-
Recent Posts
- Liz Green: Displacement Song
- Dub Collision mix: Common Folk Song (jazz traditions 2011)
- Dub Collision mix: Crunch Dance (jazz fusions 2011)
- Dub Collision mix: One Last More Miles (Blues & Soul 2011)
- Dub Collision mix Monday Rollerz (DNB etz 2011)
- Sonic Touch: Episode 5
- Perpetuum Jazzile, Slovenian Choir
- Senzari’s Formulaic Fail
- Dub Collision mix: Current Figures (slow music 2011)
- Sonic Touch Show #3
Pages
squareONE web:
Imaginal Musicology
Kamelmauz on Bandcamp
-
-
Follow Kamelmauz
Category Archives: soul & pop
Neko Case – Prison Girls
Can you identify the other players?
Posted in soul & pop, video
Leave a comment
Robbie Returns
Kevin O’Hare interviewed Robbie Robertson about his new album. The above video is from that page. …Robbie journeys to make a record with Eric Clapton. Yay.
There’s a comment on the page for this video praising the band at the same time the writer offer the group didn’t “have the perfect guitarist.” …caused me to chuckle. My three favorite rock guitarists who don’t slip a slide on their little finger are Clarence White, Robbie Robertson, and Richard Thompson, so, I’m admittedly biased in feeling Robertson wasn’t only the perfect guitarist for The Band, but is also a perfect guitarist, as he goes about subjecting his virtuosity to his soul’s expressive and poetic wishes.
Wrapping Up 2010 V. Blues, Soul and Funk
| BLUES | SOUL | FUNK-NU JAZZ |
 Buddy Guy Living Proof |
 Janelle Monae The ArchAndroid |
 Trombone Shorty Backtown |
| Janiva Magness The Devil Is An Angel Too |
Karen Lovely Still the Rain |
Otis Grove The Runk |
| Pinetop Perkins & Willie Big Eyes Smith Joined at the Hip |
Mavis Staples You Are Not Alone |
The Haggis Horns Keep On Movin’ |
| Carolina Chocolate Drops Genuine Negro Jig |
Betty LaVette Interpretations-The British Rock Songbook |
Little Axe Bought For a Dollar, Sold For a Dime |
| REISSUES-ARCHIVE |
 Aretha Franklin-King Curtis Live at the Fillmore |
| Junior Wells & the Aces Live in Boston 1966 |
Last in my year-end accounting come blues, soul, and funk. Funk serves as a catch-all. In important respects the umbrella class is rhythm and blues. In recent years this class doesn’t get enough attention. The main reason for this is that I tend reach for old classic Chicago blues and southern soul when I want to scratch my itch. For funk my habit is to pull out Fela, The Meters, James Brown, and others. These predilections do not imply my global value judgment about recent rhythm and blues. I have to narrow my attention simply as matter of time, and, I’m as enthusiastic about the gems here and deeper on my list, as I am about anything else I’ve put my ears to this year.
The fact of the matter is that in this summary sits the one record I’d dare to elevate to be my record of the year. We’ll get to this honor shortly.
Buddy Guy is 74 years old. He originally was a leading light of the second wave of Chicago electric bluesmen, establishing his signature sound starting in 1965 with his debut for Delmark and the classic six sides made with Junior Wells for producer Sam Charters, forever enshrined on volume one of Chicago/The Blues/Today, (Vanguard Records.) It’s fitting the two most thrilling records of electric blues I heard last year came from the elder statesman Guy, Living Proof, and his off-and-on partner, Junior Wells, Live in Boston 1966.
The latter record captures a working band on a working night. The recording is serviceable, the playing sturdy and locked in. The music provides a time machine back to a time when this was how blues drummers drummed and blues bass players played. We are here talking about Dave Myers and Fred Below. Louis Myers is on guitar. Wells, thirty-one at the time of this club date had been plying his trade for 15 years by this night. He, and a handful of others, were about to enjoy a brief enlightening run through college town clubs, hippie ballrooms and main stages, such as the two Fillmores. Here, we’re on the cusp of the Chicago blues coming to town. Rock and roll would never be the same.
Buddy Guy is without any doubt the preeminent guitarist of the Chicago blues sound. He is also a survivor, whose long recording career has demonstrated his keen ability to evolve his artistry with the currents of change in Black popular music. A confident player, sometimes he can seem to coast while cranking out the tried-and-true. He’s always been a terrific singer, and my hope with each outing over the years is that it go beyond mere everything falling into place. No problem with Living Proof: Guy goes right for the heart of the matter with the first track, etching slashing, psychedelic blues lines as only he can do. From there, he’s so on that cameos by B.B.King and Carlos Santana are as frosting–sweet augmentation. Greatly advantaged by the arrangements and recording, this strikes me as the most invigorating blues record of the new century, so far.
New Orleans R&B has equal standing with Chicago blues in my funked-up world. Trombone Shorty, I’m sure, means to amuse on Backtown, a record preceded by a reputation somehow gathered up and delivered on the ethers. He’s good to this advance world. Although the NOLA brass band is central to a number of big easy ritual musics, here various conventions get stretched and hammered into bottom heavy funk only Shorty is thumping out. Backtown is razor sharp in execution and smile-inducing in its borrowings from the Caribbean, urban funk, Wonderesque soul, and fusion jazz. Crazy good.
I’d like to offer a concoction: a bit of Peggy Lee, a bit more David Bowie, and a liberal helping ofThe Fugees. Hmmm, you’re shaking your head? Let me adjust this mix then. Sprinkle some Queen and David Axelrod into the pot. Huh, you don’t know who Axelrod is? Okay, sounds unappetizing, but just take a sip.
Janelle Monáe. The ArchAndroid, Ms. Monáe’s second record, and one which continues her suite, Metropolis, is one of those musical moments I wouldn’t of thought possible. Her earlier record didn’t trip my triggers and then she signed on Bad Boy, and joined Diddy‘s stable of has-beens and wannabees.
So what happens? She forges the most ingenious and extravagant and utterly unique slab of neo-everything since Prince’s heyday.
Here’s an excerpt from Pitchfork’s review.
The songs zip gleefully from genre to genre, mostly grounded in R&B and funk, but spinning out into rap, pastoral British folk, psychedelic rock, disco, cabaret, cinematic scores, and whatever else strikes her fancy. It’s about as bold as mainstream music gets, marrying the world-building possibilities of the concept album to the big tent genre-mutating pop of Michael Jackson and Prince in their prime. Monáe describes The ArchAndroid as an “emotion picture,” an album with a story arc intended to be experienced in one sitting, like a movie. It most certainly works in this way, but at first blush, it’s almost too much to take in all at once. The first listen is mostly about being wowed by the very existence of this fabulously talented young singer and her over-the-top record; every subsequent spin reveals the depths of her achievement.
Here, I’ll poor you a full glass.
Posted in blues, soul & pop, yearly recap
1 Comment
Dub Collision mix: One Track Mind
1-Ike & Tina – Funkier Than a Mosquita’s Tweeter 2:33
2-Finger – Téléphone 3:50
3-Graham Central Station – It’s Alright 3:48
4-Un Aio Black – Yeah Yeah Yeah 3:05
5-Fred Wesley – Out Of Sight (feat. DJizzle) 2:23
6-Roland Stone – Honky Tonk Woman 4:33
7-Fishbelly Black – Brick House 5:44
8-Groove Robbers Feat. Dj Shadow – Last Stop 2:25
9-Talking Heads – Slippery People 3:55
10-Nightmares On Wax – What I’m Feelin’ (Rae + Christian Mix) 6:21
11-Jeff Beck – Grease Monkey 3:32
12-Mr. Scruff – Nice Up the Function (feat. Roots Manuva) 3:52
13-Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings – Give It Back (live) 3:21
14-The Cinematic Orchestra – Channel 1 Suite 3:44
15-The Meters – Hang ‘Em High 3:23
16-Afros Band – Right On Right Off 2:44
17-Fila Brazillia – Speewah 3:53
18-Herbie Hancock – Nobu 7:07
19-Otis Grove – Basket Case 3:47
20-Docteur Nico & African Fiesta Sukisa – Canchita 3:55
I’ve been planning on doing a hard funk mix for sometime, and then when I get around to it instead I end up with a funk and groove and hip hop and breaks and soul melange, stretched over 40+ years, and between the first fuky world and Africa and the Caribbean. Here is Ike and Tina and Doctor Nico, as well as very fresh Otis Grove, Fishbelly Black and Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings. As the kids say, “It’s all good.”
Hat tip to Duze, who kindly turned me onto to late Nawlins local icon Roland Stone. John Sinclair–the John Sinclair–has the scoop on Mr. Stone.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
download tagged for iPod | 320kbs | Megaupload
Posted in art of rhythm, Beats & Breaks, Dub Collision Mix, soul & pop
1 Comment
Judith Owen and the Cool Life
Judith Owen. superb. As it sometimes happens, I’m late to the show but this record is definitely a topper for last year. It never occurred to me Richard Thompson’s recently favored harmony singer and duet partner had a career of her own. Then she appears on a Michael Feldman rerun today and I’m gripped hard. The story of this record is it was shelved by Capitol and it took Owen the better part of a decade to free it up and have at it again.
This isn’t the first time I’ve been late like this: Cat Power, Bjork, Shawn Colvin, Julia Fordham, Feist, Ursula Rucker, and others seemed to mark my radar screen long after their initial flights. Better late than never. …time to play catch-up! Heck, by the time I got it, she’s recorded eight records.
Soul Moves 1000 Miles From Memphis
3 stars
1/2 star
The new records by radio icons Sheryl Crow and Cyndy Lauper showcase, no doubt, the singers’ deep desire to make soul and blues music for their aging audiences. Because both established long ago their stylistic ranges, both records come across as experimental self-indulgence. Each also slides into the odd ‘career move’ track of many an aging musician whose recognizable niche has lapsed.
Crow, when she stays in the range of mildly gritty L.A. folk-rock and pop, has proved an enduring hit maker. Lauper, who burst on the scene as a quirky singer of MOR rock melded with dance-pop, has, over the last ten years, wed her–nowadays–creaky soprano to a chameleon-like ability to tune into what’s left of radio-friendly pop trends.
Here both make left turns onto the soul road. It provides an object lesson in the risk of self-indulgence. I don’t like to thrash music on the blog, but Crow’s record, 100 Miles From Memphis, is excruciatingly mild and denatured. She doesn’t have a stirring voice, yet the problem is the gulf between the expert backing and her seemingly complete lack of feel for the material. When I finished listening to it, I thought, ‘Well, strip the vocals and you have an excellent karaoke bed.’ Too bad, Sheryl chose to lie in it. Stick with Nora Jones, folks.
Cyndy Lauper, on Memphis Blues, compensates for her own unlikely appropriation of bluesy material, by simply wailing through the tunes, and doing so with help from Allen Toussaint, B.B.King and Anne Peebles. The result is a mediocre soul/blues record, but a pretty good blast of Lauper having a bunch of fun. Her greater emphasis on a kind of blues party atmosphere helps. Enjoyable; I hope Cyndi got it out of her system.
Still, I think, ‘poor Memphis.’ Now, where did I put that Betty LaVette CD?
When I’m 64
If you sense the large energy somehow captured in this photograph of Bettye Lavette, then imagine what its sonic equivalent sounds like. (biography) I saw her perform before a partially packed house at The Beachland Ballroom several years ago, and it was both the most soulful singing and most intense soul performance I’ve had the pleasure to be overwhelmed by.
She’s released a new record, one with an unlikely concept, Interpretations: The British Rock Songbook. Except it’s Bettye, and she could sing a phone book into fire and fury.
Here’s the trailer.
This record will be there at the end of the year.
Denise Sullivan’s article at Crawdaddy, Betty Lavette. When the Blues Catch Up to You, includes this capsule professional bio:
Once or twice in her promising career the soul songstress had the rug pulled out from under her cha-cha heels. The story of her long-waged war on going unheard started in 1962 when, at the age of 16, she was dropped from her label on the eve of a tour to promote “My Man—He’s a Lovin’ Man”, her Top 10 R&B hit. There was another less notorious incident, when “Let Me Down Easy” (a sweet and low slice of mid-’60s soul released by another record company) failed to take the world by storm as planned. But LaVette’s infamous blow came in ‘72, on a second bet with Atlantic, following the completion of her session in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, with the Memphis Horns. It was hoped that the masterful Child of the Seventies would be her overdue breakthrough, though the record was inexplicably locked in a vault for the next 28 years.
Between ‘62 and ‘02, LaVette recorded (she charted R&B a few more times) and performed, though she was often relegated to hotel bars and stages even less illustrious. “The same show you see now I was doing for $50 a night. That’s the way I was raised. That’s the way I work mine,” she says. And yet the stone survivor hasn’t lost her ability to laugh at what’s been framed as her tragic fate. “I figured that if I could live long enough to get over to everyone’s house and do a show on their porch, I could get to ‘em all,” she says. Meanwhile, offstage she fielded dumb-ass questions like, “Didn’t you used to be Bettye LaVette?”
And then, at the turn of the century, the winds of change started to blow for the artist who was once and always Bettye LaVette. First off, a French record label dug up the tapes of Child of the Seventies and released it as Souvenirs, setting the gears in motion for her now-famous comeback “from the crypt,” as she calls it. By 2004, a collection of newly recorded works, A Woman Like Me, had earned her a W.C. Handy Award for contemporary blues achievement. Her steady and recent ascendance is owed to the critical and commercial acceptance by rock audiences for two albums recorded and released in the last three years for hipster haven, Anti Records, starting with 2005’s I’ve Got My Own Hell to Raise (a collection of songs produced by Joe Henry and written by women, among them Aimee Mann, Sinead O’Connor, and Fiona Apple). But mostly it’s last year’s Scene of the Crime, for which she returned to Muscle Shoals to record 10 handpicked songs produced by herself, David Barbe, and Patterson Hood of Drive-By Truckers that brings it all back home for LaVette and kicks things up a notch.
Bettye sings her tale best of all.
Swingin’ on A Star
From the youtube goldmine, soulsters Spooky and Sue, (Iwan Groenendijk and Sue Chaloner,) ebulliently lip-synching over a boho-soul workout. They had 4 Dutch top twenty hits and it was over. Holland was where they found success, yet Spooky was from Aruba, Sue from the UK. They broke up their partnership in 1977, leaving some fine party tunes to be rediscovered in our era–when all sorts of dim traces of brief comets can be followed back to their source.
A Grey Day In Cape Town
Taxijam presents the amazing Zaki Ibrahim! from taxijam on Vimeo.
“Daylight” by Zaki Ibrahim (myspace). Taxijam puts musicians in taxi cabs in Cape Town and its environs and lets the video camera roll. It’s a very fresh approach because the singular atmosphere is nevertheless opened up to the daily life of a most extraordinary, vibrant city.
Zaki’s site is splendid too, as is her jazzy trip hop. Nice write-up in the Huffington Post…
