Month: September 2017

Two very short stories from the Filthy Friends show

Three weeks ago, I went to the Bell House to see Filthy Friends. I had two main reasons for going: one was Peter Buck, the ex-R.E.M. guitarist, and the other was the lead singer, Corin Tucker, best known as one-third of Sleater-Kinney. They’re artists whose work I’ve enjoyed a lot; why not trek an hour away with a slight head cold to see them in a group I don’t know at all in its current incarnation? Such are the thoughts of a music blogger.

 

While sitting outside the main room during the opening act, I noticed a group of people standing close by, talking to each other and excitedly catching up on their lives. It didn’t occur to me to wonder who they were until one of them briefly swiped into the employees-only area. It turns out that I recognize by Peter Buck his guitar playing, not his face. This is at least a little embarrassing, given that Buck was the only one I’d seen play before. (Although after being hypnotized by Linda Pitmon’s drumming, I’m going to be keeping an eye out for her and her other projects, too.)

 

Corin Tucker took me no time at all to recognize once the show began–she was standing center stage, with that unmistakable voice. At one point between songs, she was holding the mic in one hand and stepped too close to the monitor and got a squeal of feedback. She looked a little flustered and essentially apologized for making such a rookie mistake. She said that in her “other band” she never holds the mic in her hand; she’s always got her guitar and is standing in one spot, so she can’t make that mistake. One of the other band members said “Your other band X-Ray Spex?” Tucker’s response was “Yes. My other band X-Ray Spex” in a tone of “I wish, buddy.”

Now I really want to hear Corin Tucker cover “Oh Bondage! Up Yours!” Just put these two together:

and

On Being a Fan – The Fifth Dimension

Over Labor Day weekend, we were hanging out with a bunch of friends up in California’s Gold County. It’s a group that has been spending long summer weekends together for a while. Every once in awhile some new people are there, so new things to find out about them. One of the women there hadn’t heard of The Fifth Dimension, so we all broke into an a capella version of “Bill” not particularly in tune, but enthusiastic.

The Fifth Dimension were an odd group in many ways. It was a black pop group that was really pop, not popified soul, like some Motown efforts. It covered a lot of Laura Nyro*, who wasn’t much (isn’t much) known in the mainstream pop world. It was also willing to show a goofy lightness that wasn’t often seen in black groups of the period**.  They could cover the music from Hair and Jim Webb’s songs, along with Nyro’s work and no one seemed to think it odd.

There’s often been a siloing of American popular music, with largely white pop over here, African American forms over there, Latino forms over on that side, with some conscious cross-fertilization and some leakage.

The Fifth Dimension never seemed to notice where the lines were.

*Laura Nyro will get her own On Being a Fan post at some point.

**This thought deserves some more development too.

Track Nineteen: “Not Dark Yet,” Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer

The second Dylan cover on this mix. What can I say? We live in Dylanesque times, full of pop culture-distorted battles between good and evil in almost unrecognizable guises. This song wasn’t the closing track on Shelby Lynne and Allison Moorer’s 2017 album, something that astounds me—maybe it’s because it’s the title track instead. I find it somber on happy days—shadows are falling—and oddly hopeful on despairing days. It’s not dark yet.

Road Trip

I recently took a road trip with my 16-year-old, not-yet-licensed son to give him practice driving on a crowded interstate. We have an ironclad rule in our family: the driver gets to pick the music. So we spent many hours listening to his musical choices. I reached two conclusions: first, the kid’s musical taste is mostly all right, and second, it’s impossible to listen with fresh ears to music I’ve hated for almost 40 years.

He started off with Arctic Monkeys’ second album, Favourite Worst Nightmare. I haven’t listened to it much but it’s right in one of my sweet spots: driving and skittery melodic rock played by skinny British young men. On a quick listen, the album revisits some of the territory of Blur’s The Great Escape and Britpop but with a more punked-up edge and an overlay of Smiths-style sarcasm and melancholy. My kid is an accomplished drummer, and the drumming on this album is a treat. Here’s the album’s hit “Fluorescent Adolescent” (be forewarned that video is basically clowns fighting middle aged men underneath a bridge).

 

We listened next to an album that he’s been into for a couple of years and that I really dig as well: Modal Soul by Nujabes; Nujabes was the stage name of Japanese composer, producer and DJ Jun Seba. His work is a gorgeous mix of jazz and soulful beats with a really lush, often melancholy feeling that rewards close listening but works equally well as a soundtrack. Nujabes often featured underground hip-hop artists like CYNE, Apani B, and Shing02. Unfortunately he was killed in a car accident several years ago. Here’s Feather (featuring Cise Star and Akin of CYNE):

 

We had driven almost two hours but he had made no comments about what we were listening to. Then, when Modal Soul was over, he turned the volume down and said “I think this is my favorite album of all time. It doesn’t sound as good as it could on the car speakers, though.” He turned the volume back up and I heard a robotic woman’s voice saying “hello, this is your midnight marauder program.” Yes! It was a much beloved old favorite that I hadn’t listen to him quite a while: A Tribe Called Quest’s Midnight Marauders. Although I hadn’t listen to it for at least five years, I had heard it so many times in the past that every beat and lyric was familiar. In true hideously embarrassing mom fashion, I even rapped along – “I roll with Shaheed and the brother Abstract.” “Stop that,” he said and rolled his eyes. As we got close to the end of the album, I asked him what he likes about it. He thought for a while and said, “it’s so complex. There’s so much going on musically under the surface. But you need headphones to hear it all.” Here’s the first single from Midnight Marauders, “Award Tour,” featuring Trugoy from De La Soul.

As Midnight Marauders finished, we pulled off the highway, got some drinks and switched drivers. I had enjoyed the music my kid selected, as well as the little peak into what he thinks about and values in music, so I told him to fire up another album. I suddenly heard the sounds of a band I have hated for 40 years. Grotesquely proggy electric guitar, ornate and overwrought keyboards, and a singer whose high tenor and falsetto have all the subtlety and resonance of a dentist’s drill. It was Boston. Boston is the precisely the type of hyperbolic and soulless classic rock that The Ramones and The Sex Pistols and The Clash and The B-52s and dozens of other bands ground into dust and swept out the door as far as I’m concerned. But I didn’t want to rail on his selection and hurt his feelings, so I bit my tongue and listened to the whole superslick overwrought fatuous mess. When it was over, I asked him in the most neutral tone possible why he liked it. He gave me a suspicious stare and said, “I don’t know. It sounds good.”

And even though I don’t agree with him about Boston, at the end of the day, why else do we listen to music except that it sounds good?

 

Track Fifteen: “Just Like Honey,” The Jesus and Mary Chain

There’s a playlist I made years ago, trying to get at a sound I really liked but had no word for. It’s titled “Synth, Fuzz, and Chimes” and has songs from The Cure, Talking Heads, and the softer side of the Smashing Pumpkins. Finally, just this year, I found out the word for that sound; it’s “shoegaze,” and this is one of the things it sounds like. Perhaps this entire blogging, mix-making project is just trying to find words for what I experience when I listen to music. I’m glad this word was already there.