Attention all guitar geeks: if you don't know Shugo Tokumaru you're missing out on something special. In short, Shugo is the man. Technically proficient and original. Great little riff in this tune, perfectly suited to his charming folk pop style.
Incidentally, this is another tune that de-emphasizes the lyrical component of songwriting. I'm not trying to make a consistent argument in this blog, but the longer I write about these songs the less important text seems to become. Heh.
Leonard Cohen. Sigh. I'm supposed to love him. He's an icon, internationally loved. And Canadian. "Suzanne" and "Hallelujah" regularly appear on "Best Song" lists. But... Jeez. I mean... Boring. Boring. Just... Boring. Beautiful poetry. I guess. Like, it's okay. But the music. God almighty. Sigh. Feel like half-traitor for suggesting he's anything less than brilliant.
Joanna Newsom
Album: The Milk-Eyed Mender
Song: The Sprout And The Bean
A friend likens Joanna Newsom's singing voice to someone who has suffered a recent brain injury. Me, I hear a constipated eleven-year old. Idiosyncratic, to be sure. But it is also, in its faux twee glory, well suited to her eccentric folk songs. Next time a film producer needs a song about the adventures of a candy-coated pink unicorn, Joanna Newsom will be at the very top of the list.
The music's pretty darn good too. The song lilts along, carving out a space between a-flat minor and B major, using the D#/E flat as an harmonic pivot point and playing liberally with the B flat/B natural tension, when suddenly Newsom springs on us an extended section that alternates between E major and C# major. It's a lovely little effect. Notice in particular the symmetry between the harmonic contours of the two major sections: A flat (G#)-B and E-C#, both minor thirds, one rising, one falling. Really quite beautiful.
Hope you enjoy it, and please feel free to comment on any aspect of the post, especially the analysis which was done relatively quickly and mostly by ear. That is, mistakes are inevitable. Let's see if we can suss out the truth together.
Bela Fleck And The Flecktones
Album: Left Of Cool
Song: Let Me Be The One
Bela Fleck: electric banjo. Jeff Coffin: electronically altered sax. Future Man (Roy Wooten): drumitar. Victor Wooten: bass.
Holy. Fuck.
Alright, a few things you need to know. First of all, Bela Fleck has been one of my favorite musicians for almost 20 years. He gained a measure of notoriety in the late 80s / early 90s for his virtuosic albeit completely atypical playing style. While a bluegrass element is almost always present, he also incorporates many other genres into the musical mix, in particular jazz, folk, funk, and pop. In fact, Bela Fleck and his band have received Grammy nominations in more different categories than any other group in history. Second, Roy Wooten created his own instrument, the drumitar, which is a SynthAxe rigged to play percussion samples. So he's the drummer and he's out front with the rest of the band. Pretty cool. Third, Victor Wooten is a fucking beast. I mean...wow. Just...wow. The best bass player I know. Lastly, Jeff Coffin is a multi-instrumentalist jazz phenomenon in his own right. Put 'em all together and you've got something truly magnificent.
The tune itself is good, but perhaps not more than that. I chose it, however, because it shows off the band's incredible virtuosity and musicianship, two qualities that often do not go hand in hand. (See Yngwie, yet again.) Coffin's solo is good. Wooten's solo is out of this world. Fleck's solo takes banjo in completely new directions. Wicked stuff.
Oh, and the band performed at the Regina Folk Festival two years ago. And I missed it. Godfuckingdamn.
The Weirdos
Album: (only released as a single)
Song: Life Of Crime
JK Rowling sends a manuscript to eight prospective publishers. They all say no. The ninth publisher, Bloomsbury, says yes. Harry Potter goes on to sell 800 billion books. The Texas Rangers sign baseball's best player, Alex Rodriguez, to a record 10 year, $252 million dollar contract. Texas finishes dead last in their division in every successive year and eventually trade A-Fraud to the New York Bloated Fuckers.
The line between success and failure can be thin. Hellathin, as the kids would say. Almost everyone knows Black Flag. Very few know Tenor Saw. Sheryl Crow owns three mansions and Lance Armstrong's balls.* Lissie owns a burgeoning alcohol abuse problem and an increased likelihood of contracting an STD. James Cameron is a gazillionaire. Richard Linklater is a severalthousandaire. Tenor Sax, Lissie, and Richard Linklater are by any standard the equal of their counterparts, and yet huge mainstream success eludes them. We should add The Weirdos to our list.
As far as I know The Weirdos did not release an EP or LP in the 70s and 80s. A bunch of singles, but no album. And like Linklater et al they are at least the artistic equals of other commercially successful So Cal punk bands from the late 70s. Our song of the day is one of the best of its genre, in my opinion: raw, brutal, great guitar riff, great lyrics, and James Denney is a charismatic frontman.
Bassist Cliff Roman went on to become an elementary school teacher. Heh.
* What's left of them, at any rate. Did I ever say I was above such tastelessness?
There's virtue in being first. Monteverdi is generally credited with heralding the Baroque period in music, and his music lives on because of it. But in fact, in the grand scheme of things, he's a lesser composer. He was the first, but others did it better. The Ramones were among the first to punk. (I've just verbed punk.) Others did it better, but The Ramones, well, did it.
Big Black were among the first industrial bands, and they made some of the most acerbic and confrontational music of the 80s. I didn't know much about the band when I purchased their second album, Atomizer, at a used record store. I liked the cover art. Within a few seconds of putting needle to vinyl, however, I realized that Big Black was something wonderful. The guitar work. Crazy fucking good. Brittle, jagged, insistent; the sound, as one critic put it, of shattering glass. The band was led by the great Steve Albini, best known these days for his work producing albums by artists like Nirvana, Slint, The Jesus Lizard, Helmet, The Stooges, The Pixies, PJ Harvey, Low, Joanna Newsom, and others. As you can see, much of my listening habits of the last 25 years have been shaped by his hand in one way or another.
Albini is also known for his role as a music industry pundit. He has been highly critical of the industry and its poor ethical standards, charging in particular that this lax morality filters down to the independent labels. On this topic he writes, "I don't give two splats of an old negro junkie's vomit for your politico-philosophical treatises, kiddies. I like noise. I like big-ass vicious noise that makes my head spin. I wanna feel it whipping through me like a fucking jolt. We're so dilapidated and crushed by our pathetic existence we need it like a fix." Albini insisted that Big Black's music remain untainted by the corporate music industry. The band maintained full creative control throughout their recording life and rejected several overtures from major labels.
In the late 80s and 90s other industrial bands did Big Black better than Big Black itself. But Big Black was, and always will be, the first. A virtue, indeed.
Oh, and they seemed as geeky and nerdy as Elvis Costello, David Byrne, and Arto Lindsay combined. Which is, needless to say, frigging awesome.
The Everly Brothers
Album: The Everly Brothers
Song: Wake Up Little Suzie
Right. Let's sum up, shall we?
Pros: 1. Nice harmonies. 2. Aggressive strumming. Occasionally. 3. They, uh, look like pleasant chaps. 4. Ummmm. Hmmm. 5. Oh! I remember. They made friends and influenced people in the early- and mid-60s. The Beatles and The Beach Boys cite them as important influences, for example. 6. A fucking killer guitar riff (very Chuck Berry) thrown into the mix. 7. Those chords!
Cons: 1. Boring as hell otherwise.
I- flat III- IV. Three chords that define a genre. Some of the best early metal is based almost entirely on those little beauties. Here is the most famous example: Smoke on the Water. One of the most recognizable songs of all time, and one of the most influential metal tracks ever. And how about this obscure little gem: Whole Lotta Love. Okay, maybe not so obscure. And yeah, it's not I - flat III - IV, it's V - flat VII - I. But that's just musical semantics. In reality it's just those chords yet again.
The earliest example of thosechords that I know of is in today's song. And yeah, they may have been hillbilly hicks, but they really rock out here. I absolutely love the killer effect of I - flat III - IV in this otherwise oh-so-pleasant down home country ditty. Devil's Horns in the air, folks. It's time for some metal mayhem:
Certain types of music should only be listened to at certain times. Opera, for example, is best ingested on grey, slightly depressing, cool-ish fall mornings, when the warm, rich tones and characteristic opulence are particularly filling. Summer evenings are perfectly suited to the clean lines of jazz. And the frigid dead of winter begs for the passion of punk.
And the Punch Brothers? Well, as far as I can tell they go down smooth in the middle of a hot summer's night with the sluggish damp condensing on moon-cooled windows. Poetic imagery for the win, baby.
Emo bluegrass? Is that what this is? Eh, doesn't matter. Tasty musicianship and a singer with pipes worthy of...ummm...Coldplay are a winning combination. Can't say I'd want to listen to this every day. Or every night. But this evening...it's perfect.
I always have several books on the go at any one time. Right now the one I'm spending the most time with is Why We Make Mistakes by Joseph Hallinan. Its basic premise is that human beings are in some ways hard-wired incorrectly, that our brains are ill equipped, in certain situations, to process information. It's an interesting read, and as someone who is fascinated by the seemingly innate irrationality of our species, I find in it compelling answers to questions I've asked my whole life.
Did you know, for example, that as a general rule people feel more responsible for their actions than their inactions? That is, we tend to view inaction as a passive event, and we therefore feel less responsible for the consequences of inaction because, well, we didn't do anything. Another way of framing this idea is via the notion of regret. Some of our mistakes cause us more regret than others, and because we feel less responsible for our inactions we therefore feel less regret for our inactions. Consequently, we are far more likely to repeat our errors of inaction, simply to avoid regretting our actions. Also, and perhaps most interestingly, fore-knowledge of this fact does not significantly change our actions, because, claims Hallinan, we are by nature irrational creatures.
So if you've ever wondered why a significant other or colleague or friend allows bad feelings to persist rather than confronting a problem head on, well, now you've got your answer. Couple this with the fact that we are notoriously poor at sussing out the root causes of our mistakes and we find a perfect recipe for continuing to make irrational errors.
What does this have to do with our song of the day? Nothing. Couldn't find any information on the band. If anyone can help me out with artist, song, and album info I'd appreciate it. Oh, and I found out about the song because it's the tune accompanying the latest Ford commercial. Shallow, but what the fuck.
John Cale
Album: John Cale And Band Live
Song: Waiting For My Man
Right. Imagine that you're a musician and that you want to portray an intense emotion. Say, fear. How do you go about it? Here's Lily Allen's take. I like it. It's pretty. Very nice melody. Doesn't convey fear to me however. Time for Drake to take a shot. Ummmm. Yeah. Typical shitty R&B inflected hip hop. This makes me fear for the music industry, but that's about it. Last chance: Jazmine Sullivan. Well...okay. Don't hate it. Damned by faint praise. And yeah, I get it, you're scared about a bunch of stuff. Deep.
In my opinion John Cale is the reason why Velvet Underground continues to influence generation after generation of musicians. Lou Reed may have been the leader of the band, but Cale was its beating heart. Cale came to New York from Wales in the 60s and immediately immersed himself in the avant garde art music scene, performing not only with Velvet Underground but also with the classical who's who. A classically trained violist, he is also an adept pianist and guitarist and a hell of a songwriter in his own right.
His solo recordings are very spotty. The first albums I heard were studio recordings, and while they were at times interesting from a musical standpoint I found them too sanitized and over produced. But then on a whim I purchased a cassette tape of a live performance from the early 80s and I was bowled over. Cale is able to connect to the emotional core of his music as well as any contemporary artist I know. At its best his music is dark, raw, and brutally honest.
So how should an artist convey, say, fear? Fear isn't a pretty emotion: Fear Is A Man's Best Friend. Neither is heartbreak: Heartbreak Hotel. (One of my favorite covers ever.) And what would it feel like, really feel like, to wait for your dealer to get your next fix? Probably something like this:
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