THE TOFU HUT

A few words with tUnE-yArDs

2010-08-22T16:23:00.003-04:00

Photo used with the kind permission of David Atlas

Merrill Garbus' tUnE-yArDs project was one of the late, great musical surprises of my 2009. Sean over at Said The Gramophone included Hatari on the Gramophone's best of the year compilation and I was well and truly knocked out by its adept mix of ragged DIY garage rock, African vocal flourishes reminiscent of Letta Mbulu or Dorothy Masuka and respect for melody. A close listening to the excellent BiRd-BrAiNs LP followed and the album has stayed on heavy repeat in my home for over nine months now.

Immediately following a live NY performance, Merrill was kind enough to speak with The Tofu Hut for a few minutes. Here's some of the high points of that conversation.

[NB: This transcription has been edited for clarity, with an eye toward maintaining meaning. Errors should be traced back to your humble narrator, not Ms. Garbus.]

Tofu - Where did the tUnE-yArDs name and the funky upper/lower case spelling come from?

Merrill - The name came from an early song of mine where I describe a "tune-yard" as a place where I can go and harvest my music, to pluck it from the ground. I like to think of songs as living independently of me; instead of having to feel the pressure of creating something solely from my own experiences, I can go and cultivate the finished product from the tune yards. My work is to manifest songs somehow, rather than make them from scratch.

The capitalization was just to draw peoples' eyes on MySpace, back when that's where my music was. It was an attention-getting device and also a way of making people have to slow down when they wrote about me; every time they typed my name they had to really think about what they were doing. I like being a little abrasive and sticking in people's teeth that way. [Laughs] And there's certainly many people, many writers, that have expressed their annoyance at that choice! But you know, I have never actively enforced that capitalization. It's not in my contract or anything.

Tofu - Do you have any regrets? If you could go back and give yourself another alias, would you?

Merrill - No, I really like my name now. It's big enough to encompass a lot, which is what I hoped it could be.

Tofu - What's your background with African music?

Merrill - I spent time in Kenya studying music abroad with an emphasis on taarab, one of the predominant African East coast styles. I was playing violin at the time so I met and played with taarab musicians and poets in Africa, trying to better understand and explore the culture. I also learned the basics of the Swahili language. Exposure to both sounds and pattern of a different tongue and a different style of composition absolutely affected the music I'm doing now.

When I visited Tanzania, I got turned on to the famous Tanzanian musician Hukwe Zawose. Zawose was a huge influence on me in terms of how he used his voice to bring himself and the audience to a different place, a spiritual plane. He used sound to mold a different reality.

More recently, I've been listening to pygmy music from Central Africa. I had been unknowingly emulating some of their sound in Hatari. When I was first recording that song, I had jost lost my voice from overuse so when I hit the high notes, I couldn't do a smooth scale up and had to kind of yodel to reach. While I was flipping my voice like that, a friend said to me "that sounds like pygmy music" so I hunted down some recordings to compare and I really loved what I heard. Since then, I've been training my voice in that style.

African music is absolutely important to me and I know that shows in my music. I'm intrigued by rhythms and melodies that aren't Western, that stretch my capability to understand and follow. A lot of that pygmy music, just for example, I can't comprehend what's going on musically or in the minds of the singers but it's so tremendously compelling.

Tofu - I hear that African grounding in your music; the lyrics are in English, but the phrasing is not.

Merrill - Yeah, I like fucking with language! Whatever makes a thing awkward or imperfect in a traditional Western classical sense, I love being able to do that, to bend the sound and to be unpredictable.

Tofu - How does that feed into your visual aesthetics?

Merrill - You mean the face paint?

Tofu - It seems somewhere between Kabuki theater and tribal markings.

Merrill - It's a little of both really! When I play in a group, the band makes themselves up so there's certainly an element of shared community in that. Again, it's about putting the audience and me in a different reality. But the fact is that I like face paint! I like dressing up for a show! I come from a theater background, so it felt like the natural thing to do to mark the performance mask versus regular me.

Tofu - When I describe your music to other people, the phrase I find myself using is "urban rustic," by which I mean to say that you take a metropolitan mindset and couch it in something grounded and universally accessible. It strikes me as a variety of outlaw country.

Merrill - That's nice. I've gotten a lot of unique responses to what I do... someone just called me "folk hop". I'll take "urban rustic." As much as I love and appreciate the wild, I have an equal love for cities, especially as much time as I spend on the road. It's been very interesting touring throughout the US and gaining a sense of connectedness with the sprawl of cities and communities in America. It's an odd time to explore this country; I've been touring for roughly the past five or six years now and even before the recession, I was shocked by how many dead cities there are in America. Detroit. Cleveland. St. Louis. Places that are downright gutted and have been for a really long time. Places that have been dead for long enough that cheap rent is allowing artists to move in and take chances and create new artistic hubs. It's still early for that revitalization as a movement, but it's there.

Tofu - Your music touches on issues of gender and class, but it seems to me that the elephant in the room on the bird-brains album is race: you're a white woman, generally playing with a white band...

Merrill - ...playing urban music, African-influenced music. It's a fair point. Before I started making music at all, issues of race and ethnicity were on my mind all the time so when I started making music, it was my way of making the decision to take the plunge and dive into... well, dive into "It", whatever "It" is. To start the conversation that says: Yes, I am influenced by this other world that is not my world. And yes, somebody should have a problem with me making money off this music. Because _I_ have a problem with it and I want to be part of the conversation about how America interacts with and appropriates music from the rest of the world.

I spent the first part of my twenties extremely depressed, ashamed and guilty because I had just gone to Africa and I couldn't help feeling indirectly responsible for the ruin of another country. When I was in Kenya, it was so very clear that America was actively aiding a cycle that sucked out resources and art but left the powerless even more powerless. As an idealistic, upper-middle-class, white, American twenty year old trying to engage this outside culture, I didn't know what to do with that information. This current phase of my life, as a musician, is me coming to terms with that shame and trying to find my place in two worlds that matter to me. So when people say to me "Oh, you're doing African music", I sort of cringe because I know that I know so little. I have a lot of love for Fela Kuti and Miriam Makeba and many, many other artists but I know almost nothing about the vast and important musical history of a people that I'm basically thieving from. I'm stealing the heart of someone else's music. And we all do. It's tough.

My response is that instead of feeling stagnant and ashamed about my fears and guilt about those things, I try to keep moving and growing and creating as best as I can to help make that conversation happen.

Tofu - I do feel you grappling with those issues in your work, but there seems to be very little of it plainly present; your lyrics are quite personal but not very political.

Merrill - I would say that I have to begin with myself, that these liberal ideas are first and foremost going to have to come through the filter of my personal experience. If you were looking for something more explicit, I would direct you to lines like "They're dying outside" in FIYA and to the dada retelling of my African experiences in Hatari. There are hints here and there. But no, I'm not a preacher and where I'm at right now as a musician and a songwriter, I feel safer talking about my own experiences. Just lately, I've been approached about doing collaborations with rap artists, with African artists and that's very exciting to me. Maybe soon I'll have the opportunity to engender those relationships that have been on my mind for so long and we can share what we all have to offer.

tUnE-yArDs is currently (and, apparently, forever) on tour and working on a second album. If you have the opportunity to see Merrill live, take it!

2009-02-21T13:50:00.004-05:00

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glisten: The Work of the Father 3

More info on my father and the background on how this piece came to be is available here.

I'm pleased to be able to play host to this piece; an exploration of the mostly unknown musical ties that bind The Golden Gate Quartet and Elvis Presley and a peek into the complex history of the traditional spiritual ‘Swing Low Sweet Chariot’. Dad promises more on the latter in a future post.

Again, here's Pops.

a few words on THE GOLDEN GATES and ELVIS

In the course of conversations with Orlandus "Dad" Wilson, the great Golden Gate Quartet bass singer, I was surprised to learn of an impromptu backstage jam session the Golden Gates had with Elvis Presley at the Casino de Paris early in 1960, and the reverberations from that encounter in Elvis's subsequent recorded repertoire. For example, "Elvis Is Back!," Elvis's first LP following his military service, includes a version of the Golden Gates' secular hit "I Will Be Home Again," recorded as a duet with Jordanaires' tenor Charlie Hodge.

The lead singer on the Gates' original 1945 version of "I Will Be Home Again" is Alton Bradley, Willie Johnson's post-WWII replacement. Pianist Conrad Frederick and guitarist Abe Green provide a dreamy accompaniment to this rather atypical Golden Gates' smooth ballad. In a 1982 interview with Ray Funk, Conrad Frederick said "I Will Be Home Again" was "the biggest record that [the Gates] had. In fact that was the only record that moved in a broader area than the spirituals."

left to right: Orlandus Wilson, Alton Bradley, Henry Owens, Clyde Riddick

Orlandus Wilson reunited with Conrad Frederick, The Gates’ old piano accompanist, at U.G.H.A. Hall of Fame ceremony (NY, April 1994)

The Golden Gate Quartet - ’I Will Be Home Again’ (Okeh 6741)

Elv1s Pres1ey – ‘I Will Be Home Again’

The following excerpt from a 1995 interview with Dad Wilson is, unfortunately, somewhat disjointed. A rough transcription follows with Mr. Wilson's comments italicized and my own in bold; you can listen to the original recording of our conversation by clicking on the link.

"Do you remember what dates it was that Elvis visited you in Europe? Was it soon after you'd moved to Europe?"

"Yeah… It must have been in the beginning of the spring of 1960. He came on leave to Paris, from the military. He was doing his military duty in Germany. He came on leave to Paris, weekend leave. And as I understood it, he said he was walking down the street and he saw this theater and on it he saw "Golden Gate Quartet," and he saw the photos that were displayed, you know. He walked in and he asked if he could see the Golden Gate Quartet, if he could meet the Golden Gate Quartet. So they said, 'Well, no, because the show is on and it's almost finished now, so you can't see them.' So at the time the husband of Line Renaud, Loulou Gaste, he heard the conversation. Because the people didn't understand him [Elvis] plainly, because the people didn't speak English very well. But Loulou Gaste overheard what he was saying, and so he walked over and he said 'Do you know the Golden Gate?' He said that Elvis Presley told him, said 'Well, I know them very well, because they are my professor.' He said, 'Your professor? Well, the show is going to be finished in a few minutes. If you want to, I'll take you back and you can meet…'"

"He didn't know he was talking to Elvis Presley at the time?"

"No. He said, 'You can meet my wife, because my wife is the star of the show.' … After the show finished he brought him back. First he carried him to her [Line Renaud] room you know. He was talking with her, because she spoke very good English too. He was talking with her. He had two men with him. Then he [Loulou Gaste] said, 'Oh you want to meet the Golden Gates. OK, I'll get them and bring them down.' So, we had changed clothes and everything. And he brought us down to Line's dressing room and he said 'This is a young men, he said he know you,' and so forth. So we said, 'Well, yeah. This is Elvis Presley.'"

"You hadn't met him before?"

"Oh yeah, we had met Elvis before, yeah. Oh sure, we had met him before. Sure. Because when we was with Wally Fowler and we would come here to Nashville sometimes he would come to see us, you know. Yes, we knew him. We had met him."

"But just met him casually?"

"Yeah, just casually, yeah. So, then we sat down and we started talking. And he said, 'You guys, oh man, imagine! What are you doing here?' He was trying to find out what we were doing there. So they were surprised, 'You mean the Elvis Presley?' Loulou Gaste, he plays guitar so he had his guitar setting over in the corner. So Elvis picked up the guitar, said 'Oh, that's nice guitar,' started strumming the guitar. And then we started to reminiscing on spirituals, you know. This was about quarter past midnight. And then, we stayed in her [Line Renaud's] dressing room singing and talking and singing and talking until six o'clock in the morning. And so, we didn't see Elvis anymore then until finally, after, I think it was about '65 or something like this, this record came out with things like 'Swing Down Chariot.' "

While it may have been several years before Dad Wilson heard it, Elvis and the Jordanaires recorded "Swing Down Sweet Chariot" about six months after his Paris jam session with the Golden Gate Quartet. Wilson judged their rendition: "very well done… close to the Golden Gate Quartet. If you're not sharp enough, when you hear it you think it's the Gates."

One of Elvis's most endearing artistic qualities was his identification with southern vernacular music and his genuine appreciation of African American musicians. While some of the phrasing and inflection in his renditions of songs originally recorded by black artists sometimes approaches outright mimicry, Elvis's methods seem practically reverential, and never descend into parody or minstrel-mockery. This sensitivity and association-by-sound is evident in Elvis's adaptation of "Swing Down Chariot," including the Jordanaires' quartet backing.

The lead singer on the Golden Gate Quartet's 1946 Columbia 78rpm release of "Swing Down Chariot" is Bill Johnson, except the last verse, which is sung by Henry Owens.

Elv1s Pres1ey – ‘Swing Down Sweet Chariot’ (RCA Victor LSP-2328)

The Golden Gate Quartet – ‘Swing Down Chariot’ (Columbia 38387)

With the kind cooperation and assistance of my friend Alan Stoker, I recently had the opportunity to interview Alan's famous father, Gordon Stoker, pianist and tenor for the Jordanaires, who is heard playing piano and/or singing tenor on most of Elvis's recordings, including "I Will Be Home Again" and "Swing Down Chariot."

The Jordanaires at their 2001 induction into The Country Music Hall of Fame. Gordon Stoker is second from the left.

ALAN STOKER: Did Elvis ever mention a meeting with the Golden Gate Quartet in Paris?

GORDON STOKER: I'm sure he did. I don't remember particularly that he did, but I'm sure he did. Seems like I can kind of remember he mentioned it. I know he met some with the Harmonizing Four, because he liked their records too. But he liked the Golden Gates better. He couldn't quite understand why the Golden Gates couldn't make a living here, that they moved to Paris. Didn't they?

Yeah. The group is still active. There's a branch of the group that's still active in Paris.

GORDON STOKER: It's extremely hard for a black group to make good money here… Because first of all, gospel has changed so much. Of course, all music has changed, but I think gospel has changed even more than country, hasn't it?

ALAN STOKER: Well, there's a new genre of gospel, contemporary Christian they call it.

GORDON STOKER: Who was it that told me, "I don't call it 'contemporary,' I call it 'temporary'." It's only temporary, I can assure you.

Well, they gave away a lot of good songs, a whole lot of good songs are not used anymore, that were used for generations.

GORDON STOKER: Yeah. Well we still sing "Swing Down Chariot" on the stage in the things we do. We [the modern edition of the Jordanaires] do several appearances a year, mainly in casinos. And they love, even in casinos they love to hear us sing "Swing Down Chariot."

The Jordanaires' personnel heard on this 1951 recording consisted of Bill Matthews, first tenor; Monty Matthews, second tenor; Bob Hubbard, baritone; Cully Holt, bass; Gordon Stoker, piano.

The Jordanaires – ‘Swing Down, Sweet Chariot’ (Decca 14555, 1951)

Early in 1980 I spoke to Willie (Bill) Johnson, the man most responsible for "Swing Down Chariot."

"Something I've been thinking about; seems like a lot of songs that got popular in later days were sort of transposed from old spirituals. For instance the one that got real popular during the '40s, 'Swing Down Chariot, stop and let me ride.'"

Now we made that version of it, yeah.

"Well it seems to me that that's got to be related to 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.'"

"No, it was a song about Ezekiel. It had nothing to do with 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.' Well the general idea was the same - like 'swing low, sweet chariot, coming to carry me home.' But the 'Swing Down Chariot' we just simply took it and put some more lyrics to it. Then we put in, added Ezekiel into it, then it became a whole different song, period."

"A jubilee song. The Dixie-Aires had a nice version of 'Swing Down Chariot.'"

"Oh yeah. Um hmm. Everybody jumped on it after we sang it. I heard some choirs… I hear them singing it now, that's amazing. 'Swing Down Chariot.' [sings some of it], because the beat's nice, you know?"

"There was a group up in Chicago that titled that thing 'Rockin' Lord.'"

"Well I'll be darned. They took the title from the middle. Which was 'Rock me Lord, rock me Lord, calm and easy."

A 1947 version of "Swing Down, Chariot," recorded by ‘The Seven Melody Men’ of St. Louis, also known as ‘The Four-A Melody Men Quartet’

At The Café Society a New-York, 1938; left to right: Orlandus Wilson, Henry Owens, Willie Johnson, Clyde Riddick

Years later, I was able to ask again about this song, this time to Orlandus Wilson.

"I have a question about the song 'Swing Down Chariot.' The Gates didn't record it until 1946. Johnson was not with the group when you recorded that?"

"Johnson was with the group when we put that song together. 'Swing Down Chariot' was put together, I would say in 1940 or 1941, but we just didn't record it on record until Johnson and I finished our military. But we were singing it in Café Society, when we was working at Café Society. But it was just that we didn't have it on record, we didn't record it until that period. If you will notice, the arrangement, we have two renditions of 'Swing Down Chariot.' One rendition we have, with the slow part [sings, demonstrating the two variations of the song opening]… We had two versions of that, you know."

"For any particular reason?"

"No. Really we did things like that, with two versions, because at the time we would think, 'Maybe we should try to do something different. Why don't we try to do this with it,' or something like that. And we would change the versions just that way, because Willie Johnson was always searching for ideas of what to do."

"Well then again, it worked so well both ways."

"Yeah, it worked both ways. Because we could all agree that one version came out better than the other. So we was all agreeable with the fact that we could change the arrangement and give it a different flavor."

"That song, I think that's perhaps the Gates' greatest song, in my mind."

"Yeah. Well, 'Swing Down Chariot' it was one of our great favorites too. Because… every time we did 'Swing Down Chariot' you could see on the face expressions that there was something really special with this."

"And so many other groups recorded it. It almost wiped out 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot' as a popular song."

"Well yeah. This is true."

"And that's the other thing about that song, that I think makes it singularly important. Because when I think about what the Gates did, bringing rhythm to the spiritual, bringing the percussive beat to the spiritual and the upbeat arrangements to the slow meter spirituals, that song is a transformation of the most important of all Negro Spirituals."

"Sure. It was; yes. Definitely, it was."

"I asked (Bill) Johnson, about it. At the time I was just starting to get my thoughts together about it. And I asked him 'Was this like a rhythmic version, or update of 'Swing Low, Sweet Chariot'? And his first response was 'No, no. It was a song about Ezekiel.' And then he thought about it a little while and he said 'Well yeah, I guess it was.'"

"I think in the beginning it turned out to be so fantastic because Willie Johnson in one way was trying to think up a story that he could put in rhythm with this. And that' s why we would say, [sings] 'Why don't you swing down sweet chariot, stop and let me ride, swing down chariot stop and let me ride, rock me Lord, rock me Lord, calm and easy, I've got a home on the other side.' Then it was time for Bill Johnson to come in. So, to give him time to think of what he was going to do, he said [sings] 'Well, well, looky yonder children. Well, well well.' Then he got the story together. 'Well, Ezekiel went down in the middle of the…'"

"Oh, you're not saying that he composed that on the spur of the moment?"

"Yeah. He did a lot of things like that… On the spur of the moment, and then afterward he'd say, 'I think that's going to work.' And we would say 'Yeah.'"

"Oh, in rehearsal you mean?"

"Yeah. When we really put it together, we kept it that way. Because it was so fantastically done. So we kept it that way. And this is what happened in 'Swing Down Chariot.' Because he was really trying to think of a story, and he was just fumbling around with it. [Sings] 'Well, well. Little children looky yonder.' And then he started [sings]: 'Oh yes, well, Ezekiel went down…'"

The Golden Gate Quartet's commercial recording of "Swing Down Chariot" dates from the brief period after WWII when Bill Johnson reunited with the Gates, before leaving in dissatisfaction to join the Jubalaires. Bill Johnson was making his last session with the Golden Gate Quartet when they recorded "Swing Down Chariot," June 5, 1946. It was also the Gates' last Columbia session. They recorded next for Mercury.

We have recordings of both versions of the Gates' "Swing Down Chariot," with the two different beginnings Dad Wilson demonstrated in the interview. Both versions include a modulated, slow meter passage from "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." Nevertheless, the two beginnings are very different. This "second" version of "Swing Down, Chariot" has Henry Owens singing "Look over yonder, what I see. Seems like the chariot coming after me," etc., pretty much as Dad demonstrated it. No discographical information is to-hand on this "second" version, reissued on a recent compilation.

The Golden Gate Quartet – ‘Swing Down, Sweet Chariot’

According to Dad Wilson, Elvis and the Gates first met backstage at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, at one of Wally Fowler's (white) southern gospel shows, or "All Night Sings." I'm kicking myself because I didn't question Wilson further about this. Thus far, I've been unable to uncover anything more about the Golden Gates' involvement with Wally Fowler.

In addition to the kindness of the interviewees, I want to acknowledge the generous assistance of Alan Stoker, David Evans and Roby Cogswell.

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the most important clicky you'll make today

RUN, don't walk, over to NYC's public television station, Thirteen's SOUL! website to see mind bogglingly awesome full-length performances from Earth Wind and Fire, Rahsaan Roland Kirk and Max Roach, to name a few.

It's part of the equally must-see Broadcasting While Black site that features THIS heart-stopper.

2008-11-02T14:24:00.002-05:00

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glisten: The Work of the Father, part two

More info on my father and the background on how this piece came to be is available here. I'm pleased to be able to play host to this piece; the interview puts Lomax's work with The Golden Gates into an interesting perspective and the previously-unheard releases that make up the post's musical component are catchy, pitch-perfect and a rosy look back to FDR-era folk music.

Again, here's Pops.

The Golden Gate Quartet from the 2/8/1941 Norfolk, VA. Journal and Guide
Left to Right: Earl Robinson, Clyde Riddick, Henry Owens, Willie Johnson, Orlandus Wilson and Burl Ives

The Golden Gate Jubilee Quartette made their first stage appearance in New York City at Carnegie Hall, as part of John Hammond's historic "Spirituals to Swing" concert in December 1938, which led to an extended series of engagements at Barney Josephson's exclusive Café Society in Greenwich Village. It was at this time that Library of Congress folklorist Alan Lomax began to make use of the Gates' talents in radio shows and concert/lecture/demonstrations. In 1995, I had the pleasure of speaking with the great Golden Gate Quartet bass singer Orlandus "Dad" Wilson, who joined the group in 1934 and remained a member until his death in 1999, about the Quartet's experience working with Lomax. A rough transcription follows with Mr. Wilson's comments italicized and my own in bold; you can listen to the original recording of our conversation by clicking on the link.

"The first concert we did like that with Lomax, this was what they called the Pan-Am Music Festival, which took place in Mexico City. We went to Mexico and we spent about three weeks doing that music festival and a few of the cities in Mexico. This was in '39. And then in 1940 we came back and we did the concert at the Library of Congress in Washington, D. C. We did a few of these concerts like that. We did one at the college, Columbia University in New York. And we did one down in the Village at one of the small theaters that they had down in the Village. These turned out to be very successful musical concerts. Then we came to Fisk and we did the one in Fisk in 1941.

"They were in the form of a demonstration? Lomax would lecture…"

"Lomax would do lectures. He would talk about the folk music and the connection of the blues and the folk song. Because in this we had Josh White with us doing these concerts. And we did demonstrations on the stories of the things that arrived with the spirituals, in connection with the folk music. And we did the sketches. We did things like 'Mr. Rabbit' and things like that. We did the dramatic story behind this. Because we had spirituals that we used to sing, 'Then my little soul going to shine, shine,' 'Then my little light is going to shine, shine, shine.' In the folk version of this it was about Mr. Rabbit, they'd say 'Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit, your ears are very thin. Yes, bless Lord, I've been splitting the wind. Then my little soul going to shine, shine.' And we did dramatic stories about this. Clyde Riddick was playing the part of the rabbit and Willie Johnson he was playing the part of the hound dog that was chasing the rabbit. And I was narrating the story, trying to get Mr. Rabbit and the hound dog together you know. All this sort of thing. At the end of the dramatic thing we would go into this song, 'Mr. Rabbit, Mr. Rabbit…'"

Here, following a brief introduction by Lomax, is 'Mr. Rabbit', recorded on December 20, 1940 at The Coolidge Auditorium of the Library of Congress.

The Golden Gate Quartet - 'Mr. Rabbit, Your Ears' Mighty Long'

Orlandus Wilson with his wife, Gun (1994)

"Was that a song that you all knew, or did Lomax introduce you to that song?"

"We knew the spiritual version, 'This Little Light of Mine is going to shine, shine, shine.' In the folk version the words was about the story of the animal kingdom."

"Lomax taught you that song?"

"Yeah. He was doing this folk music series called 'Back Where I Came From,' and we was doing different folk songs, and this was a folklore version of the song 'My Little Light's Gonna Shine.' When we did that it turned out to be so successful we did a series of these programs with Josh White; and we did some with Burl Ives and with Woody Guthrie."

"Actual concert programs with them?"

"Yeah. And Pete Seeger. But the ones that we did in Mexico and the ones that we did at the Library of Congress in Washington and the one we did at Fisk was just us Lomax and Josh White."

"Sterling Brown?"

"And Sterling Brown, yes."

"Was he on all the programs, Sterling Brown?"

"Sterling Brown was on the one we did at the Library of Congress and also here at Fisk, but he wasn't in Mexico with us."

"Did you ever have the opportunity to meet the Fisk Jubilee Singers or any members, to the best of your recollection?"

"No. I never met any of the Fisk Jubilee Singers."

"Were you aware at all of the minor uproar that your appearance at Fisk caused in 1941? Did you hear anything about that?"

"No. We only heard things that Lomax would tell us. How successful it was, and how the people enjoyed it so much. During that time we only saw Lomax on a weekend or something like that, when he came into New York; because he was doing his duties at the Library of Congress in Washington at that time."

"Over the past couple of days we've discussed the perceived distinction between spiritual music and gospel music, and the strict lines that some people draw in their minds between what they are doing and what anyone else is doing. Time magazine, this is May 12, 1941, wrote a review of the program at Fisk."

"I didn't know this."

"You know, this is like the old saying from years ago in this profession. Everyone even spoke of Duke Ellington that way; here was a man that was fifty years ahead of his time. I think the same thing amounted to what we were doing, that the Gates were probably fifty years ahead of their time, what we did then. It wasn't that we were only criticized in this way by these people, but even by some of the churches that we sang in. They said, 'Well, who are these guys doing all the side-slapping, all the rhythmic syncopations in this type of music?' We were criticized by not only just one organization like that; there were many churches that criticized the Golden Gate Quartet. They would refuse to let us sing in the churches."

I showed Wilson the Time article, with its derogatory reference to "hotcha," etc. The hidebound attitude reflected by the Time article wasn't shared by Fisk University alumni secretary Andrew J. Allison. His comments appeared in the campus publication Fisk News (May 1941) directly rebutting the sentiments expressed in Time piece.

You can look over scans of both articles in pdf format by clicking this link.

"What was it like working with Alan Lomax in a context like this?" Was it smooth and easy?

"Yeah. Alan was very easy to work with. The things that he knew about folk music he mixed this in with what we knew about the spiritual feeling of folk music. What was really exciting for Lomax with what we did, was that Willie Johnson was someone who could make stories sound so fantastic. Because Willie Johnson could make a fantastic story out of nothing. This was a thing that really made Lomax so attached to what the Golden Gate Quartet was doing, involving the folklore stories that he was putting together. Willie Johnson had a lot of expression in the things that he did, the stories that he could tell. It was no one that was able to do the great narrations like he did. He was someone that had such a fantastic way of doing these things. The expressions that he could use, no one else was able to use the same expressions and feeling."

"You didn't ever feel like Alan Lomax was trying to force you into some kind of a mold that was outside of your natural expression?"

"No, I don't think so. What Alan did with us, he would listen to what we were doing and if it came close to the things that he had collected in his search in the folklore he was really satisfied with it and he would mix it in with what he had to offer. The same thing with Josh White and the blues. The same thing with Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, what they were doing."

"These things were kind of an outgrowth of the 'Back Where I Come From' radio show?"

"Yeah. The things that we knew to do and Josh White knew to do. And Hudie Ledbetter, Huddie he had so many stories that we could laugh about, you know. Willie Johnson, he had such expression that could mix into the stories that Huddie would be telling that was breaking everybody up."

"I'll bet that was a great radio show."

"Yeah, it was really fantastic."

Some years later I was able to acquire a nine-and-a-half minute abridged copy of the 1940 'Back Where I Come From' show that prominently featured the Gates contributions to the program. The recording culminates with a chorus of 'So Long, It's Been Good To Know You' by The Gates, Woody Guthrie and Burl Ives.
The Golden Gate Quartet - 'Back Where I Come From'

The Golden Gate, circa 1939; clockwise from top: Wilson, Johnson, Langford, Owens

2008-08-24T16:22:00.013-04:00

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glisten: The Work of the Father

My Pops had been a Metro bus driver in Nashville for some time and it didn't suit him well. While visiting family in New York City, he passed by the now-venerable House of Oldies and spied a record in the window selling for a hundred dollars. Earlier that year he had picked up a copy of the same disc for two bits. He hadn't been aware that there was a market for such stuff, a coterie of vinyl and shellac obsessives willing to pay far beyond top dollar for rare and historically important recordings. A light went off. Pops, a Yankee expat living South of the Mason/Dixon, saw the potential for a potentially lucrative hustle that played well off a lifetime of fascination with music. In 1975, the year I was born, my father decided to buy and sell antique records for a living.

In those pre-bay times, Tennessee was a collector's paradise; over a half century of music and radio industry unique to the area produced literally hundreds of thousands of undervalued records left unused or forgotten in garages, parlors, basements. A curious crate digger could find warehouses filled with untrammelled pickings. Initially, Pops would cart bulk piles of 45's and 78's into the city to sell but he quickly adopted a business model that would require less hauling and a different sort of focus.

Once a year, he would print and mail a thick pamphlet of the thousands of meticulously graded records and musical memorabilia he had acquired (or, as eventually became more common, that he was selling on consignment) to an international community of several hundred select buyers. Those buyers would send their lists of requests along with a price they were willing to pay for each of their picks. A month or so later, Pops would pull all the high bids and write the winners to confirm purchase. They would send checks. He would clean and pack the records then drive vanloads, many vanloads, of boxes to the local post office. Everybody at the post office knew him by name. In the background, while he's working, he's always playing an eclectic mix of music; sometimes favorite albums but more often whatever it is that he's just found to sell. Seventy-five percent of my childhood had an ever-changing soundtrack.

Pops has run this mail-order auction for over thirty years in pretty much the same fashion I've detailed above. It fills six to eight months of his year, every year, with packing and cleaning and grading and acquiring and mailing. I've watched him do it; it's a numbing sort of grind that often left him frazzled and irritable; hands cracked from the rubbing alcohol he used to clean the records, shut up in a home office walled by cardboard and vinyl, burning early morning hours appraising disc after disc. He has always done all this work by himself and continues to do so. His main mechanical aide well into the late nineties was a typewriter. He has a computer now but he uses it solely as a word processor. To the best of my knowledge, he has never opened Excel; all his financial mathematics are done on paper or with a calculator. He does not have an internet connection.

Pops realized early enough that simply selling records wasn't going to fulfill his needs; he needed to add a creative or educational element to this work to make it worthwhile. When my father began his business, there were limited resources available to learn more about the artists and groups that populated his favorite songs. Constant exposure to the people who sold and bought these sort of records brought him into contact with a mostly unwritten history that caught his imagination. He began to form an identity as an independent musical scholar in the styles of music indigenous to the South: blues, rhythm and blues, bluegrass. He was particularly taken with the vast and rich tradition of Southern gospel recording, the race records of the twenties through the late forties. Many of the artists had 'Bessemer' or 'Birmingham' attached to the band name. Alabama, like Tennessee, presented plenty of opportunity for record scavenging and my ex-busdriving father liked to take road trips. On one such trip, he came upon an unlikely name in the local phone book that matched with a singer he was familiar with via old recordings. He made the call and found a surprised Reverend on the other end who wasn't entirely clear why this white boy wanted to talk with him but who would be willing to meet. Pops bought a tape recorder and some blanks and interviewed the man.

This felt worthwhile.

One singer referred him to another. He'd meet with these men and women and discuss lives and careers some forty years past and mostly forgotten; they appreciated his respect and inquisitiveness. Conversations would lead to questions that would lead to new singers and new conversations. My father filled hundreds of tapes, transcribed many of them. He began writing essays on these bands for specialty magazines and academic magazines. His interviews became an exclusive base of knowledge that he would refer to while researching the history of the bands.

Recently, my father has approached me about helping with a project relating to these tapes. About three years ago, Pops bought a machine that would transfer audio to CD. He's been copying over the now decaying tapes and it's brought some ideas to mind that he'd like to share. He asked if I'd be willing to help him "publish" some of these audio interviews on The Tofu Hut. I warned him that my inactivity on the site and resulting lack of attention here likely meant that it wouldn't exactly be the best place to expose new material but he seems to believe that these short pieces might provide historians some new information or perspective on the bands in question, that just getting the material out there onto Google is good enough. I gave the interviews he had compiled a listen and it is pretty fascinating stuff, accompanied by some fairly rare music that Pops dubbed directly from record. I decided to do it.

Pops sent two entries worth of material along with a "let's see how this goes" note, so you'll see at least one more post of this nature. Before beginning, he wanted me to share the following caveats:

"The sound quality on many of these interviews I'm sending you - recorded on a cheap machine with budget tape nearly thirty years - may make listening to these conversations difficult, but the testimony itself and the singing are mighty fine and should hopefully make this project worth your (and your reader's) time.

I will admit to being a bit embarrassed by my over-exuberance in the making of these recordings; my tendency to interrupt and interject my two cents is an annoying element of many of the interviews that I taped during this period. Nevertheless, work got done that nobody else was going to do. I learned quite a bit, had a good time and made some great friends. 'It is,' as they say, 'what it is.'"

Without further ado, here's Pops.

The Golden Gate Quartet, circa 1943 - At Piano: Conrad Frederick (bearing more than a slight resemblance to Andre 3K)
Left to Right: Orlandus Wilson, Bill Johnson, Henry Owens and Clyde Riddick

The first post in this series is an excerpt from an interview I taped with Bill Johnson in his home in Los Angeles on January 23, 1980. Johnson was the lead singer, music arranger and general mastermind of the original Golden Gate Jubilee Quartet which was formed in Norfolk, Virginia early in the 1930s. Johnson was born in Washington, North Carolina, May 2, 1913. He died May 3rd, 1980.

When I asked Bill Johnson about his earliest musical inspirations, he told me the following story about attending St. Stephen's Baptist Church in Jarvisburg, North Carolina. A rough transcription follows; you can listen to the original recording of our conversation by clicking on the link.

"Now let me try to explain this. As a kid and going to the churches when I was still in North Carolina, there was an old man called Obadiah. And Uncle Obie, that's what everybody used to call him, he must have come directly from Africa or either he was the second generation out. Because, in the mornings he would get up and he would come out, call himself 'waking up the neighborhood' and he could practically do it too. Had a voice that carried just like a bullhorn. And he would get up in the mornings and he'd go 'Whoo Whoo, Wheet Whoo, Haah!' One of those things. And he would do that several times, and people [inaudible phrase], 'Obie's up, time for us to turn too.' And he used to go to the church where I was going at the time as a kid. And he would be, how would you put it… You know how the chiefs of the African tribes would narrate happenings and that sort of thing, but all of his things was things from the Bible. He would sing them with some type of rhythm behind then. I think that's what got me on the rhythm kick. Because he had such a natural rhythm you know. And he'd have, just before the services, before the preacher got - I never shall forget it, old Reverend Arnold that was his name - just before the preacher would start to preach old Uncle Obadiah would get up, and he'd start to walking the aisles. And he would start [sings]: 'A hey-hey-hey,' and he'd say 'and a ha-ha-ha.' And then the sisters would take it: 'A hey-hey-hey,' and he'd say 'and a ha-ha-ha.' Then he would say 'come along children, do come along. Shuffle up, shuffle up a hey-hey-hey.' That was the answer. And this beat sort of got into you after a while. And all of the things that he used to sing really started like that. They would start down here and they would keep moving up, until they really got into a frenzy of a beat. And I guess that's about what attracted me to it."

Not long ago, I obtained a dub of a 16" radio transcription by the Golden Gate Quartet (NBC Thesaurus No. 1122) which they recorded in New York in 1943. It includes a song which the Gates never released commercially called 'Jubilee'. Johnson is singing the lead. It reminds me of the bit of adlib vocalizing he had done for me that day in 1980.

The Golden Gate Quartet - 'Jubilee'

Our conversation continued:

"With this quartet, what we tried to create was what I used to call 'vocal percussion.' It was vocal percussion, it was just like a drum. But it had notes to it, it had lyrics to it. And you had different beats, you had different accents. You would accent it here, accent it here, but whatever was done was done together. So what I used to call it 'percussion.' It was really a vocal percussion…

"Like a bunch of guys beating a tom-tom somewhere. And that is what it had to sound like, and it all had to be done sharply and together. And I think that is what made, along with the harmony, and we sang simple chords, the simple triad. The furthest away we got from the simple triad perhaps would be a diminished chord… we sang minor sevenths. And that's about as far as we got. We were trying to sing chords that sounded good to the ear. And in some places in some of the songs there would be only two parts; but it went so fast you couldn't hear it. And the obligatos were, like [Henry] Owens would take an obligato, he'd sing in the cracks. But it fitted in because he slid from the key from the note to the crack, to the note, to the crack, and home. Most of his moans, if you're listening to a lot of things he does when he's moaning behind there, he's dead in the crack in most instances."

The Golden Gate Quartet, circa 1940 - Left to Right: Orlandus Wilson, Willie "Bill" Johnson, Henry Owens, Bill Langford

In February of 1995, I had the opportunity to spend several days in the company of the great Golden Gate Quartet bass singer Orlandus "Dad" Wilson, who joined the quartet in 1934 and remained a member until his death in 1999. I recited to Dad Wilson what Bill Johnson had told me about "vocal percussion" in order to get his reaction and comments. Here's the audio of his response, following my brief introduction of the topic:

"That's why, with the Golden Gates' style, when you took the bass out you had nothing there. The bass was the percussion that kept it going. Like in things that he's talking about there… the bass started off with the percussion beat. In the case of 'My Walking Stick,' the bass started up [sings:] 'Whump, whump, whump, whump, whump. Without my walking stick…' This is what he is talking about in the percussion. When you had that percussion beat there, the other three voices could do anything around that. They could make any cutoff, they could make any chop, they could make any hole. What the other people don't realize is it's not actually a hole there, because the percussion is still going on, the beat is going on. But the other three voices are not there at that particular time. It is after that, 'whump, Daah, whump, daah de doo dah, whump, daah da de dah… You see? They are filling in everything that has to be filled in."

"Uh huh. They're filling in, instead of the bass singer trying to fill in."

So you see, the bass is the percussion that is carrying that beat. They are free to do anything around that. This is what a lot of people don't realize with the style of the Golden Gate Quartet. This was the Golden Gate Quartet style."

Here is the wonderful song that Wilson refers to in that conversation, 1939's 'My Walking Stick'.

The Golden Gate Quartet - 'My Walking Stick'

Dad Wilson made no bones about the fact that it was Bill Johnson who was the creative genius behind the Golden Gate Quartet. But he also gave credit to their great falsetto tenor Bill Langford, known as "Highpockets," or "Pocket" for short:

"Langford had an important part in this. I will say this: Langford was such a rhythmic cat that he would amaze all of us in some of the things that he could do. He would do some kick-ins some time, that Bill Johnson would stop and laugh, say 'Pocket, you really got it!' He would be amazed that Langford would kick-in like that, you know. Sometimes he would say, excuse the expression that I use, 'Highpocket there is really kicking us in the ass.' And that's the way it was. You know."

"That's what it is with the Gates. It's movement. The thing has to be propelled forward."

"Yeah. But Langford has such a sense of rhythm, of filling in a spot. And he had the imagination that he saw the spot before we could get to it; that it would be vacant and he is there."

Here is an excellent example of Langford's kinetic vocalization and a prime cut from The Gates songbook, 'Found A Wonderful Savior,' from 1937.

The Golden Gate Quartet - 'Found a Wonderful Savior'

Pops and Dad Wilson at The Fisk University Chapel; Feb. 1995 - Photo credited to Robie Cogswell

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tell me more

Buy compilations of the vast majority of The Golden Gate Quartet's discography from UK label Document records. With shipping and handling included, these come out to about nineteen bucks US a pop.

For those looking for a better deal, I'd recommend EMusic, which carries a considerable amount of the Document catalog. That route puts them at roughly ten dollars an album.
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Visit the official website for the current iteration of The Gates.
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Explore a brief history of the band and a selected discography at the Vocal Group Hall of Fame website.
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Read a short essay by gospel musician and scholar (and family friend) Tony Backhouse detailing some good starting point purchases for the curious Golden Gate neophyte.
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Listen to The Gates perfom 'Hush' and 'The Sun Didn't Shine'.
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As was common for popular vocal groups of their era, The Gates appeared in numerous cameo roles for major Hollywood movies (including this somewhat demeaning but utterly outstanding turn in 1942's 'Star Spangled Rhythm') and starred in many theatrically released musical shorts.

Watch 'The General Jumped at Dawn' and this much later Eisenhower-era, Vietnamese travelogue and performance.

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clicky

A big, BIG Tofu Hut thank you to my good buddy over at the slumbering Tuwa's Shanty for providing file hosting for this and future posts. You're a prince, sir!
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The newly revamped Sesame Street website, featuring literally hundreds of sketches and clips, is good for about three to four weeks of non-stop exploration.

And the music! Ray Charles! The Pointer Sisters! Celia Cruz! The Lovers of Five!
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Can you even begin to imagine how hard life is for Starfish Hitler? The taunting on the elementary school playground, the hysterics at the DMV, the prank phone calls, the blind date disasters... no wonder he ended up on the wrong side of the tracks. But for the grace of god...
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I've spent quite a few hours of late listening to Orera, a Georgian pop-jazz band that reached superstar status in the former Soviet Union during the sixties and seventies.

Check this out and if you like what you hear, download the greatest hits collection from What's In My Ipod (tip of the hat, mister ipod!)
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MARIMBA PONIES!
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Over a thousand men and women (mostly men) in furry suits. Pick your favorite!
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'Now Do This' is a simple and effective online list widgit from Vimeo founder Jakob Lodwick that forces you to focus on one task at a time. I've found it to be helpful in the office.
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Great interview with the indispensable Lynda Barry.

The pittance she receives for her weekly work is really shameful; she should consider creating an online site and building a subscription base there instead. Lynda, if you've googled your way here, it would work! It really would! Hire somebody! Ask around! I'll join!
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Spectacular images from the Olympics
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I'm so very happy I'm an email subscriber to Animal Review; the writing is consistently hysterical and brightens my day.

More than any other animal, the hippopotamus manages to combine adorable comedy value with sheer terror. Unlike the lions, tigers, bears, cobras, and Great White Sharks, all of whom look like animals that will kill you, the hippo is bald and fat. Instead of fear, your first impulse upon seeing one is to dress it in a tutu and invite it to perform at your kid’s birthday party. But as too many people have found out the hard way, this is a very bad idea that will ruin almost any get-together. For their adorableness belies the fact that hippos are killers. In so many words, in Kingdom Animalia hippos are the guy in his mid-40s who lives alone and juggles his time between his jobs of part-time party clown and full-time serial killer.
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Get Right Music is an effective and free way to keep up with what's new in the mixtape scene.

Check out recent releases from Asher Roth, Curren$y and Nas.
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Spelunking the old abandoned Tyson mansion
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A recent amazong purchase of the complete series of Phoenix and an on-the-way Ebay haul of an almost complete set of Astro Boy puts me in spitting range of having acquired every Osamu Tezuka work translated into English. I await Black Jack with bated breath.

Those of you unfamiliar with the work of Dr. Tezuka should have a go at the first book of Buddha and then let the craze take hold.

2008-07-08T08:49:00.012-04:00

Go Celtics!

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glisten: eluveitie

Eluveitie - Gray Sublime Archos

Eluveitie - Anagantios

(apologies for the tacky megaupload links; I'm trying to get my server issues fixed; see below in clicky for more details...)

It was Elisabeth who told me that I really shouldn't miss Paganfest (you can read her Time Out New York piece on the tour here) and after a few listens to the myspace tracks, I understood her enthusiasm.

By far the most exciting band I saw that night was Eluveitie; a nine man ensemble featuring the traditional metal staples of drum kit, multiple guitars, bass and a cookie monster vocalist along with the less predictable inclusion of a viola, a bagpipe, two flutes, what I took to be a lute and an honest-to-god hurdy gurdier who alternated playing the instrument with helicopter headbanging.

These shakycam movies from the show I attended don't really do the evening justice, but they should give you a sense of the exuberant spirit of the performance. Watching eight hundred hyperactive kids throw up the horns and crowd surf to pennywhistle is the sort of thing that sticks in your memory; it was certainly among the best shows I've seen this year.

Recently signed to Nuclear Blast Records in the States, Eluveitie (pronounce el-WAY-tea, it means "I am The Helvetian" in Etruscan) are a Swiss band that combine ancient Celtic folk music with the trappings of death metal. This is less convoluted than you might think; Switzerland, founded in the fifth century BC by the Celtic Helvetians has long been a matrix for nationalistic heavy metal bands such as Celtic Frost, Samael and Krokus. Perhaps all that emphasis on peace has led aggressions to come out in music... or maybe it's something in the soil?

The tenor of Eluveitie's work is strikingly non-nihilistic and positive; they describe themselves as "a neutral band on topics such as politics and religion". The band has gotten minimal buzz on the aboveground blogworld (even Toni Basil has a bigger footprint on hype machine), which leads me to wonder if I'm missing out on some solid, not-for-profit, single user driven Metal musicblogs. Lord knows that Elisabeth, Steve Smith and Ian Christe are among the very few regularly publishing journos who take the genre seriously; I'm not sure if this is solely an American way of viewing metal or if it's a real academic lack. Let me know in the comments if you know of some places I ought to be checking out and I'll post them here in a future Hut.

The two tracks I'm offering today are representative of the band's ostensibly wildly divergent paths; 'Anagantios' is a sublime string instrumental that reminds me of James Bryan and Carl Jones' 'Last Look at Lonesome Rock', while 'Gray Sublime Archon' has more of the aforementioned thrashing-to-recorder, "peanut-butter-in-my-chocolate" blend of traditional melody and blast beats. Both are engaging, robust and (I think) of interest even to people who would generally eschew anything metal sight unseen.

Give these a listen; you may find yourself pleasantly surprised.

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tell me more

Eluveitie's albums are for sale on eMusic, iTunes and Amazon and readily available via the usual suspects for try-before-you-buy exploration. Suffice it to say that you should absolutely try to catch them live for the full effect when and if they make it out to your town.
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Youtube offers a considerable host of Eluveitie videos; official, live, bootleg, fan built or otherwise.

A few of the better live tapes include this 2007 take on 'Slanias Song', this surreal impovisational bagpipe and bass duet and this nicely captured performance of 'Tegernako'.

I also strongly recommend taking a gander at the video to Eluveitie's current single 'Inis Mona'; it captures the band at its best and most moving.
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Need more than the Eluveitie homepage has to offer? The MySpace and Facebook not doing it for you? Check them out on LastFM (with a fully downloadable mp3 of 'Your Gaulish War') or talk it out on the Eluveitie forums.
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Read interviews with Eluveitie frontman Christian "Chrigel" Glanzmann and (apparently newly ex-) bassist Rafi Kirder.
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Folk metal is a fascinating new offshoot of the "global" tree; despite being less than likely to show up at any of the boutique festivals, what else would you call the neat blend of new expressions with traditional European and Middle Eastern folk music?

Newcomers to the scene interested in exploring a few of the more innovative and keystone bands of the genre should check out Korpiklaani, Finntroll, Skyclad, Orphaned Land and Bathory. If you'd like to get a brief primer to the many other players on the scene, you could do worse than giving a click thru The Metal Observer's archives.

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spiffy and such

Apologies for tossing up that longwinded buildup at end of May and then disappearing for a month or so; as Dorothy Parker said, "I hate writing but I love having written". Trying to find the discipline to get back on a regular bump-n-grind with this monster is proving difficult, though they tell me the worthwhile things usually are.

Not-so-incidentally, I'm looking for a new server to host music files on, as my old service seems to be functionally kaput. Don't suppose anyone could recommend (or, better yet, offer up) a space for me to put my uploadables and delicates on? You would receive much dap.

Drop me an email line or a comment if you're into it.
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One of the many, many things that have kept me distracted from my nightly rounds has been the tremendous Spore-sorta-beta. For those of you uninterested or uninitiated in the dark ways of the gamer, Spore should still be worth a gander.

The free-to-download demo for Creature Creator isn't really a game; it's a sort of hi-tech Mister Potato Head that allows you to mix and match parts and skin and arms and eyes on a lump of exceedingly malleable electronic clay to create unique and often ungainly life forms that chirp and shamble about for your pleasure. Ultimately, when Spore is released in its final form, you'll be able to import your creations into a gamespace where they can evolve and fight for territory, but for the moment you can assemble a menagerie, see them prance across your desktop and share them online with other Sporexplorers.

In the past three weeks since the creature creator, over 1.6 MILLION of these guys have been posted onto EA's website; likely the greatest flash flood of user-driven content in internet history. Stop by and say hi to a few of my friends when you have a moment.
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Just so you know it's not all video games and pie around The Tofu Hut; I was also recruited as one of the judges for this year's New York MTA Music Under New York audition; if anybody would be interested in hearing more about it, I could do some blogging about the artists and the selection process...?

Leave me a message in the comments and I'll have a go if there's more than three of you raising a hand.
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Ye olde Giant MusicBlog List is terribly out of tune and in desperate need of pruning and revision, but I'm not quite sure I'm the right guy to keep up with the movement anymore. The fact of the matter is that I don't much frequent the blog circuit these days: my work at a music venue brings new music to me daily; I keep up with the Billboard charts via Youtube; my girlfriend/friends/family/co-workers regularly pass along things of interest and I have a backlog of some two to three hundred gigs of backlogged hard drive space and a four-foot stack of cd's to wallow through. Somehow I've become a crotchety grandpa on the web in only four years flat.

This isn't to suggest that there aren't amazing blogs and great work going on out there (and feel free to let me know if you think you're one of the folks doing something spectacular); it's just that I've plenty on my plate already and am getting more and more attuned to the fact that I don't really have forever to sample it all.

That said, even if you're like me and jaded as hell, you should still make time in your busy schedule for Excavated Shellac. Always eclectic, always obscure, never disappointing. Special stuff here; you'll kick yourself if you miss out.
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Debra Jackson in my comments! As I live and breathe. Drop me an email, missus; I'd like to catch up.

Oh, and thanks for all the other friendly words of encouragement and positivity you folks jotted down to me; they're greatly appreciated
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Getting excited over megatrippy-Bolly weirdness is very mid-2007; but if you've not seen it already, you've got to make an exception for the candy-coated whoa of Radha and Chiranjeevi's 'Idhi Oka Idi Le'.
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Turner Classic Movies Has a Blog.
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"Honey, I'm a little high..."(NSFW)
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Imagine my joy at discovering that not only is my downstairs neighbor a blogger, she's a food blogger (over at Thursday Night Smackdown) and a hella good cook at that.

If you'd like to imagine what my life is like (and who wouldn't?), investigate Michelle's blog and then imagine the aroma of said cuisine wafting upwards. And if that doesn't turn you on, eat me.
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Golden Age Comics is a massive repository of classic pulp fiction from the turn of the century to the fifties, all in public domain (in Britain at least) and all fully downloadable.

You'll have to jump through some registration hoops and get a (free) copy of CDisplay if you're on a PC or Comical if you're on a Mac to read them, but those concerns pale when you consider the impossibly rare treat of curling up with an almost full run of Whiz Comics!

a few words from our sponsor

2008-05-27T17:21:00.003-04:00

Hi.

I've been thinking about the moments in my personal history when I have experienced the golden spark of unexpected connection. There have been a lot through technology, most of them on the web. The vehicles are an odd mix of off and brand names: Bittorrent, YouTube, AudioGalaxy, Google, Ultima Online, IRC, Project Gutenberg, Netflix, Tivo, Metafilter, Blogger. They've all left me a little breathless from what Kierkegaard calls "the dizziness of freedom". Expectations of restriction and boundary are overturned and there is literally no end to what you can find. On an ur-level, this is what it means to be a child, to be in a constant state of amazed discovery at every leaf or toy or Werner Herzog short that shows up on the plate. The problem comes when I find myself in a state of media gluttony; it's a rare moment when I'm not immediately offering myself up to engage with some sort of art. There are repercussions, a sort of creative torpor. Sharp flavors dull and bright colors blur a bit. Expectations of self decline: while Aristotle was supposed to have read all the worthwhile opinions of his society, I can't even read half the magazines I subscribe to. Context wobbles in and out of focus; when the music that reminds you of your old country home in the Ozarks is Afro-pop and Tuvan throatsinging, where are you really from? It takes work to be curious and even more work to be excited all the goddamn time. I write less and less until eventually I'm not writing anymore.

When I started The Tofu Hut some four years ago, there was a premium in the newly burgeoning 'music blog' scene on either finding the newest new stuff or on finding really rare tracks. Personally, I aspired to being more of a shadchan, a matchmaker for ideas and interested minds. I've never been interested in being a critic; why should I tell you what to think about something that you can just as easily listen to on your own and form your own opinion? And, incidentally, fuck a 'tastemaker'; that always struck me as the sort of term you'd use to describe a coffee machine. Scarcity is a fun novelty, but it means less and less as the celestial jukebox starts filling up... and you don't need me to tell you that new tarnishes faster than it can get on the shelves. So why bother at all?

I've been paralyzed with diversity, with being unsure whether what I have to say matters, with the recognition of the time and effort it would take, with the fear of my own amateurism and lack of polish. But to be that golden spark for someone else? To give them a new idea that carries them somewhere down the spiderweb that I can't even see? It's still something worth aspiring to.

All this is a rambling, roundabout way to say that I've been listening and watching and reading over the past year and I have a few nice goils you should meet. I'll trot them out for you now. Thanks for waiting for me.

the secret history of Betty Davis

2007-08-14T00:05:00.000-04:00

listen to the lady herself

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tuwa's-day

If ever there were a good reason for this site to lurch back from the dead for the gazillionth time, it would be the revitalization of my ongoing relationship with the admirable Tuwa and his Shanty. Tuwa drops by the Hut today to grace us with some knowledge and hot traxx from funk goddess Betty Davis. Show him some love in the comments section and who knows? Maybe we could even see more of him in the future.

Betty Davis -- If I'm In Luck I Might Get Picked Up

Betty Davis -- Shoo-B-Doop and Cop Him

Miles Davis divorced Betty because she was too wild. She's known for that and less for her music, which is a shame, and even less for her cooking, which is another. Between living in New York and living in Pittsburgh she used to have this restaurant in New Orleans, a hole-in-the-wall, dive-looking place that paid okay but cooked even better. It specialized in soul food: hush puppies, collard greens, fried chicken so greasy you couldn't lift the napkins off the table without help, you know the scene. That was where she worked after her first couple of records: they were some real hot stuff, sassy and in your face, hot like I said, hot like you'd expect today from Macy Gray or somebody but funky too like P-Funk and Sly Stone. Those were good albums but didn't get much attention, and Betty, she just figured hell with it and set up her restaurant. She did what she wanted to do and then she wanted to do something else. If you haven't heard 'em, well, I'll tell you something more about her cooking and that'll tell you about the music.

This restaurant started to get a reputation for itself, till one day this music critic from New York came in after one of the concerts--Irma Thomas and Allen Touissaint and Eddie Bo, that crew. Betty'd gone down and performed a couple of songs with them even though she didn't fit in too well, and then she came back to take the meatloaf and cornbread out of the oven even though I could have managed it just as well like on any other day. She seemed peevish about something, on edge, so I just ducked my head and tended to my tables. And the place was starting to fill up when this dandified critic walked in, cutting early from the concert, and ordered a reuben. Betty told me later he'd been standing there near the front row with his notebook out, and I guess that's what got under her skin. He didn't help things coming in later asking for a reuben.

"A reuben," she said.
"Yes, I think I'd like a reuben."
"You came into a soul food restaurant and ordered a reuben."
"Do you know how to make a reuben?"
By now Betty had her head back and one hand on her hip. "Do I know how to make a reuben? Hmph. Oh, you'll have your reuben." Then to me: "Jimmy, go get some some Swiss cheese and some rye bread." And back to the critic: "you want something to eat until then?"

So I went off to the grocery down the street and came back, and Betty buttered a plate and sliced the bread and took some corned beef she'd intended for a hot hash and she put it on one slice on some Swiss cheese, and put some Thousand Island on the other. And she put the two sides together and brought it out to the critic like that and set it across the table from him and he just looked at it.

"Not yet," she said. She was wearing this short tight skirt and a form-fitting blouse--she liked to advertise herself a bit, you know--and she had an afro in those days with some hoop earrings, and she sat at the counter catty-cornered from the critic and his sandwich, her elbows back on the counter with her legs crossed, one foot bobbing absently like she was still listening to Eddie Bo play an encore. She had her chin back a bit, her dander up, you know, and she turned her head slowly, giving that critic and his sandwich a look like you wouldn't believe. And the butter began to sizzle and the cheese began to melt and that poor fella had to loosen his tie. And shortly she took a spatula off the hanger and got up and flipped that sandwich, and when it was over she took the sandwich off one plate and put it on another and pushed it over to him and said, very sweetly, "careful, honey, this sandwich is still hot."

And he just said "yes'm" and mopped his brow with a handkerchief. When the sandwich was gone he had another glass of tea in a hurry, and left a good tip.

I guess he went off and wrote his article, but whatever it said, Betty didn't go back into the studio. Like I said, she did what she wanted and then she did something else. The food's long gone but at least we have the music still.

[Betty Davis @ amazon.com, or @ emusic.com]
[They Say I'm Different @ amazon, @ emusic.com]
[A non-fiction Betty Davis bio]

2007-06-06T10:37:00.000-04:00

PLAY LOUD UKULELE

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glisten: son of tofu hut

Son of Tofu Hut is a collaboration with The King Open School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. King Open is a mix of races, ethnicities, social class and nationalities; a melting pot of opinions and perspectives. I've been sending discs of music to King Open to have them played to a class of seventh and eighth graders; the kids give them a listen once or twice and then write a brief critique of what they've heard. I'll be compiling their responses to present you with music, links (when available) and lightly edited (spelling and obvious typing errors are corrected, grammar and slang is not) teenagers' responses.

Jake Shimabukuro - 'Heartbeat / Dragon

John sez: In addition to being a grand virtuoso, Jake Shimabukuro is one of the nicest and most completely genuine people I've ever met. I've seen him play live three times now and he's absolutely floored me every time.

I was first exposed to Jake when I did a capsule review for his album, Dragon. I was struck by how much I wanted to listen to the man on the uke play solo and ditch the modern jazz production that mucked up his fascinating intricate fingering. You can imagine how overjoyed I was to discover that his readily available on the internet live shows generally consisted of Jake with an amplified uke and nothing but.

Gently Weeps, which Heartbeat/Dragon hails from, is an entirely acoustic album and, while it makes for an interesting listen, it simply can't compare to the exhilarating experience of seeing Jake live. If he ever comes to your town, don't miss him.

Student 1: Boring. The begining is too long and sounds like old fashioned chinese music. I dont like it. It is boring and... god, it is boring. Very asian-ish and very boring.

Student 2: The song sounds like some one is very sad. It makes me want to cry because it gets me into a really deep thinking point. I am happy this song has no singing in it because singers would mess up my train of thought. If i were really sad or was bored, I might actually listen to this song. I really like it. Wow, I can't believe this song is played on a ukulele, oh my god!!!!! But I still like this song.

Student 3: This sounds like a traditional Asian song. I would listen to it to relax. This guy is really talented. I like the sound of the heartbeat in the beginning.

VISIT

MYSPACE

LISTEN 2 A JAKE FULL-LENGTH LIVE SHOW

BUY 'Gently Weeps' direct from Jake

Student 4: The instrument in this song is lovely but it has too much of the same beat at the start. It's like a song that you would listen to if you wanted to cry because it sounds so sad.

Student 5: This sound like a person is going to a open mic stage to perform and that person is just bobbin' his head back and forth.

Student 6: At first it sounds like a heartbeat and then it sounds like an Asian beat, but then it gets more clear and has different kinds of beats to it. I think the beginning is just too long. Can't it just get to the singing part, like oh my god its wasting my time. Anyways it sounds kind of calming in one way then fun and move-y in another way. I like the different beats it has to it, like it's pulling one way then another. It seems like a song you would meditate to.

WATCH JAKE PLAY DRAGON LIVE

WATCH

WATCH MORE

Student 7: This song is very relaxing. I feel like I am in a life-sized zen garden. It sounds happy and remindes me of "A Princess Bride" (that movie is also great). It sounds as if fairies and elves are playing the harp (I know, that was cheesey, but it's true). The beginning of the song really does sound like a heartbeat. The ukulele is beautiful! I didn't know it could sound so relaxing!

Student 8: This song is very calming, something that you would listen to when you need to relax. I think that the maker of this song is trying to get you to come out of your shell and express yourself. It reminds me of rippling water.

Student 9: The beginning sounds like someone walking down a hall where they're not supposed to be at, maybe in a Chinese Garden. It's very repetitive and calming, but it's slow going. It needs some words. After awhile, it's getting boring and kind of giving me a headache. There are very few notes and then it goes into chords. I think this would be a nice song to go to bed to.

LISTEN 2 THE NPR INTERVIEW

LISTEN 2 MY INTERVIEW WITH JAKE

Student 10: VERY BORING. I NEED WORDS A.S.A.P. IT MAKES ME THINK OF WHY PEOPLE KILL THEMSELVES.

Student 11: I like the heartbeats in the beginning. The ukulele is nice and peaceful. It reminds me of some kind of Asian mixed with Western music. I like it, because it's not too happy and not too depressing. The music reminds me of music from this game on the web I played. It sounds like the kind of music used for foreign, graceful dances.

Student 12: I really like this song. At first it kind of sounds Asian, but then towards the middle it just sounds like cool acoustic "noodling", as some people call it. It makes me want to dance. It also makes me want to sing along, despite the fact that there are no words. It kind of reminds me of raindrops. At first it's light, but then towards the middle of the song/storm it gets heavy and frantic, but even with the frantic-ness, the song still sounds smooth. I wish I could play guitar like that. Kind of makes me think of that guy, I forget his name, but he was a gypsy and he only had two fingers but he was an amazing guitar player. It kind of sounds like that man mixed with Hawaii.

READ

READ MORE

JAKE PLAYS KAMAKA UKULELES

If you'd like to leave any questions or comments for me or for any of the students who are helping contribute to the Tofu Hut, feel free to do so in the comments section, but PLEASE keep the criticism constructive.

2007-06-05T00:32:00.000-04:00

lol cat is hueg

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clicky

LOLCats are so May. LOL80's, that's the wave of the future.

Want to read all the Jack Chick tracts but worried about the awkward conversation you may have to endure to get them from the lady in the subway?
The Internet, as always, has the answer.

Street Fighter II: Turbo Buggy Nostalgia Edition
I particularly like the Vega/Blanka infinite pit of doom.

Related: the (bonus) stages of death in video games

Thanks to the always enjoyable Snarkey Malarkey for turning me on to the flamboyant world of Chris Crocker.
This dude is straight killin' it; kid is the internet age's Tennessee Williams.

The hidden link between Randy Savage and Justin Timberlake

English Russia: a fascinating peek into another world.

What's new in indie audioblogs: iweenie, standard lipsum, Berkeley Place, All Things Go, Bootlog, Blanathema, Sound As Language and The Alternakids

78 RPM Youtube Jukebox with over 400 songs!
I only wish it were more easily searchable.

Gorgeous carniceria decorative art and mindboggling work from Moira Hahn

Probe Is Turning-on the People! is one of the best audioblogs I've found in ages; understated, elegant and with a real sense of style. Go check it out!

Giger's Alien in a Tux
Obsessive and nuts and I like it.

The CardStacker

So i am going to put my super old TV out on the curb. i think. maybe. now.
I love wacky narcissistic self-journaling, especially when Photoshop gets involved.

www.creedthoughts.gov.www\creedthoughts
I really hope they maintain this.

"The entire food industry depends on the fact that evolution doesn't happen..."
Glad we could clear this up.

Killer robots? Check. Lightsabers? Check. Hasselhoff?
Check.
The Starcrash fanfic site has been shut down; didn't ANYBODY mirror?
C'mon internets! Don't disappoint me!

clicky is back as a weekly function of the Hut and I welcome any and all readers to contribute links for audioblogs of note, general weirdness or neato stuff.
You can send links in to the email listed over at the top of the page with the subject heading "CLICKY" and I'll give 'em a once over. Promise.

2007-06-04T09:15:00.000-04:00

The Gold Standard

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glisten: walkie talkie

Time for my weekly round-up of Joe's Pub interviews; those of you somewhat in the dark as to what this is all about are welcome to get all the details in the first of these posts here.

Mudville mixes soul, blues, electronic, jazz and rock, among other genres, to create a sound that defies explanation but tickles the eardrums.

On the internet providing a porthole to the inner workings of musicians' process:
Marilyn - "There's always room for a shoegaze mentality, to be the 'mysterious artist'; we know people like that and that's part of their creative persona. It can be done well."

Ben - "I think people really like the personal connection and they want to tear that wall down. No one wants stand-offish, larger than life rock stars anymore."

Listen to Mudville's Eternity

Watch Mudville perform live in NYC

Visit Mudville's website

Buy 'Iris Nova' direct from Mudville

===================================

Jenny Owen Youngs is a folk rock singer songwriter out of New Jersey. Her debut album, Batten the Hatches, was released earlier this year.

On distributing full-length tracks online for free:
"I come from an indie-label background and I feel like hoarding music and making people pay for every single thing they get is kind of more of a major label mentality. It's more important to me to gain visibility and anything that can help work toward a critical mass of people who know who you are and what you sound like is worth doing even if it's financially unprofitable."

Listen to Jenny Owen Youngs' Fuck Was I

Watch Jenny Owen Youngs live

Visit Jenny Owen Youngs website

Buy 'Batten the Hatches' direct from Jenny

===================================

Roberto Rodriguez is an instrumental innovator who synthesizes his Cuban roots with traditional Jewish music and avant-garde jazz.

On his mix of traditional Cuban and Jewish musical influences:
"I think it is a natural connection. I came to the United States and I lived in Miami with the Jewish community, so I was able to vacillate between the two cultures. In Caribbean, as well as South American sounds, we look back to Spain and there's a connection with Judaism there. I realized later on in my life that there is a line there that crosses all the borders..."

Listen to Quinteto Roberto Rodriguez's Wolfie's Corner

Visit Roberto Rodriguez's website

Buy 'Baila! Gitano Baila!' from Amazon

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M. Nahadr is an internationally acclaimed performance artist based out of New York. Her shows combine singing, movement, multimedia and theatrical overtones.

On the impact of her albinism in her work:
"My condition is the condition of humankind: we all have differences. To realize that difference is to celebrate it and to know our union. Since my difference is so starkly presented, I revel in it."

Listen to M's Anymore

Watch M perform an excerpt from her rock opera 'Madwoman'

Visit M's website.

Buy 'Madwoman' from Amazon

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2007-05-31T10:46:00.000-04:00

Shhhhh...

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glisten: son of tofu hut

Son of Tofu Hut is a collaboration with The King Open School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. King Open is a mix of races, ethnicities, social class and nationalities; a melting pot of opinions and perspectives. I've been sending discs of music to King Open to have them played to a class of seventh and eighth graders; the kids give them a listen once or twice and then write a brief critique of what they've heard. I'll be compiling their responses to present you with music, links (when available) and lightly edited (spelling and obvious typing errors are corrected, grammar and slang is not) teenagers' responses.

Afroman - Hush

John sez: Afroman's debut LP is generally somewhere between slept on and reviled, but it's something that I find myself coming back to every now and again. This oddly engaging and sweetly endearing take on the traditional spiritual is leavened with stoner humor, chicken squawks, Afroman's lengthy reminiscinces on his childhood visits to Mobile and a persistent elastic bassline.

I was pleasantly surprised to see that the students pretty much all loved this one; who woulda thunk it? Certainly Afroman can only take so much of the credit; there's no denying that 'Hush' has withstood the test of time. Here's a few bonus tracks (that the kid's didn't get to hear) to give you a clearer ear with this song: a much more straight ahead mid-40's rendition by gospel legends Golden Gate Quartet and a funkier, dirtier cut by Hugh Masekela.
It's a helluva trifecta!

The Golden Gate Quartet - Hush

Hugh Masekela - Hush

Student 1: This song sounds like those songs you would hear when watching a LA gang movie and something good just happened and you would get out your movie seat and if you knew this song you would sing it. This song is like a dedication to the community. You would start having to help the community even if you didn't want to and then you ended up liking doing work alot. This man sounds like he was in a church choir. If I was growing up in a bad place, this song would really cheer me up.

Student 2: This song sounds like gospel music. They are singing about jesus. It has an R&B type of beat, like jazz but after u hear it for a while you can catch the beat. I like this song but in one part, the singer adds too much feeling.

Student 3: I like it because it's old school and I think it's really fresh. I need this song on my ipod for sure. I like the meaning of the song, how it's kind of new with a hip hop beat and then it sounds really old school. This song is good. I just really like how the song starts with the guys saying who they are.

VISIT

LISTEN 2 MORE

AMAZONG Afroman's 'The Good Times'

Student 4: This is something I can relate to a lot because I listen to a lot of songs like this at home. They are very calming and they make you want to get up and get your freak on. It's very cool. Just the name afroman is cool.

Student 5: I can't figure out what kind of music this is. It sounds like early hip hop and acapella and Gospel. I like this song because it makes me feel like I am at some kind of concert in New Orleans. I like the humming at the end as well. It also sounds kind of like a slavery song. I wonder when this song was written. i would be very interested to know where this band is from.

Student 6: It is very nice music. They want people to be quiet because somebody is calling their name and it is jesus. It has many melodies to it and the fact that it is about jesus connects to what they are saying. My teacher Lynn was just dancing to it and I think that she has the warmth to this music. This is just like gospel rap. Gospel rap is cool. I give this an A plus!!!!

MYSPACE

WATCH

Listen to this drivetime morning radio interview and this "marijuana radio exclusive".

Student 7: It sounds like something that would go on a gospel radio station. It has a slowish beat. It's like a mix of jazz and gospel. It has a R&B kind of beat. I'm not that fond of it, because I don't really like this kind of music. I don't like gospel. It's always about Jesus, God/The Lord, but I guess that's kind of obvious since it's called gospel music... but it sounds too slow for me.

Student 8: This song has a lot of different beats to it. The words are a little confusing because it talks about one thing then goes to something different. The song sounds like hip hop but it also sounds like it is a rap song. It kind of changes between the two.

Student 9: I like this. It has a good simple beat and a religious hip pop song. It also sounds like the other song: Because I Got High. This song moves me. It shows that religious songs could be fun too. It tells a good message and I think he's telling the bad people to hush so he can hear Jesus calling him.

TALKIN' GARBAGE

Student 10: Think of someone who knows you, yet you cannot see that person of guess who it is. Perhaps it is Jesus? Or are you you going crazy? But there is no one there and yet there is still someone calling you. That's what this song is about. As I listen to this right now, it reminds me about when someone dies or you miss someone and can't see them anymore you can see their reflection pop out of nowhere. Or.... you can hear them calling you. I remember feeling like this and my mother did too when my grandmother died. I can't explain why but this song reminds me of that feeling. This song is a yearning about someone dear and you can hear them.

If you'd like to leave any questions or comments for me or for any of the students who are helping contribute to the Tofu Hut, feel free to do so in the comments section, but PLEASE keep the criticism constructive.

2007-05-30T10:01:00.000-04:00

From photographer Denis Darzacq's beautiful collection of falling bodies

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clicky

The sad effects of real world Tetris in Grand National's 'Drink To Moving On'
Catchy song, better video.

Jumpstyle dance falls into that difficult to pin down area between clogging and breakdancing.
All I know is that everyone's doing it and that this video is terrifyingly awesome.
Now if only the music wasn't so soulless and uninteresting...

"Like something out of science fiction, the fruiting body of the cordycepts fungus erupts from the ant's head. It can take three weeks to grow and when finished the deadly spores will burst from its tip. Then, any ant in the vicinity will be in serious risk of death."
Next time you're feeling sorry for yourself, just thank god that there aren't any killer zombie mushrooms that prey on the human race.
Well, except for mucormycosis. And for the love of god, don't GIS that.

ZeFrank interview on the nature of creativity
He's a rare talent and a good example of the simultaneous empowering and compartmentalizing effects of the web; it's crazy that there are folks in entertainment who don't know ZeFrank but can list all the songs Sanjaya did.

Tiny, gothic Japanese girl throws mighty chokeslams, to the LUM theme, no less!
We need an American version, pronto.

AH HAS A NETI
Honestly, it's one of the most major change-of-life purchases I've ever made. I'm strongly recommending my fellow allergy/sinus infection/nasal issue sufferers give this sucker a try.
Just don't don't pour booze up there; that's just dumb.

Tangentially related: extreme enema tales in the Guardian.
NOT for the faint of heart.

Some music: electronic from Nevenen, multiculti funkpunk from CONGOPUNQ, scattered covered smothered tunage from The Waffle House Music Machine, Yung Joc's awesome banger 'Coffee Shop' and Jonathan Coulton's 'Code Monkey'.

Doctor fish cure your psoriasis by eating your skin.
I'm betting this'll be a feature at a New York spa before the end of '08.

Online gametime with Onslaught.
Got six hours to kill?

2007-05-29T00:54:00.000-04:00

image courtesy laura aura and the shoy shoy boy

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glisten: walkie talkie

Time for my weekly round-up of Joe's Pub interviews; those of you somewhat in the dark as to what this is all about are welcome to get all the details in the first of these posts here.

German born Ute Lemper is one of the most critically acclaimed and commercially successful cabaret artists in New York

On her place in the New York cabaret scene:
"I never even thought of myself as a cabaret singer until I was called one in the New York scene, after I finished my Broadway run. I was a singer, a songwriter; I did concerts and recitals but it never fell into the genre of cabaret until it was cast that way. Then, I was like 'Oh that's weird; I'm a cabaret singer. What does that mean?' I find myself not really belonging to that scene."

Listen to Ute's 'Tango Ballad'

Watch Ute sing Weill's 'Je ne t'aime pas'

Visit Ute's website.

Buy Ute Lemper's Blood and Feathers: Live from the Cafe Carlyle from Amazon

===================================

Selan is a Queens-born new wave soul singer songwriter who actively dabbles in producing. His upcoming debut EP, The Selan Sessions, is due out this year.

On soul music:
"Soul music is something very genuine, it's _from_ your soul. It shouldn't have any other specific connotation. The beauty is that it can spread out into different genres. Soul music and R&B has been really stagnant and predictable and boring, but I see a lot of artists experimenting with soulful feeling in rock, hip hop, punk, electro and I think I incorporate a lot of that in what I'm doing."

Listen to Selan with DJ Spinna in 'Back 2 U'

Watch Selan in the studio.

Visit Selan's myspace

===================================

Howard Fishman is a guitarist, singer, composer and bandleader who works in a variety of styles and influences into his music, from Romanian traditionals to New Orleans big band to Hoagy Carmichael.

On Werner Herzog:
"You can't put his work into a genre. Take a film like Wild Blue Yonder. It's part documentary, part science fiction, part nature film, part oratorio... I'm that way too. I think about the feeling that I want to express and whatever tools I need. I'll use different idioms, but those are like colors that a painter would use. Whatever's at my disposal that I need, that's what I'll use."

Listen to Fishman performing 'When I Grow Too Old To Dream', 'Best Is Yet To Come' and 'Moonlight'

Visit Howard's website

Buy Howard's new album, 'The Basement Tapes' directly from him

===================================

Sarah Shannon is perhaps best known as the lead singer of the 90's indie rock band, Velocity Girl. She's just released her second solo album, 'City Morning Song'.

On performing on the Sub Pop label during the early nineties:
"We were sort of the others. We were pretty peppy compared to the rest of the roster at the time. We differed a lot from the Seattle grunge movement, so we were a little bit on the fringes there."

Listen to Sarah's 'Near and Far'

Watch Sarah with Velocity Girl in the video for 'Audrey's Eyes'

Visit Sarah's website

Buy Sarah's 'City Morning Song' from Amazon

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2007-05-16T14:00:00.000-04:00

You can't spell "meme" without me

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clicky

Vintage 70's Nostalgia Iron-On Transfers
You could certainly make make your own, but it's hella difficult to get that Foxy Lady calligraphy just right.

Funky 16 Corners, the long-running soul audioblog, just wrapped a successful pledge drive and is committed to another year on the air. Stop by and sample the fruits.. and drop a tardy dollar or two in the handbag while yer at it.

"I read boing boing too" dept:
What 2.5 million bottles looks like
The plastic bag one especially messes with my head.

David Banner's That Crook'd Sipp

Pentangle
Audio that's as eclectric as it wants to be.

MY GRAMMA MADE THIS BEAT
The Jason Foxx track is nice enough too, but Gramma SNAPS.
See also.

Cortex from MeFi writes:

"I helmed the creation of a compilation album of music by MeFites last year, and released it around the beginning of December. It's good stuff, and the money from sales is going to charity; we've sold about 300 copies and cleared costs and then some, but have the balance of a 1K-unit run languishing. Think any of your readers might be interested in purchasing a copy if they got a chance to listen to some of it?

The album is pretty all-over-the-board -- the tracks have a decent mix of genres, but it's hard to condense it with a small selection. There's a lot of background on the MeFiComp site -- liners/lyrics/contact info and so on.

There's a collection of 30-second or so samples linked here and, special for your tofu-folk, here's a handful of full-length cuts from the disc."

Peggy Lee, Brian Eno and Th' Boredoms
Loving th' scrolling .gifs, Jon.

Onion Interview with Devin the Dude
I've already trumpeted my appreciation of Mr. Copeland in Newsweek, of all places, so I won't go on again about how awesome dude is.
But he's awesome. You should be getting Waiting to Inhale immejitly.
Catching him this Friday at the Knitting Factory; the last show I saw of his was one of my all-time faves and I am, of course, mucho excited! Get tix while you can!

1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10, 11 12!

The Full Revelations of a Professional Rat-catcher by Ike Matthews

Woody Allen interviews Billy Graham
"May I ask what your favorite commandment is?"
Woody's guess about his marital status turned out to be pretty much on the mark!

Angry Duck Tofu Racing
Honestly, I had no idea.

clicky is back as a weekly function of the Hut and I welcome any and all readers to contribute links for audioblogs of note, general weirdness or neato stuff.
You can send links in to the email listed over at the top of the page with the subject heading "CLICKY" and I'll give 'em a once over. Promise.

2007-05-15T10:25:00.000-04:00

how high's the blood, mama?

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glisten: son of tofu hut

Son of Tofu Hut is a collaboration with The King Open School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. King Open is a mix of races, ethnicities, social class and nationalities; a melting pot of opinions and perspectives. I've been sending discs of music to King Open to have them played to a class of seventh and eighth graders; the kids give them a listen once or twice and then write a brief critique of what they've heard. I'll be compiling their responses to present you with music, links (when available) and lightly edited (spelling and obvious typing errors are corrected, grammar and slang is not) teenagers' responses.

3 Inches of Blood - 'Destroy The Orcs'

John sez: I actually meant to send the kids the version of this song on Advance and Vanquish, not from 3 Inches earlier album Battlecry Under a Winter Sun; the Advance rendition is much cleaner and sharper. I'm posting the copy here, mostly for consistency's sake.

3 Inches brand of D&D metal is Wonderful, silly fun; who couldn't get behind an orc killing rampage? Kitsch value aside, their songs are catchy and ramshackle fast. It's good stuff for running or lifting.

They're also a hella good time live; I enjoyed myself tremendously leaping and banging around to this song at the Knitting Factory last year. I'm definitely looking forward to catching them when they (presumably) make the rounds to support their upcoming album, Fire Up the Blades. Track titles like 'The Goatriders Horde', 'The Great Hall of Feasting' and 'Rejoice in the Fires of Man's Demise" suggest no great deviation from their sword and sorcery dork metal beginnings, which is all good by me.

VISIT

LISTEN 2 MORE BY 3 INCHES OF BLOOD: 'Deadly Sinners'

AMAZON 'Advance and Vanquish'

Student 1: The title of this song sounds like a song used in a video game. Once I heard the song, I loved it. I like rock and heavy metal, usually. I like this, because it's really energetic and beyond upbeat. I like some morbid things, mostly books. Very good. I also like the name of the band: Three Inches of Blood. I like most morbid things. Some morbid things are somewhat intriguing, because sometimes I find it easy to relate to. Like if you or a friend have experienced something morbid, like death or a terrible disease, you can understand what it feels like. I don't know if that was at least an okay explanation. I really enjoy this song. I would definitely put this on my iPod.

Student 2: ZZZZZZZZZZZ. This is so so so BORING it makes me want to fall to sleep on a pillow or take a nap and I hate taking naps so that's how boring it is. There are some things I like about it but its kind of weird. I like the screaming part and stuff like the "wwhhoooooaaaaa". Umm yeah, it sounds like a song some punk or rocker type chick/dude would listen too. Just not ME.

Student 3: THE ORCS ARE AFTER ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! YOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!! They are destroying their instruments. Get them a dictionary and teach them proper etiquette. I still dont know what they are saying.

PLAY ALONG

LISTEN 2 AN INTERVIEW WITH THE BAND

MYSPACE

Student 4: YAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ROCK OUT MAN!!!!!!!!!! YA!!!!!!! I wouldn't put this on my i-pods, but it's a cool power metal song. It has an awesome beat and I find the screaming quite amusing. I hear the band's name is "Three Inches of Blood". SWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEET! hee hee...

Student 5: Once our teacher read the lyrics to the group, I really liked them! That was so cool... Blood....

Student 6: The title sounds interesting, like a title from a movie or video game. I like this. It's heavy metal kind of cool, very energetic. The voice sounds like a cartoon character singing/yelling into the microphone. This is a cool band! I can't really understand the lyrics, but I don't mind.

READ MORE

WATCH 3 INCHES LIVE

Student 7: It is crazy. They have a name that could get them gunned down. They sound Asian. What are they saying?

Student 8: I'm not a really big rock fan, but I recommend this song to rockers. I think it will make you wanna scream and if you have a lot of hair you can shake it really hard and smash your things on the floor. It's a song to let out anger or a song to go kill someone.

Student 9: Starts out with the usual screaming dark guy. Of course, I can hear the constant pounding of the drums and loud melody of the guitar. The guy is trying to scare me but unfortunately all attempts fail. When I listen to the lyrics (which I can barely hear) "slay the whatever", the band reminds me of some depressed Lord of the Rings fans.

If you'd like to leave any questions or comments for me or for any of the students who are helping contribute to the Tofu Hut, feel free to do so in the comments section, but PLEASE keep the criticism constructive.

2007-05-13T12:52:00.000-04:00

terrorizing the interviewer

=================================================================
glisten: walkie talkie

Time for my weekly round-up of Joe's Pub interviews; those of you somewhat in the dark as to what this is all about are welcome to get all the details in the first of these posts here.

Hey, all you digital artists and photoshop wizards: I'd love to have a stock
image that I can use every week to go with this walkie talkie section. if anyone can think up an appropriate idea, realize it and mail it to me at the address located to your immediate right, I'd be happy to feature it here. Lemme know!

Sinead O'Connor is a Grammy winning singer songwriter and one of Ireland's best known recording artists. Sinead's eighth full-length album, the double-disc Theology, is scheduled to be released in America on June 22nd.

Responding as to why she stepped away from music in 2003:
"I felt unable to carry any longer the burden of being the Sinead O'Connor person who everybody seemed to be enjoying kicking around the place. I had dealt with years of being abused, basically, whenever I went to work. (Lately), I've noticed a vast improvement in terms of how people treat me; I think aging helps in terms of having respect. Around this album, I've probably done maybe twenty, twenty-five interviews. Out of those, I've felt uncomfortable or humiliated by about five of them and the rest have been very respectful and uplifting."

Listen to Sinead's 'Jeremiah (Something Beautiful)' from her new album.

Watch Sinead's live performance of 'Jeremiah (Something Beautiful)'.

Visit Sinead's website.

Buy 'Theology' from Amazon.

===================================

Country Joe McDonald is the co-founder of the pioneering psychedelic rock group Country Joe and the Fish. With over 30 albums and hundreds of original songs under his belt, he remains an active recording artist.

On his listening habits:
"It'll be a very rare day when I listen to any sixties music, I'll tell you that. I like rap music a lot: De La Soul and Mixalot, Digital Underground, NWA. Rap music has become the musical scapegoat for the 21st century. Rap music is held to blame for every social ill and crime that we have in America today. Everyone from Oprah Winfrey to Laura Bush has jumped on that fuckin' bandwagon."

Listen to Country Joe's "The Fish Cheer".

Watch Joe perform live, from 2006.

Visit Country Joe's website.

Buy music, guitars, "notions" and ephemera from Joe's 'Country Store'.

===================================

Jen Chapin performs a hybrid of folk and jazz music that is at once gentle and powerful.

On her father, Harry Chapin:
"My dad wouldn't have had a career today, I don't think. He was signed to an eleven album deal with Elektra and I don't think they have eleven record deals anymore. His passion was in live performances and that's where he was truly alive. In the studio, well that's where we differ. I love the tedium of it, the details, the overdubs. My dad didn't have patience for all that stuff; he was too interested in engaging with people as opposed to with machines or with sound."

Listen to Chapin's 'Time'.

Watch the video for Jen Chapin's 'Let It Show'.

Visit Jen Chapin's website.

Buy Chapin's 'Ready' from Amazon.

===================================

Morley is a singer/songwriter who leaps genre boundaries of jazz, folk, pop and global music.

On one of her favorite moments performing:
"There were fifteen or twenty children singingwith me and when I taught them the song,they were singing from their whole being. One thirteen year old girl with us said 'May I sing it? May I stand next to you and sing it?' I said sure and she sang it right to my face, before we even went on the stage, this little prayer that I wrote: 'Keep your gaze steady my love; yours are the eyes that have seen god' and she starts weeping while she's singing..."

Listen to Morley's 'Raison d'etre c'est L'amour', featuring Lokua Kanza.

Watch Morley live, performing 'My Bed Is By The Sea'.

Visit Morley's website

Buy Morley's 'Days Like These' from CD Baby.

===================================

2007-05-09T21:26:00.000-04:00

"a celebratory mountain of notes"

=================================================================

glisten: son of tofu hut

Son of Tofu Hut is a collaboration with The King Open School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. King Open is a mix of races, ethnicities, social class and nationalities; a melting pot of opinions and perspectives. I've been sending discs of music to King Open to have them played to a class of seventh and eighth graders; the kids give them a listen once or twice and then write a brief critique of what they've heard. I'll be compiling their responses to present you with music, links (when available) and lightly edited (spelling and obvious typing errors are corrected, grammar and slang is not) teenagers' responses.

Clifford Brown and Max Roach - 'Daahoud'

John sez: Man, you just forget when you listen to Cliff Brown how goldurned YOUNG this cat was. To believe that he was not twenty-four when he composed and performed 'Daahoud' is a straight-up mind boggler. The mastery of the horn and the impact that kid left behind after no more than four years playing is stunning; it's a terrible tragedy that we didn't get to hear him at forty, at sixty, at seventy...

'Daahoud' is a total standard now and, along with 'Joy Spring', one of Clifford's best known composition. The apple-tart quality of Brown's bright, slightly fuzzy intonation on his feather-soft and labyrinth-complex trumpet solos slays me every time. It's insanely deep and emotive as hell and purely joyful.

ANYONE reading this who has not yet had opportunity to fully ingest the wonder of the 'Clifford Brown and Max Roach' album really MUST go get it now; as much as any album has left a permanent footprint on my taste and love for music, that one has.

VISIT A CLIFF FAN PAGE
READ ABOUT CLIFF (1)
READ ABOUT CLIFF (2)
WATCH CLIFF LIVE
EXPLORE CLIFFORD'S DISCOGRAPHY
REMEMBERING CLIFF
READ MORE ABOUT IT (I liked this book, BTW)
LEARN 2 PLAY LIKE CLIFF (1)
LEARN 2 PLAY LIKE CLIFF (2)
GIVE BACK IN CLIFF'S NAME

Student 1: This song reminds me of the blues. I like the drum solo. I would like to learn how to drum real good. Do you know how to drum? Do you? If you do, then teach me.

Student 2: Oooooh! Very swingy! I like this a lot. The percussion is just perfect and the trumpet is great! I feel like I'm at a chic bar eating shrimp cocktail and sipping a martini from a fancy glass. I can almost see the waiters rushing by to serve Donald Trump and his wife their $10,000 food. I would definitely put this on on my iPod.

Student 3: This sounds like the blues and I have to tell you I dont like the blues when they are slow. I don't like this because I think this song will put me to sleep. When I listen to music, I want to dance to it and when I do I'm happy with that. WHEN MY TEACHER SNAPS HER FINGERS it is like my grandparents dancing to this. This is good for my mom and higher but not for me. Sorry!

READ ABOUT MAX
WATCH MAX WORK OUT
LISTEN to Cliff and Roach rip up 'Cherokee'

Student 4: At the begining of this, it sounds like you are at a very fancy rich party. I don't like jazzy music, because it's too slow. I'm all bout the fast music!! This song has no singer in it. It's the kind where you just hear a bunch of music and just meditate.

Student 5: Sounds like the kind of music I would hear at a jazz festival. I don't like jazz. It's too.... uneven? No. That's not the word I'm looking for. Hmm.... something like uneven, but not. I can't think of the right word. It's not coming to my head. This kind of song might also be heard at some kind of restaurant that has colorful lights and nice tables where you can eat or just have a drink and the people there are all dressed up in formal, fancy clothes.

Student 6: What a funny name for a jazz song. Why would the creators of this song name this piece with that name? I must say that I am a big fan of jazz, whether it is modern, smooth or back to the greats like Ray Charles. I feel jazz has that calming feeling and expresses emotion other than with words. Sometimes I think that jazz can be more POWERFUL than speech. [ Depends on the quality of the song though.] Amazing too that Jazz artists can play music without recording it down. Now for what I envision in the song. Hmmmmm.... I just see those college cafes that always have the young artists playing all the instruments like the saxophone, piano, you know....

AMAZON Clifford Brown and Max Roach
LEARN MORE ABOUT THE AWESOME CLIFF AND MAX ALBUM
LISTEN 2 MORE CLIFF AND MAX

Student 7: This song has no lyrics to it. It is a jazz. There is drums, trumpet and I think there is a piano. It feels like this is a good song to dance to and just have fun with it. I think this song has so much feeling that i can listen to it all day.

Student 8: I like the jazzy tune. I also like the saxophone, the piano and the drum solo. I think this is like something you would find in an underground jazz club in downtown Boston or New York. I really like this type of music.

Student 9: Jazzy time .......................oh well. I'm not that much of a fan. This song would be great to go with a troublesome scene in a bazaar movie. Oops... I mean bizarre.

If you'd like to leave any questions or comments for me or for any of the students who are helping contribute to the Tofu Hut, feel free to do so in the comments section, but PLEASE keep the criticism constructive and to a minimum; we're all just starting to write together and it's gonna take us a little while to get comfortable.

2007-05-08T10:00:00.000-04:00

rollin' on 20s

=================================================================
the return of the deadly clicky

Glenn Danzig leads a guided tour through his library
"This is great... there are lots of great werewolf stories in here. All documented. All true."

Wonderful ILX compendium thread of dogs in costume
A nice bookend for the infamous "Imagine: your dog, cat or other pet in full military regalia."
Honestly, pancake astronaut is never going to stop cracking me up.

sampleur sample offers brief snippets of contemporary rap or electronic songs and equally brief snippets of the songs that are being sampled to make up the new ones. Think of it as a before and after collection where you can hunt down the origins of hooks that you've enjoyed for years. Best part is that there are over eighteen hundred of these to choose from. That combined with the sites excellent googlability makes sampleur sample a real boon to anyone looking for tricky progenitor track info. I hope they go on forever.

This Blog Gets the Gas Face has rock and punk bootlegs from Jesus and Mary Chain, Nirvana/Melvins doing Flipper covers, Mozz, Bad Brains, Velocity Girl and the such.

Lost-in-Tyme is a multiple-user blog with a monster collection of overlooked wonders and out-of-print classics. There's so very much activity on Lost-in-Tyme that they've spread the blog out in four different URLs: one that covers psych-pop, acid-rock, folk music and garage rock, one for krautrock, prog, classic rock and blues, one for alt-rock, punk and new wave and one for funk and soul, jazz and world. Lost's multiple blogs engage in two methods that I've long been ambivalent about: YSI/RapidShare/MegaUpload type file-sharing rather than hosting one's own files on a dedicated server and zipped full-album downloads. My distaste for the file-sharing utilities is unlikely to bridle anytime soon, but at least the albums that Lost's members are sharing are obscure and difficult enough to find to somewhat justify their full-length posts. I'm gonna stay on the fence on the legitimacy about full-length album sharing; as long as the disc is completely unavailable and out-of-print (as most, if not all, of Lost's albums are), I have a hard time seeing who's being hurt by bringing the material back into the parley.
The best thing Lost has to offer is great hivemind taste; the worst is the paucity of commentary for the albums. Text is often cribbed completely from AMG or wiki and when it is not, it's difficult to tell. If these guys ever step up their writing game, they're gonna be a daily must-visit and a force to be reckoned with.

Speaking of forces to reckon with, Weirdomusic has undergone a recent facelift that has it looking ten years younger and ten times more navigable. Scope their downloads section for links to any number of excellent sites trafficking in what they call "sharity" and what I call "mucho eclectric tunage".

Google Video has Brass Eye!
Five years old and still vastly more risky than anything else on television before or since. If you've never seen Channel 4's cracker-dry, acidly funny, mock-Dateline show before, you're in for a treat.

The magical wonder of K. Chin
More information here and here; outside of an ILX thread I started some time ago, I can't find any appreciation sites on the web. Anybody wanna point one out to me? I'd love to get some hi-res K.Chin desktop images.

One last note: I'm planning on bringing 'clicky' back as a weekly function of the Hut, so I welcome any and all readers to contribute links for audioblogs of note or general weirdness. You can mail links in to the email listed at the top of the page with the subject heading "CLICKY" and I'll give 'em a once over. Promise.

2007-05-07T21:00:00.000-04:00

the main line

=================================================================
glisten: son of tofu hut

Son of Tofu Hut is a collaboration with The King Open School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. King Open is a mix of races, ethnicities, social class and nationalities; a melting pot of opinions and perspectives. I've been sending discs of music to King Open to have them played to a class of seventh and eighth graders; the kids give them a listen once or twice and then write a brief critique of what they've heard. I'll be compiling their responses to present you with music, links (when available) and lightly edited (spelling and obvious typing errors are corrected, grammar and slang is not) teenagers' responses.

I commented in last Son of Tofu Hut that I would address some of the differences in the style of writing I brought to these entries. My nature is to take my time, anguish and pore over my entries on th' Hut. I'll continue doing that kind of work when I'm seeking auxilliary material to provide you with more background, but my commentary for the Son of Tofu Hut tracks is my attempt to level the playing field somewhat: my responses are formed over one or two listens to the track in question. It's the same constraints I'm forcing my collaborators to follow; so it only seems fair.

The Gospel Harmonettes of Demopolis, Alabama - Jesus Is On the Main Line

John sez: I wrote a lengthy post about the Harmonettes over two years ago (my god, that long?!?) which covers my astonishment at their vocal power and sadness that they appear to have split for good. It's one of my favorite things I've done with the space; I received more uniformly positive praise for the Harmonettes music than for any other songs I've posted before or since. It does my jaded ol' heart some good to see that the next generation of listeners (well, with one notable exception... "what flys eat", indeed!) seem equally flabbergasted by the sheer emotional epiphany that makes up the Harmonettes repertoire.

This song is one of the bands dozen professionally recorded tracks that I did NOT put up in that original post, which is not to say that it is not soul-scraping, achingly awesome. The ending, where the female soloist (I believe that's Annie Wilks) moves into the crowd and away from the microphone, culminates in one of the most joyful sounds I've ever heard.

Basically, every time I listen to this album I'm dumbfounded and I have to remind myself why I'm listening to anything else. It's something short of sinful NOT to share something this beautiful. As the album itself remains unavailable two years after my last stab at bringing this stuff a greater audience, I've come to the decision that it's time to throw this precious bread out onto the water.

Full album is here.

Read the first Gospel Harmonettes Hut post.
It's still the only link I can find with info about the band.

Student 1: OH MY GOD!!!! I LOVE THIS!!!! This sounds a lot like Sweet Honey in the Rock! So many young childhood memories are coming back! My moms used to play this kind of music to get me to sleep when i was sick. I remember them putting me to bed, tucking me in, and turning on my little tape player. This song makes me feel like i am sitting around a warm campfire, and singing with my loving family. When i heard this song, i almost started clapping along.

Student 2: It sounds too gospel for me. I think this would only be popular on a gospel radio channel or church. It's not really my kind of song, because It's too slow... Kind of.

Student 3: this is a very cool song and it sounds like the Temptations. Do u know who they are? They were once the bestest group ever but one of them got greedy with the money and tried to make himself the star leader when it was really a group thing. He got too drunk to sing anymore and cracked his voice and couldn't sing anything then he killed himself. The ones that lived got through their differences and got the group together again. That's the Temptations.

Student 4: In the beginning of the song and at the end it sounds like a church choir that has no instruments and uses no technology, just all singing voices. Yes I do like it. I like different types of church music.

Student 5: I'm not very religious, but I love gospel because it really sounds like it comes from deep inside. I love acapella music because I love the fact that it isn't necessary to have instruments in a song to make it sound whole. I really love harmonies too. The voice is such a powerful instrument itself and some people don't realise that, but acapella really brings that out. Acapella + gospel = perfection!!!!!!!!!!!

Student 6: oooooooooooohh!!!!! i like this song!!! this song is a religious one, but i still think that you can get stupid to something like this!! i like how this song also holds a message about jesus too. i also like how the songs beat and backround music is layered so that it sounds so good!! man, i just cant get over how good this song sounds. being a believer of jesus and a christian god may have something to do with my view of this song, but even if i weren't a christian i know that i would still be feelin' this song!! and thats for real!!!!

Student 7: Trash. Turn it off, it is blowing my ears off. It sounds so dumb. How long ago was this made? This stuff is what flys eat. Erase this from memory. Who could sing this? TRASH TRASH...............TRASH.

Student 8: Instantly, I'm transported to those Southern gospel churches. A fine example of how to show your devotion through music. I like how after a while people from the benches shout out to help emphasize the music. Now I don't know how southern churches look like so I'll describe a northern church. Wooden benches, a large organ and stained glass on windows.....

Student 9: This is a christian song? It sounds like a song you would hear right when you walk into a church. They start singing out loud to get the choir going. I would listen to this song without no worries.

Student 10: The beginning sounds kinda like something i wouldnt listen 2. this song doesnt have music itz just vocals & clapping. it soundz very religious 2 me. the people that sing this song must love god witta passion. this isnt something i would listen 2 cuz i dont listen 2 religious muzik (onli at church on sundai). the end is kinda hot tho like when they get more into it.

If you'd like to leave any questions or comments for me or for any of the students who are helping contribute to the Tofu Hut, feel free to do so in the comments section, but PLEASE keep the criticism constructive and to a minimum; we're all just starting to write together and it's gonna take us a little while to get comfortable.

2007-05-06T16:36:00.000-04:00

"it would just be a waste of time"

=================================================================
glisten: walkie talkie

Time for my weekly round-up of Joe's Pub podcasty-type interviews; those of you somewhat in the dark as to what this is all about are welcome to get all the details in the first of these posts here. It was a good Friday and I had a nice chat with all the folks involved.

David Brown of Brazzaville

Listen to Brazzaville's 'Madalena'

Visit the Brazzaville website.

Watch Brazzaville's video for 'Star Called Sun'

===================================

Jason Swinscoe of The Cinematic Orchestra

Visit The Cinematic Orchestra's website.

Listen to The Cinematic Orchestra's 'To Build a Home'

Watch The Cinematic Orchestra's fascinating video for 'Man With a Movie Camera'

===================================

Eric Donnelly of The Alternate Routes

Listen to The Alternate Route's 'Ordinary'

Watch The Alternate Routes perform live

Visit The Alternate Routes website

===================================

Kevin Michael

Listen to Kevin Michael's 'We All Want the Same Thing'

Watch Kevin Michael perform live

Visit Kevin Michael's MySpace

===================================

Alyssa Graham

Visit Alyssa Graham's MySpace page.

===================================

Luke Temple

Listen to Luke Temple's 'People Do'

Visit Luke Temple's MySpace

Watch Luke Temple's 'Private Shipwreck

2007-04-30T00:11:00.000-04:00

I gotta start stocking up on my new favorite food

=================================================================
glisten: walkie talkie

Time for my weekly round-up of Pub interviews; those of you somewhat in the dark as to what this is all about are welcome to get all the details in the first of these posts here.

I wasn't able to connect with too many people this week, but there is a little surprise at the bottom for those of you curious (and masochistic) enough to go fishing for it.

So without further ado:

Colin Channer

Colin is a bestselling author from Jamaica who has published several books on Caribbean life. He occasionally reads his own work as a theatrical performance and is currently performing a piece drawn from the experiences of his own family life called "How To Beat a Child the Right and Proper Way".

Visit Colin's official homepage.
-
Read another interview with Colin.

===================================

Danny Rivera

Danny Rivera is a legendary singer who has been performing for almost forty years. He's especially revered in the Puerto Rican community.

Watch Danny perform Michael Bolton's "How Am I Supposed to Live Without You" in Spanish and make it sound quite nice.

Big Pun fans may be more familiar than they think with Danny's song 'En Un Rincon Del Alma'; it's the basis for 'It's So Hard'.

Read a brief bio.

===================================

Sean Hayes

Sean Hayes is a singer/songwriter with a folk sensibility. His new album 'Flowering Spade' is due out in a few months.

Listen to a full length track from Sean Hayes called 'Calling All Cars'.

Visit Sean's official home page.

===================================

Eleni Mandell

Eleni Mandell is an L.A.-based singer songwriter who's long been a critical favorite. She's in town to promote her new album, 'Miracle of Five'.

Visit Eleni's official site, but mind th' flash.

Listen to a full length track from Eleni's new album called 'The Make Out King'.

===================================

Me?

Yes, me. I got a lovely phone call from a fellow who is a Music Management Student at the Liverpool Institute for Performing Arts who's writing his dissertation on audioblogs and he wanted to follow up on the points that were brought up a few years ago in the Morning News round table interview. Mostly it's me running off at the mouth without much to say, but I figure turnabout is fair play, so here it is if you want it. I do ramble on like a fool and if I were you, I'd stick to blisspop... so don't say you haven't been warned.

2007-04-22T18:35:00.000-04:00

the kids are alright

=================================================================
glisten: Son of Tofu Hut

Well, this certainly took a while. Son of Tofu Hut is a project that I've kept on the back burner for quite some time; I'm very happy it's finally getting to see the light of day.

This new song series represents a collaboration with The King Open School of Cambridge, Massachusetts. King Open is, according to the teacher I've arranged this project through, a salmagundi of races, ethnicities, social class and nationalities; a melting pot of opinions and perspectives. I've been sending discs of music to King Open to have them played to a class of seventh and eighth graders; the kids give them a listen once or twice and then write a brief critique of what they've heard. I'll be compiling their responses to present you, noble Hut reader, with fresh music, links and our only lightly edited (spelling and obvious typing errors are corrected, grammar and slang is not) teenagers responses.

I'll be talking about some of the reasons I'm taking on this project (and a slightly different authorial voice) as we go along, but now I'm anxious to just jump right on in.

(Oh, and respect due to Gaylord Fields, who coined the 'Son of Tofu Hut' moniker.)

4Hero with Jill Scott -'Another Day'

John sez: This was the first song I ever heard of 4Hero's and it made enough of an impact that I went out and found a copy of Creating Patterns (the now-out-of-print album that this song first appeared on) and listened to it for a week or so. It's a real shame that Creating is so hard to find; there's quite a few nice tracks on it, notably the duet with Alma Horton called 'Hold It Down'.

I haven't had a chance to listen to the new 4Hero album yet; it's on a long list of things I need to put on th' hi-fi.

Jill Scott is really perennially underrated; it's a shame that she's had to go abroad to get the attention that she deserves.

Obviously, the sentiment of this track hits home for me as well. I'd rather be playing Guitar Hero than typing this right now myself!

STAY HOME + PLAY VIDEO GAMES PLAY SOME MORE.

KEEP PLAYING. NOT TIRED YET? KEEP GOING.

Student 1: only part i don't like about this song is that it is telling you to get up and sometimes you don't want to get up. but i would if i could try to record the part of the song that says that you have to get up. but, yea, i like this song!

Student 2: It's so peaceful and relaxing, especially her voice. There's just something about it that makes you want to start singing it. When you're telling yourself to wake up constantly when your eyes just won't stay open. THIS SONG ROCKS and I love it.

Student 3: Wow ! I am impressed. I like this even if it is slow. It has a slow mellow to it and not many people do that anymore and that's y I like it that much. The words sound so real like she is right by my side and that is a great feeling. I wonder who this is. Yeah, who is singing? Anyway, she has a veeery nice voice and I give her my respect to that. The words "got to get up "makes me feel the same way as the girl who is singing because she seems lonely and needs to get up to search for a friend. This also has passion to it and I really like the beat. I think this song has many meanings to this song and it's good for little kids. No offense, but this song also can put people to sleep because it is slow and if it is just a baby. I give this baby a big thumbs up!!!! Cool like a pop star!

VISIT 4HERO 4HERO MYSPACE

LISTEN 2 MORE 4HERO READ ABOUT 4HERO (1)

READ ABOUT 4HERO (2) WATCH 4HERO

Student 4: Alright my fav ambient!!!!!!! I don't think this piece doesn't have any problems with me! When it started I immediately felt I was in one of the high-end lounges. The woman has a dreamy voice. I liked how the music started slow and went faster. Like you're slowly waking up and gaining your energy. Funny, as the lyrics say "I gotta get up" it reminds me of how we all are grumpy when we get up the morning. Smell the coffee!

Student 5: it's soft at first but after it gets a lil beat into it and it sounds like easy listening music. it sounds like chill music like if u just wanna sit and chill and relax than u pop this in and listen 2 it. there's a point in the song where it soundz bad but they turn it around. i think the girl in da song is 2 soft but w.e itz all good. i like how it sayz gotta get up cuz it remindz me of when i gotta get up 4 skool and yea. i like how it sayz i wanna stay home and play but i gotta get up. it reminds me of those dayz that u wanna stay home and chill but you have 2 get up and go. i think that a lot of people can relate to this song. i don't like the end of the song when it sayz got 2 get up. it sounds bad. the vocals are bad.

Student 6: Jill Scott changed this song completely because the beat to this song is kinda like elevator music. Jill's soft voice and the hint of raspyness really brought the song together and made it work and what she is talking about i can really relate to this song because this morning i really wanted to stay home but i had to get up. i really like this song. i would put this on my Myspace :-) because i really don't put a song that i don't like on Myspace. this song reminds me of something back in the day that Lauryn Hill would sing about. the song to me says that no matter what, u gotta get up..

AMAZON 4 Experience: Jill Scott Live JILL MYSPACE

VISIT JILL LISTEN 2 MORE JILL

READ ABOUT JILL (1) READ ABOUT JILL (2)

WATCH JILL GIVE BACK 2 JILL'S FOUNDATION

Student 7: i love Jill Scott. her voice is so peaceful and calming. it's something you just want to fall asleep to. it's kind of like modern jazz. the drums are perfect. you think it's some old jazzy tune but then again it's so modern. i like this. i also like this r&b twist. i feel this way in the morning when i have to go to school i don't wanna get up. but then my mom tells me i gotta get up. and i would rather stay home and play too.

Student 8: OMG!!!... Jill Scott IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE SINGERS EVER. SMOOTH JAZZ WITH R&B. A SONG U HAVE TO LISTEN TO AND FEEL TO GET. VERY RELAXED TONE. THE BEAT IS RELAXING... I CAN IMAGINE THE WORDS COMING FROM HER SINGING WHILE I'M CLOSING MY EYES AND PICTURE WHAT SHE'S SAYING. IT REMINDS ME OF WHEN I WANT TO STAY HOME FROM SCHOOL BUT GOT TO GET UP ANYWAY. I KNOW HOW SHE FEELS. I BET A LOT OF OTHER PEOPLE FEEL THE SAME WAY TOO.

Student 9: This song is kinda' like my life--always got to get up to go to school instead of playing video games but I just got to.

If you'd like to leave any questions or comments for me or for any of the students who are helping contribute to the Tofu Hut, feel free to do so in the comments section, but PLEASE keep the criticism constructive and to a minimum; we're all just starting to write together and it's gonna take us a little while to get comfortable.

2007-04-22T15:28:00.000-04:00

charlie rose or jon stewart, i ain't

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glisten: walkie talkie

Those (few?) of you who follow the Hut on a regular basis may well be wondering what I may have been up to as of late. The answer is "quite a lot"; much of which I hope to be able to share with you shortly, but let's start out with a heaping dose of my always-interesting, always-busy day job.

As you may remember back in issue 236 (it was a sponsored- by- Hostess one-shot special), I spend my 9 to 5's (or, more accurately, 11 to 8's) working at Joe's Pub. The Pub is a New York music and theater venue that brings in a pretty impressive array of artists from all over the world and all over the spectrum. It's open seven days a week and averages about three shows a night, so there's been plenty of opportunity for exposure to all kinds of tunage; I thought I was pretty knowledgeable when I started the gig, but I'm reminded every day now that it's all but impossible to have a comprehensive grasp on the entirety of popular music... and that's great! Or at least as good a reason to go on as I can think of...

Anyways, one of the reasons they hired my punk ass in the first place was presumably because I'm "down" with this blog stuff that's got the kids all riled up and they wanted to stay "on that new media flippity flop". To that end, I spend a good chunk of my work day/evening punching up the Pub's handy-dandy website. My own inclinations are always to show more so than tell, so we've started posting what I consider to be de rigeur media with every booking: decent-sized, smilin' pictures of the band; embedded YouTube video (live shows when available, videos when not); full-length fully-downloadable MP3s and links to the artist's personal web page. It seemed to me that the best way to get folks interested in a live band they might not otherwise know was to allow them to listen to the music and see video of them perform in advance so that they'd have a basis to form an opinion. This may sound pretty elementary, but it's also largely unheard of; there's no performance venue websites with anywhere near as much downloadable media as we're maintaining at th' Pub that I know of... but, incidentally, if any of you weisenheimers know of any other clubs that are doing similar promotion, please leave a link in my comments, cause I'd love to talk with other people who are walking the walk of the try-before-you-buy mantra.

So as I say, this all struck me as pretty elementary and once I set up some systems to help properly channel this media online as quickly as possible, I was left with an interesting question: what now? My experience has been that the web is all about content and that the best way to attract folks, keep 'em happy and keep 'em coming back to your website is to offer as much worthwhile content as possible. The gold ring, of course, is exclusive content; something special that only your site/blog/sewing circle/smithy/bakery can provide. That's when I hit upon the idea of recording informal one-on-one interviews with our artists.

Currently, there's just under a hundred of these interviews up on the Joe's Pub site; they're anywhere from five to twenty minutes long. I get a great deal out of doing them and have decided to start sharing them with you on the Hut as well. I record new conversations every Friday, so I'll start posting new interviews (as long as I keep doing this project) every Monday. In the future, I'll give a bit more information about who the people I'm talking to are and how I thought the talk went, but seeing as we have so very many in reserve, I figure I'll just toss the whole kit-and-kaboodle up in the air and we'll see how it lands.

Some caveats before I turn over the complete list of links to already-recorded interviews:

While I will cop to having some public speaking background, I'm not a trained interviewer by any stretch of the imagination. I am happy to say that I think I'm getting a little better with practice and that you can expect all upcoming future posts in this series to improve somewhat.
These talks are recorded over the phone, so sound quality will vary.
All this stuff is meant as promotional material for the artists in question as well as for the venue; there's necessarily some shilling going on. Take it with a grain; hopefully you'll find something interesting in any case.

If I were going to recommend a place to start, I'd suggest you give a listen to my conversations with avant-garde vocalist Theo Bleckmann, Lenny Bruce impersonator Steve Cuiffo, country legend Porter Wagoner, Go-Go godfather Chuck Brown, They Might Be Giants front man John Flansburgh, Pulitzer-nominated playwright Eisa Davis, Sweeney Todd star Manoel Felciano, drag comedienne Miss Coco Peru, cabaret singer nee' fashion designer Isaac Mizrahi, ukulele maestro Jake Shimabukuro... but click around and see what catches your eye.

Current complete list follows; more (with better annotation) to come next week:

Devon Allman

Anjani

Rani Arbo

Karen Bernod

Bitter: Sweet

Theo Bleckmann

Justin Bond of Kiki and Herb

Sarah Bowman of The Bowmans

Brooklyn Qawwali Party

Tom Brosseau

Chuck Brown

Julie Brown

Chris Byars

Clair Byrne of Dancenow

Jose Conde y Ola Fresca

Contramano

Steve Cuiffo

Catie Curtis

Cymin Samawatie of Cyminology

Eisa Davis

Luther Dickenson of The North Mississippi All Stars

Pierre Dorge

the everybodyfields

Simon Nicol of The Fairport Convention

Feathermerchants

Manoel Felciano

Jesse Tyler Ferguson

Fink

Tim Finn

Jennifer Gibbs, director of First Fig

Roberta Flack

Julian Fleisher

Eliza Gilkyson

Marta Gomez

Morgan Taylor of Gustafer Yellowgold

Andy Guthrie

Haale

Jackie Hoffman

Hunger Mountain Boys

Vijay Iyer

Karen Jacobsen

Jahi

Rick Jordan

Gabriel Kahane

KIFF

The Last Town Chorus

Lisa Levy

Mike Mattison of Scrapomatic

Brian Mazzaferri of Green Eyes

Myra Melford

Kenny Mellman

Varla Jean Merman

Chrisette Michele

Raul Midon

Isaac Mizrahi

Shawn Mullins

Luca Mundaca

Fionn O Lochlainn

Django Haskins of The Old Ceremony

Michael Hearst of One Ring Zero

Pablo of Orquesta Tipica Fernandez Fierro

Eric Person

Miss Coco Peru

Jim Hayes of The Persuasions

Katy Pfaffl

Glen Phillips

Angie Pontani of The World Famous Pontani Sisters

Kristoffer Ragnstam

Tom Rush

Jeremy Schonfeld

Dorothy Scott

Selim Sesler

Jake Shimabukuro

Emilie Simon

The Slammin’ All Body Band

Sophe Lux

Jonathan Spottiswoode of Spottiswoode and His Enemies

Neil Eurelle of STAND

Roger Steffens

Travis Sullivan

Swati

John Flansburgh of They Might Be Giants

Tobias of The Swingle Singers

Russell Taylor

Teitur

Vienna Teng

Dan Tepfer

Sarah Tracey

Wes Verhoeve of The Undisputed Heavyweights

Porter Wagoner

Holcombe Waller

Natalie Walker

The Wiyos

Bethany Yarrow of Bethany and Rufus

David Yazbek

Nora York

The Yoshida Brothers

2007-02-19T19:00:00.000-05:00

Polk Miller picture courtesy of Richmond, Virginia: Then and Now

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glisten

The Old South Quartette - Pussy Cat Rag (Broadway 5031, 1928)

Polk Miller and The Old South Quartette - Rise and Shine (Edison + Edison Germany, Standard 10333; 1909)

Polk Miller and The Old South Quartette - Old Time Religion (Edison + Edison Germany, Standard 10332; 1909)

The Old South Quartette - Bohunkus and Josephus (aka Tobias and Keechungus) (Broadway 5031, 1928)

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"Who the hell are Polk Miller and His Old South Quartette?" - Robert Christgau

One of the benefits of growing up with a music historian as a father is that I was exposed as a stripling to a wealth of music that would otherwise (until the relatively young age of the Internet) be utterly out of reach. I listened to many songs for many years at a tender age that, secreted away by scarcity and lack of public interest, I have never yet heard again since I moved out of the family home. It is with great excitement that I discovered, perhaps some twenty years after my last listening, Ken Flaherty's reissue of the complete works of Polk Miller and The Old South Quartette, 'Music of The Old South'. The disc is a remarkable time capsule of fine Southern gospel, ragtime and proto-blues from the birth of recording, but it is the story of Polk Miller, how these songs came to be recorded and the history of The Old South Quartette that compels me to post this music today.

Polk Miller was born on a Virginia plantation in 1844 to a wealthy, slave-owning family. As a child, he learned to play the banjo from slaves and immediately began amassing a collection of black vernacular music to add to his playing repertoire. Polk was something of a prodigy whose skill at mimicry and performance was noteworthy even at a young age; an pre-Civil War diary account from adjoining Augusta County (found at the Virginia Valley Digital Archives) holds a sixteen year Miller up as an exemplar, stating that another white imitator's "beaming face and banjo music and 'darkey' songs could not be excelled by Polk Miller himself." Miller's willingness to embrace certain readily available elements of black American culture apparently set him apart from other, less artful imitators of the time; his ability to vocally and musically blend into a black band is evident in the extant recordings.

Miller joined the Confederate Army during wartime and served as an artillery private. After the war, he founded a pharmacy in Richmond and went on to create a successful company devoted to nostrums and remedies for domestic animals which he named Sergeant, after his hunting dog, Sergeant (Sergeant's continues on today as a popular pet food and medicine corporation, though they're understandably cagey about Miller's Confederate background). Late in his middle age, Polk was a respected Southern gentleman and a prominent businessman, but a restless interest in entertaining would not quit him. In 1892, Polk handed off control of his business to his son and took to the road to began performing full time, exhibiting an act comprised of banjo picking, singing and the revisionist rose-colored retelling of an Antebellum Eden.

The liner notes to Flaherty's reissue CD tell the story of these stage exploits and Miller's intentions better than I can; hereafter follows an edited excerpt:During the 1890's Miller performed alone, appearing at reunions, business conventions, literary association meetings... He often gave benefits for Confederate benevolent organizations and monument committees. Miller recreated the black slave characters of his nostalgic youth with banjo tunes, dialect stories and lecture, without resorting to farce or blackface make-up... (his) stage presentation was too sincere for minstrelsy and too rich in music to be considered a lecture. (Miller was) quoted in the Greensboro, Georgia Herald-Journal: "If there was anything that my mother used to whip me for when I was a boy, it was for talking like a nigger and I haven't quit talking like him yet."

Miller saw himself as an apologist for slavery. In his lecture he avowed: "It has been my aim to vindicate the slave-holding class against the charge of cruelty and inhumanity to the Negro of the old time". Miller was quoted... in a detailed review that appeared in The Atlanta Constitution: "There is no more comparison between the 'Sarvant Marster,' [sic] ever gentle, ever faithful, ever true, contented and happy old Virginia plantation Negro and the impudent, loud-mouthed, discontented, head educated and heart neglected young Negro of today than there is between the high-toned, honorable refined gentleman and public citizen Chauncey M Depew and the brazen-faced coarse blackguard and public nuisance, John L. Sullivan..."

When Miller made his pronouncements, neither his language or his philosophy was outside of the mainstream. Racial stereotyping and racist slang were commonly used in mainstream American newspapers and magazines. While Miller was touring the southern states, delivering this deprecating, dehumanizing message, the lynching of blacks in the South reached epidemic proportions; a lynching was taking place roughly every second day."
Apparently, Miller's drive for what he likely saw as authenticity forced him to recognize that a solo act could only replicate a limited amount of the black vernacular musical catalogue. Somewhere between 1899 and 1903, Miller took the surprising step of hiring a black vocal quartet to perform onstage with him; creating what may have been the first integrated touring production of the 1900's dedicated to the performance of black music. The addition of the singers, dubbed by Miller as 'The Old South Quartette', was well received critically; again, from the reissue's notes:A review in the Bristol, Tennessee Courier offered...favorable assessment: "They look like field hands and sing like Carusos. Their music is like nothing else on the platform, for they sing the old songs as the old time Negro sang before the War and not like Negroes trying to demonstrate how much like white folks Negroes can sing".

Extant documentation provides depressingly little information about the members of Polk Miller's quartet or insight into Miller's treatment of them. Miller claimed to have employed, "about twenty men in all, I reckon, since I first began to use a Negro quartette... I never discharged one of them for a fault, but they had to give up for other reasons," such as illness and "throat trouble." "It was always troublesome to break in new men, but if a Negro had any music in him - and the most of them have - it didn't take them long to catch on."
In 1909, Miller and The O.S.Q. recorded seven 'sides' (though cylinders don't technically have sides) for Edison Records. Miller appears to have been something more of a special guest on these cuts than a leader; he sings on only four tracks and is clearly willing to allow the quartet the bulk of the attention. These cylinders apparently sold quite well but are most noteworthy as historic milestones; as the CD reissue's liners point out, "few if any biracial vocal recordings of comparable American vernacular music were heard again until the rock and roll era."

Racist times would call to an end for this sort of lop-sided camaraderie. In 1912, Miller disbanded the O.S.Q., citing audience resistance and harassment in a Richmond Journal newspaper article:There is a deep seated, cruel and foolish prejudice in the North... a thing which I have never been able to account for (since they brought troubles upon both the whites and blacks in the South), against the Negro as a race of people. Perhaps the "bad nigger" that left here for the good of his country and went North is responsible for it all, but they visit upon the entire Negro race the hatred which we have only for the bad ones. Some of the Northern towns which wanted me would write, "We are exceedingly anxious to have you, but our people don't want The Quartette, as our people do not like Negroes..."

There is a certain class of whites in the South, whose ancestors never owned Negroes and who never enjoyed as I did the kind ministrations of the old Negro mammies and Uncle Toms of Antebellum days. This class of people made it very uncomfortable for my Negroes. My solicitude for the comfort of my men, and many times for the safety of them in going from the halls to their quarters, worried me very much and unfitted me for my work... this fact, with the inborn dislike of the Negro on the part of the hoodlum element, intensified my troubles when on the road and in some places I had to call on the Police force to guard my men.
For the following year, Miller continued to perform his act with another accompanist: a white Confederate veteran named Tom Booker. Booker was a banjo player and friend of Miller's; together they toured for a short while with a similar program to the one Polk performed with The Old South Quartette under the name 'Two Old Confederates'. Polk Miller died in 1913 and was buried at Hollywood Cemetery.

No written record of what became of The Old South Quartette has been discovered, but in 1928, a band of the same name reappeared in a studio in Long Island to record seven more sides on the QRS label. While neither the names of the "twenty men" who comprised the original Quartette nor the '28 incarnation are known, pictures of both groups and the unmistakable similarity of sound suggest that, even though almost two decades had passed since their last recording session, some of the same members and/or management connect the two groups. No documentation remains to suggest that the group toured. They would never record under The Old South Quartette name again.

Ultimately, what are we to make of Polk Miller? He attempted to popularize and legitimize black vernacular music decades before it was acceptable to do so, but he also openly longed for the days of slavery. To the best of his ability, Polk tried to bring black culture before white audiences as honestly as he could, but all of his efforts are badly marred in the contemporary eye by dint of his unmistakable paternalistic racism. Miller toured with a black band at a time when associating with blacks as contemporaries was potentially punishable by beating or hanging, but he seems to have viewed them (at least in public) as interchangeable inferiors. Miller is a difficult man to understand by today's standards and his legacy is not simply summed up. I can only suggest you listen to the songs I have posted today and try to enjoy the music without prejudice. It is a sentiment that both Polk Miller and the regrettably anonymous members of the Old South Quartette would undoubtedly have hoped for.

The gentleman above is a member of the 1928 iteration of The Old South Quartette.
His name is unknown.
Photo courtesy of Virginia Commonwealth University Library Digital Collection

about the music on the page...

Two of the songs from today's post hail from the 1909 recordings: 'Rise and Shine' and 'The Old Time Religion'. Miller sings lead on both tracks; 'Rise' also features his excellent banjo accompaniment. 'Rise and Shine' is performed here as a bouncy, upbeat spiritual; 'Old Time Religion' is sung entirely a capella and is a more nuanced and deeply moving take on the gospel classic.

The two tracks taken from the 1928 Old South Quartette recordings are joyous musical novelties. 'Bohunkus and Josephus', set to the tune of 'Auld Lang Syne', is a silly anecdote told in call and response that neatly showcases the band's considerable skill at choral harmony.

Of the four of these, 'Pussy Cat Rag' is the one that still speaks to me most, both now and back when I first heard it as a child. The Quartette's minimal guitar accompaniment buoys up their astonishing vocal theatrics; also note the song's almost imperceptible but rousing tempo increase. 'Pussy Cat Rag' is a meowing, barking train with a now-and-forever place in my favorite songs of all time.

Cover of a tobacco tin, circa early 1900's
Picture courtesy of Banjo On My Knee, an excellent resource for all things banjo

a brief aside before we hit the linkage

The liner notes I've extensively quoted from above come from the pen of my father, ethnomusicologist and occasional Tofu Hut contributor Doug Seroff. Pops and his writing partner Lynn Abbott have just published their second book on the history of black American music, Ragged But Right: Black Traveling Shows, 'Coon Songs,' and the Dark Pathway to Blues and Jazz. The volume boasts a gorgeous cover, designed by fellow ragtime-geek Chris Ware.

I was lucky enough to see galleys of 'Ragged' and found it to be a compelling and fascinating read. The bulk of the research for this book comes from literally years of poring over microfiche prints of turn-of-the-century black newspapers such as The Indianapolis Freeman and The Chicago Defender. It's work that has simply not been done before and it yields a bountiful trove of untold stories about the history of (to quote the introduction) "musical comedy productions, band and minstrel companies in the circus sideshow annex and itinerant tented minstrel shows" at the birth of the twentieth century. Over the course of 350+ pages, 'Ragged' painstakingly details how a generation of forgotten black artists set the stage for the birth of modern American music. The work is lavishly illustrated with hundreds of exceedingly rare illustrations and photos, most of them out of print or unpublished until now.

'Ragged But Right' is available on Amazon at the prohibitive academic price of 75 bucks, but I would strongly recommend it as a necessary read and an unprecedented exploration of overlooked musical history to librarians, anyone with deep pockets and a love for a moving story and any folks who make their living in music industry or criticism; I guarantee that you will come away with a completely new understanding on the role and meaning of minstrelsy.

tell me more about it...

Buy the wonderful new Polk Miller and The Old Southern Quartette collection, direct from Ken Flaherty.

A Lucullan feast for the eyes and the ears, the disc comes sumptuously packaged in a 78 shaped (die cut with spindle hole!), heavy-stock paper, twenty-five page booklet peppered liberally with pictures and documents culled from Miller's own scrapbooks, analysis of the music and a lengthy, heavily annotated essay about Miller and The O.S.Q., finished with a lovely parchment belly band.

The disc itself includes the band's complete recorded output (both with Miller and from the 1928 session) in amazingly crisp and clean transfers; no small feat when you bear in mind that high quality copies of these recordings are at a premium. As if that weren't enough, Flaherty has also overseen the digital remastering of the entirety of the '09 sessions and added these seven cleaned-up tracks as a bonus on the tail end of the album. The clarity of these remasters is a wonder; unburdened by surface noise and hiss, you can really appreciate the artistry of the performances. For comparison's sake, compare the remastered version of 'Rise and Shine' that I have posted above with an unremastered version of the same song. I think you'll agree that the improvement is impressive.

At the moment, the disc and its accompanying book are available ONLY directly through Ken. A burp on Google's part ("polk miller" doesn't lead to "polkmiller") makes it difficult to find the reissue through the common search methods; if you find yourself enjoying this music, help bring some attention to this labor of love by lighting the off ramp to his door and driving some web traffic his way with a link or two.
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Itunes, eMusic and Amazon have little or nothing to offer from Polk Miller, but if you happen to have a gramophone around the house you may want to bid on this original Edison Cylinder of 'Laughing Song'.

Ebay also lists a 1929 edition of Polk Miller's Dog Care book, with a cover comprised of this fantastic portrait of Polk with his loyal pooch.
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Edison cylinders, for all their scratchy sound and anachronistic content, do have one very good thing in their favor: they're all in the public domain. That means that, obscure as Polk and The O.S.Q are, most of the band's recorded music is thankfully available via Internet archives.

You can listen to and download mp3s of five of Polk Miller and The O.S.Q's songs thanks to The Cylinder Preservation and Digitization Project at The University of CA, Santa Barbara .

Some of this music deserves a bit of commentary and linkage:

'The Bonnie Blue Flag' is an odd bit of lasting ephemera; it may be the most complete extant recorded version of the unofficial Confederate anthem performed by a Confederate veteran... backed by a black vocal quartet, no less! You can also download a healthy handful of other Civil War nostalgia cylinder recordings here, courtesy of The Missouri Civil War Museum.

'Laughing Song' (aka 'Oysters and Wine at 2AM') is part of an eponymous tradition of non sequitur-laden songs whose chorus is comprised of laughter. Here's a bit of spirited discussion about laughing songs over at The Mudcat Cafe and a memorable sheet music cover for a laughing song by recording pioneer George W. Johnson. Just for good measure, I'll throw in a collection of laughing songs from Archive.org and a video of a contemporary Chinese laughing song by the Malaysian pop group Four Golden Princess.

'The Watermelon Party' is a "coon song", a once popular genre with an ugly nomenclature taken from the million-selling turn-of-the-century phenomenon 'All Coons Look Alike To Me' by Ernest Hogan. Mark Twain, a fan and vocal proponent of Miller's work, singled out this song for particular praise, saying "I think that Polk Miller and his wonderful four is about the only thing the country can furnish that is originally and utterly American. Possibly it can furnish something more enjoyable , but I must doubt it until I forget that musical earthquake, 'The Watermelon Party'."

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The Document Records reissue of Polk Miller and The O.S.Q's collected works is out-of-print in America but the label's UK site offers a pair of Old Southern Quartette tracks for download: 'Oh What He's Done For Me' and a musical take on the the Paul Laurence Dunbar poem 'When De Corn Pone's Hot'.
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Here's a contemporary take on Miller: Jerusalem Mournin', all Moby'd out.
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Download a .pdf of a beautifully preserved program from Polk Miller's touring show, one of the many historical documents reproduced in its entirety in the Flaherty reissue.
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Read a brief, informative essay on Polk Miller and The O.S.Q. from Victrola and 78 Journal by music journalist Jas Obrecht.
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Read a lengthy example of Polk's somewhat vile pre-Emancipation nostalgia, quoted within a lengthy and didactic 1899 memorial for a Richmond doctor.
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Historian Tim Brooks' book Lost Sounds: Blacks and the Birth of the Recording Industry, 1890-1919 features a full chapter devoted to Polk Miller and his accompanying, Grammy-winning two CD-set includes a Miller/O.S.Q track.
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The Edison Speaking Phonograph Company Myspace offers 19th century wonders on 21st century stationery.
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A Tofu Tip of th' Hat to Locust Street and an especially deep bow to Tinfoil, who helped with the remaster of the original cylinders for Ken Flaherty's project.

Tinfoil is a must to explore for anyone with an ear for the sepia tone; in addition to a considerable archive of free music and loads of information, essays and vintage illustrations, they also sell reasonably priced 24-track year-by-year cylinder CD compiliations.

sorry to have been away last week
Doing research and writing this post ended up requiring a lot more thought and time than I originally budgeted. I should be back on my self-enforced "at-least-once-a-week" schedule from here on in.

Given the sweat I put in on this sucker, any comment on it would be greatly appreciated.

2007-02-05T01:40:00.000-05:00

"an engagingly surreal stage presence who carries the audience along with his misguided enthusiasm"

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glisten

Reggie Watts and Yungchen Lhamo - 'Pieces'

I've seen performance artist/vocal acrobat/Andy Kaufman award-winning stand-up comedian Reggie Watts perform live three times now and each show has been completely different and completely engaging. Watts' stuff is groundbreaking and non-sequitur filled; his stage persona is random and simultaneously ren-fair emo geeky and spine chillingly soulful.

Today's selection is a more restrained look for Reggie: a duet with talented Tibetan songstress Yungchen Lhamo. 'World In Transition' hails from the recently released album Antibabel, a four-track EP of vocal worldbeat jazz. The music is crafted more for instrument than for voice; Yungchen sings something close to an erhu's part and Reggie beatboxes drums and sings bass and auxilliary strings.

It's been a lovely and enjoyable album for me to relax with for the past week, though it's hardly indicative of Reggie's broader body of work.... so, since I've already got your attention, let's take a closer look at this up-and-coming performer.

Reggie's diverse schtick blends obtuse comedy, beatbox, singing, electronic sampling and improv in a way that's more difficult to explain than it is to show, so why not just explore this video collection of essential Watt-ages before you read further? I can pretty much guarantee you'll be blown away.

'Out of Control' - Five minutes of awesome freestyle multi-tracking.

'I'm Scrotor' - The best song about a tiny genital-tugging robot you'll hear today.

Freestyle with Curt Weiss - Riffing on 'War Pigs'

Live at The Jazz Cafe in London - A nine minute best-of compilation guaranteed to tickle and confuse; featuring the family favorite 'What About Blowjobs'

tell me more about it...

Buy Antibabel from Poptech.
Fifteen bucks puts it on your stereo. You can even count it as a charitable deduction; the entire purchase price of the album is donated to Machik Inc. "a non-governmental, non-profit organization whose mission is to support innovative strategies that promote the sustainable development and strengthening of local communities in the Himalayan region and neighboring areas".
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Visit Reggie Watts online or at his myspace.
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Reggie's very pro-taping which leads to him linking to an extensive collection of downloadable material both through his own site and on archive.org, which offers solo shows and full-length concerts with his sometime collaborators Soulive and rock/rnb project Maktub... lots of great stuff to explore!
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My New York peeps can see Reggie live next Sunday, February 11 at Comix.

Reggie's recently relocated to NYC and this is his second gig at Comix; he's definitely deserving of an obsessive fan following. Get on the bandwagon early and you get lollipops!
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Visit Yungchen Lhamo's official page, realworld records site and her myspace.
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Read this interview with Yungchen.
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Check out some Yungchen Youtube.
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If you want more beatbox in your life, you should also seek and find Rahzel and Kenny Muhammad; if you're digging the multi-track human orchestra thang, go scope Dokaka and Kid Beyond.

clicky

George Washington's Rules of Civility clearly state "Let your Recreations be Manfull not Sinfull" so I'm going to skip telling you how much I enjoyed Puppy Bowl III and just note instead that while I do love the black man and I do have love for Peyton, I still think Addai shoulda got MVP.

Props also to Prince's spectacular halftime; easily the best since Elvis Presto.
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Becky's Broccoli and Banana Label Collection is very... extensive.
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Looking for new and quality audioblog linkage to explore?

Hut recommendations go to Spabelo-Hi for random oddness and interesting weirdity and Country Universe for a selection of C-Pop WMAs.

On the myspace tip, give a peek to mashup dj emancipator, one-armed Spanish guitarist Andres Godoy and boobie-immortalizer Walt C.
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I love Katamari and I love kids drawing comics, so both together is a no-brainer.
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For a little while, I was seriously considering getting into World of Warcraft, but my girlfriend put her foot down.
While that may mark me as whipped, at least it's stopped me from ever writing anything like this: "I was completely justified in letting your girlfriend know you were flirting with Menah. You think I ruined your life? Well as my idol Obi-Wan Kenobi put it in Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith, "You have done that yourself." I can't stand !!@@*#%s like you who think you can run around seducing all of the fair skinned Night Elven maidens after you get home from kissing your Mormon girlfriend on the park bench. Somebody has to stand up for the little woman. Unluckily for you, that someone turned out to be me."
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"Squirrel Melts. You MUST try them."
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Running From Camera guy is an international man of mystery.
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I got a letter asking me to astroturf for Melvin Van Peebles and I bit hard on that watermelon. Nice MP3s!
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Mark Leung's Complete College Saga is forty minutes long and (if the image of Aeris dying breaks your widdle heart) undoubtedly worth every second.
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Almost twelve thousand youtube music videos and no Sam Cooke?

They do list Vitalic's Poney though, so I guess all's forgiven.
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Oh so touched to discover flying toaster screensaver lives; I missed it so.
For PC and Mac!

2007-01-29T04:23:00.000-05:00

time-tested and mother approved

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glisten

Alex Lilly and Colorforms - 'Nothing Can Come Between Us'

Alex Lilly - 'But For You'

I've been called a lot of dirty names in my time, but the one that always sticks in my craw is "tastemaker". It's a silly buzzword that's piggybacked the mp3blog/audioblog zeitgeist for the sole purpose of being tossed around by PR hacks trying to justify to their bosses why they should fly a nineteen year old kid out to Austin. Basically, you're assumed to be a tastemaker if you're web savvy enough to hyperlink to Stereogum and reach a larger audience than the average community college newspaper. Having done this myself for a few years and clocking in over a million visitors, I guess I fit the profile; but, dig: whose taste am I making here? Are the kids falling over themselves to get Orioles box sets? Or Hugh Mundell reissues? Sure, I'll occasionally I hit a sweet spot with a Lady SOV or a Feist but, by and large, I'm perfectly happy to just unearth decade-old jewels rather than get into the astigmatic, hype-filled and overcrowded business of starmaking. It quantifies what (for me) is a job done out of love in the wee hours of the morning into a commodifiable resource to be vacuum packed as salable product endorsement from and for that all-important 18-24 year old demographic. The reality is much less glossy and opportunistic: I just want people to have a chance to enjoy music that I think is great as much as I do.

Now that I've made that cranky grampa rant, I'd like to break my own rule just this once and ask that all the label execs, web marketing kids, talent bookers and otherwise empowered types who keep telling me that I am a tastemaker pay attention and listen closely when I tell you: go find Alex Lilly and sign her. Please.

Based out of California, Alex currently backs up and occasionally opens for likewise excellent indiepop (if Blue Note can really be considered indie) faves The Bird and the Bee; your best bet to see her live right now is to go to a Bird + Bee show. One part Komeda, one part Nellie McKay and one part all her own; Lilly, both on her own and with her band Colorforms, has been an obsessively listenable pleasure for months now. In a crowded field of sometimes-electronic chanteuse/auteurs (see also Bjork, Cibelle, Colleen, Psapp, etc), Lilly's subversive songwriting, patient composition and impressive production announce an artist to be reckoned with. Her songs are pendulous, simple and lovely; as ripe and promising as a first date's end-of-night kiss.

Of the two tracks I have up today, 'Nothing Can Come Between Us' is the one I recommend the most highly; it was one of my favorite singles of 2006. 'But For You' is included more as a fan rarity; it's not available anywhere else on the web.

tell me more about it...

Visit Alex Lilly and Colorforms criminally undertravelled mySpace pages; both feature numerous full length track downloads.

I'd most strongly recommend giving a listen to 'Who Loves You Now' and 'Green and White Stripes' but they're all worth the download time. Go get 'em.

Like now.

I'll wait here for you.
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Watch the video for 'Nothing Can Come Between Us'.
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Colorforms had their heyday in the less attention-deficit 80's, but they're still hangin' on. If you need a solid dose of nostalgia, there's only about a zillion web-oriented dress-up doll/colorform stylee sites to fake it on... or you could ebay anything from Buck Rogers to Bravestarr.

clicky

'Check On Estelle', the Estelle Getty Workout Video with Beyonce accompaniment.
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Lindsay Wagner convinces Sasquatch not to kill John Saxon, courtesy Six Million Dollar Man Central.
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In an unlikely (but successful) attempt to appeal to my loves for both ghost ridin' and Werner Herzog, I give you 'Even Ghost Riders Started Small'.

Courtesy of the new, but imminently watchable, Pinglewood.
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In the Studio with Rick Rubin and Ray Stevens: "As most people know, I'm currently producing my way through the alphabet..."

Travis and Jonathan continue their brilliant stranglehold on America's windpipe. Or funny bone. Or funny pipe.
They're good, is what I'm getting at.
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"Girls charged with conspiring to kill classmates, Oprah"

It's hardly an original sentiment, but I do feel compelled to point out that if I had come of age in the current culture of fear, I almost certainly would've done some jail time.

Picture me in high school: black trenchcoat, pushead t-shirt, a drawstring Canadian Club bag of d20s and an afro-mullet, talking shit about Mortal Kombat and H.R. Giger day in and day out? Juvie bait for these sad times, no doubt.

I remember one of my best friends in high school once dialed in a bomb threat (from inside the building, even) to avoid taking a final exam. Not only was he never caught, it worked! Went on to join the military, as I recall... good times, good times.
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Koffins for Kids
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Now that Crime Mob has sampled Haddaway, everyone should prepare for inevitable remixes of 'Rock Me Amadeus' and 'Rappin' Duke' before '07 is finished.
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Strictly for my Final Fantasy homies: College Saga is 40 minutes and worth every second.

2007-01-26T04:55:00.000-05:00

"cool, cute and culturally correct," to say nothing of their skill with alliteration

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Sorry to find you so very late in the week; between a busy concert and work schedule, I barely have any time for writing.
My hope for the future (fingers crossed) is to attempt a regular schedule of two posts weekly... or at least one if real life proves difficult to schedule around.
Be patient and keep checkin' in; I'm just getting comfortable back in the saddle again.

But you don't want to hear all this, you want some music.
And do I got a winner for you!

glisten

The Yoshida Brothers - 'Kodo' (Hishou Version)

The Yoshida Brothers - 'Erghen Diado'

Hokkaido Prefecture prodigies The Yoshida Brothers were heralded as far back as 2000 as the next best bet to break out of the narrow world music ghetto and storm U.S. radio, but it's taken six years to bring them into the living rooms of middle-class America. The song that's done it is the "Inside the Sun" remix to the strident, caffeinated 'Kodo'; a galloping shamisen duel souped up with a progression of boom-bap drum loops, drifting string echoes and an insistent bassline. It's an East-Meets-West dancefloor hit with the easy grace of a 21st century samurai, but instead of promoting Bushido, the track is being used to sell seventh-generation video game systems; the 'Kodo' remix is the theme to Nintendo's TV ads for the Wii. Perhaps it is only appropriate that The Yoshida Brothers should find a greater audience in a phenomenally popular export; blending cultures is a great deal of what the band is all about.

The twentysomething Yoshida Brothers, Ryoichiro and Kenichi, both play the shamisen, a three-stringed lute covered in animal skin (the Brothers prefer dog, for its resonant sound) played with a ginkgo leaf-shaped pick that resembles nothing so much as an ice scraper. You may recognize the shamisen's unique twang as the background instrument du jour for many a late night chop-socky b-film punch-em-up; you can listen to a sample here.

Shamisen has long been viewed in Japan as an instrument for the elderly or the disabled; an old man playing shamisen in the street has the same connotations to an Easterner that a fellow with dark glasses and a cup full of pencils might have to a Westerner. The Brothers have striven to change that image and they've been quite successful; in their home country, they regularly play to sold out houses.

The Yoshidas' tastes have, in the past, been primarily fusion-driven; their songs show the influence of jazz, flamenco, blues and, most prominently, rock and roll. Such experimentation breaks new ground for an instrument that has been an unchanging part of traditional Japanese culture for over four hundred years; the Brothers willingness to mix new genres and approaches to the underutilized and highly codified shamisen repertoire has been no small part of what's brought the duo into the public eye.

Out of maturation, curiosity or some combination of the two, The Yoshida Brothers appear to be returning to a more antiquated performance style; their latest project eschews the additional instrumentation and electronic assistance prevalent in their previous recordings in favor of the more rigorously dictated form and old-fashioned composition of tsugaru-shamisen standards. If the Brothers end up turning their back on the rock-shamisen fusion that they've helped pioneer it may not bode well for their crossover appeal, but it may prove artistically vital to their long-term career. The pair are technical wizards and endlessly clever; given strict boundaries, one suspects they may be able to make more out of less.

The tracks offered on the Hut today show the two different sides of The Yoshidas; the original 'Kodo' (from the II album is a speedy and arch sneer of a song; this revised version from the Brothers' forthcoming album, Hishou, is slightly less rushed; the pitch of the central theme has been shifted down a notch. The result is a song that's more grounded than the original, more assured and rustic in both sound and spirit.

'Erghen Diado', from the III album, finds The Yoshidas engaging in their love for fusion and esoteric exploration; the song is a cover of a classic Bulgarian folk tune notably performed by Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares from their memorable 1990 eponymous disc. The unlikely marriage of Balkan orchestration and traditional Japanese instruments is hardly intuitive, but it works; the eerie and dissonant shamisen offers a new twist on the otherworldly 'mystere' once provided by the Bulgarian vocal choir. The end result defies classification and, if put on repeat, loops endlessly in a oddly beautiful dance between Japanese sounds and Bulgarian sensibilities.

tell me more about it...

Visit The Yoshida Brothers' official site and their media-saturated myspace page.

The Brothers' label, Domo Records, has really bought into the sharing principle, which means that you can listen to a whole bunch of Yoshida tunage before you buy; but let's assume that you've heard enough and it's time to break out the pocketbook.

Amazon has the Brothers' first three major label stateside releases available at reasonable prices; iTunes does too.

In addition to the II album, eMusic also offers advance access to the soon-to-be-released fourth album, the trad-throwback collection Hishou.
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Here's the obligatory YouTube gallery of Yoshida goodness:

'Rising', live and as an elaborate music video

'Tsugaru Jongara' (Live)

'Kodo' (Live)

Listen to and download more tracks from The Brothers here:

'Kodo (Inside the Sun Remix)' (aka, the Wii remix)

'Storm' (courtesy of Feed Me Good Tunes).

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Listen to the inevitable NPR thought piece.
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New York area readers can catch The Yoshidas at their thus-far only-announced East Coast stop, on February 20th at Joe's Pub. I'll be there with bells on; let me know if you're coming and I'll look you up in the crowd.
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Play a virtual shamisen and tune a real one.
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Obviously, The Yoshidas aren't the only active shamisen artists by any means; one of my other faves is a gentleman by the name of Hiromitsu Agatsuma, who I was lucky enough to see live last year at The Japan Society of New York City.

Agatsuma is also well known for his rock-shamisen stylings; I recommend checking out this impressive three part A&E 'Breakfast with the Arts' interview/performance as an excellent introduction to the man's work. You can also watch him holding his own in a duet alongside the "king of tsugaru-shamisen", Shin'ichi Kinoshita.
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Those of you particularly drawn to the rock-fusion shamisen sound may be interested in listening to music from the East coast band God of Shamisen.
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Read this extensive interview (with heavy hyperlinking and numerous sound samples) with tsugaru-shamisen legend Yamada Chisato.

It's a fascinating tale of one of the last wandering shamisen performers; Yamada's father traded a bale of rice for his son's first instrument in the early 1930's.

clicky

Deadwood: Wildstyle
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D4L's 'Tatted Up' is really great for about five listens. Try and avoid that sixth time and you'll be all good.
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YO GABBA GABBA! seems like either a hip hop Teletubbies or Wonder Showzen without the thick, abominable layer of nihilistic hate; in other words, it looks awesome.
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The only thing more cute than gratuitous anthropomorphism and robot kitties is an entire alphabet of baby animals.

The puma is killing me.
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Kiefer Sutherland sez: "We started torturing him around 11 o'clock at night, and, by two o'clock in the morning, we had set him on fire in the parking lot. We got up the next day and there was just this puddle of wax. His clothes didn't burn, which I thought was pretty cool..."
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Lil' Bone claims that Kronic 187's mom is bionic.

Mr. 187 is also an allegedly fuckin' Canadian motherfucker.
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Sulfur Hexafluoride is six times heavier than air
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Props to the always brilliant and fascinating Elisabeth Vincentelli for pointing out this fireball-hot '71 Ike + Tina live 'Proud Mary' video (which bookends nicely with 'Nutbush City Limits') and this thirty woman choral cover of Kate Bush's 'Wuthering Heights'.
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New Order on Baywatch
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? (aka Rudy Martinez) of ? and The Mysterians recently lost his home and several of his beloved pets in a horrible fire; if you can afford to offer a few bucks to help him rebuild, it would surely be a mitzvah.

Hopeful Hut thoughts go out to Question Mark.

2007-01-18T05:45:00.000-05:00

better than no good

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glisten

Amy Winehouse - 'Love Is a Losing Game' (Acoustic)

My American readers may not know Amy Winehouse yet, but they will soon. Her first shot at the U.S. market will start in a few months, but Winehouse's sophomore effort, Back to Black, is already the current number one album in the UK, where she's become a notorious tabloid fixture for her profligacy with wine and weed, her fluctuating weight and her willingness to speak her mind.

That stuff is low-key rockstar drama for New York, though; the question is if the girl can sing. The answer is an emphatic yes: the little Cockney-voiced white girl with the piercings and the crazy hair can more than sing; she can SANG and with a deep, rich soul that fairly evokes comparison to Mary J. and Sharon Jones.

As much as Winehouse's voice beguiles, it is her talent as a songwriter that announces her as a talent to be reckoned with. At least four of the tracks she's penned for her new album have the crystal ring of instant vintage: the first single, 'Rehab', which casually namechecks and rhymes Ray (Charles) and Hathaway (comma, Donny); the foul mouthed kiss-off 'Me and Mister Jones'; the cannabis-etiquette primer 'Addicted' and the album-titled, Phil Spector-esque heartbreaker 'Back to Black' will likely be covered a dozen times apiece before the end of the decade.

Winehouse's producers also acquit themselves admirably on Black; Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi's throwback-to-the-future Fauxtown stylings sidle up so cozy against Amy's gutsy crooning that it's difficult to imagine one without the other. It's at least partially due to the addition of Ronson and Remi's contributions that Back to Black is such a step up from Winehouse's first album, the uneven (and, as of late, somewhat disowned) Frank.

I had opportunity to watch two sets of Amy live on Tuesday and I was pretty impressed. Teetering on six inch heels, wrapped in a too-tight minidress with her ratty beehive slowly unravelling, Winehouse put on a lovely pair of shows before a celeb heavy audience (Jay Z, Dr. John, Mos Def, Nona Hendryx and Citizen Cope) attending. Her hellion reputation proved entirely inaccurate in this instant; the venue's staff found her unassuming, upbeat, easy to work with... and very, very nervous. Several heavily poured amaretto sours and an hour of stage time later, most of that nervousness had simmered off and left behind a firebrand less inclined to second guessing and a second set that far outshone the first.

Backed by a hot NYC tour band that she couldn't have spent more than a few hours rehearsing with, Winehouse gave full-throated attack to the whole of her album, showing a passion for the stage that shone through her perfunctory jitters. "I have a message to my label, all the Universal people in the house", she exclaimed near the end of the show. "Put me on tour. I want to tour for the whole year." Here's hoping they take her up on her offer; if she comes to your town, check her out.

The track I've put on offer today affords a view of Winehouse's softer side; this one-take acoustic version of her slow dance ballad 'Love Is a Losing Game' shows Amy in a restrained and introspective light. Her vulnerability and emotional commitment are on full display here; it puts me in the mind of Feist's demo of Mushaboom, all sitting-by-the-hotel-air-conditioner with-a-guitar-and-a-tape-recorder intimate.

It's lovely stuff, though not totally indicative of Winehouse's sound; there's plenty of listenable links below if you'd like to try something a bit more representative.

tell me more about it...

'Back to Black' is due out stateside in March; if you can't wait for your Winehouse fix, you've sadly only got a few options.

iTunes is going to block American buyers and eMusic has never heard of her, so your current mainstream legal downloading opportunities are slim and none.

Amazon is offering the import for the not-so-bargain price of thirty-five bucks; your best bet now is to try eBay, where you should be able to find a copy for roughly twenty bucks postage paid.

Can I take this opportunity to point out that there's no goddamn reason why legally purchasing extant music that you enjoy this should be so difficult and expensive? Record execs and AR folks (who are generally amongst the first who want to exploit the internet for it's wacky "viral" qualities and its "tastemaking" music blogs) need to realize that putting walls around content is the FASTEST way to encourage piracy and to discourage critical excitement about an album when it's finally released locally. I understand that the way you've done business in the past involves hard on-sale dates and rolling out publicity plans, but if the media is available and the medium to transmit it is already in place; all you're doing now is frustrating heads that wanna see this up and running so's they can recommend it to their friends. Doesn't anybody remember what happened to MIA? Or Annie? Serve it up while it's hot and you'll capitalize on global heat; let it sit and you lose the people who already got burnt out on the import months in advance.

Alright, rant's over. I'd use this space to link to a pre-order site, but as I can't seem to find one...
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Visit Amy's official and myspace sites, both with very loud autoloading music... in the case of the myspace, three different autoloaded tracks.

More proof of the music industry being on the cutting-edge with its innovative use of internet technology.
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As always, there's plenty more to read and explore on the vast blagoshfere over at Hype Machine, where Amy is clearly reaching quick critical mass; those of you more prone to trust certified professionals for your criticism ("don't try this subtle metaphor at home") should stick a nose in on "the new metacritic for singles," Critical Metrics.

Full disclosure dept: Anthony at Hype Machine is a bro and my girlfriend works for CM, but they both run excellent services that I would recommend even if I didn't know them. So there.
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Listen to the oh-so-nice Hot Chip remix of 'Rehab'.
It's not quite as great as the album version, but it's a pleasant tonic to the original's gin.
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"I admire men who don't take anything seriously, like... Sammy Davis Jr, who treated all that racism like water off a duck's back. He was like, 'Fuck it, I've got music.' That's how I feel."
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This being 2007, I imagine you all prefer your new-fangled YouTube to downloads these days.

I'll have you know that in my day, we were lucky to get a "now buffering ... 85%" message on our realplayer. I used to have to walk three miles to get to the nearest hotspot, nowadays you just turn on your router and BAM, there it is.

Kids these days.

Anyways, here's some media featuring a few of Amy's finest moments:

'You Know I'm No Good' from Back to Black (sans Ghost)

'You Know I'm No Good' from More Fish (with Ghost)

A brief aside here: Ghost's take on 'No Good', from his flotsam and jetsam collection More Fish is America's first recorded exposure to Winehouse.

The Ghostface connection is an interesting and oddly apt one; both artists have a penchant for lifting soul classics wholesale and remaking them in their own image. For Ghost, that means rapping over minimally altered versions of The Delfonics 'La La La Means I Love You', Dr. Buzzard's 'Sunshower' and The Stylistics 'You're a Big Girl Now' on (respectively) 'Holla', 'Ghost Showers' and 'Big Girl'; for Winehouse, it's brazenly lifting Tammy and Marvin's 'Ain't No Mountain High Enough' and The Impressions' 'I've Been Trying' for 'Tears Dry on Their Own' and 'He Can Only Hold Her'.

If executed even the slightest bit clumsily, this sort of theft would be embarrassing; amazingly, both Ghost and Winehouse are fully capable of pilfering and in some ways improving (or at least equalling) the original in the retelling. It's a hell of a high wire act and that much more impressive when they pull it off.

'Rehab' from Back to Black

'F*** Me Pumps' from Frank

'Tenderly' and 'Rehab', Live on Jools Holland

'Back to Black', Live from Bloomsbury Theatre

...and of course, the infamous drunk-off-her-ass live television duet of 'Beat It' with Charlotte Church, which is just some breathtakingly cool, punk-ass attitude, legend-in-the-making shit.

This was the first thing I ever heard of Amy's and it completely won me over; I love the fact that even though she's clearly having a hard time staying on her feet, Winehouse still basically blows Church out of the water.
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Three interviews with Amy, one circa Frank, one more recent (Nov. 06) long form radio talk with some live performance and one where she carves, minces and kisses meat.

The girl's got a hardworking publicist.
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You know you've really made it when...
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Ink artist Michael Arthur, Joe's Pub's resident Hirschfeld, sat in on Winehouse's soundcheck; he offers, in addition to some lovely sketches, his wry observations on the launching of a new talent here.

clicky

Perhaps the best use of a YTMND ever: Garfield is Dead, in which the execrable Jim Davis shows his true, sadistic colors.
This explains so much.

If that sad revelation is harshing your buzz, come back to a better world with a quick round of Five Card Nancy... er, Three Card Garfield, rather.
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I can't stop picking up the yellow stones

Best excuse to destroy your scanner, EVAR.
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Do you ghost ride the whip?

Yeah yeah; I know this is totally 2006 and I'm crazy late to the party, but what can I say: it ain't really a New York thing yet and I don't watch Pimp My Ride.

If you're lame like me and are new to this phenomenon, I recommend starting with this best/worst of compilation, moving on to this jawdropping video of Mistah Fab ghost riding the shortbus on 24's and finish up with this Vice City-esque Shot Poppin' Cop Ghost Ride.
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Okay, so by now you're probably thinking, what could be more awesomely batshit wreckless than dancing alongside a driverless moving car?
Would you believe sandal skating with three of your friends on the highway while hanging out the passenger side?

Seriously, that's some next level shit right there.

For some reason, the fact that their hazard lights are on just kills me. Like that's going to be their defense: "Well officer, we WERE trying to be careful..."

Also: dude grinding one foot on the pickup at 1:04? Jackie Chan called, he told me to tell you he wouldn't do that.

I salute you, gentlemen.
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Best Sepultura cover band you'll see today.
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The inimitable children's author Daniel Pinkwater is putting up chapters of his new book, The Neddiad, onto the web once a week. It's a great read, so stop by and give it a perusal, then pick up a paper copy in April.

an open request
I'm currently working on a new project that would require the aid of a classroom of junior high age kids.

If you or any of your friends working in the field of adolescent education would be interested in discussing getting involved with The Tofu Hut for some music listening and reviewing in front of an audience of literally thousands, please contact me at forksclovetofu AT gmail dot com for more information.

I very much look forward to hearing from you!

2006-07-24T01:05:00.000-04:00

men have named you

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glisten: The Return of the deadly D. Bo

David Boyle - DaVinci's Ho

Imagine my surprise when our prodigal son and once and future king David Boyle dropped a line to let me know he was getting back into business. Somewhat edited communique follows:

How are you? Have been very busy myself, sorry; but here it is, my new single. You can find the lyrics online at my website. The song itself is based on the 1978 hit 'Get Off' by Foxy.

Despite any (un)intentional vocal styling resemblances to Jerry Lewis, I really think that you can't fault the idea, lyrics or backing track. And who could argue with the rap portion... "Lindsay Locust", indeed! I'm also kind of proud of "Dan Brown, D.Bro made so much Ludacris dough / He proud he got Da Vinci's Ho in every area code, like a pimp-o". You can consider this to be a quasi-sequel to "Rapping of the Christ", if you will.

David also made the point that he'd like to see if the market could handle a D.Bo. single or possibly even a disc. How about it, folks? Anybody interested in ponying up a few sheckels? Drop the D. Bo. a line at his website and let him know.

tell me more about it...

Visit David's site for audio and video for the inimitable 'George W. Pussy' and much more.
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Read this article on 'George W. Pussy' from The Boston Phoenix.
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Check out a few of David's past appearances

Explore the finer points of D. Bo's political stance over at his political blog.

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blah blah pop singles blah blah

I've gotten myself into the position of doing occasional scritchity-scratching for Stylus; mostly to keep me plugged into what's what on the worldwidepop airwaves. Here's a recent dose of weekly snarkiness, along with youtube links where you can see the video and make up your own mind.

Nelly Furtado ft. Timbaland - Promiscuous Girl
'Promiscuous Girl' is promising enough at first; the hook and the drums are engaging and obsessive, but that chorus is SO CLUNKY it scuttles the song entirely. There's none of the payoff that I expect from a Timbaland track; it just gets boring, awkward and weak. If I didn't know better, I'd have pegged this as one of Will.I.Am's bland-ass beats. On the plus side, a newly bulked up Timbo seems to have put some muscle to his flow too; generally the weakest part of his own songs, Tim now sounds a dead ringer for Bubba Sparxxx. Speaking of soundalikes, ambition is rarely so bald as Nelly makes it here; as hard as Furtado is biting her style, Gwen Stefani should be getting royalties. 'Promiscuous Girl' sounds like half a song to me; more's the pity that it's poised to become this year's 'My Humps'. I really hope Tim's comes with more in the tank next time.

Sandi Thom - I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)
Proving yet again that I'll bite hard on any hook that packs a pretty voice, tambourines, foot stomps and hand claps; I regret to inform that I actually like this lamentable bit of misguided, vapid nonsense. This is not to say that I'm unaware that you could go mad picking out all the inaccuracies, fallacies and out-and-out bullshit from betwixt the teeth of the "impressionistic" lyrics. This is not to say that I think that this internet wunderkind's aughties 'For Dummies' rendition of 'We Didn't Start the Fire' has serious staying power. This is not to justify the existance of the most empty-headed "don't it make ya think?" folk anthem since 'Ironic'. But the pretty voice! The tambourine! THOSE HAND CLAPS!
Maybe if we get her a ghostwriter?

Cassie - Me & You
Cassie is Bad Boy's entry into the race for the next Ciara and her first single, a minimalist pop come-on masquerading as bubble-crunk, makes a reasonable case that there may be room for another princess at the top of the game. Cassie opts for a coy purr rather that showcasing any range or virtuosity, but that seems appropriate on a song as stripped down as 'Me & You'. Its innocuous, its got good bass and its absurdly simple hook doesn't get tired. At the same time, there's not much that sets this apart from the crowd; the whiff of plastic and lack of personality makes 'Me & You' less of a piece of art and more of an ad for the second single. Anyways, it's hardly fair to blame hamburger for not tasting like steak; this zipless fuck of a song is short, sweet, unmemorable, appetizing and tailor-made for the Summer. Be on the lookout for it booming from the back of a jeep near you before the end of the month.

Prince - Fury
3121 has been one of the nicest surprises of 2006; a solid album from an icon who had lately seemed to have tired of making music. Though nothing else on 3121 is nearly as good as Prince's leadoff single, 'Black Sweat,' there are still another couple of "at his best" cuts: the mid-80's throwback title track '3121', the silly-but-fun 'Lolita' and 'Incense and Candles,' a slinky, vocoder-heavy quiet-storm ballad that would've been a more natural follow up to 'Sweat'. The rest of the album vascillates between corny, disposible and mediocre with flashes of brilliance; it's this last that best describes 'Fury'. A little bit Vegas and a little bit rock and roll, 'Fury' takes a simple theme and whips it into a froth of excellent but aimless guitar solos and overzealous kickline synths. It's too ungainly and dense a song to quite take flight, but there are undeniable moments; when Prince segues into the chorus with a growling squeal of "Who's the guilty one / When there ain't no judge or jury", you'd swear he was twenty again. It's not quite a hit, but 'Fury' is done with such mastery and ease that you can't help but be impressed... even if you're not much interested.

Silvia Nott - Congratulations
Nott is the Bizarro-Bjork: a self-obsessed, uninhibited, nutty Icelandic nymph with a closet full of oddball costumes; but utterly lacking in gravitas and depth. And did I mention that she doesn't even really exist? 'Congratulations,' Iceland's maligned entry into Eurovision, isn't much more than a little girl singing 'Hit Me Baby One More Time' in front of the closet mirror with a Magic Mike, so OF COURSE it's kinda great. Less interesting is the tongue-in-cheek Velveeta production, the blatant judge pandering and the lack of a hook. Actually, there's the question of a lack of a SONG; still, how many tracks can boast a moment when the singer calls God on the telephone in a Betty Boop voice to declare that she's "saving the world"? 'Congratulations' wants to be enjoyed ironically, which means it's great for the first three listens. Past that, you're on your own.

2006-07-18T01:28:00.000-04:00

respect due

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glisten: Hirokazu 'Hip' Tanaka

Hirokazu Tanaka - Title Theme (from Kid Icarus)

Hirokazu Tanaka - Reapettes' Theme (from Kid Icarus)

Hirokazu Tanaka - Stage One Theme (from Kid Icarus)

Hirokazu Tanaka is one of a small band of mostly Japanese music writers active in the mid to late 1980's who are to music what Wesley Morse was to art; which is to say, anonymous but prolific producers of populist entertainment that was reproduced and enjoyed literally millions of times.

Tanaka was a video game sound engineer and composer for Nintendo from 1980 to the end of the nineties. These days, Tanaka works as the President of Creatures, Inc, which shares the Pokemon trademark with Nintendo; but in his heyday, 'Hip' was responsible for some of the most memorable tunes and jingles of his generation.

Tanaka is probably best known for his work on the soundtracks to Kid Icarus and Metroid. Both games were scored in 1986, but they sound drastically different; Icarus is tinny, light and sugary where Metroid is dark, dense and foreboding. Both are wonders of minimalist composition and still pretty damned exciting to listen to. Nostalgia sweetens this cocktail considerably, but I'd be willing to recommend these short pieces even to the most video-game illiterate. At heart, they are beautiful and addictive themes with a direct view to an twelve year old Tofu Boy enrapt before the TV screen, playing with power.

Ah, the tender sounds of the good ol' daze. Enjoy!

Hirokazu Tanaka - Samus Aran Appears (from Metroid)

Hirokazu Tanaka - Title Theme (from Metroid)

Hirokazu Tanaka - Brinstar Theme (from Metroid)

tell me more about it...

Buy Famicom 20th Anniversary Original Sound Tracks Vol. 1 from Play-Asia.com, delivered to your door for $25 American.
This remarkable Japan-only collection of video game music and sounds expanded to three volumes; this first disc offers a collection of simply essential Nintendo-phile tunage and loads of Tanaka tracks. the complete themes and effects to Ice Climber, Zelda, Metroid, Donkey Kong, Super Mario and Kid Icarus are only the start of this pricey (but easily obtainable via P2P) compendium. Highly recommended, no matter how you get it.
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Read this Gamasutra interview with Hirokazu Tanaka.
Well worth the registration; Gamasutra articles and interviews are indispensible to the curious gamer.
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Explore lengthy fansites for both Metroid and Kid Icarus (some tunage in that last one).

If you're feeling a desire for playing these games again coursing through your veins, why not watch these tool-assisted speed run for Metroid and Kid Icarus?
It's the next best thing to holding the controller... if you were some sort of cyborg freak.
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Download these lovely desktops for Kid Icarus and Metroid from Desktop Gaming.
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Listen to dozens of takes/remixes/mashes of Tanaka's work over at OverClocked Remix.
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Metroid Metal recasts Tanaka's soundtrack as a metal masterpiece.

Try this at home!

2006-07-12T02:37:00.000-04:00

"blood flowin’ folk ballads with no sound explanation"

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glisten: malcolm holcombe

Malcolm Holcombe - Cathy's Creek from I Never Heard You Knockin'

Malcolm Holcombe - Sparrows and Sparrows from Not Forgotten

If you (like me) are pissed off to discover that Tom Waits' '06 tour is taking place all but entirely South of the Mason/Dixon, here's salve for thea t wound: today's Hut offers the work of another folk/rock musician whose ragged and raw blues should help you while away the longer hours.

Malcolm Holcombe is a rural North Carolinian who writes and sings some of the most heartfelt and honest folk mountain music you'll hear. He is a kind and gentle man in person, a hell of a good listen on tape (his '05 disc I Never Heard You Knockin' was one of my last year's favorites) and a focused, glorious whirlwind on the stage. He's also a tetch eccentric; at live shows, he'll squeal, growl, violently shake his head and walk aimlessly in circles with his back to the crowd. None of this comes off as strained or hokey; Malcolm seems more like a man who's spent many an hour alone in a room, playing music for his own edification.

I've just gotten a copy of Not Forgotten, Malcolm's newest album and while I've only listened it through two or three times, my initial response is that it sounds much more self-assured and lighter than any of Holcombe's prior work. I look forward to having it sink in over the next few days as I play it into the ground.

Here's a sample track from that new album and a high point from the aforementioned '05 disc for you to try out. Keep an eye out for Malcolm to support the album with some shows; if he gigs anywhere near you, don't miss it.

tell me more about it...

Buy any of Malcolm's last three albums direct from Village Records.

Holcombe's first album is available at Amazon.

eMusic comes up empty, but iTunes has A Hundred Lies if you'd rather go digital.
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Visit Malcolm's official website.
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Watch Malcolm perform 'The Station' live, complete with trademark grunts, face shaking and head bobbin'.

Please ignore the fucknut intro. "Evolved Hillbilly," my Aunt Fanny.
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Reporters who sit down with Malcolm seem to often come away befuddled and amused, insinuating either that he's a cryptic hayseed or some sort of a savant. Truth is, he's just plain folks but I guess that's enough to confuse some.

If you'd like to fly-on-the-wall somebody a bit more on-the-ball talking with Holcombe about his influences and interests, I recommend you read this lengthy and informative interview from puremusic.
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Listen to (and download) the title track from Malcolm's new album from his myspace page.

You can also grab my favorite Holcombe track, the haunting Kiss Me When I'm Sleepin',from (stop-me-before-I-shill-again) the ever-lovin' Joe's Pub music repository.

Best for last: Candace Corrigan's The Nashville Nobody Knows podcasted a half hour interview/overview of Malcolm's work last year; you can listen to/download that here.

2006-07-10T01:06:00.000-04:00

"...the future of cabaret, if cabaret knows what's good for it."

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glisten: theo bleckmann

Theo Bleckmann - Teacher's Pet

Theo Bleckmann - Chim Chim Cheree

Theo Bleckmann is a New-York-by-way-of-Germany composer/performer whose work tends toward the novel. Bleckmann's latest project is a collaboration with Japanese composer/pianist Fumio Yasuda titled 'Las Vegas Rhapsody'. The album celebrates Vegas' centennial with a collection of showtunes and standards performed in an odd mix of styles. Equal parts transgressively avant garde, respectfully traditional and puckishly inventive, 'Las Vegas Rhapsody' is great fun and obsessively listenable; it's been on heavy repeat for me since I glommed a copy.

I was lucky enough to see Bleckmann and Yasuda perform the album live last month at a lovely show that featured a four piece string orchestra fronted by Todd Reynolds. Theo's magnetism, sheer showmanship and flat-out amazing vocalizations are deeply impressive. As much as I love him though, your milage may vary: a couple of curiosity seekers left the show cackling and mimicking Theo's falsetto riffs and, even as I write this, I just received an e-mail from an unenthusiastic test listener who found him relentlessly jangly and flat. Still, I daresay it's a fair guess that if your tastes vascillate 'twixt the odd and the button down (as mine tend to), he'll wow you.

'Teachers Pet' features a barbershop quartet of Bleckmanns supporting a solo Bleckmann, managing an effect that (much like the original song) deftly straddles the line between coy and creepy. 'Chim Chim Cheree', a personal favorite of mine, allows a showcase for Theo's more experimental chirruping and yodels over the yearning strings. Both tracks feel artistically abundant, emotionally engaging and fascinatingly aspirant; Bleckmann reaches, strains and finds fresh, undiscovered meat in these chestnuts.

tell me more about it...

You can buy 'Las Vegas Rhapsody' direct from the publisher, Winter + Winter, but the Americans in the audience will likely find it easier and cheaper to go through Amazon.

Unfortunately, the album isn't available for download at iTunes or eMusic, but clicking on those links will reveal a host of other Bleckmann-ia that those august institutions _do_ carry; so give them a peek.
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Visit Theo's official website.
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Read this brief interview with Bleckmann and listen to the accompanying sound samples from a few of his other projects.
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Listen to a pair of other tracks from 'Las Vegas Rhapsody' on the "my-other-blog-is-my-job"Joe's Pub website.

Shill, shill, shill.

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a sad plea

Y'all still out there? Lord knows my posting has grown sadly erratic, but the hit count continues to turn, so I can hear you breathing. Drop a note in the comments; I'm gettin' lonely out here and I need encouragement to keep this idiot machine a'chuggin'.

2006-07-04T23:36:00.000-04:00

i'm watchin' you

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 11: Familiar Melodies, New Songs

Both of today's tracks feature sounds that'll likely sound familiar; the first tastes a bit like (the very much contemporary) Coasters 'Yakkety Yak'; the second is a dead-ringer for Sam Cooke's 'Wonderful World'... only it predates that classic by a good two years.

The Cadillacs - Peek-A-Boo

THe Harlem based band The Cadillacs are probably best known today for their mid-50's hit "Speedoo" (as in, "They often call me..."). 'Peek-A-Boo' was a success upon its release, climbing up to #28 on the pop charts and #20 on R+B; it also represented their sole foray into the British market prior to reissue. It may likely have seen some play in the Burlesques of the day, making this an rnb strip club throw-back of the elder variety. 'Get Low' it ain't; but you should still be able to shake it to this silly little doo-wop wonder without shame.

tell me more about it...

Neither iTunes nor eMusic offers much to speak of but you can buy a twelve dollar single disc best of for The Cadillacs from either Amazon or direct from Rhino. If you've a taste for this Lucky 13 stuff and a few extra bucks in your wallet though, why not supersize it for ten bucks more and get the three disc, mostly complete Cadillacs: For Collectors Only box set?
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Read this enthusiastic, multi-part biography of The Cadillacs.
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Everything you ever wanted to know about Cadillacs, but didn't have the cash to ask.
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Listen to a snippet of'Peek-A-Boo's B-Side, the even catchier 'Lolita'.
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Funny thing about somethin' as easy as peekaboo: no matter how simple it sounds, there's always someone who's gotta go and make it look hard.

The Travelers with Lou Rawls - I'll Always Be In Love With You

Formed in the 1930's, The Travelers AKA The Pilgrim Travelers kept touring and performing up until 1960. 'I'll Always Be In Love With You' finds the band at the end of its storied career giving a leg up to their newest frontman, a young Lou Rawls. Rawls and Sam Cooke were good friends and Cooke was intimately familiar with The Travelers; it's not too far fetched to imagine Cooke appropriating elements of this song to craft 'Wonderful World', one of the most loved and best known RnB songs of the past century. Of course, the pretty sing-song melody that 'Wonderful World' and 'I'll Always Be In Love' share is likely a bit older than either than of these, but doggoned if I can think of any songs that predates it off the top of my head. Any of ya'll got any ideas?

To the best of my knowledge, this little rarity has never been reissued (in fact, it's obscure enough that I had to reference this Keen records discography just to date the track) but seeing as this is a title that's more or less googleproof; I welcome correction on this point. Any Lou Rawls fans out there wanna school me?

tell me more about it...

Visit Lou Rawls official website.
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Listen to more Lou Rawls and The Pilgrim Travelers at this admirable Lou Rawls obit post over at the always admirable The B Side.
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Read more about the history of The Pilgrim Travelers.

2006-06-26T10:35:00.000-04:00

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if it's monday, this must be spiffy

Outdated, but quite likely the only extant discography of Marissa Marchant on the internet.
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If Stampy has a hangnail, the internet would like to tell you how to take care of your elephant's feet.
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Stevie Starr is a professional swallower and regurgitator, which is what people did for fun way back before the internet.

The video has to be seen to be believed.
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Thunderegg has the right idea: tons of music online and a one disc mp3 album compilation of 215 songs for the new listener.

They call it "the working man's box set".
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So much cheese, so little time.
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This May post over at FMU's 'Beware of the Blog' was in reference to the Enron verdict, but if you ever get a hankerin' to let a no-goodnik know how you feel about them, this guilty mix makes an excellent aural poison pen letter.
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The Ukelele Orchestra of Great Britain plays 'Smells Like Teen Spirit'
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These oddball Russian mock-traditional illuminated texts double as archaic movie posters. Can you name them all?
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I don't pretend to be an expert on parenting, but when you take the ashes of your cremated child, put them in a plastic bag, stuff those ashes into a teddy bear and then give said teddy to your surviving child; aren't you really asking for trouble?

Not a hoax, apparently.
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Desktop wonders, ahoy.

2006-06-23T00:18:00.000-04:00

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glisten: hurra torpedo

Hurra Torpedo - All the Things (S)He Said

Hurra Torpedo - Body

It's not often that you find an internet meme that makes you come back for seconds. Star Wars Kid was fine the first time, sure; but was anyone really hoping that Ghyslain was going to do a follow up? Did anybody buy Will Hung's album? Does anyone care about the Pokemon kids' next project? Of course not; so it's a tetch odd to find that the folks behind the much emailed and linked cover of Bonnie Tyler's 'Total Eclipse of the Heart as performed on kitchen appliances' clip are not only still active, they're currently on tour.

This gets less surprising once you realize that the band wasn't some fly-by-night outfit. Egil Hegerberg, Kristopher Schau and Aslag Guttormsgaard have been making music for over a decade now, as part of the pop/demolition band Hurra Torpedo and in other incarnations as part of the Norwegian art collective cum improv comedy group Duplex Records (think less Lansing Dreiden and more Gwar). As Hurra Torpedo, the trio dress in baggy, blue tracksuits with the ass pulled down to thigh height. They play rock and roll music, generally with one man on rhythm guitar and the other two doing improvisational and oddball percussion. More precisely, they're beating the living hell out of kitchen appliances with lengths of pipe and massive gears and slamming shut a deep-freeze to what roughly corresponds to 'the beat'.

I got looped into seeing Hurra Torpedo live after some encouragement from sometime Hut contributor Elisabeth and scoring a little love from the Norwegian Embassy. I went with low expectations and left utterly blown away. First of all, they were loud. About two weeks earlier I had seen the much ballyhooed and droning sunn0))) in the same space, a band that claims to play so loudly and violently that they will make audience members loose their bowels. Sunn0))'s show is nowhere near that sort of Grand Guignolesque hyperbole, but they were cacophonous enough that you could actually feel the music shimmer around your body. Hurra was louder.

They're also very funny and very well grounded. Hurra Torpedo is several parts comedy and theater to go with their destruction. Each performer plays a persona; the oblivious frontman, the violent would-be Casanova and the Harpo-esque idiot. They understand that what they're doing is farcical and they're the first to tell you; their only pretentions are faux pretentions.

Lastly, all the talk about being a novelty act and of selling out to Ford aside; they're very, very real with their performances. It is one thing to talk about utterly demolishing an oven with a lead pipe and to then lift said oven over one's head and throw it several yards, all while performing an awesome cover of 'Blitzkrieg Bop'; it is quite entirely another thing to actually watch someone do it. Allow me to be the one that tells you: it is an awesome spectacle and it cannot be faked. By show's end, the entire band was well and truly exhausted, the set was littered with glass, twisted metal and insulation. I was impressed enough that I left with a CD, a t-shirt... and a badly abused oven door, which currently occupies a position of honor in my foyer.

Hurra were definitely one of the best and most memorable shows I've seen this year; they take a great deal of rock's animus and give it violent life in the best and least misanthropic fashion possible. I threw up the horns without a shred of dignity or irony. I highly recommend you do the same if they're in your neck of the woods.

Recorded music from this sort of a band hardly does them justice, but I've pulled two of my favorites from their album: a cover of the TaTu pop hit 'All the Things She Said' and the clanky original 'Body'.

tell me more about it...

Hurra Torpedo's new full-length album is available only via import or at their shows... or, amazingly, via iTunes.

Weird world we live in these days.

The album's unsurprisingly not too listenable, but you're obliged to at least get their cover of 'Toxic'; you won't regret it.
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You can also buy all manner of useless Hurra Torpedo stuff from their cafepress site... but no album?
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Unsurprisingly, there's a great deal of Hurra presence on the web. You can visit the band's official site, their myspace site or The Duplex Records site.
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Watch the band's Ford Fusion sponsored 'rockumentary', The Crushing Blow.
Viral salesman bullshit aside, this is fairly clever.
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Read a pdf of the band's utterly insane tech rider/stageplot.

Ever seen backline that includes two toasters and an electric toothbrush?
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'This is music from Norway'
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To get any kind of an idea what Hurra Torpedo is all about, you're obliged to see them perform live. Video hardly captures the energy, but here's some clips to give you an idea:

- Covering The Pixies' Where Is My Mind

- 'Spencer'

- All The Things (S)He Said

- Not too sure on this one; some interesting chanting, though.

- And, of course the iconic cover of Total Eclipse of the Heart... plus a special live finale.

2006-06-14T03:49:00.000-04:00

"He was the Doveman before I met him, but it suits him."

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glisten: doveman

Doveman - Castles

Doveman - Sunrise

Thomas Bartlett is something of a New York Renaissance man; when he's not gigging as a keyboardist for any of a myriad of downtown bands (among them Sam Amidon, Elysian Fields and Chocolate Genius) or writing for his own eclectic Salon audioblog, the notorious insomniac is writing new music as the master domo for his own band, Doveman.

Doveman is tender folk rock, delicately designed and soothingly delivered. Thomas plays organ and does lead vocals for the combo; in performance he slumps forward onto the piano and softly whisper-sings directly into his mic. The effect is unsettling; there's some potential to misconstrue these sort of hijinx as pretentious. Quite the opposite is true; in fact, Thomas is putting himself in a very private and personal space when he sings and by inviting you in at all, he appears to be taking a tremendous chance. This shy but somehow fearless presentation of the hopeful, fragile thing we carry inside informs Thomas' work intimately and makes for fascinating live viewing.

Bartlett describes the Doveman project as 'Lamp Rock', which he evokes in concert by dotting the stage with shining lamps. Lamp Rock, as a genre, is meant to be cozy and warm; but the metaphor is more apt when we apply it to Doveman-as-lamp : brilliant light, gently (but firmly) muted.

In many ways, I admit that I'm a little surprised that Doveman appeals to me so very much; there's a whispery/whiny element to the music that would generally turn me off. Thomas wins me over with the naked heart of his vocals, the deceptively simple (and beautiful) arrangements and the virtuosity of his band. You could make a case that Doveman fits into the Daniel Powter/James Blount school of mewling "whine rock", but you'd be wrong. Thomas' music sidesteps emo angst and boneheaded frat-boy bonhomie in favor of something more gothic, intricate and mysteriously unknowable; it's like a soundtrack to a love story by Edward Gorey.

I find that folks who do like Doveman tend to skew into a dichotomy: they either find the music terribly upsetting and nerve-racking or they think it's calm as a cup of chamomile. I fall squarely in the "calm" camp, but I certainly see the view from the other side; the tension in Doveman's songs springs in the implied storm that never quite breaks. That kind of restraint can put people on edge. Approaching the music with a light and happy heart helps quite a bit; for me and my girl, we find Doveman to be a warm bedtime blanket and excellent music to cuddle to. Which, if you'll excuse me, is what I'm off to do now... just as soon as I give you a few more songs and a bit of linkage.

Doveman - Chasing Clouds

Doveman - Sunken Queen

tell me more about it...

The four tracks on the Hut today are demos from the as-yet-unreleased new Doveman album; to the best of my knowledge, this is their virgin flight onto the internet.

Want more? You can buy the first Doveman album, 'The Acrobat', in digital form from iTunes or eMusic. Physical copies are available at amazon for fourteen bucks... but why not go direct to the publisher, swim slowly records, and buy it for a somewhat negotiable ten spot ("If for some reason you can't afford the prices listed email us something nice explaining and we will extend you love and and a cost-based price").

Visit Doveman's (somewhat neglected) blog.

Check out the current tour schedule to see if Doveman and David Thomas Broughton are playing in your town at the official Doveman Website.

My New York kids just missed him at Joe's Pub; come and see him next time we host him, eh?

Here's a handful of hit-and-miss reviews of 'The Acrobat'.

Read this Gothamist interview with Thomas and this lengthy back and forth with *Sixeyes proprietor, Alan Williamson.

Listen to (and download) three tracks from 'The Acrobat' at the Doveman Myspace.

Doveman on the radio: NPR profile/review and live on WNYC.

Some second opinions.

2006-06-13T00:47:00.000-04:00

Hall of Famer Etta James, before she dropped the weight

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 10: Hot Rockin' Mamas

19. Ivie Anderson - 'The Voot Is Here To Stay'

Ivie Anderson is yet another once-wildly popular artis that time has treated unkindly. Ivie spent eleven years as a singer for Duke Ellington's orchestra, before retiring prematurely due to a severe asthma problem.

Ivie's also famous for stealing a scene from the Marx Brothers classic A Day at the Races.

'Voot' is a popular bit of street-talk from the forties that you'll hear in songs of the era. While some believe the word refers to booze, drugs or cash; 'voot' more likely appears to bemalleable as any object of desire ("I'll be fine once I get my voot").

In any case, 'The Voot Is Here' is a pretty sweet little slangified track; Ellington's unparalleled band (featuring a young Charlie Mingus on bass) would be hard pressed to do anything but excel and Ivie's brassy voice gives this hootch some extra kick.

UPDATE!
In an extremely unlikely coincidence, the good folks over at Tuwa's Shanty appear to have me out-vooted, 12 to 1. I'm downright embarrassed I didn't notice this post before I put up these songs but you can colour me deeply impressed; Tuwa's new companion Dan has put together an astonishingly comprehensive audio history of the word voot (featuring the indispensible and prime example of the field, Marion Abernathy's 'Voo-it Voo-it!'), replete with damn near obsessive annotation. It's stuff like this that makes the world go 'round, folks; go snap em up now and don't forget to bookmark the Shanty while you're there for future downloading wonder!

tell me more about it...

Not much from Ivie on either eMusic or iTunes but you can buy 'I Got It Good and That Ain't Bad', a collection of many of Ivie's best tracks with Ellington's band, from Amazon.

Read this brief Ivie bio.

Listen to 'Voot's' A-Track, 'I Thought You Ought to Know', in realaudio, courtesy of the always wonderful Vocal Group Harmony website.

Read a vivid remembrance of Ivie by acclaimed jazz critic Nat Hentoff.

20. Etta James - 'Good Rockin' Daddy'

Etta James has over forty five years of recording history under her once-ample belt, but today's Hut entry finds her early in that career, squealing like the seventeen year old she was.

'Good Rockin Daddy' was an early hit for Etta, charting as high as #6 on the 1955 R+B charts. It's a tribute to Ms. James' talent that 'Daddy' still holds up; it's a catchy, toe-tappin' doo-wop rocker powered as much by an excellent band of sidemen as it is by Etta's growling come-ons.

All the daddys get up on your feet and do th' crazy twist!

tell me more about it...

Etta's material both old and new is pretty easy to find. You can buy digital copies on both iTunes and eMusic; as is almost always the case, the selection on iTunes is better but the prices on eMusic can't be beat.

If you're more about owning a physical copy of Ms. James' best, Amazon has two bulls-eyes. For the somewhat curious, there's Etta James At Last!, the reissue of Etta's 1960 excellent, first full length recording, on the Chess label.

For the more ambitious, there's The Essential Etta James the two-disc, thirty dollar greatest hits collection that concerns itself more seriously with Etta's earlier work.

Visit Etta's official site and listen to her new cover album, All the Way.
Worth a once over for the sheer "wha?" factor; Ms. James' take on 'I Believe I Can Fly' is an earful in and of itself.

Explore this text-dense fansite.

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2006-06-12T02:41:00.000-04:00

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spiffy cinema

With the advent of Youtube and Googlevideo, there's often more of interest to watch on the internet than there is on your average array of basic cable stations. Here's a few things that've caught my eye as of late:

"Fuckin' mounds a fuckin' whipped cream"

If watching this cat boisterously bark obscenities plucks yer magic twanger (and I know it does mine), there's a few dozen more just like this at Michael Caracciolo's personal site.
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Big Pimpin' on B-L-A-D's.

And, from the same folks, don't miss the Jackass-esque antics of Clown Down.
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Oddly compelling: Brokeback Snake Mountain.

And here's another cowboy flashback: do you still hanker for a hunka cheese?
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Unsurprising understatement: Internet nerds like Super Mario Brothers.

Clearly drug influenced live reinactment

Your Princess is in another castle, dude.

The Super Mario Bros. Super Show
Which reminds me, there's dozens of good 80's cartoon themes on Youtube. Certainly enough to merit another spiffy cinema feature, soon. But first...

Super Mario on Ice
Princess Peach talking like Mae West? Off-model Luigi blowing up ice-koopas with a raygun? Jason Bateman thwarted from his dreams of video game domination over Alyssa Milano because of a Nintendo computer virus? Mr. Belvedere as Bowser? Could this be the most fucked up video in the history of man?
Could be.
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Parker the Talking Dachshund

No relation to Rusty.

God, I love dachshunds.
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"Still Breakin' the Hard Way?"

haha1-800-GET-DOWNhaha

For the real thing you'll want to look elsewhere.
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One Got Fat
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"This is rock and roll!"
Dude's AWESOME!
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There was a time not longer than three decades ago when hip hop was a bit more innocent and here's proof.
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Nine amazing short episodes of the trippy Japanese Kid's show, Kure Kure Takora or 'Gimme Gimme Octopus'.
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"Satan! I forgot my canine in the washing machinery!"
The fact that I find this endlessly funny likely doesn't speak well of me, but we all have our weaknesses and mine is cuddleperson.
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July 4th come early.

2006-05-24T02:02:00.000-04:00

ain't nothin' bland about him

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 9: Back Off, Baby

A fabulous double header for you on this sunny Spring Wednesday: a pair of incredible, soul-quakers from two of the greatest bluesmen of the century. Tuck in and start downloading; these are prime vittles!

17. Bobby 'Blue' Bland - You've Got Bad Intentions

Bobby 'Blue' Bland is a Tennessee treasure and a well-known champion of the "Memphis Sound".

'Bad Intentions' is one of Bland's first pop hits; it's also an excellent example of his unique brand of velvety, soulful squalling. I don't know about you, but it took me a few listens to realize that there was no harmonica solo after the second verse... that's Bland vocalizing!

Some vicious lyrics on here, too:

"You say you can't go on living/ if you can't be by my side /Gonna send you a bottle of poison/ Please commit suicide"

Damn, that's HARSH!

tell me more about it...

No eMusic, but plenty of iTunes love if you want to get more Bland's music online. Truthfully, this might be a case where a best-of disc would serve you as well as anything.

The one you probably want is The Anthology, available from Amazon for twenty-three bucks. It charts thirty years of Bland's career over two discs; you'll find 'Bad Intentions' on there as well.
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Listen to (and download) Bland's Ray-Charles-esque heartbreaker 'Touch of the Blues' on Livin'Blues.com.
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Read this history of Bland and this lengthy Salon essay.
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Tip of th' Tofu hat to Adventures of a University Finalist, who ran a Bland post with 'Bad Intentions' way back in '05.
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If there's a worse intention than a pop to the kisser, I've yet to see it.

18. Charles Brown (with Johnny Moore's Three Blazers) - It Ain't Gonna Be Like That

The name Charles Brown brings Charles Schultz to mind for most people. More's the pity; they're missing out on one of the great pianists of our time.

Brown was an amazingly prolific and successful piano player throughout the 1940's. He is regularly recognized as a major influence on Brother Ray, but he's likely best known for his perennial holiday classic 'Merry Christmas, Baby'.

Charles Brown stayed active and recording for a good sixty years. His impressive career took an upturn late in life when Bonnie Raitt added him as her opening act in the nineties.

This track finds Brown behind the ivories for a trademark smooth blues song with a combo known as The Three Blazers; the cool cat on the mike is Johnny Moore (no relation to the Johnny Moore who sang with The Drifters).

tell me more about it...

Though not especially well known by the layman, Charles Brown's discography is luckily still very much in print. You'll be able to find plenty on iTunes and on eMusic... including this comprehensive five disc, 120 song set of Brown's recordings from the 1940's... well, almost comprehensive.

If you want a disc with 'Ain't Gonna Be Like That' on it, you'll have to sojourn to Amazon for this Johnny Moore's 3 Blazers reissue of their Swingtime recordings. It's nice stuff and worth a listen.

Charles Brown isn't very well served on the web, but you can still read Brown's Rock + Roll Hall of Fame induction page and his obit.

This is the requisite Charlie Brown link.

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spiffy

Twenty-six number one singles, but we're not listening until you sing in English?

Well, t'hell with that; I'm off to Bollysongs.com.

Pop-ups out th' wazoo, but live DLs; get em while they're hawt.
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"Place a rubber duck on your monitor and describe your problems to it. There's something magical about stating your problems aloud that makes the solution more clear."

But what if your problem is that you talk to inanimate objects?
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Here's a pair of oddball gaming links for you: A student who was shot and paralyzed in the Columbine killings talks about Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

Especially interesting in that the kid wants to work in the gaming industry as a sound designer.

Speaking of which, In The Pit is a sound only videogame (that requires a xbox360 controller, boo) in which you play a blind monster that stalks people thrown into your lair.
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Pimpadelic Wonderland
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It is with great excitement and a sense of relief that I welcome the first (that I know of) independently run, classical-themed audioblogs into our midst; make them feel welcome.

A big hand for classical connection, le roi s'amuse, different waters and master fade.
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As part of an effort to stop the imminent operation of the Nuclear reprocessing plant in Rokkasho, electronic elder statesman Ryuichi Sakamoto has posted a handful of tracks for downloading and remixing.
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And continuing on the nuclear theme: set aside about ten minutes, turn your speakers down and commit to watching The Legacy of Chernobyl.

Be warned: this is as sad and obscene as anything I've ever posted. It's heartbreaking, but it should be seen.

2006-05-22T02:32:00.000-04:00

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 8: A Slow Dance + a Side of Syrup

Two uber-sweet rnb cheek-to-cheek ballads.
Freakazoid robots, find your sweetie and report to the dance floor, stat.

15. The Chanteclairs - I've Never Been There

Another case of not much recording and not much documentation, the little known Chanteclairs produced only four sides that I've been able to find, all of them in 1954 for Dot Records.

'I've Never Been There' is gently swinging doo wop with a train-like 'Happy Trails' beat. Great performance from the lead, too.

tell me more about it...

Not a whole lot of avenues to find more from The Chanteclairs but, if you gotta, you can buy the sixth volume of the Dot Doo-Wop Collection from Dead Dog Records. It contains three of the band's four extant songs, including 'I've Never Been There'.

Listen to this realaudio clip for The Chanteclairs only other A-side, 'Baby Please', courtesy The Doo Wop Net.

Read the story of the Gallatin, TN based Dot Records label.

16. The Flamingos - I'll Be Home

The Flamingos are one of the best-known bands of the doowop era, primarily for their memorable cover of the Dick Powell classic 'I Only Have Eyes for You'; which hip hop heads may best remember as the hook for The Fugees 'Zealots'. 'I'll Be Home', pressed in '55 on the Checker imprint at Chess Records, was the band's first big hit on the Billboard R&B and, as covered by Pat Boone, pop charts.

Beautiful echo-chamber vocals and lovely choral flourishes probably got many a debutante to give it up in the bucket seat.

Suggestive lyrics, too: "My time's about up, doll. So long until I'll be home to start serving you."

tell me more about it...

Not much Flamingos love (barring the obvious token 'I Only Have Eyes') on either iTunes or eMusic.
Amazon has a host of options, best boiled down to either the eleven buck Rhino best-of or the 'Collectors Only' twenty-six buck, two disc set; 'I'll Be Home' is part of both.

Visit the official Flamingos website, this interview heavy fanpage on Bob Davis' Soul Patrol (mind the embedded sound), the band's inductee page at The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and this surprisingly comprehensive wiki.

Listen to an album's worth of Flamingos classics.
It's realaudio, but you can't have everything.

A quarter million bucks buys a lot of cokes.

Everything you ever wanted to know about Flamingos but were afraid to ask.

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bonus glisten: delicious norwegian pizza jingle

Grandiosa - Respekt for Grandiosa (Lørdagspizza)

Grandiosa is a Norway based frozen pizza company whose products are phenomenally popular amongst Norwegians. Their pizzas are also exported to some of the outlying Scandi countries and to expats across Europe. The above song is the theme for their current advertising campaign and its popularity is hard to believe; it's topped the Norwegian pop charts for eight weeks, beating out Shakira, Rihanna, Mary J, Pink and Red Hot Chili Peppers.

That's-a spicy pizza!

Bouncy and synthetic as a ball of processed mozzarella, the Grandiosa jingle is just too good to go ignored by American pop listeners. Since we Yanks are unlikely to get hit by this particular not-sold-in-the-states ad wagon, I figure it's a public service to drop 'Grandiosa' on you as a bonus track. Respekt!

Visit the largely defunct Grandiosa website.

Watch the 'Respekt for Grandiosa' advert video.

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spiffy

Yeah, I remember The Inhumanoids too.
-
I'm only about five thousand sites behind on the audioblog list on the right (I'll likely have to take a week off from work to get it back together again before the end of the year), but here's three guys that have taken the model and run with it:

Good Hodgkins representing the Cleveland/Indie scene to the fullest.

Fidelisharium offers obscure, out-of-print full length albums, running the gamut from Yamaha organ demonstration discs to Nigerian high-life.

Basement Songs hails from a WNYU DJ; mostly hipster stuff but a sprinkling of offbeat world pop and electronic too.
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Poor widdle wallaby...
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I've been reading Paul Lukas' excellent Uni-Watch column on ESPN for almost a year now; it's an obsessive collection of sports uniform ephemera and evolution written in a style of dense hyperlink and opinionated rhetoric that will seem pretty familiar to any fans of th' Hut.

Dude finally got a Uni-Blog; go check it out.
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Bolly YouTube Gumnaam Fun comes in pairs.
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Gnarls Barkley hit NYC's Webster Hall today; anybody with tickets or label connection should drop me a line as I would love to see Cee-Lo live sooner rather than later.
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Insane props to controversial costumed Finnish deathmetalheads Lordi, on winning Eurovision, a feat best understood as GWAR winning American Idol or, less prosaically, Carrie winning Prom Queen and then killing her entire class with TK.

Watch Lordi's winning performance and read this interview with Lordi frontman, Tomi Putaansuu.
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8008135 and 800813 |)15(U5510|\|
NSFW, natch.
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I'm about three hundred emails behind; if you've written lately, please be patient. I'm gettin' to ya.

2006-05-15T03:22:00.000-04:00

Born on April Fool's Day, but Amos Milburn was nobody's fool ('cept maybe anagrammatically)

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 7: Amos Milburn

#13: Amos Milburn - Let Me Go Home, Whiskey

#14: Amos Milburn - Three Times A Fool

Amos Milburn is one of the missing links between the boogie down juke joints of the forties and the bad boy Southern rockers (think Presley, Fats Domino, Jerry Lee, Little Richard) of the fifties. His rough and tough rhythm and blues made him king of the roost for almost a decade on the RnB charts; the man put nineteen songs on the top ten between '48 and '54.

The two songs I've put up here are pretty indicative of the man's repertoire; both are fairly danceable rough and tumble fun. Both also carry dark messages under their catchy coat about the payment due for the good life. 'Let Me Go Home' is, more or less, about alcoholism and 'Three Times' is about cuckolding... but hey, it's a good time, man!

Let the record spin; let Amos sing and let's make a night of it.

tell me more about it...

Want more? Sure you do.

Hardly anything on iTunes but eMusic offers a solid best of; copies of the three disc Capitol box set sell for seventeen bucks used on Amazon and the two disc 'The Chicken Shack Boogie Man' compilation goes for thirteen simoleons at Elderly. Price looks right all around.

Listen to two more tracks from Amos at Livin' Blues.
'Bad Bad Whiskey' is not to be missed; you WILL be astonished.

You can also listen here to the Milburn holiday classic 'Christmas Comes But Once A Year' and to read an excellent brief on Amos from one of my all new favorite bloggers, Red Kelly.

Red runs not one, not two but three fabulous blogs of vinyl rippin' goodness, chock fulla soul and glory. The wise among you will get your bookmarkin' fingers ready when you click on these; dude's work is golden.

Read this extensive history of Milburn.

The internet, oddly enough doesn't offer many decent pictures of Milburn (though there's several lovely watermarked ones over at Redferns). If you'd like to get a better look at the man, I'd recommend this "badass" portrait from a fave cartoonist of mine, Jim Blanchard.

Have some fun with whiskey.

Looks like Milburn's heirs are putting together a hopefully-soon-to-be-live official website; here's hoping it comes to fruition soon.

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spiffy

A few hundred of the 90's best hip hop singles; add your own, but don't forget to Control+F.
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Wrap that Rottweiller
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I often ask myself, where can I go for my Ernie Hudson fix? At last, my dreams are answered.
I kid; I love the guy.
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It ain't where yer from, it's where yer at.
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The Carolina Chocolate Drops
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404? Or something more?
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This little webslinging game is not recommended for the obsessive; it's tough to put down.

I crapped out at 1100. Best of luck.
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Wii?
Wii.
Wiiiiiiii!

2006-05-10T01:04:00.000-04:00

nothing is more appropriate for children than a talking sugar cube with killer gams

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 6: Box o' Chocolates

#11: Eddie Banks and The Five Dreamers - Sugar Diabetes

Two grab bag singles today, one that's just knock-down good and the other more of an oddity.

'Sugar Diabetes is the treat; it's another no-hit wonder for you. As best as I can see, The Five Dreamers released four sides of music total, only two with Eddie Banks and all of it, for all intents and purposes, is functionally out of print. Regardless of their skimpy track record, this track is an A1 charmer; a novelty cut that can run with 'Rockin' Pneumonia' anyday.

This swingin' sweety features some real killer one-liners, as Eddie invites the honey-pie of his eye to "stick your finger in my coffee" and dubbing her to have "more sugar in one kiss than a Baby Ruth factory".

tell me more about it...

Obscure and offbeat yes, but not genuinely RARE; though 'Sugar Diabetes' somehow eludes a listing in the otherwise generally reliable Both Sides Now Discography, you can buy an excellent looking import compilation of 50's soul on the Jubilee/Josie label that contains 'Sugar' from Amazon for a ten spot.
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Read more about it.
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Explore this historical diabetes timeline
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"Why people believe they have sugar rather than diabetes is not clear."
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Wilford Brimley knows Beetix

#12: Ray Charles - I Found My Baby (end clipped)

So here's an odd little rarity: a 1950 track from Ray Charles in its reissued 1960's form. 'St. Pete Florida Blues' was originally released in '51 when Brother Ray found his way into the sunshine state; this single was reissued several times over the next decade or two, sometimes as 'St. Pete', sometimes as 'I Found My Baby There' and sometimes (as on this Time label issue) as 'I Found My Baby'.

There's a good reason why this little-known track is, well, so little-known: it's pretty minor. 'I Found My Baby' is Ray doing low-key troubadouring in a voice that's not quite yet his own. By far the most interesting part of the song is the oddball scat singing, something I don't think I've ever heard Charles do on any other song.

You may notice some odd warping of sound on this song; that's not intentional. The record this was dubbed from was pressed off-center; the grooves are somewhat off-kilter. That explains the clipped ending; the record simply won't play to the end. You'll hear the weirdest wobble in the sound on the aforementioned vocal scat solo; Ray's voice weaves into strange and impossible keys as the stylus cuts into unbalanced grooves. It's a nice example of a sound that's personal to the specific album. I rather like it, but I imagine you might not, so if you'd like to purchase yourself a clean recording, more info follows...

tell me more about it...

Lots of ways to purchase this and several other early rarities from the Charles catalog, you can buy a copy of the King label 'Ray Charles: The Early Years' disc from Amazon or you can buy
a four track EP of Ray's Miami recordings direct from Henry Stone, one of Charles' first producers.

If you'd prefer to opt for the online route, you can get these tracks on iTunes or eMusic; your choice.
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Visit Brother Ray on the web.
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I wrote up a big ol' link-heavy tribute to Ray when he died back in '04; the music links are dead, but there's plenty to click around to and explore.
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Find your baby in St. Pete.

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spiffy

And now, a koan: Black People. White People.
Honestly, I sometimes just open this in a separate window for, say, four or five hours until its sublime and poignant message becomes a part of me.

I'd love to hear more about the history on this little gem. Anybody know who made it?
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The indispensible Hollywood Animation Archive Project Blog has an incredible selection of the work of legendary cartoonist, Milt "That's My Pop!" Gross!
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At home with The Zappas.
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For those of us too cheap or simply wise enough not to engage in the freebasing that is World of Warcraft, you can experience a fast and free Murloc RPG right here.

I'm finishing up my first scratch-built computer with the help of an IT buddy; we're back to the drawing board for RAM that'll fit the motherboard and some SATA cables, but I should have a rip-roarin'-no-crashin' machine up pretty shortly. If you, like me, wanna know how them things work, take a peek here.
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Pirolettes look useless and expensive and I want one.
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The Starlight Mints - 'Submarine #3' Toon Mix
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Guinness: Lee 'Scratch' Perry approved.
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Last chance for the music in the first post of the Lucky 13 series; it comes down on Friday.

Get it while it's lukewarm.

2006-05-05T01:08:00.000-04:00

not too hot, but she ain't no Lena the Hyena

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 5: Ugly Women Sing th' Blues

#9: Big Mama Maybelle - That's A Pretty Good Love

Big Maybelle had a voice with as much kick as a mule and the heft of a sledgehammer. That's a Pretty Good Love has one of my fave lyrics of any of The Lucky 13 tracks: "Ain't much to look at and I won't win a prize / When it comes to lovin', I'll open your eyes."

I ain't the tattoo type, but that sounds like a good logo to me.

tell me more about it...

Big Mama Maybelle's music is fairly easily available; you can buy the two-disc Savoy Maybelle best-of 'Blues, Candy and Big Maybelle' from Barnes and Noble for thirty two bucks or download both discs from iTunes for ... $46!?
Man, this internet music revolution is really something, eh?
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Read this Big Maybelle Bio; poor lady fell victim to heroin, diabetes and stress and it drove her to a too early grave. Raise a glass.
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Listen to two other Big Maybelle tracks in full length MP3 form (courtesy of
Livin' Blues), including the awe-inspiring Rain Down Rain.
Just... wow.
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Explore Big Maybelle's discography.
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Necessary dap to blogmeister Reverend Frost's Spread the Good Word who big upped Big Maybelle about a year ago and... what's this?

He's got an album out? I detect a trend! Alert the NY Times!
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My Yiddisha Ugly Woman
-
Nice try, no cigar.

#10: Pearl Reeves (Reaves?) and the Concords - I'm Not Ashamed

The Concords recorded all of two records and Reeves only saw six sides, but there's plenty to love in that short history. The big and memorable hit was 'You Can't Stay Here', of which 'I'm Not Ashamed' is the B-side.

FWIW, I've seen a picture of Pearl Reeves that was clipped from the ad for this single and Pearl was a serious knockout. "Ugly woman," my sweet patootie.

tell me more about it...

If you simply MUST own a copy of this track on CD or, more likely, you'd like to hear more of the same, you can buy 'Rare 1950's Boston Doo Wops' from Dead Dog Records.
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Read this history of the Concords.
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Listen to Pearl and The Concords big hit, 'You Can't Stay Here';
courtesy of the amazing Hound, whose archives you should be plundering just as fast as your mouse can click.

Really, this is a link that may just make your year. 32 kbps or not; thar's gold in them thar pages!
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The Concords eventually went on to become The Solitaires; click the link and find out where they ended up.
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'Ugly' mom sues ABC for nixing makeover
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All the old timers know that I loved me some ugly women
since before ugly was cool.

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spiffy

Yes, they're sinfully hipster and obscenely expensive, but these Salvor animal pillows are entirely too cool to front on.

The girl and I have Pearl the Squirrel and Watson the Dachshund on the couch; I can think of few things nicer than a menagerie of animal pillows to recline upon, except perhaps a flotilla of tape babies.
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Dubplate style
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Enthusiastic but Mediocre wrought umlauts which begat Enthusiastic but Mediocre; forever and ever, amen.
So go get you some Euro/World Pop excitement, eh?
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Oooooh, mysterious.
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In another strange case of life imitating art, Mikey really will eat anything.
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Super Mario Soundboard D-Lux
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WFMU's Beware of the Blog has long since become one of the most important and consistently necessary sites on this big ol' intarweb; if you still doubt, then I suggest you find yourself some religion.

2006-05-03T01:30:00.000-04:00

decades later, after the accident

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glisten - Lucky 13 Pt. 4: Percy Mayfield

#7: Percy Mayfield - Sugar Mama, Peachy Papa

#8: Percy Mayfield - The Voice Within

Talk about a hard row to hoe, Percy Mayfield sure had one. At thirty, Percy fought his way to the top of the hill with a self-penned number one R+B single, 'Please Send Me Someone To Love'. His movie-star looks and songwriting chops put him in the running to become one of the first great pop stars of the fifties but two years later, Mayfield gets in a horrendous car crash that terribly and irrevocably disfigures him.

He spends months recovering, writing and, finally, touring again. Mayfield spends the next seven years on the road, fighting depression and alcoholism. His songwriting had always focussed on a dark inner life (Percy's first published singles included 'Two Years of Torture' and 'Life Is Suicide') and the fallout from his accident fuels a number of macabre blues ballads that would become standards, among them 'Stranger in My Own Town' and 'The River's Invitation'.

By 1961, Mayfield has pinballed from Specialty to Chess to Imperial and appears to have reached the end of his career when he sells a song to Ray Charles titled 'Hit the Road Jack'. The tune is a massive jackpot and, knowing a good thing when he hears one, Ray signs Mayfield to his newly formed Tangerine label. Mayfield stays with Tangerine to the end of the sixties, but eventually moves on to write tracks for RCA Victor until the mid seventies, when he effectively retires. In 1984, not yet sixty-five, Mayfield passes away.

The two tracks I have up today showcase Mayfield's intensity, virtuosity and versatility as both a songwriter and a performer.

'Sugar Mama, Peachy Papa', Mayfield's duet with obscure rnb singer Joy Hamilton, is a pop gem; bouncy and sweet as molasses. Frothy and full of nonsensical scatting, it's a wonderfully syncopated call and response, uptempo swinging sunshine that's utterly frown-proof.

'The Voice Within,' on the other hand, gives a look into Mayfield's harsh inner world. Essentially a schizophrenic interior argument for suicide, 'Voice' is driven by buzzing demonic saxophones, death-march drums and a skeletal, tripping piano line. It's less a blues and more a malaise. Both songs are amazing listens and memorable melodies; if this is your first time meeting Mr. Mayfield, I imagine you'll be hungry for more.

tell me more about it...

Both of these tracks hail from 'Memory Pain' the second volume of the outstanding two disc Percy Mayfield best of. You can buy the discs from Amazon for fifteen bucks a pop or from Oldies.com for a few dollars less.

If you'd rather download, both iTunes and eMusic have the greatest hits; neither, unfortunately, has the gorgeous Rhino handmade Tangerine/Atlantic set that tracks Percy's later and equally impressive work. The disc is long out of print and starts at the usurious price of a hundred bucks on Amazon.
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Read this bio.

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spiffy

Kim Cooper and Nathan Marsak run an occasional LA bus tour that explores some of the darker spots of Los Angeles' criminal history. Over the course of 2005, Kim and Nathan have taken their interests online, obsessively blogging the police blotters and local dustups and murders of 1947 L.A..

Recently, they've started a new project with the same bent, only they've dialed the wayback machine this time to 1907.

Lots of great newspaper clips and plenty of film clips as well; it's a clear porthole to an earlier, equally complicated time.
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King Hippo, we hardly knew ye.
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I'm sure all you 1337 kids already know how to save youtube and googlevideo movies as mpegs, so I won't even bother telling you.
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I strongly support drawing on things. Just not on people.
That kind of thing leads to Mr. Cool Ice.

Apparently, he had a T-shirt company design the tat in Corel Draw. Arial Black is forever, I guess.
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The last statements of everyone executed in Texas since 1982.
All three hundred and sixty two of them.
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"showPAN's Sharezo No. 1 in b min, op. 20 ".
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All kinds of cool and geeky print for sale at fairly reasonable prices from Nucleus Gallery in California.
Your tastes may vary; look around the page a bit as there's flavor variation throughout.
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Last I heard, there was no more limbo; which is probably for the best, all things considered.