music

216 posts

Six Latin Artists That Will Get Stuck in Your Head

Like many, when I stumble upon good music, I feel that the divine order of life would not continue would I not be able to proselytize  my current loves to everyone I see. Thank GOD for the internet. Makes indoctrination so much easier (and more annoying) to reach the masses. So for the past couple of years I have been exploring the world that has opened up to me through Latin artists who would’ve ordinarily escaped my radar (and my radar is pretty international). In any case, I thought it might be fun to make a small introductory post so maybe there might be someone you discover too.

Manu Chao / Mano Negra

Along with his brother and cousin, Manu Chao was a co-founder of Mano Negra, one of the most influential alternative bands to come out of France in the 80s and one that I will forever and ever and ever regret not seeing when they came to my small town when I was studying in France. Mixing rock, ska, punk, reggae, flamenco and raï influences along with singing in Spanish (mostly), French, English and even Arabic, they became legends in Europe and Latin America. Today Manu Chao carries the torch in his solo work, focusing on social and political themes in the Latin world. He is involved with many side projects and happily, continues to play Mano Negra’s music and still incorporates it in his work now.

Mala Vida – Mano Negra

Desaparecido & Rumba de Barcelona

Gustavo Cerati

Cerati is an artist that I have been recently introduced to and is a huge legend in his homeland, Argentina. He was a founder of the 80s alternative group Soda Stereo and were the first Latin group to become successful throughout Central and South America have influenced numerous groups. Since the band broke up in 1997, Cerati has gone on to do much successful solo work. Last year in May, he collapsed on stage due to a stroke during a gig in Venezuela and has remained in a coma ever since.

De Musíca Ligera – Soda Stereo

Perdonar es Divino – Cerati

Juanes

Another South American legend from Colombia. Juanes started out his career in a heavy metal band named Ekhymosis, eventually moving on to rock and pop music. Much of his music is influenced from traditional Colombian folk songs and although fluent in English, insists on singing in his native Spanish since he says it is the language that he thinks and feels in. Juanes is also extremely dedicated to charity work and has taken on the cause of eradicating land mines from his homeland. Also, I am going to see him next week in concert and am so freaking excited about it.

A Dios Lo Pido

Yerbatero

Julieta Venegas

An extremely popular Mexican-American singer from Long Beach, California but grew up in Tijuana, Mexico. Having collaborated with the legendary producer Gustavo Santaolalla who also gave Juanes his start , Julieta sings in Spanish and her music is heavily nuanced with classical Mexican accordion and is very melodic. In concert she also does a mean cover of “Love Cats” by the Cure. She has done a myriad of collaborations including and is a friend of…

Eres Para Mi

Sería Feliz

Ana (Anita) Tijoux

Ok, this girl…. I have not had her off of my iPod since her second album came out last spring. A Chilean rapper originally born in France, her family moved back to Chile after Pinochet had left power. Much of her music deals with personal themes, is inspired by classic hip-hop and first got much attention with her collaboration with Julieta Venegas on “Eres Para Mi”. She has received much critical acclaim for her work and was the second Chilean artist ever to be nominated for a Grammy in the Best Latin Rock, Alternative, or Urban Album category. Personally, I can’t say enough about her and have been disappointed that I’ve missed a few opportunities to see her last year when she came around promoting the album. (Soon…..)

1977

Gol

Mala Rodríguez

Lastly, in our little tour of Latin music, I’d like to mention Mala Rodriguez. I got introduced to her thanks to Pandora last year and is also another one of the artists that I can’t get off my iPod. I don’t know a ton about her but she is a rapper from Cádiz, Spain and incorporates flamenco influences into her music which includes themes of poverty, racism, domestic violence, and female empowerment. She won a Latin Grammy this year in the category of Best Urban Song and was nominated for Best Urban Album.

Nanai

Volvere

I know that I am missing just volumes of information on some of these artists but I deliberately tried to keep it light with an aim of whetting your appetite, not become an encylopedia (which Wikipedia does so much better). Hopefully you will enjoy discovering these Latin artists (if you already haven’t) and are influenced to seek out more. I’m hoping that with the rise of more Spanish language music making it in the American mainstream, we will see more and more artists continue to break through and enjoy much success in our traditionally English-dominated market.

Your Toddler Is Like Keith Moon in So Many Ways

One vastly overlooked career path for mothers looking to re-enter the workforce: rock star/celebrity handlers. Although toddlers may seem so cute and innocent (mostly when asleep) the parallels to the archetypal out-of-control artist are uncanny; and perhaps enough to make even Pete Doherty blush.

Substance Abuse

Artists of all stripes have had historical struggles with the bottle or the needle and as their handler you’ll be expected to help them score and definitely provide damage control once they’re high.  OK, most toddlers are only addicted to bottles of the BPA-free variety.  But they are often high on life, and the frightening part of this is you can’t pack them off to rehab for that. As a matter of course toddlers tend to stumble, slur, and drool under the influence of absolutely nothing at all, and find endless amusement in things like spinning in place till they hit their heads on the kitchen floor.  Like girls gone wild, they’ll disrobe at a moment’s fancy.  Often in public.   Nor have they ever seen a fountain or body of water that doesn’t irresistibly beckon. And unfortunately, like the most hardcore drunks, will often wet the bed and slumber on. Not to mention you’re also already familiar with the stealth puke, which happens with alarming frequency, and will come in very handy with budding Mama Casses and bulimic starlets.

Toddlers don’t need the aid of foreign substances to channel Britney and cut off all of their hair with blunt scissors, but there are the times when sugar definitely contributes to the daily mayhem.  Anyone who has ever witnessed a group of under-5’s mainlining undiluted juice boxes will have experienced the frisson of terror that one might encounter say, when addicts meet very pure heroin.  No one can tell me sugar is not a drug and I’ve seen the ugly things toddlers will do under the influence:  the shriveled foil hull of a verboten chocolate Easter egg discarded behind the sofa, the tell-tale blue tongue of the secret jelly-bean huffer, the incessant whine of the Oreo addicted.   Even when you’ve forsworn all snacks of the evaporated-cane-juice variety, there will always be a playground groupie who will help junior cop from some unsuspecting mom.  The playground fanbase feeds the sugar junkie’s already inflated ego, finding his antics charming and funny.  They don’t get to see the ensuing meltdown once your homeboy gets back to his crib. But if you do have to score drugs in your new gig you’ll know how to play it to get maximum advantage. Like a lollipop will get your kid through the supermarket checkout line, a handful of Vicodin will get your client through the interview.  Just don’t be caught holding and keep it out of the tabloids.

Artistic Expression

Like miniature Jackson Pollocks, toddlers are the ultimate free spirits. Gargantuan ids trapped in tiny bodies yearning to break free, expose their innermost souls, jam Legos into the DVD player.  Everything is art, if you cannot see the beauty in random piles of salt or juice as medium and the kitchen floor as canvas then you might as well be the Man. It is a fine line to walk, however, as you already know.  In your new gig you’ll want to strive to be more the Patti Boyd type of muse, even though you’re Yoko at home. Also, when the work is pure crap (it is little-known and overlooked fact that even Basquiat had a brief, and misunderstood, macaroni period),  you already know how to assuage the most sensitive of egos.  “I’m sorry you didn’t get the Grammy, but hey, good job! I got you a sticker, I mean, a hooker!”

One of the first battles waged by toddlers in ther epic quest for self–expression revolves around clothing. Once they demand to dress themselves they, like rock stars, are known for their quirky sartorial  sense—the intensity of a four-year-old girl’s relationship with sparkle is enough to make Lady Gaga look Amish—and often the end result, replete with the requisite bruises and scrapes that come with a burgeoning sense of balance, is pretty much the way Amy Winehouse looks on any given day.  You already know how to roll with the flow here and you won’t even have to make public excuses that your new charge was dressed by Dad that morning.

The Truth Hurts

Like toddlers, rock stars and artistes are often known for their lack of social filters, they’ll say whatever they want and be adored and despised for it.  As the handler, you’ll be doing damage control here too.  Fortunately you’re also prepared for this.  When your new charge gets into the inevitable tiff with Paris Hilton or Lindsay Lohan, you’ll know what to say to smooth things over.   Well, honey, Paris didn’t mean to steal your Greek shipping magnate boyfriend, can you say you’re sorry for running her over in the parking lot?  Baby, remember friends share so can you give Lindsay some of your eightball?  She shared her Oxycontin with you last week, remember?  Let’s use our sharing and our inside-the-VIP-section voices.

Hangin’ with the Roadies

You will have no trouble relating to the lads as you are already intimately familiar with Newton’s little-known fourth law of motion: an inverse equation whereby the smaller a person in motion is, the more items they suck into their tiny vortex.

Let’s face it: P-Funk’s real mothership is pretty much any Suburban on the road with baby on board.  Diapers, wipes, tissues, snacks, bottles, formula, drinks (in the princess cup), antibacterial gel, Epi pen, hats, mittens, scarves, coats, boots, crayons, books, toys, car seats, DVDs, changes of clothing, portable potty, sling, stroller, rain cover, sunscreen, bug repellant, blankets. Ah, what the hell, throw in a forty-foot inflatable pig, go on.  Just don’t be smug because your last trip to Target didn’t disrupt flights out of Heathrow and the roadies will embrace you as one of their own.

Trashing the Hotel Room

A two-year-old in the middle of the terribles can make Courtney Love look like Martha Stewart.  Doubters may wonder: how can something so small do so much damage?  Think Ebola, my friend.  They may be pint-sized but they are preternaturally determined to have their willful way–not to mention freakishly strong. For instance, anything that can fit, and a few things that can’t, will end up in the toilet (and that’s not even with the hotel dicks on your trail).  So maybe your fancypants college degree didn’t quite prepare you for picking dried spaghetti off the ceiling, but at least in your new gig you’ll be paid for having to deal with the chaos, and, even better, paying off others to clean up the mess. Just carry a wad of $20s like you carried Wet Ones and use them with the same frequency. Clean up, clean up, everybody, everywhere!

Just remember a mom would never let you expire on the toilet (I’m talking to you, Colonel Parker) and if you did you can be sure we’d at least put in you in clean underwear before the press got wind of it. Don’t be fooled: beneath that snot-swiped sweater beats the heart of a rock ’n’ roll warrior.

 

Investing in Your Favorite Bands’ Future

As the mainstream music industry feebly attempts to hang on to some semblance of its past glory days, many bands and artists are opting to cut out the middleman and go directly to their fans to provide financial backing for their future album releases.  Using sites such as PledgeMusic or Kickstarter, musicians are able to make their case to fans and others who are interested in helping cover the costs associated with recording an album — booking studio time, distribution, promotional efforts, and so on. Beyond the financial, some bands are also reaching out to their fanbase to provide inspiration for songs in the form of words, artwork, or sound effects.

Helping an artist finance their next album usually comes with perks such as having advance access to music, bonus tracks, or having your name listed in the liner notes. Of course, there’s the simple personal gratification you’d feel in assisting a band get their music out to the masses.

Gregory Douglass:
I first learned of Gregory a few years back after seeing the video for his song, “Hang Around,” on TV one evening. I quickly downloaded the song from iTunes. Shortly thereafter, I returned to purchase the rest of his music. Back in 2009, I hosted a house concert where Gregory performed in my home for me and a group of my friends. His voice is simply amazing and I can’t help but cheer the guy on. Gregory has been holding weekly concerts streamed online and making appeals for fans to contribute to helping fund his next album, Lucid.

The Damnwells:
This is a band that needs to be heard by many more people. Their last album, One Last Century, was made available to the world for free. The band’s latest release, No One Listens to the Band Anymore, was just released on March 15, however, those who were financial backers via PledgeMusic, received early access to the album in addition to bonus songs and special access to a concert stream.

Imogen Heap:
At shows during her last world tour, Imogen Heap raised money for local charities by creating and recording a song at each show and making it available for purchase on her website. Even better, the audience was part of creating the song. At the show I attended, someone yelled out C sharp for the key and another person provided the general melody. From there, Imogen created a song.  Perhaps using that experience as inspiration, fans were able to contribute words, sounds and/or melodies that would be reviewed and used to create a new song — the first song created for her new album.

As Imogen culled through the submissions, fans were able to watch via Ustream as she reviewed them and built a song. The result is “Lifeline.” It’s also worth noting that the submissions used in the song will receive credit on her album as well as receive compensation.

The Seven Best Songs from Boston (the City)

The epicenter of  more than 50 institutions of higher learning with a population of over 150,000 college and grad students, Boston has been inspiring and incubating musicians and bands ever since the early days of rock ’n’ roll, starting with the Standells, who weren’t even really a Boston band but a Cali group who recorded what’s probably still the most emblematic Boston song of all, the 1966 classic “Dirty Water”

I’ll get the ball rolling with half-dozen of my favorites (in some cases I actually was lucky enough to meet a few of these people) but if you don’t have at least one favorite Band in Boston, you must be brain-dead. So crank up the volume, blast that first power chord. And “One two three four five six seven …”

“Roadrunner” by Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers: an iconic Boston tune, replete with shout-outs to Stop’n’Shop and Route 128. This is perfect highway music, simple yet driving rhythms overlaid with Richman’s unmistakable stuffed-sinus  voice – it’s also one of very few JR&ML songs that’s not flat-out off-the-wall: “Abominable Snowman in the Supermarket,” “I’m a Little Dinosaur,” and “Dodge Veg-o-Matic” are much more characteristic. (I met Richman a few times; to call him “fey” is to understate the effect by several orders of magnitude, but his band’s music was and remains more seminal than many people recognize.)

Interestingly, “Roadrunner” is basically lifted from the Velvets’ “Sister Ray” though in place of Lou Reed’s typically Warholian, debauched detachment, Richman achieves a weird earnestness in his paean to the Turnpike. Joan Jett, the Sex Pistols, and Yo La Tengo are among other rockers who’ve covered this propulsive song.

 

“Funk (All Over the Place)” by Duke and the Drivers: a legendary BU party band with a tight-knit following, DatD coalesced in the early 70’s and still play the occasional reunion concert. If you like blues, r&b, and irresistibly danceable roadhouse music and get one of the ever-rarer opportunities to catch Duke, jump at the chance. Back in the day they toured with the likes of Lou Reed, Steely Dan, the NY Dolls, and ZZ Top, among others.  (I’ve had the unlikely pleasure of meeting the shadowy Duke, whose doppelgänger in life and onstage alike is a longtime friend of your humble correspondent. The Duke is also known as André Marine, plutocrat, philosopher and bon vivant.

 

“Voice of America’s Sons” by the Beaver Brown Band: Fronted by John Cafferty, later the eminence grise of Creedence Clearwater Revival, Beaver Brown  isn’t strictly speaking a Boston band – they actually hailed from nearby Narragansett, Rhode Island. If you’ve ever heard of them you’re probably a fan of 1983’s cult sleeper Eddie and the Cruisers, for which Cafferty and Beaver Brown wrote the music. This particular song was used on the soundtrack of a Stallone cheesefest called Cobra — I like it for its bombast … naturally mixed with anti-war sentiments: this is New England, after all.

 

“My Best Friend’s Girlfriend” by The Cars: One of yours truly’s all-time favorite songs, from one of the great New Wave bands ever, Ric Ocasek’s Cars (a name suggested by former Modern Lover David Robinson, also a member of The Cars’ original lineup.) What Abba was to disco, so were The Cars to late-70s and early-80s guitar-synth garage-bands, a juggernaut of catchy, hooky, quirky songs that became hits one after another, from “Just What I Needed” to “You Are the Girl,” their last real blockbuster, in 1987. Ocasek and guitarist Benjamin Orr first met in Ohio but moved to Boston to break into the music business … by the time they were done, Cobain and Nirvana had covered this very song. Weezer too.

 

“Walkin’ Blues“ by Bonnie Raitt: Back in the days of which I write, Bonnie Raitt had just dropped out of Radcliffe to play blues guitar round Boston’s clubs; her father was a Broadway star, and she herself would become a pioneering woman in the boys’ club of top-flight traditional slide and bottleneck  bluesmen. “Walkin’ Blues” dates from her eponymous first album (1971); this song  was written and first performed by the legendary Robert Johnson , who sold his soul to the Devil at the “Crossroads” in return for the meteoric musical career that blazed across the blues firmament for scarcely six years in the 1930’s – and made him the guitar gods’ guitar god. The second of these videos captures not one but two guitar goddesses — Bonnie and EmmyLou Harris — singing backup for Lowell George and Little Feat.

 

“Centerfold” by J. Geils Band: When I tended bar in a local saloon, Peter Wolf used to come in fairly often and hang out.  Many people believe that Peter is J. Geils but he’s not – Peter was the front man, for sure, but J. Geils is actually the guitarist. [insert: JPeter.jpg] Amazingly, the band’s first sign of life was as a mid-Sixties combo called “Snoopy and the Sopwith Camels;” they hit their stride when Peter joined, and “Centerfold” is probably their biggest hit — six weeks at #1 on the Billboard Top 100. The video rocks, too.

Peter was (still is, I’m sure) a very interesting guy: a renowned, very accomplished painter who studied under Norman Rockwell as a kid; when I rubbed shoulders with him he hadn’t yet married Faye Dunaway, but at that time he had not long before been roommates with surrealist filmmaker David Lynch at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Lynch threw him out for “being too weird,” which has gotta tell you something if David Lynch thinks that about you.

 

“Digging for Fire” by The Pixies: This song, especially, could be mistaken for David Byrne in the early days of Talking Heads, but the Pixies are figuratively speaking the Boston-based younger sibs of the New York New-Wave crew who made second homes at CBGB and the Mudd Club. Formed in 1986, the Pixies are a bit after my time, but no list however brief of Boston bands could omit them. Critics award them substantial influence over the alternative-rock world of the 1990s, Kurt Cobain was a fan, and … and …

Black Francis (or Frank Black or his actual original name Charles Thompson IV) is the lead singer and main songwriter. Radiohead, U2, and the Strokes cite the Pixies with admiration, and no less a figure than David Bowie declared that the Pixies made “just about the most compelling music of the entire 80s”. Since then the Pixies have broken up and reformed several times.

 

So there you have it, boys and girls. Let’s give it up for Boston. Or, as Jonathan Richman put it:

Already been to Paris

Already been to Rome

What did I do but miss my ho-ome?

O-oh New England!

 

Unsung Country Funk Soul Genius: The Back Story On Singer Songwriter Jim Ford

As a singer songwriter (more on that at a later date) I have frequently been fascinated by the personal back-stories of songwriters whose work I really respect.  I really enjoy reading books like Brian Wilson’s autobiography, mostly because I like finding out the stories behind his writing of songs like “Caroline, No” and “Warmth of the Sun”.

Country-Funk Musical genius Jim Ford

It’s particularly interesting for me when I discover an artist from the past whose work I was not aware of previously.  Such is the case with Jim Ford who I just “discovered” this past weekend.

Friday night I was home doing work, and had the R&B classics channel on Fios on in the background for music.  I heard this song,  “Harry Hippie” that I had never heard before, and was instantly into it.  It is wonderfully sung by the great Bobby Womack.  But a quick Google search revealed that the writer was one Jim Ford.

Born in Kentucky in 1941, he spent time in New Orleans before making his way to L.A. and success in the music industry.  Incredibly prolific, he was at the forefront of the musical “mixed marriage” that was country-soul-rock-funk; so popular in the early 1970s.  Musical luminaries such as Nick Lowe (one of my personal all time favorites) called Jim Ford a big musical influence and a friend.  Ford’s good friend Sly Stone called him “the funkiest white man I know”.

Ford released just one solo album in his life, the somewhat unsung “Harlan County” released in 1969 on White Whale Records.  Listen to the title track, if nothing else, to see how Ford blended the various styles of American popular music with incredible finesse and excitement.  His arrangement is complex and highly satisfying; if those horn sections alone don’t get you moving, you’re just too tired to move.

Apparently he recorded a second album, set to be released in 1970 on Capitol Records.  However after some sort of dust up between Jim and some Capitol execs, they pulled the plug on the album.  He was sent on his way with $20, 000 AND his master tapes, and specific instructions never to show up in the Capitol Records building ever again.

Although his career as a solo artist was indefinitely stalled, he maintained his rock star lifestyle by writing hits that were covered by many major artists like Womack and Aretha Franklin, who shined with a bangin’ version of Ford’s  “Niki Hoeky”.  He even wrote an entire album for the Temptations, “Wings of Love” released in 1976.

If you listen to Ford’s own solo tracks, you easily understand how both his songwriting and vocal style  might have been influences to so many new artists of the time. Nick Lowe and the rest of the London pub rock scene guys were just getting started when Ford went over to London to lay some of his soul on the people. And of course Ford’s influence could be seen in all kinds of American southern rock artists.

Jim Ford claimed for years that he actually wrote or co-wrote the famous “Ode to Billy Joe”, which was singer Bobbie Gentry’s entrée to musical fame.  Gentry has always denied that Ford was involved with writing the song. The two were a couple and living together when the song was written, and sometimes songwriters living or working in close proximity can develop nebulous and conflicting perceptions of their “boundaries.” Gentry later showed that the “Billy Joe” story was something she had written up as a short story before putting it in song form, and showed early drafts of the lyrics that had many more verses than ones she finally recorded.  Places mentioned in the song like Choctaw Ridge and the Tallahatchie Bridge were real locations from her particular southern upbringing, not his.  And Gentry did go on to have artistic success and hits on her own after her breakup with Ford, shortly after the song hit. But you can see some of Ford’s style in the song too.  I believe it’s at least conceivable that while Gentry was in the process of turning her short story into the song, that Ford suggested some part of the melody line or chord structure. Was Jim hurt because she didn’t acknowledge his contribution to a huge hit, or just hurt because she left him? Only the two of them will ever know for sure.

According to this article about Jim on Aquariumdrunkard.com, after those initial years of living in the fast lane,  came a story we’ve all heard before, namely: charismatic musical genius gets lost in the world and makes friends with drugs and drinking.

He cleaned up in the early 2000’s and found himself living in a trailer, in Mendocino County, California, strewn with myriad master tapes of tons of amazing Jim Ford songs that had been recorded and never released.

This is how and where he was somehow found, lounging in obscurity, by a Swedish music magazine publisher in 2006.  Thus started the last, brief phase of his life, garnering one more bit of the spotlight for the road.

In 2007, a German indie label named Bear Family Records put out “Sounds of Our Times”, a compilation consisting of the entire “Harlan County Album” plus 15 of these unreleased tracks.

There were plans made for a subsequent album of even more of Ford’s demos (which was released in 2008 as “Point of No Return”) and old friend Nick Lowe was planning a big reunion concert for Jim in London.

But before the hoopla could ensue, it was over.  Ford was found dead in his trailer on November 18th, 2007, at the age of 66.  His neighbors were worried something was up when they noticed that he had left his Peugeot with the hood up parked in front, in the rain.  I haven’t found anything about the cause of his death online.

RIP, Jim Ford. You’ve certainly made this girl love you, and darned if you didn’t make it “out of Harlan County.”

Don’t Mess with the Sound Guy

When I’m not awesomeing it up all over the Internet, I’m mixing live bands for money.  I have what’s referred to as a “house gig.”  I don’t tour.  I work in one venue, and bands come to me.  Sometimes they’re well-known national acts, other times, they’re smaller regional acts.  The bigger bands usually come with their own crew, and I just tell them where they can plug in and how to use the sound board.  The smaller acts, I usually have to mix them.  The following lists happens in both instances, but with the larger acts, I’m not the one who has to deal with it.  On the smaller acts, it effects my job directly.

The Person Who Plays the Tambourine

There are two people who play the tambourine:  The guy who has nothing to do during this song, and the girlfriend of the lead singer who wants to join him on tour, so she knows he’s not sleeping with the groupies.  (Trust me – if I’m mixing you, you have no groupies.)  Either way, you’re not helping the song.  You’re just shaking the shit out of a bunch of metal plates near a microphone.  That becomes the loudest, and most grating part of the song.  And then, right afterwards, you step up to the mic to say something, so if I take the mic out so I don’t have to hear the tambourine, it’s still out when you speak, and now you know I wasn’t putting the tambourine through the P.A.  And now you’re pissed, because nobody could hear the complex rhythms you were playing that like, totally made the middle eight of the song.  If I’m lucky, you’ll mention this on mic so everyone can hear, which brings us to number 2:

The Band that Calls the Mix from the Stage

Don’t stand on stage and tell me how it could sound better.  The speakers I use aren’t pointing at you.  You really have no idea how it sounds.  You’re getting the low end from the back of the cabinets, and then the reflection off the back of the venue.  Of course you think it sounds like crap.  Don’t start telling me how to fix it, because you are going to be wrong.  Then we’re going to get into an argument and I’m going to look like a stubborn dickhead house sound guy who doesn’t know how to do his job.  And, for the love of God, if you decide to poll the audience on the sound, I will shut you off.  No audience has ever collectively decided that the reverb time is too long or anything else that might be slightly helpful.  All they want is LOUDER.  And if you take that to mean that I should turn it up, and tell me to do so on mic in front of everyone, you’re not going to get what you want.  Barring some freak of physics, you’re loud enough.  Probably too loud.  And I have to do this shit for a living.  If it becomes too loud, I will walk away.  I have to listen to loud volumes for extended periods of time, and unlike the douches who are hanging out right next to the subs, I care about my ears.  I put a lot of time and money into educating them.  They are how I pay my rent.  If I break them, I have to find something else to do for money.  Four hundred drunk guys on the dance floor yelling “LOUDER!” are not worth my livelihood.

Keep Your Fucking Family Members Away from Me

That’s your brother playing guitar?  Great.  I’m not turning him up.  I can hear him fine.  I don’t need the whole night to be about him picking around on some chords.  There’s also some guy singing.  That part of the song is pretty important, too.  If you keep coming up to me and telling me you can’t hear him, and each time I don’t turn him up, guess what?  I’m not fucking turning him up.  Nine times out of ten, this results in family member getting pissed, and then telling the guitar player it sounded like shit and they couldn’t hear him.  Then I’m the jackass.

People Who “Do the Sound” at their Church

Please don’t come up to me with mix notes, or want to talk about gear.  I haven’t been to your church, but I’m guessing you’re back in the corner with a tiny console, and you mix by telling the band that plays those super-awesome Jesus Rock songs to turn up their amps.  You also probably read Mix Magazine and pour through Guitar Center catalogs searching for new gear.  First off, Guitar Center sells crap.  They’re the Best Buy of music.  Second, my work buys my shit, and unless it breaks and can’t be repaired, it’s not getting replaced.  I don’t keep up on the latest models of effects units because I ain’t getting one.  When it’s time to buy a new one, I’ll spend the two hours it takes to research them, and then buy the one I want.  I don’t need to study up on that stuff monthly.  Also, unless your church is run by Rick Warren, what I do is on a completely different level than what you do.   You have one guy speaking, I have five or more guys all doing loud shit.  It’s very different.

The Audience

You see this big, expensive-looking thing with a bunch of lights and knobs on it?  IT”S NOT A FUCKING COASTER.  If your drink gets anywhere near it, I will send that Malibu pineapple off in the opposite direction.  And, no, I’m not buying you a new one.  Also, don’t stand right in front of me.  I have to see when the guitar player decides to play an acoustic guitar on this song.

Tone Freak Guitar Players

My venue isn’t that big.  We seat around eight hundred maximum.  When I get a guitar player who needs to have his amp up all the way to get his tone, and can’t live with it facing away, or in another room with a mic in front of it, that means the show is going to suck.  It’s going to be the an evening of trying to get everything up to the same level as your amp, until I just give up because, like I said earlier, I need my hearing.  Then, I’m going to get a bunch of people telling me the guitar is too loud, and they’re going to be right.  But I won’t be able to do anything about it.  I hate these nights.

Bands that Screw Around During Sound Check

I’m good at my job.  Really fucking good.  I see a lot of acts and listen to a lot of mixes, and 80% of the time, I can put together a better mix.  I don’t tell them that, because it’s not nice. (You know who has a great sound guy?  Asleep At The Wheel.  That guy doesn’t do sound check, and within the first half of the first song, has put together one of the better mixes I have heard.)  I will make your band sound good.  But I can’t just pull it out of my ass.  I need like four songs, and I need you to play all your instruments.  I also need you to play at something close to show volume.  Most of the time, everyone walks through soundcheck, half-assing everything, and then come showtime, everything is different.  The guitars are all louder, and the drummer is beating his kit like it owes him money.  That means soundcheck was a complete waste of time.  It’s always fun to un-mute the console and find out your mix isn’t working at all.

Most of the time, I love my job.  Once in a while, I have to deal with these people.  Then,  I don’t love my job.  Whatever.  At least I’m not touring.

Monday Daytime Open Thread

Welcome back Crasstalk. Hope you had a wonderful weekend and are ready for an exciting week around here. I am pleased to announce the winners of this weekend’s epic Light Rock Wars. The competition was bloody and hard fought, but two winners emerged.

From the Saturday and Sunday Thread, NurseWretched played this masterful choice:

Excruciating, simply excruciating. However, the winner from the first day and the
overwhelming winner over all goes to bbqcornnuts who made us all suffer through this:

Congrats to both of these ladies, and to all of you who spent the weekend searching
for Michael Bolton clips on You Tube.

Have a great day.

Stray Tracks of the Week (3/21-3/25/11)

*This is also posted on my personal blog, which is pretty quiet lately due to school obligations.*

I listen to music constantly, and I’m constantly acquiring new things. So much, in fact, that serious evaluation on an album-by-album basis is impossible. To ensure my musical hoarding doesn’t amount to too much waste, I’ve elected to begin picking out choice tracks from my catch and reviewing them, here. I’m hoping to make this a weekly thing, every Saturday night, mods willin’.

*** I had to take a week off for school stuff (which is also the culprit behind the dearth of proper album reviews around my blog for the last month or so) but I’m back. This week, acid technopop from EOD, a Daedelus remix from UK House guy Floating Points, and acoustic folk from RM Hubbert. ***

EOD – questionmark 2 (from Questionmarks, self-released via Bandcamp)

Perhaps due to his high profile in the 90’s, or the vacuum left by his long, languid release schedule, a lot of people have taken cracks at cribbing the Aphex Twin’s myriad styles. Most of these artists tend to go straight for an AFX-style hard acid sound centered almost entirely around Roland TB-303 arpeggios, and while that’s all well and good, oftentimes the music feels more like faithful genre exercise than anything else. I would be a lot less enthused with Rephlex-style IDM were it not for EOD, a Norwegian producer who captures the uniquely skewed electropop sensibility that Richard D. James brought to IDM as very few do. Following the pretty amazing Ultrecht EP for the acid-centric 03030 imprint, he has released a new EP on short notice to raise funds to  repair his Roland TR-909 drum machine, which suffered damage from a power surge.

Ultrecht was pretty evenly divided between airier Selected Ambient Works Vol. I compositions and analog acid techno, but Questionmarks is pretty much entirely in the latter mode, sounding throughout like two or three Analord singles that were never released. “questionmark 2” is akin to some of the outliers in that massive 42-track series, a rushing 4/4 acid-electro instrumental that never really flags in pace. The multiple synth melodies, which by this point are a sort of EOD signature as much as an IDM touchstone, surge and twist in emotive and spectacular ways, and the rubbery 303 bass arpeggios, which admittedly aren’t as acrobatic as they are in some of EOD’s other efforts, provide a more dynamic rhythmic underpinning to the track than the fairly standard 4/4 drum pattern (which still pulls off a satisfying break every once in awhile, and manages to get more interesting towards the end of the track). The only real downside is that it ends out of nowhere, but in a song with this sort of momentum, satisfactory stopping points are hard to come by.

Stream “questionmark 2” on Soundcloud.
EOD – questionmark 2 by Dicccccccce

(“Questionmarks” is a digital only album sold through EOD’s Bandcamp page.)

___________________

Daedelus – Tailor-Made [Floating Points Remix] (from Tailor-Made Remixes on Ninja Tune)

Daedelus has been credited with sowing the seeds of the current Low End Theory-centric “Beat” scene in Los Angeles (notable home to Flying Lotus, among many many others), releasing music since 2001 and cultivating an air of eccentricity in concert (mainly due to his Victorian gentleman dress and fairly spectacular use of a Monome) that hasn’t always paid off on his recordings, primarily due to the fact that he’s so prolific, and thus often inconsistent. Thankfully, the first single off of his new album for Ninja Tune is one of his best in awhile, staking out territory between Bonobo and Joy Orbison with a sultry female vocal (courtesy of Milosh) over a track that quietly builds forwards and up before ratcheting back down again.

For the prospective single / remix EP, Daedelus (Ninja Tune?) picked out a pretty strong pair of artists to retool the track, but the strongest of the two (to my mind at least) is Floating Points, who’s quietly built up a reputation in certain circles over the last few years as a UK House wunderkind. More recently he’s been exploring more jazz-influenced sounds (primarily though his live ensemble, also on Ninja Tune) and his edit for Daedelus follows in this vein. Floating Points takes a bit of a risk in essentially removing the track’s forward momentum, but he compensates by leaning a lot harder on Milosh’s vocal and teasing out its latent lounge potential through tasteful use of a Rhodes (always a good choice) before inserting softly squeezed organ synths and a shuffling rhythm that I would call “dubstep” if the term wasn’t so meaningless these days. Overall, FP pretty much steals the song from Daedelus (it’s more of a deconstruction than a remix) but in so doing he makes a better case for himself as a certain sort of jazz composer than he did with his ensemble group. It’s sort of a shame that Daedelus is probably best known at this point for being Flylo’s LA-based mentor and Floating Points is now known as the guy who talked over the radio debut of the recent Four Tet / Burial / Thom Yorke collab, but if this song (and its remix) are any indication, they certainly have the chops to gain greater recognition for their own work.

Daedelus – “Tailor-Made (Floating Points Remix)” on youtube.

(You can purchase the digital version of the “Tailor-Made” Remix EP, also including a Tokimonsta remix, over at Bleep)

___________________


RM Hubbert – Hey There Mr. Bone (from First & Last on Chemikal Underground Records)

There was a time, not too long ago, when I considered myself an electronica partisan. Tired of the skepticism of people I knew over electronic music in general, I started to articulate a distinctly anti-rockist stance, arguing against the musical primacy of the album format and, more importantly, the emotional primacy of the guitar as a musical instrument. Mostly, this was in reaction to the continued vexation of Radiohead fans who felt as though everything the band made post-OK Computer was “not real music”, and the rise of Chillwave and Witch Hosue, which I considered (and still consider) to be illegitimate, historically ignorant sham genres (I was great fun in conversation, as you can probably imagine).

Over the past year, however, as my music-buying habit has expanded and I noticed that I’m not as drawn to UK Bass music as I used to be, I’ve begun to revisit guitar music. I still find myself largely bored by most permutations of rock and blues (exceptions being shoegaze and certain types of metal) but through my recent induction to the Swans fan cult I’ve delved into the Young God Records back catalog and discovered that I have a greater affinity for folk music (the darker and drone-ier the better) than I thought I did. This impulse took me from Gary Higgins to Angels of Light to James Blackshaw to Mountains and finally to the wider world of fringe folk, at least, that which I can find through Boomkat (always the closest resource at hand for a musically cloistered soul such as myself). A few weeks ago I was sifting through their new releases and came upon a Scottish guitarist named RM Hubbert and his First & Last album, which I had never heard of, but when I played the sound clips I knew I had to have.

Hubbert’s music plays sort of like a less studio-bound James Blackshaw, which is to say this is unaccompanied acoustic virtuosity par excellence. This particular track (the first on the album, dedicated to Hubbert’s dog) is marked by its distinctive use of on-instrument percussion, which meshes seamlessly with Hubbert’s flamenco-indebted playing, which slides and flares with natural finesse. On record I figured must have been multitracked or performed by someone else, but live footage seems to indicate this is all Hubbert, which is certainly impressive. My vocabulary for this sort of music is lacking (well, more lacking than usual) so as with any music I’m naturally intoxicated by, I can only really speak of the feelings it elicits. I could probably break out any number of hoary scenarios such music would be perfect for (bike ride through an orchard with your sweetheart in the Summer, I’d say) but suffice to say this is the sort of music that a particularly lucky person might walk in on at a cafe somewhere – unpretentious, supremely competent, and personal.

RM Hubbert – “Hey There Mr. Bone” live. The actual song starts up around 1:05.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kbUnb20mBdg

(Boomkat has “First & Last” region-locked outside of the US [props to Rob for the assist there] but it looks like the digital version, as well as other formats, may be available direct from the label)

 

Light Rock Wars: The Battle Continues

1 comment

Hi gang. So it looks that some of you are still ready to bring on the soft rock pain. However, the other post is so full of videos that it is difficult to load and navigate. To make this easier I am going to open this new thread so people can continue to play. All previous entries and points will be considered in the final judging which will be tomorrow night.

Remember, the rules are simple.

Post the most teeth-grindingly bad light rock videos you can find. Your peers and fellow competitors will vote (by fonzing) for the most awful videos.Bonus points for home-made videos that add an extra layer of fail.

The tool of victory

At the end of the weekend the video with the most fonz points wins all of the internet gold and bad taste bragging rights. Here are a couple stand out videos from yesterday’s round.

Good luck warriors!!