Lewis & Clarke's Blasts of Holy Birth etc.

Lewis & Clarke's new album Blasts of Holy Birth (about which I posted before it's release) is out now, on La Societe Expeditionaire. I recommend it highly.
As I have discussed before, Lewis & Clarke is the musical vehicle for the singer and writer named Lou Rogai, from Pennsylvania.
I have thought a lot about what makes his music so attractive to me, and last week, as I was walking home from work with the title song playing in my Ipod headphones, I realized that what I like best about the music is the fact that it swings. I hate that word, because it so directly references a type of music that I don't have any particular affinity for, but I figured out a long time ago that my love of music is very strongly related to my belief that there is a definite rhythm to the universe, and that if we can lock into that rhythm and live within it, it's like swimming with the current, and we can live harmoniously. And of course, if we fight the rhythm, as if we were trying to swim against the current, we are going to be exhausted, anxious and discontent.
I have found this applies to everything from physical activities like running to things a simple and basic as breathing. And, of course, it very much applies to music.
The sense of swing begins, superficially, in the rhythm section. Bass and drums. I can't explain technically what makes some musicians swing and others not swing, although I think there may be something about being just the slightest bit ahead of the beat. I do know that Charlie Watts could play the phone book and it would swing. And I remember seeing James McMurtrey at Mercury Lounge back in the 90's and thinking that he was very lucky that he had an Austin rhythm section backing him up, because without it his songs (at least in the arrangements he was then playing) would have been interminable.
However, I think there is a deeper kind of swing, which I hesitate to even try to define. It's one of those "I don't know what it is, but I know it when I hear (feel) it" things. I think there are musicians - artists - who innately and unconsciously swing. (For some reason, my paradigm for this is Duke Ellington. My image of being swingingly in sync is Duke Ellington in a tuxedo, conducting an orchestra as he floats down the river.)
Lewis and Clarke, and Lou Rogai, embody that type of swing.
What's interesting about Lewis and Clarke's music is the fact that there is something meditative - a melodic droning, a relaxed drawing out - that occurs simultaneously with its swing-ness. When I first noticed this, I thought that the two were antithetical, and that it didn't make sense that they were occurring at the same time. But the more I thought about it, the more it seemed to fit, in as much as one of the goals of meditation is to find that place in oneself where one is in sync with the universe.
So, in affect, the music is acting as a prod to help us find that place of harmony within ourselves, at the same time that it actually reflects that harmony.
Lewis and Clarke - Bare Bones and Branches (Live on WPRB)

All of Lewis and Clarke's albums are available at the Lewis and Clarke website.
Lewis and Clarke will be performing at a Ballroom Party to Benefit Common Ground
Friday June 15th at the Prince George Ballroom
15 East 27th St (btw. 5th & Madison)
Manhattan, NY
$20.00 (3 Free Beers with every Ticket Purchase [21+])
For more info, go here.

Welcome to the World, Conner Kirkpatrick Hall

Guy Clark - Come from the Heart
White Stripes - Hardest Button to Button

Philip Rambow - Fallen

There isn't much to say about "Fallen." It's a great song by a singer/songwriter who never did anything else as interesting or exciting. You could call "Fallen" a one hit wonder, except it wasn't even a hit.
For a couple of months back in 1979, I played this song more often then all the other records I owned combined. And since I found it online last week, I've been playing it just as relentlessly. (One of the things I have found out about my music listening is that I still love everything that I loved at one time or another. But in addition, I now love a lot of things I didn't like at all at one time or another.)

Philp Rambow - Fallen

You can download the (now out-of-print) album from which "Fallen" is taken - Shooting Gallery - at a great sharity blog call Power Pop Criminals.

Marie et les Garcons - Re-Bop

Over the last couple of weeks I've been incredibly fortunate to find digital versions of several songs/albums that have been on my digital wish list for years.
First and foremost is the Beckies' album, about which I've already posted.
But there are a couple of other things I've found recently, and I'm happy to be able to write about them and offer them up as MP3's.
Marie et les Garcons was a French post-punk group. When I discovered the 12" of "Re-Bop" (in 1978 or '79)) I was working at Bleeker Bob's record store, and I brought it home only because it was on Ze Records and because John Cale produced it. At the time I was in a band called W-2, and we had just replaced out bass player, Shelby, with a guy who I remember only as William. "Re-Bop," which was disco punk overlayed with a thin veneer of Euro-pop, had a lot of elements that I thought were similar the things we were doing in W-2, and I wanted this guy William to listen and learn. So I loaned him the 12" (along with Jack Johnson and some obscure disco records). A week or so later, in the van on the way back from a disastrous gig in Philadelphia, W-2 broke up, and for whater reasons - mostly having to do with my own drug-addled lack of responsibility - I never saw William again, and I never got the records back. And I never replaced "Re-Bop." Every couple of years I would wake up singing the chorus, and that would make me heartsick. I made a couple of half-hearted attempts to locate another copy of the song, with no luck. It wasn't like the song had been a hit and was going to show up on Greatest Hits of the '70's. Finally, last week, I discovered it online.
Happily, it holds up extremely well.
Marie et Les Garcons - Re Bop

Believe it or not, Marie et les Garcons are still around; at least they have a MySpace site.

Ze Records deserves at least a post of its own, if not a whole book. In its heyday, it was one of the most innovative record companies in the world. Everyone from Lydia Lunch to Arto Lindsay released records on that label and none of them were boring.

A Couple of Things I Found on MySpace

I've never had much to do with MySpace in terms of interacting with friends, but I've been a big fan of it as a source of music since I joined last spring. The first band I sent a Friend Request to was My Morning Jacket (don't ask me why). Soon after that, I learned about Lily Allen and I've been using MySpace to discover and keep up with music and musicians I like ever since.
In the past few days I have come across a couple of bands I would love to recommend:
My Cloud Mireya is from New York City and is made up of Claudia Deheza (ex- ON!AIR!LIBRARY!) and Guillermo S. Herren (Prefuse 73, Savath y Savalas, Piano Overlord, Zanzo plus the defunct Delarosa+Asora.) I don't know much else about them. I discovered them when I was checking out the "Top Friends" of a band I have been listening to for awhile called Daylight's for the Birds.
A Cloud Mireya - Wasted Time
A Cloud Mireya's album, Singular, is available from Insound.
My Cloud Mireya's MySpace site.


Le Futur Pompiste is from Finland. They were "Top Friends" of the Dreamers, a band I highly recommend and intend to post about more extensively in the near future.
Le Futur Pompiste - Seeds
Le Futur Pompiste's record, Your Stories and Your Thoughts, is available from Siesta Records.
Check out Le Futur Pompiste on Myspace.

Luomo

Now that's what I call music.

Luomo - Let You Know

Buy Paper Tigers here.

Luomo website

The Great Pop Masterpiece

The legend of Michael Brown is pretty familiar to pop music geeks of a certain age. He was a precocious 16-year old music student in 1966 when he formed the Left Banke and wrote, arranged and recorded "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina." Both of those songs were hits, and it seemed like the Left Banke, and Michael Brown, were on their way.
But to those to whom much is given, much trouble is also given, and Brown, never comfortable on stage, and perhaps (unfairly) feeling the band could not keep up with him, soon split, and a year or so later, ended up producing and writing songs for a band called Montage. That didn't work out and the band broke up after making one album. (Despite the fact that it is probably the weakest album with which Brown was ever associated, his signature is unmistakeable.)
A couple of years later, Brown hooked up with a singer/bass player named Ian Lloyd and formed a band called the Stories, who were, in many ways the third point in the pop triangle of Big Star and the Raspberries. But while the Raspberries and the Stories shared an obvious debt to the Beach Boys, the Stories were strongly piano-based while the Raspberries and Big Star were all about ringing guitar chords. And even though all three bands relied on strong melodies and soaring harmonies, the Stories' music was much more firmlyy rooted in Brown's classical training and a love of a frenetic, almost Glenn Gould-like bed of keyboards.
The Stories released two albums in which Brown participated, but then he and Lloyd fought and Brown split again. Shortly afterward, the Stories actually had a hit, with Hot Chocolate's "Brother Louie," but one listen to that song and it's obvious that Brown had nothing to do with it.
Brown dropped off the map for a few years, and then resurfaced with a band called the Beckies, from St. Louis. I don't know how he found those guys. On paper, it was an unlikely match: young fresh faced innocents from the Midwest teaming up with a by-now battle scarred, paranoid New York music veteran.
However - a big however - the album they released in 1976 (called The Beckies) is, in my mind, a POP MASTERPIECE. Maybe THE pop masterpice.
Now, I may be alone in thinking this. Certainly no one has thought enough of it to reissue it on CD. Even when I first purchased it, in the summer of 1976, I found it in a cut out bin for $1.99 in a second hand record store on 12th Street and Broadway in NYC. But the fact that I remember so clearly the circumstances of the purchase says a lot about how important the album has been for me.
I have been listening to this record off and on for 31 years now, and it still sounds as fresh to me as the first day I heard it.
It's a sneaky record, I will admit. It's easy to hear it as a bland '70's pop/rock JoJo Gunne/Crabby Appleton wannabe (especially considering that it came out at a time when so much interesting and edgier stuff was going on musically in New York City.). But listen closely: the subtleties of Brown's writing, arranging and producing soon become obvious. The stops and starts, the bed of keyboards, the string arrangements, the counterpoint in the harmonies, the classical echoes in the solos, are all musical themes Brown had explored before, (albeit never as as successfully.)
The Beckies was the last album Michael Brown worked on. I have no idea what has happened to him. There is a fan website that has downloads of radio interviews with him in 2003, but I haven't listened. As a rock and roll romantic, I don't want anything messing with my image of Brown as the Villonesque artist manque. He is that great tragic figure, the musical genius who could never find a home. I would say that it's a shame, and I can't even begin to imagine what he would have created if he could have harnessed the demons that seem to have kept him from staying active. At the same time, I have to say that the Beckies album is a glorious way to end a career.

The Stories - Darling
The Stories - Please, Please

The Beckies - River Bayou
The Beckies - On the Morning That She Came
The Beckies - Fran

(Check out Gooder'n Bad Vinyl, a sharity blog featuring a great selection of out-of-print vinyl downloads.)

Voxtrot

Voxtrot, from Austin, Texas, has released three EPs in the last year and a half, each one more subtly original than the last. In the process, the band built a huge international fan base. (They sold out a week's worth of shows in New York City in no time last fall.)
Consequently, there was a lot of curiosity about what their first full length album (called Voxtrot, and released this week on Playlouder / Beggars Group Records) would sound like. (And quite a lot of pressure to be as good as, if not better than their three EPs, without repeating themselves.)
As the review in the New York Times on Monday said, no need to worry. Voxtrot has outdone themselves in every way. The production, by Victor Van Vugt, fleshes out their sound, adding instrumentation and weight without sacrificing the focus on the songwriting. The performances, by lead singer and songwriter Ramesh Srivastava, Jason Chronis, Mitch Calvert, Matt Simon, and Jared Van Fleet are original and self assured. The songs themselves are idiosyncratic pop gems, echoing everything from early Paul McCartney to XTC to fellow-Austinite Britt Daniels. And yet, there is never any doubt that it is Ramesh who is writing these songs. Melodic without being cloying, lyrically intensive without being pretentious or verbose, they are serious without taking themselves too seriously.
Voxtrot - Kid Gloves
Purchase Voxtrot at emusic.com.
Voxtrot MySpace.

May 21, 1988

Townes Van Zandt - To Live Is To Fly

Miracle Fortress

Miracle Fortress, the brain child of Montreal musician Graham Van Pelt, is streaming their new album on their MySpace site, and it's worth putting up with the crappy MySpace music player to experience it.
The album, Five Roses, will be released next week on Secret City Records, and can be ordered here.
Check it out, it really is brilliant.
PS: I posted a song from the album a couple of weeks ago, and you can still download it.

The National Lights

The National Lights, from Richmond, Virginia, have released an album called The Dead Will Walk, Dear, on BloodShake Records, and it's lovely (in a full moon shining through the pine trees in a lonely forest in Kentucky sort of way.) I have found myself listening to it a lot lately - in the car, on my way to work, on my computer at work. One song flows into another so seamlessy that the album seems to be over in the space of time one song usually takes.
Everything works: the 21st-century folk arrangements, the self-assured production by Chris Kiehne Jr., the background vocals by Sonya Cotton.
What I love best is the way the warm, accessible melodies by group leader Jacob Thomas Berns very sneakily suck you in, and then you slowly become aware that most of Berns' songs are about death and dying. The Dead Will Walk, Dear is an album that wraps itself around you. It's only later that you realize you are being warmed by a shroud.
I am hesitant to post a single song, because, as I said, one of the album's strengths is its cohesiveness. It really should be heard in its entirety. But what the hell, here is the first track.
National Lights - Better For It, Kid
Order the album here.
Learn more about the band here.

Guitars

In the May 14 issue of The New Yorker there is an article about guitar maker Ken Parker by Burkhard Bilger that should be fof interest to anyone who either plays guitar or has tried to play it. Or, for that matter, anyone who has surfed Ebay fantasizing about vintage Gibsons, Martins and Fenders. Among the things I learned was that building a guitar is like building a cathedral - you are always balancing the practical need for support and the aesthetically-driven desire for pure tonal beauty. I also learned that you will never get rich making guitars by hand. Your descendants might, but you probably won't.
In honor of guitar makers and players everywhere, I am posting a song about guitar strings by Guy Clark, a pretty fair luthier in his own right.
Guy Clark - Black Diamond Strings
(The song has an interesting verse about Rodney Crowell and his father, JW, and mother, Causette.)

Listen to audio clips from Burkhard Bilger and Ken Parker

(I Am) Superman

The other day, my wife, Sara, and I were discussing REM, and she mentioned how much she loved the song "I Am Superman." I was happy to be able to point out to her that REM's version was in fact a cover of the original, which was the b-side of the only hit by a '60's pop/bubblegum LA group called The Clique, whose hit, "Sugar On Sunday," was written and originally recorded by the greatest of the pop/bubblegum LA groups, Tommy James and the Shondells. Oh, what a wonderfully tangled web we weave.

The Clique - (I Am) Superman
REM - (I Am) Superman

The Clique - Sugar On Sunday
Tommy James and the Shondells - Sugar On Sunday

Special thanks to my son Walker for finding the Clique cd in our apartment when I was convinced I had put it in storage.

Searching for a second career

No words are necessary:
http://www.billwymandetector.com

Rolling Stones - You Got the Silver

Toni Price

Toni Price represents everything that is both awesome and tiresome about the Austin music scene. She is an amazing singer, with a richly sensual voice, who could easily have a larger career if she wanted to. But she rarely tours, and rarely makes the kind of records that could expose her to a wider audience. She has been content to make records in Austin using local musicians and producers, recording material by little known Austin and Nashville songwriters or obscure blues standards, and she is best known for her long running Tuesday night Hippy Hour at the Continental Club
I am not at all critical of her decision to stay local. I think that can be really healthy. Just like the best restaurants buy local produce from local growers, sometimes the best music is made by local artists who are totally steeped in their own environment.
But the tiresome part is that localism gets worn like a flag, and then it becomes parochialism. Your audience doesn't grow, it just becomes more fanatic. Your choice in material narrows, and you proudly refuse to grow stylistically.
I used to go to Price's Happy Hour gigs a lot when I lived in Austin. Week in and week out, the music was great. She was backed up at the time by three great Austin guitar players, Scrappy Jud Newcomb, Casper Rawls and the late Champ Hood. I always had a good time, even though Toni's cult of weird little hippy girls and fat bikers was a little off putting.
Now, out of the blue, Toni Price has announced she is moving to San Diego, so no more Hippy Hours. And even though I left Austin ten years ago, I will miss knowing that, if I was there, I could always find her at the Continental Club on Tuesday evenings.
Toni Price - Tumbleweed
Loose Diamonds (with Toni Price) - Hanging On

Toni Price on MySpace

Lucky Soul

Presenting this year's Camera Obscura. Great melodies and arrangements straight out of late 1960's Top 40 radio. People who don't take themselves too seriously. And Ali Howard's glorious voice. Summer is coming.
Lucky Soul - Add Your Light to Mine, Baby

Learn more about the band, purchase the new album, The Great Unwanted, at the Lucky Soul website.

The Math and Physics Club

You could draw a straight line from Belle and Sebastien, through the Lucksmiths and end up at the Math and Physics Club. (And in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that.)
Here is a song from their recently-released first album, on Matinee Recordings.
The Math and Physics Club - Darling, Please Come Home
Check out their page on the web.
Purchase their album at Amazon.

Some More Personal Music

I wanted to post a few examples of music similar to that of Lewis & Clarke. (You can see I'm really living by my words about personal music and the feeling I don't have to share it.)
Here are three more very personal artists:
Miracle Fortress - Have You Seen In Your Dreams
Paul Duncan - The Lake Part 2
Magic Arm - Outdoor Games

None of the albums from which these songs are taken are available yet, but check out their websites for preordering info, tour schedules, artist bios and (possibly) more mp3's.

Miracle Fortress
Paul Duncan
Magic Arm

Madame George

There is an interesting article by Tom Nolan in the Friday, April 13 edition of The Wall Street Journal, proposing that Madame George, the central character in the song of that name on Van Morrison's landmark 1969 album Astral Weeks, was in fact Madame George Yeats, wife (from 1917-1939) of the Irish poet W.B. Yeats. (Unfortunately, I can neither post the article nor link to the article, since The Wall Street Journal offers no Internet access unless one is a paid subscriber.)
Nolan makes a convincing argument, based not only on the character's name, but on some key lines in the song that talk about the spiritualist activities of the main character. (Madame George Yeats was famous for her seances.)
When you fall into a trance
A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
Up to now, the most popular theory concerning the character's identity was that Madame George was a Belfast drag queen. See Lester Bang's fairly famous piece on the subject in Stranded from 1979.
One thing about which we can be pretty certain, Van Morrison is never going to enlighten us. Whoever Madame George is, however, the discussion is a good excuse to revisit a great song.
Van Morrison - Madame George

Dengue Fever Link

Dengue Fever, the Los Angeles-based "Cambodian pop band" I posted about recently, has provided a link on their MySpace site to a website for a documentary about Cambodian pop music. It has a lot of fascinating info about Cambodian pop culture, and includes some great MP3's.
The name of the website is Cambodian Rock. (Duh.)
Here is a track by Ros Serey Sothea:
Ros Serey Sothea - "I'm Sixteen"

Lewis & Clarke Update

There is an announcement on the Lewis and Clarke website that the band's next album, Blasts of Holy Birth, will be released May 15. Lou Rogai, the artist behind Lewis & Clarke, has also made available an MP3 of one of the songs on the album, "Before It Breaks You," which was previously available in a live version on the WPRB Live album.
Check out the website for more info, preordering, and just to enjoy the wanderings of Rogai's imagination.


Lewis & Clarke - Before It Breaks You

Feist Update

Feist's new album, The Reminder, is scheduled to be released on May 1 on Interscope Records, and already there have been several big pre-release articles/reviews, including the lead story in the NY Times Art & Leisure Section today (4/15). Check out Sasha Frere-Jones' piece in this week's New Yorker for the most interesting take on Feist in terms of the dichotomy between her hipster it-girl persona and her obvious potential to become a mainstream superstar.
Among Frere-Jones' more interesting observations is his assertion that the most daring thing Feist has done has been to cover an American public domain standard called "Sea Lion Woman," most famously recorded by Nina Simone the 1960's. Feist records the song on The Reminder, but Frere-Jones is more interested in her live version (He calls the version on The Reminder, "polite," and I would agree with him). I haven't actually seen her perform it, but I came across a live recording a few months ago, and I was blown away. In her performance (and in her band's 60's soul band arrangement), Feist creates an incredibly high level of energy, without ever losing track of the subtleties of the song. It reminded me of Janis Joplin at her less-histrionic best. One of Feist's real strengths is her uncanny ability to communicate rhythm with her voice (I swear she doesn't need a drummer) without ever giving up the melody. This song demonstrates that perfectly.
Feist - Sea Lion Woman (Live)

Photograph of Feist by Greg Kadel.

Twilight Sad

I meant to post about Twilight Sad a month or so ago, and actually thought I had, but when I went to look at what I'd written, I found I'd written nothing.
Twilight Sad is from Glasgow (where else?). They write and perform muscular, bottom-heavy pop songs that belong to the Jesus and Mary Chain/Stone Roses/Teenage Fanclub family tree. They manage to maintain the sense they are talking about personal hurts, fears and anxieties - and small victories - while still sounding like they are standing on the edge of a mountain at midnight, raging at the universe. Play this loud.
Twilight Sad - That Summer at Home, I Had Become the Invisible Boy

Learn more about Twilight Sad on their Myspace page.
Purchase their new album, Fourteen Autumn & Fifteen Winters at Amazon and Emusic.

Road to Ensenada

A friend of mine recently returned from a visit to California, which included an unhappy side trip into Baja, Mexico. It reminded me of a trip my wife and I took to that area a few years ago, which was not a hell of a lot of fun either. (Although we didn't get pulled over by the Mexican police like my friend did.)
The one good memory I have of that trip was of driving on the all-but-deserted highway between Rosarita and Ensenada at dusk. The stark and lonely landscape, broken every couple of miles by a decaying farmhouse, was like a Tom Waits version of a Wyeth painting. The Baja Peninsula seems particularly evocative of all kinds of existential despair.
Lyle Lovett's "Road to Ensenada," from his 1996 album of the same name, and one of my favorite songs from the happy-go-lucky '90's, perfectly illustrates that. Sadly beautiful, beautifully sad.
Lyle Lovett - Road to Ensenada
Purchase Road to Ensenada on Amazon.

World (Music) Turned Upside Down

I've never been a huge fan of what the New York Times loosely refers to and fervently reviews as "world music."
But I recently discovered a band that is, in its own twisted way, a true representative of world music.
Dengue Fever is from Los Angeles. The story goes like this: Cool LA musician named Ethan Holzman goes to Cambodia with a friend, falls in love with a style of pop music with roots in '60's American garage punk. Cool LA musician comes back to the States, gets other LA musicians involved, forms Cambodian pop cover band. Eventually meets a Thai woman named Chhom Nimol, who was an actual Cambodian pop superstar, before emigrating to the Little Phnom Penh area of Long Beach, California. Convinces her to become lead singer. Band switches to original material with roots in '60's Thai pop and 21st century American indie pop. What could be better?
When I listen to their album, I imagine I am walking down a crowded alley in Bangkok, with the music blaring out of cheap speakers hanging in the doorways of seedy dark bars. At the same time, the dynamics and textures of the music are very knowingly American, spanning the 60's, 70's, 80's, '90's - right up to the present.
I love the way music can go from it's crude source (60's American punk), get reinterpreted and adapted by a foreign culture, and then come back here and get reinterpreted yet again.
Dengue Fever - Sni Bong
(I do not have any idea what the lyrics mean.)
Purchase Escape From the Dragon House, Dengue Fever's latest album, on their website.

Five Songs that American Idol Contestants Should Consider Covering

I am a not-so-closeted American Idol fan. I know it's cheesy, I know that no musician I respect would ever make it out of the prelims, I know it's manipulative, crass, cynical, feed-the- money machine commercial television, but I love it.
However, I will say that, week in and week out, the song choices made by the contestants are so uninspired and insipid that I sometimes find myself itching to see what the Knicks are doing.
So, in the interest of improving the quality of my American Idol-watching experience, and at the same time guaranteeing the wise contestant who takes my advice at least one more week of national exposure, I would like to offer the following alternative song choices. (Note: None of these songs are at all left field. In fact they are all pretty mainstream. They have all previously been covered by mainstream artists. They are just a little more interesting than the usual Tuesday night fodder.)

Jeff Buckley - Hallelujah
This is a Leonard Cohen song made famous by Jeff Buckley, but also covered by K.D. Lang and John Cale, among others.

The Left Banke - Walk Away Renee
This was a hit back in the '60's and has been covered countless times. It deserves to be a hit again.

Patty Griffin - Mary
This is a Patty Griffin song covered very badly by Bette Midler, but nevertheless a truly gorgeous, moving song.

Blue Rodeo - 'Til I Gain Control Again
This is a Rodney Crowell (meaning c&w) song that has been covered by everyone from Van Morrison to This Mortal Coil (one of the best cover bands of all time). This version is by a great Canadien band called Blue Rodeo.

This Mortal Coil - Song to the Siren
This is a Tim Buckley song, covered here by This Mortal Coil (featuring vocals by Elizabeth Fraser, lead singer of Cocteau Twins). I actually like this version better than the orignal.

All these songs can be purchased on Amazon.

Speaking of Paris 1919...

John Cale's Paris 1919, released in 1973 and re-released last year with some additional tracks, is one of my favorite albums of all time. The gauzy beauty of the songs and the sophisticated, complex arrangements make it impossible not to be drawn into the world Cale creates.
Over the years several artists have covered songs from the album, notably Alejandro Escovedo, Yo La Tengo and Hope Blisters.
Here's a new cover of "Hanky Panky Nohow," by Miracle Fortress, from Montreal.
Miracle Fortress - Hanky Panky Nohow

Check out some more of Miracle Fortress' fine music on their MySpace page.
Purchase Paris 1919 on Amazon.

Road Test

Several weeks ago, on an extremely cold Brooklyn morning, at the far end of Red Hook, where Henry and Hicks Streets meet the New York Harbor, I took my automobile road test. Because of some bad luck and a couple of bonehead moves on my part, I had been without a license for several years. Thanks to the wonderful bureaucracy that is the New York Department of Motor Vehicles, I was forced to go through the whole process, from permit through driver's ed through the road test, as if I was a 16 year old kid. It took me a while, but I finally did it. And since I didn't fuck up the parallel parking or run a stop sign, I passed the test, and now I am an officially licensed New York State driver.
To celebrate that fact, I am posting one of my favorite car songs, Tom Robinson's "2-4-6-8 Motorway," a song that was pretty popular when it came out in the punk heyday of 1978, but is rarely heard anymore. I promise to play it at very high volume as I drive at a very high speed over the cracked, potholed surface of the Brooklyn Queens Expressway.
Tom Robinson - 2-4-6-8 Motorway

More Monsterbuck news

Monsterbuck's album, Land of Make Believers, is finally available via their website. I recommend it highly.

Personal vs Public

There is some music I like that I have no doubt the rest of the world will like too. It seems like a no-brainer, and if I discover it before it becomes a hit, it's only a matter of timing. Lily Allen and Voxtrot come to mind as examples. And if other people seem slow in discovering that kind of music, I will campaign hard for it, whether that means talking to friends or blogging about it or ramming it down people's throats on mix cds.
But there is another kind of music about which my feelings are much more private. It is music that means a great deal to me, but which I'm not necessarily interested in sharing with others. It's not that I want to hide the music or keep it from becoming too popular, it's just that I don't really care if other people like it.
I think that what makes the music personal for me is the impression I get that the music is personal to the artist. My sense is that Lily Allen and Voxtrot are making music with the audience in mind. (Not that there is anything wrong with that, and not to imply that they are pandering in any way.) But there is music I hear which I believe the artist has made for himself or herself, and for which the audience is secondary.
Every artist wants an audience, on some level. But I do feel like certain artists are more inward-looking, and the music they create is made more for their pleasure than for that of any other listener.
This kind of music hits me on a personal level, divorced from the criteria by which I usually decide if I like something (interesting lyrics, great melodies, distinctive vocals).Case in point is a band called Lewis & Clarke, from Delaware Water Gap, PA. Lewis & Clarke is really one guy, Lou Rogai. His music is ethereal and acoustic and sometimes downright pretty, but is always anchored by self-possessed vocals and long, drone-based, meditative guitar lines.
I was introduced to his music when someone posted a cut from a live album he released last summer from a radio show in Philadelphia. I downloaded one of the songs on a Friday afternoon, and then downloaded the rest of the album (WPRB Live) from emusic.com, and listened to it on my Ipod over and over again on my way to the country that night. I found myself encased in Rogai's world, with one song sliding into the next as if each was an extension of the last.
Later, I bought both the American and European version of Bare Bones and Branches (also available from emusic.) And while listening to Bare Bones may not be quite as powerful an experience as my initial experience of listening to the live ep, the music continues to sustain me in a deep and rich way.The point is, I love the music, but I don't have a stake in others loving it. (If this is a characteristic of Rogai's music, that's too bad, in a way. It would be a shame if his music was defined by the fact that the people who loved it had no urge to pass it on to other people. It's possible that, all over the world, there are isolated individuals, unaware they share this passion, listening to Rogai's songs in solitude, with no desire to share them with other people.)Having said all that, I should note that I put this song on a bunch of mix cd's at Christmas time, (before I realized I didn't care if other people heard it) and it turned out that one of the people I gave a cd to, my friend Dannette, loved it so much that she put it on a Valentine's Day mix. So much for the purity of isolated experience.
Lewis & Clarke - Before It Breaks You

I'm trying to think of other artists to whom I have responded like this. Off the top of my head, what comes to mind is Steve Reich's Music for 18 Musicians, John Cale's Paris 1919, and just about everything by Townes Van Zandt.

Visit Lewis & Clarke's website.
Purchase Lewis & Clarke's music on emusic.

Miscellaneous

I haven't posted anything recently because I haven't felt that excited about anything I've heard. I like the new Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible, a lot, but so much has been written about the band and the album, both online and in the mainstream press, that there hasn't been much to say. (Although I found it interesting that Win Butler went to Exeter, the prep school I attended, for better and worse, in the '60's. Exeter was where I was first exposed to a lot of great music, everything from the Seeds to John Mayall to Jimi Hendrix. It was also where I first played in a band - the Psychosomatic E Train, a Mothers of Invention rip off that featured the New England Prep heavyweight wrestling champion playing stand up bass as if it was a Fender, and also featured Benmont Tench, later a member of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, on keyboards.)
The only other comment I would make about Neon Bible concerns the Prefab Sprout references on "No Cars Go." Horns, strings and harmonies are all strongly reminiscent of Jordan: the Comeback, Prefab Sprout's 1990 double album. I've never been that enthusiastic about Prefab Sprout. (I've always associated them with late '80's, early 90's English bands like Deacon Blue, Blue Nile and Everything but the Girl, that I've actually liked a lot more.) But this is the second musical reference I've noticed in the past month, so I'm starting to pay more attention.
Prefab Sprout - Carnival 2000

Other things I've heard recently that I felt like playing more than once: a cover of Love's "Message to a Pretty" by an English band called the Duke Spirit. I have never heard a Love cover I didn't feel was worthy of posting. Love rules, and I applaud any band that seeks to carry that message. This one reminds me of Mazzy Star's cover of "Five String Serenade."
The Duke Spirit - A Message to a Pretty
Click here to purchase Duke Spirit's ep "Covered in Love."

There is band from Wales that I've been enjoying a lot, called Los Campesinos! They sound like a cross between Arctic Monkeys and Camera Obscura. Very hyper verses and very sweet boy-girl harmonies in the chorus.
Los Campesinos! - We Throw Parties, You Throw Knives
Los Campesinos! website: www.loscampesinos.com/

The Grammies were lame, what else is new. I'm glad the Dixie Chicks won a bunch of awards, even though I think Taking the Long Way Home is their weakest album. But in honor of all those trophies, I'm posting a version of Townes Van Zandt's "Snowing on Raton," sung by Pat Green, a country singer/songwriter very popular in Texas and unknown everywhere else, and Natalie Maines, the Chicks' lead singer.
Pat Green and Natalie Maines - Snowing on Raton

Also on the Grammies telecast, Mary J. Blige sang a song I hadn't heard in a long time, Barbara Ellison's "Stay with Me, Baby." The first version of that song I ever heard, back in the late 60's, was by Terry Reid, the English singer who was supposedly offered the job of singing lead in Led Zeppelin, but turned it down to pursue his solo career. Good thinking.
Terry Reid - Stay With Me, Baby

Sunday Post #2

Joao Gilberto - Aguas de Marco

Paper Moon

One of the first bands I discovered on MySpace was Paper Moon, from Winnipeg, Canada. I have probably put their song. "String of Blinking Lights," on more mix cd's than any other in the last nine months. And their album, Broken Hearts Break Faster Every Day, is entertaining, jingle jangle pop of the highest order.
Besides making great music, the members of Paper Moon are very charming, at least as far as I can tell from reading their periodic blog postings on MySpace. Here is the latest example:

After wending our lazy way through the lush meadows of Q-94's Top 30, running up and then gleefully rolling down the grassy hills of the Top 20, and finally finding ourselves riding the Zipper and eating greasy, sugary treats at the glorious carnival of the Top TEN, it's time to go home. The rides are shutting down, the barkers have stopped ceaselessly urging you to show how much you love the "little lady" by winning her a giant stuffed penguin, and Samson, who runs the travelling show, is telling the rousties to "shake some dust".

Technically, we're still IN the top ten (as we are currently #10), but we knew this time would come eventually, and three concurrent weeks in the Top Ten was more than we hoped for. I wonder what the next "single" will be?

SXSW is fast approaching. All you Austin friends, be sure to make it out to the Co-op Bar on March 14. We're also playing an industry BBQ on Friday at 5pm, but I'm not sure if that's open to the public or not.

I would certainly be at their show if I was going to SXSW, and I strongly recommend that, if you are in Austin, you go hear them.
Buy Paper Moon cd's on the band's website: http://www.papermoon.ca/
Visit their MySpace site.

And check out "String of Blinking Lights."

Sunday Post #1

The Postmarks - Goodbye

(Photo by Tina Barney)
The Postmarks available at amazon.com

No I Was Wrong - This Is the Flavor of the Moment

Forget it, Donovan. it's all about Three Dog Night, the most successful cover band of all time. (And I mean that in a good way.) For two nights this week, Three Dog Night was all over the tube.
Wednesday night, the hills and valleys of the Lost island were alive with the sound of "Shambala" as Hurley and Charley careened crazily down an impossibly steep hill in a beat-up VW bus. Then on Thursday night, those crazy kids from American Idol did a cheesy Up with People version of "Joy to the World."
Can SXSW be far behind?
Three Dog Night - Shambala
The Best of Three Dog Night is available at Amazon.com

Mott the Hoople - Brain Capers

Mott the Hoople achieved its greatest commmercial success after David Bowie "discovered" them, gave them the song "All the Young Dudes," and produced the album on which that song was included. But I believe Mott was at its best on the four albums prior to that, culminating in Brain Capers, released in 1972, an album that is, in my opinion, a hard rock classic. (Hard rock was a genre, not a casino hotel in Vegas, in those days. I don't remember exactly how it was defined, except that hard rock meant good rock, and plain rock could mean anything from America to the Grateful Dead. I don't think the term soft rock had been invented.)
Mott was never a band that could be easily classified. Their first album, called Mott the Hoople, came out in 1969 on Atlantic Records, and I suspect that the record company thought they were getting the next Humble Pie or Spooky Tooth. However, one could see that Mott was anything but the standard issue English blues rock band ( even if they did do an instrumental version of "You Really Got Me"). Their albums were chaotic and messy, with instruments and vocals flying all over the place, sometimes out of tune, sometimes buried in the mix. Their frontman, Ian Hunter, was a sunglass-wearing keyboard-playing Bob Dylan wannabe with a punk sneer. Their choice of covers reflected a post modern sensibility years before anyone but Lou Reed had the right to lay claim to that term: Sonny Bono's "Laugh at Me!" Doug Sahm's "Crossroads!" Melanie's "Lay Down!" Plus, their bass player's name was Overend Watts!
(I saw Mott at the Boston in the summer of 1970 at the Boston concert venue, The Ark, opening for Ten Years After. Of course, Mott blew them away. I remember I had to dodge Hunter's piano, which fell off the small stage during "You Really Got Me.")
Brain Capers captured all the joyous chaos of their previous albums, and yet rocked even harder. The vocals were more intense, the guitars shrieked with more urgency, and the rhythm section pounded away with more fire and assurance.
More importantly, Brain Capers also marked the maturing of Hunter as a songwriter. The obvious Dylan references were there, but they were clothed in truly great pre-punk rock music.
Brain Capers, like the previous three Mott albums, was produced by Guy Stevens (who appropriately enough produced the first three Clash albums). His ability to communicate the sense that the music was this close to flying completely out of control, and yet never allowing that to happen, was one of the reasons the Brain Capers may be one of the hardest rocking albums of all time, unmatched except by a few classics like Raw Power and The Clash.
"The Journey" is the centerpiece of Brain Capers. It is over nine minutes long and is, in some ways, a classic power ballad, with a long intro, slow build-up and several big crescendos. But one of Ian Humter's songwriting gifts, clearly evident in this song, was his ability to stay very personal even when the power chords were flying. That's why the song still sounds fresh.
Mott the Hoople - The Journey

Brain Capers is available from Itunes and Amazon.com

Story of a Band Chapter 2

A few months ago I posted a note about my nephew Robby Miller's band, Mister Loveless. Mister Loveless just recorded a new song called "Good Story," and posted it on their MySpace site. As good as their first album was, I think this song shows amazing growth in Robby's singing and songwriting. It's also a great showcase for the maturing of the band as a whole.
I feel like Mister Loveless exists for all the right reasons. It is made up of people who got together to play music because music is the only thing that makes sense to them. It is the only thing worth being passionate about. I believe they would walk through fire to be heard, and yet at the same time, they would shut it down overnight if they didn't feel like they were growing both as individual artists and as a group.
It is fascinating to watch this band grow; I can't wait for the next chapter.
Mister Loveless - Good Story

Mister Loveless' MySpace site

Flavor of the Moment

In the space of five minutes, I saw two commercials featuring songs by Donovan. One was for Fruity Cheerios ("with a touch of real fruit flavor") and used the song "Happiness Runs." I switched channels and came upon a GE commercial that used "Catch the Wind." There was nothing terribly original about either choice, but they both worked well in context. Is it time for a Donovan revival?
Donovan - Happiness Runs
Donovan - Catch the Wind

Feist and A Girl Called Eddy

It's hard not to like Leslie Feist, dba Feist. The most prominent member of Broken Social Scene, she released a great record two years ago called Let It Die that was post modern pop at its most assured and sophisticated, featuring covers as disparate as the BeeGees' "Inside and Out" and "Tout Doucement," a song best known (at least to me) for the version by Blossom Dearie. Before that, she collaborated with Peaches, Gonzales and Kings of Convenience.
Lately she seems to be focussing more and more on the blues. I recently heard her kick-ass live version of the Nina Simone arrangement of "See Line Woman," and the download she has made available from her soon-to-be-released album, The Reminder, is very bluesy as well.
As cool as Feist is, and as much as I like her, I need to remind you of A Girl Called Eddy, who shares many traits with Feist, and released an absolutely brilliant self-titled album a year or so earlier than Let It Die came out, an album I would describe as "Dusty Springfield Sings Truly Sad Songs by Burt Bacharach, Produced by Scott Walker." (In fact, it was produced by the great English singer-songwriter, Richard Hawley.) There is a deceptively languid sadness to her songs that draws you in and then spits you out, leaving you emotionally spent. (That's what music should do, right?)
Perhaps because I feel like A Girl Called Eddy hasn't received the recognition that Feist has, I have a deeper appreciation of her music.
Feist - My Man, My Mountain
A Girl Called Eddy - Tears All Over Town
(Check out the little lift from Prefab Sprout in the middle of "Tears All Over Town," it's awesome.)

Purchase cd's by Feist and A Girl Called Eddy at Amazon.com.

Another Excuse to Mention Asobi Seksu

Asobi Seksu, Brooklyn's 21st Century answer to the Ronettes, and the only band whose t-shirt I own, are on tour and playing Bowery Ballroom tonight (2/21) at 8:00 PM. Their album, Citrus was one of my favorites last year.
They are offering a live cd at their website.
Asobi Seksu - Then He Kissed Me

Jonathan Lethem's Article in Harper's Magazine

Jonathan Lethem, author of the very fine novel, Fortress of Solitude, has a fascinating piece in this month's Harper's, called Ecstacy of Influence. In it, he explores the nature and morality of appropriation of artist's work by other artists.
I think we are all inherently appalled by the idea of plagiarism, in any form. Yet, as Lethem says, there are many acts of plagiarism that are, in fact, works of art themselves, and that (in his words) ultimately "make the world larger."
As Lethem points out, many art movements of the 20th and 21st centuries embraced plagiarism in one form or another. Surrealism, Dada and pop art all borrowed freely from the real world, in ways that could easily be interpreted as stealing.
Writers like William Burroughs (and, up in the ivory tower) Pound and Elliott championed the lifting of quotes from other sources to make double points, contextual and symbolic.
It is impossible to overstate the importance of appropriation in both classical and popular music. As Lethem says in his article, blues and jazz are part of an "open source" culture, in which new ideas develop directly out of old.
Pop music is, by its very nature, plagiaristic. There is undoubtedly a totally original chord sequence out there, but it is rare. "Sweet Jane" is an amazing song, one of the greatest songs ever written, in my opinion. Yet it's basic chord structure can be found in hundreds of other songs. And that does not detract in any way from the beauty of "Sweet Jane." If anything, it magnifies it.
In the early '70's, I was living in Albany, New York, working in a record store. I became acquainted with a group of SUNY Albany music students, and one day I went with them to a music lab on the campus. Someone there was painstakingly splicing audio tape together, and when he played it back, I heard a wonderful collage of drones, sound effects, voices and, buried deep in the mix (although it wasn't called that at the time) a snippet of Tommy James' "Mony, Mony." I had never heard anything like that before, but it instantly made sense to me. The idea that you could put together a bunch of already existing sounds, including a piece of a pop song that was, certainly at that time, something barely worth listening to, to create a totally new piece of music, was exhilarating as hell. It was simultaneously high art and pop culture, composition and commentary.
A year later, after I had moved to New York City and started a rock band called Jack Ruby with one of those Albany music students, my principle contribution to the group's first magnus opus, "Bored Stiff," was the line "I couldn't hit it sideways," which I lifted whole from the Velvet Underground's "Sister Ray." I didn't (and don't) see that as plagiarism at all, because I felt that by singing that line, I was sending a message to people who would hear the song: those who recognized the origins of the line got Jack Ruby (and Jack Ruby got them), and those who didn't weren't worth our time.
Today, technology has made it possible to create entire songs (whole albums, actually) out of samples and splices of other music. (Listen the The Avalanches, posted below.) There is no question in my mind that the composers and musicians employing this methodology are expanding the definition of art.
Lethem's article explores all this, and many other things. It's thought provoking and provocative, entertaining and educational.
(My only objection is to his unnecessary epilogue, which is a Rick Moody-esque list of footnotes in which he proudly demonstrates that much of the article was written by lifting sentences and paragraphs from other writers.)
The Avalanches - Frontier Psychiatry
Jack Ruby - Bored Stiff (1974)
(Please note: I appropriated the "ivory tower" reference from Bob Dylan's "Desolation Row.")

Oh Sweet Nuthin'

A friend of mine told me recently that he thought I was posting too many medium tempo songs on Be Hear Be Now, that it was getting all "Morning Becomes Eclectic." This post is not going to change his mind, since it is based on Sweet Nothings - Love Is a Mixtape, a sweet, medium-tempo Valentine's Day mix of love songs from artists on the Nettwerk label.
There is some stuff that's a little iffy (Barenaked Ladies) but there is also the Submarines, the Weepies and Great Lake Swimmers, a Canadien band with a new, already heavily-blogged album coming out in May called Ongiara.
I'm posting "Your Rocky Spine" by Great Lake Swimmers, partly because it's a great song, but also because Great Lake Swimmers recorded a song last year called "I'll See You on the Moon" for a an anthology of kid's music by indie bands (called I'll See You on the Moon), and it is one of my family's favorite car songs - it's the place where my taste meets my son's taste.
Great Lake Swimmers - "Your Rocky Spine"

Babies

I am posting this song in honor Johan Agebjorn, the producer of Sally Shapiro's sparkling Italian-Swedish disco pop records, who just had a baby girl, my friends Lew and Ina, who are now in China adopting a two-year old boy, and my wife Sara and our little Nemo, due in June.
Lovin' Spoonful - Younger Generation