Devendra Banhart - Carmensita
Built to Spill - Twin Falls
Dear Clusterflock
Were all of you hiding it from me that Blixa Bargeld is also a member of Einstürzende Neubauten?
A True Public Intellectual
John McWhorter, a man who I often disagree with as much as I respect, critiques the Academy’s standard perspective on Hip Hop:
McWhorter argues. Far from being truth-tellers, he says, so-called “conscious” rappers recycle endless clichés and conspiracy theories about inner-city blight, the drugs trade and Aids. Instead of generating a desire to change the system, rappers and their acolytes in the media and academia simply encourage a sense of passivity. “Insisting that things are still so simple that black people need to get together and rise in fury against an evil oppressor makes for entertaining hiphop,” he writes. “It sounds good uttered fiercely and set to a driving beat. But this way of parsing things does not correspond to what black America really needs today, as opposed to what it needed 50 years ago.”
I also highly recommend his book Doing Your Own Thing: The Degradation of Language and Music. The book does not argue what you think it does.
British Tabloids: Amy Winehouse Better Than Britney
Ms. Winehouse’s acclaim could not have come at a better time for the sultry, beehived songstress, whose husband Blake Fielder-Civil received on the same day a twenty-seven month prison sentence for his June, 2006 conviction on dual charges of beating a Hoxton pub landlord and attempting to smoke a wicker chair.
While worldwide support for Ms. Winehouse has ebbed and flowed — depending upon her daily batshit-crazy antics — the devotion of her UK media fan base reflects traditional British values of loyalty, perseverance, and clinging tenaciously to lost causes.
Bert & Ernie Try Gangsta-Rap
Tom Waits
25 things you might not know about Tom Waits, like “Waits’ favourite is the Chamberlain Music Master 600; an early analog synthesizer that contains inbuilt samples of everything from galloping horses to owls hooting.”
I couldn’t find much on the Chamberlain Music Master except this modest page. Drop a comment if you find something Music Master related.
Dear clusterflock,
Do lyrics trump music (nonverbal melody, rhythm, and all that jazz)? Or does music trump words?
In other words, if there is a disconnect, which way do you lean? Great tune/icky (even sporadically icky) lyrics — okay or not okay? Vicey-versey?
Or is it more complicated?
On singing the national anthem of the United States of America
I have always found that it helps to get drunk when trying to sing “The Star-Spangled Banner”.
the origin of patriotic songs
A little late for the July 4th holiday, a list of the origins of patriotic songs.
“The Star Spangled Banner,” sung to the melody of a drinking song “To Anacreon in Heaven,” is based on a poem written by Francis Scott Key called “Defense of Ft. McHenry.”
Burnt Hendrix Auction
A guitar Jimi Hendrix set afire on stage and thought lost is being auctioned on ebay.
“When Hendrix set this guitar alight it marked a watershed in live performance,” said Ted Owen, director of acquisitions at the auction house.
Hendrix, who died in 1970, burnt two guitars on stage — he repeated the stunt at a festival later in 1967 — but the one to be auctioned is the only example that survives intact.
Also on auction, Jim Morrison’s last notebook of poems. Too bad it wasn’t burnt on stage.
Patti Smith
listens to Silver Mt Zion.
Dear Jesus
At the beginning of every season of The Wire when I hear the new version of the theme song I think how odd it sounds and how I will never forget the old one. Then I do. Please forgive me.
Your faithful servant,
malaprop
This is what it sounds like when ducks cry.
Comme Si De Rien N’Etait
Carla Bruni — married to France’s right-wing President, Nicholas Sarkozy — is hurt by negative reviews of her 60s flavored third album.
“All those breathy notes just become annoying: you feel like telling her to have a good cough and give up smoking.”
&
“First lady… of schmaltz,” headlined the Independent newspaper, which said the former supermodel came across as “simpering and weedy”.
The Times dryly noted that it “may be the best album ever made by the wife of a head of state.”
I hope Laura comes out with an album.
Call me a dolt,
if you like, but I have this hankering to write that I’m voting for Jeff Beck and Rod Stewart’s mid-’80s performance of “People Get Ready” as one of the most beautiful of the so-called rock era. And while we’re on the subject of recorded beauty, I’ll go out on a limb and say I’m giving the nod to Brian Eno’s Discreet Music as the loveliest “composition” of the 20th century. You?
I misheard
all of the lyrics to Kyu Sakamoto’s “Ue wo muite arukou” (released as “Sukiyaki” in the United States, where for three weeks in 1963 it was at the top of Billboard’s Pop chart).
Great video.
A sad aside: Kyu Sakamoto was a passenger on Japan Airlines Flight 123 on August 12, 1985. Flight 123 crashed into Osutaka Ridge outside Tokyo; all members of the crew and all but four of the 509 passengers died. The crash remains the deadliest single-aircraft disaster ever.
Dear Clusterflock
What song lyrics were you mistaken about?
Example:
Real lyric: A girl with kaleidescope eyes
Misheard lyric: The girl with colitis goes by
I bought
The Black Angels‘ new release Directions to See a Ghost and am listening to it now. If you like neo-psychedelia, this may be just the music you’re looking for. (I bought the mp3 from Amazon.)
Canadian fiddler sells rights to music on eBay
A Canadian fiddler who answered the question “What’s beneath your kilt?” on Conan O’Brien in 1997 is now bankrupt and auctioning rights to half his future earnings on eBay.
“I’m not David Bowie, I’m not Madonna, I’m not Eminem, I’m Ashley MacIsaac, so to set a price at that (C$1.5 million), I thought, was fair market value,” he said.
I have no idea
what Axe Bullet is, and I know that many of you hate the usage of pop songs in commercials, but I for one was quite charmed to hear The Seeds’ “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine” (1966) in the Axe commercial. Maybe we’re in for a Seeds revival.
This World is Not My Home
Purdy much how I recollect it…
The First Album Cover
In 1939 a 23 year-old Alex Steinwess, a designer for Columbia, wrangled them into creating the first true album cover (rather than generic sleeves):
(hat tip to Triumph of Bullshit)
Stills Version of Gobbledigook Video by Sigur Rós
The video was inspired by and made in collaboration with photographer Ryan McGinley. See the full version at sigguros.com.
I’ll be applying
for the faux-Jim Morrison job after Ian What’s-His-Name? gets tired of it. I’ve already got my first quatrain for Robbie Krieger to write a driving guitar lead to.
Here’s how it goes:
Hey baby shake that thing
Hey baby diamond ring
Hey baby now you’re mine
Take a bath in turpentine
For the second or third pass-through of the lyrics, I’ll change the first line to “my thing”, thus deepening that already intense Morrisonian sense of sharply intellectual sensuality. And of course for the extended coda of the live rave-up we’ll all four join in on the fourth line, singing it as “Make that breast milk into wine.”