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Category Archives: web of music
Bizness and Materials
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Unofficial video featuring title track from Ry Cooder’s new record.
Ry Cooder is pissed off. I’ve been tracking his music for over forty years, and this is the most pissed off he’s been so far. He wraps an interview with Lynell George about his excellent new record Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down this way,
“These times call for a very different kind of protest song. ‘Where Have All the Flowers Gone?’ We’re way down the road from that.”
In a new review of the album, Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down “is in the tradition of the great titles of Woody Guthrie and Haywire Harry McClintlock.” Reviewer Cory Doctorow describes the album’s songs as “a combination of Mexican-style corridos, stomping blues, shitkicking C&W tracks, and other forms of great American music, tackling such themes as financial corruption, immigration, the plight of migrant workers, the double sorrow of dying for a war based on a lie, and other outrages of the modern age.”
Ry’s site at Nonesuch is great.
A Buddy and Two Steves
Buddy Miller, he of mad guitar skills, aces songwriter and singer, and on-call auteur for Robert Plant and Emmylou Harris, has defied the usual odds in assembling an all-star confab featuring his picking with that of Bill Frisell, Marc Ribot and Greg Leisz. Farm meets downtown–and Majestic Silver Strings‘ conceptual variety, understatement, guest vocalists, including Emmylou, Shawn Colvin, (and, hold on, Chocolate Genius,) plus the featured felicitous interplay spark a sterling set. (Interview)
new disc by Canadian multi-instrumentalist Steve Dawson
In the same vein, although not at all low key, is Canadian jack-of-all-string trades Steve Dawson‘s latest recording Nightshade. Dawson’s is a slide and steel guitar specialist, he’s a good enough songwriter to offset his workmanlike singing with a slew of bright, at times country-funky, essays in good time rock and roll. Dawson is similar to Ry Cooder, Sonny Landreth, and Dave Lindley. Good company of course, and the Juno award winner definitely deserves a wider audience in the states, with his third solo recording.
(For pedal steel enthusiasts, his instrumental date from 2008, Telescope, is essential.)
For just a moment I mistook Chicago’s Steve Dawson for his Canadian counterpart, when I searched at Bandcamp. Must have been the steel and slide guitar scattered throughout his fine record from last year, I Will Miss the Trumpet and the Drums. Songs from that record pop up on his live date from April 2011, Live at Simons. A little bit looser than the earlier record, it attractively squares a jazzy ambience–with vibraphone–with Dawson’s mid-tempo folk-rock, while also plugging in some sauntering instrumentals, featuring his band.
He’s on Bandcamp, so one can try out any of his four BC records.
In addition: Steve Dawson web home, where this beguiling video is featured.
Mastodons from steve dawson on Vimeo.
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Alluring, Ancient Future Voice
The Iranian-born, now US-based, singer, composer and auteur of dazzlingly original music, Sussan Deyhim, came to my attention on a track by the pianist Janis Mattox, embedded in the classic Asphodel compilation, Swarm of Drones in 1995. (The Asphodel drone series, three sets and seven discs, launched, literally, tens of my sonic quests.) The Mattox track stood out because Pauline Oliveros was there, and she’s a touchstone of mine for twenty years. For Deyhim’s part, she’s a soft ripple in the track’s wordless atmosphere. Yet, it led me to a recording she made with Richard Horowitz from seven years before this introduction, Desert Equations – Azax Attra (Made to Measure) and I was transfixed.
Sussan Deyhim & Richard Horowitz – Desert Equations – Azax Attra
If asked to describe Deyhim’s art, and she’s another artist I am moved to hear every last note, I would do her nowhere near enough justice by suggesting she is a middle eastern Meredith Monk. Going deeper, Deyhim, who started as a masterful dancer in Tehran, strikes me as a musician for whom the gestural and kinetics and movement of dance is deeply ingrained in her music. Knowing dancers dance to music, here, the music sounds to the dance.
Sussan Deyhim & Bill Laswell – Meykhaneh
In 2008, having released records infrequently, but having collaborated also with Peter Gabriel, Robert Rich and Bill Laswell, (and others,) she made up for her modest output by releasing five records on her own label, Venus Rising. These included unreleased sessions going back seven years and encompassed her entire range, from austere spiritual chants to beat driven downtempo to startling experimental flights. Deyhim’s flood of music left me hoping for even more.
Her new album, City of Leaves, dials back the experimental mission for the sake of recapitulating her multiple perspectives on her own sound. Still, and as always, her mettle as composer and singer and sonic alchemist is proven again in questing music that is visionary, achingly persona, and intensely modern. Her new record is a great starting point to launch a journey through Deyhim’s boundless artistry.
Sussan Deyhim home
Interview at Worldstreams
Family That Plays Together. . .
Kitty, Daisy and Lewis are a trio of siblings – Kitty, 18, Daisy, 22 and Lewis, 20 – from north London, who play thigh-slapping traditional rhythm and blues and hillbilly swing. With their quiffs and 1950s vintage look, which they have had ever since they were at primary school, it is as if they are transported from another era. Most endearing is that they recruit their mum and dad as backing musicians for their live shows, which includes Glastonbury this summer.
Their half-Norwegian mum Ingrid Weiss – who plays double-bass – used to play drums in Kurt Cobain’s favourite post-punk band, The Raincoats. Anglo-Indian dad Graeme Durham – who plays guitar in the band – owns and runs London’s The Exchange mastering studios, which has done albums for Laura Marling, Foals, and The Chemical Brothers. He has produced and recorded Kitty, Daisy & Lewis’s album at the vintage recording studio they have built at home. With 1940s and 1950s recording equipment, using ribbon microphones and tape, their homemade studio was inspired by Memphis’s Sun Studios. This family is fixated with all things vintage, and releases music on vinyl, as well as digital downloads and on CD. Earlier this year Lewis opened his analogue recording studio in Soho’s Riflemaker gallery, where the public could cut one song direct-to-10in disc. Kitty, Daisy and Lewis – Swing out sister, brother, sister (Independent UK, May-20:2011)
It struck me almost no mention of skiffle music in all the write ups about Kitty, Daisy and Lewis. (“A large number of British musicians began their careers playing skiffle in this period and some became leading figures in their respective fields. These included leading Northern Irish musician Van Morrison, British blues pioneer Alexis Korner as well as Ronnie Wood, Alex Harvey and Mick Jagger; folk musicians Martin Carthy, John Renbourn and Ashley Hutchings; rock musicians Roger Daltrey, Jimmy Page, Ritchie Blackmore, Robin Trower and David Gilmour; and popular beat music successes Graham Nash and Allan Clarke of The Hollies. Most notably The Beatles evolved from John Lennon’s skiffle group The Quarrymen.”) Skiffle music: “Skiffle is a type of popular music with jazz, blues, folk, roots and country influences, usually using homemade or improvised instruments.”
My motive for highlighting this family of musicians is the following, beguiling excerpt from a BBC documentary. It is totally worth spending 26 minutes with.
Kitty, Daisy & Lewis (Myspace)
Home Page
Check out the ska romp I’m So Sorry on the group’s youtube page. It’s also featured on the home page.
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Sweet Sap
Three years ago, Glen Hansard and Irglova Marketa, starred in the movie Once, a bittersweet love story framed by the joining of a man and woman’s musical and romantic aspirations. Among the duets the two sing as they use their musical journey together to work through their feelings for each other, is the melancholy Falling Slowly. It deservedly went viral.
Now, as a new musical year rolls in, I am happy to report the duo of Joy Williams and John Paul White have plucked this same bittersweet chord with the song Poison and Wine from their debut record, Barton Hollow. And, the video has gone viral too on youtube. The new record drops February 1.Ms. Williams is the known quantity. She gained notice as a rising star in Christian folk music back in the early eighties, when she was in her late teens. Then American Idol contestant David Archuleta picked up a song of hers, and a year later another song was featured on Grey’s Anatomy. Whereas John Paul White labored as a contract song writer until his debut record The Long Goodbye was released in 2008. The Civil Wars have come out from somewhere shy a tad shy of nowhere.
It makes sense the two met in songwriting camp. I haven’t heard the record, yet the copious videos they’ve made available, the free ep from last year, Live at Eddies (download) have generously set the stage for the duo’s song craft to become much better known. Much has been made of the two’s California meets Nashville synergy. Okay, but their artistry really seems centered on two great songwriters, their deep rapport, and, simple guitar or piano settings.
Check out the collection of videos at The Civil Wars‘ youtube portal. Billie Jean! Allison Rizk, one of my go-to mavens, has produced a nifty article and podcast at Radiopotato.
Joy Williams and John Paul White
The Civil Wars: Web Site Facebook Twitter Myspace Last.fm
Posted in country, music of the moment, musicians, web of music
Tagged John Paul White, Joy Williams, The Civil Wars
2 Comments
Cut off just enough to feel well tailored.
Don’t you feel though, Don, that when you pick up on these weird guys and turn them into musicians…
You mean like Fellini does?
Well, yeah, but Fellini just uses his freaks for one camera frame or something. You…
Yeah, but that’s what I’m going to do from now on. Just like Fellini. Like, I want to get across to the people. I want to be commercial. I want to play rock ‘n’ roll. Do you know, this new album is the only one that has paid itself back and then done some! None of the others did. You see, I think everything is commercial. I thought ‘Trout Mask Replica’ was a very commercial album, didn’t you? There was a lot of humour on that album that I thought people would pick up on. That’s the only thing I give Zappa credit for. He was asleep most of the time at the controls, but if it hadn’t been for him, that album probably wouldn’t have come out. Also, he free-associates, there is a song on Zappa’s last album I like. It is called ‘Montana’ – I just like that title, you know, ‘Montana’.
But what Don Van Vliet does in art already has what the catalogues call a “distinguished aesthetic history” – which is not, of course, something to be ashamed of. And what he did in music was totally new. This is why people will always tend to be less interested in the development of his technique as a painter than in how he learnt to play the harmonica by holding it out of his parents’ window.
…which reminds me of a story evidently not repeated in the archive of the excellent web site devoted to all things Don Van Vliet, The Captain Beefheart Radar Station.
I vaguely recall I first read this story in Creem Magazine a long time ago. The Captain was asked what was the greatest solo he ever heard, and he told the interviewer something like: “Well, I was driving in the deep night on a straight shot through the desert, going 80mph, and I took a D Hohner harmonica out and thrust it out the window. Glory, man!”
Beefheart is the source also of the following:
Captain Beefheart, (Don Van Vliet,) describes the most memorable performance he ever witnessed.
I saw Monk once at a theatre in San Fernando Valley. They gave him a grand piano, a really beautiful Steinway, with a cut glass bowl of roses. He came in late wearing a trench coat. He dumped the bowl in the piano, knocked down the lid, and hit one note. The sound: everything going into the piano, the strings, the water splashing, the roses. And then he left.
CAPTAIN BEEFHEART’S 10 COMMANDMENTS OF GUITAR PLAYING
1. Listen to the birds. That’s where all the music comes from. Birds know everything about how it should sound and where that sound should come from. And watch hummingbirds. They fly really fast, but a lot of times they aren’t going anywhere.
2. Your guitar is not really a guitar. Your guitar is a divining rod. Use it to find spirits in the other world and bring them over. A guitar is also a fishing rod. If you’re good, you’ll land a big one.
3. Practice in front of a bush. Wait until the moon is out, then go outside, eat a multi-grained bread and play your guitar to a bush. If the bush dosen’t shake, eat another piece of bread.
4. Walk with the devil. Old Delta blues players referred to guitar amplifiers as the “devil box.” And they were right. You have to be an equal opportunity employer in terms of who you’re bringing over from the other side. Electricity attracts devils and demons. Other instruments attract other spirits. An acoustic guitar attracts Casper. A mandolin attracts Wendy. But an electric guitar attracts Beelzebub.
5. If you’re guilty of thinking, you’re out. If your brain is part of the process, you’re missing it. You should play like a drowning man, struggling to reach shore. If you can trap that feeling, then you have something that is fur bearing.
6. Never point your guitar at anyone. Your instrument has more clout than lightning. Just hit a big chord then run outside to hear it. But make sure you are not standing in an open field.
7. Always carry a church key. That’s your key-man clause. Like One String Sam. He’s one. He was a Detroit street musician who played in the fifties on a homemade instrument. His song “I Need a Hundred Dollars” is warm pie. Another key to the church is Hubert Sumlin, Howlin’ Wolf’s guitar player. He just stands there like the Statue of Liberty-making you want to look up her dress the whole time to see how he’s doing it.
8. Don’t wipe the sweat off your instrument. You need that stink on there. Then you have to get that stink onto your music.
9. Keep your guitar in a dark place. When you’re not playing your guitar, cover it and keep it in a dark place. If you don’t play your guitar for more than a day, be sure you put a saucer of water in with it.
10. You gotta have a hood for your engine. Keep that hat on. A hat is a pressure cooker. If you have a roof on your house, the hot air can’t escape. Even a lima bean has to have a piece of wet paper around it to make it grow. ?
For my own part, the amazing dynamo man, Jamie Cohen, plucked down Trout Mask Replica on his turntable in 1969, and maybe he said ‘And if you think Zappa is weird,’ and it went down. That was my first experience of the avant-garde for sure. My own appreciation is centered on a few amazing bootlegs from 1971, and, much later, the masterful string of ‘free rock’ records he made between 1978 and 1982 before hanging up his harp and growl. Doc At the Radar Station (1980) is one of my favorite records, and, considering that it burst out of the magic volcano in the midst of the punk musical revolution, it is also one of the greatest musical commentaries on popular music…ever. RIP Don Van Vliet (January 15, 1941 – December 17, 2010)
Thirty years? Have a great new year in music.
Posted in all-time favorites, Giants, pop deviations, visionaries, web of music
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KMAG’s 20 Best Drum & Bass Singles Of 2010
My right hand guy at the Den, DJ Weirton, turned me onto several mountains of music. He did so right from the git-go and he’s the main reason entire stacks rose up in my musical universe. There were a few shared enthusiasms: old school rap and reggae and dub. Out of this mix, he intuited enough receptivity on my part to give me a spectacular crash course in new urban music.
Joint after musical joint of chill breaks, downtempo, illbient, Crooklyn dub, jungle and drum and bass proved to be the right prescription. Then, sometime into this blast, a friend at corporate unearthed several boxes of promos stashed under her desk and these turned out to be bursting with what the chain’s buyer simply reduced to the term, ‘techno.’ It was on.
Now, ten years after walking away from music retail, I still sustain my weak spot for the Ninja Tunes crew, Amon Tobin and a few others, and, jazzy downtempo best exemplified by The Cinematic Orchestra and Up, Bustle, and Out. After my last stint, there were a few years when all sorts of jungle and break beat was sifted down to the bargain stacks at The Record Exchange. This was beat heaven on my slim budget. Yet, long before Ableton Live and Reason came to the fore, evoking a giant tsunami of third wave urban breaks, I had already reconfigured my, alas, limited muso time.
Thus, I was delighted to run across in my newsreader an article, 20-best-drum-and-bass-singles-of-2010, complete with a youtube video for each blunt. At #20, the list starts off with Seba, who has been at this since break’s golden age in the nineties. The music showcased simply rages on.
Drum & Bass on the web: dnbdubstep | dnbshare | dogsonacid | dnbforum | dnbsets | doddiblogdnb Oh, man…
Here’s a foursquare of classic drum and bass from back in my personal dnb day, including my all time favorite from Grooverider, Where’s Jack the Ripper, the title cut to Ronnie Size‘s London Calling of breaks, an atmospheric slowdown from Big Bud, and a proto stepper from Metalheadz.
Nineties, baby.
GROOVERIDER Where’s Jack the Ripper
RONNIE SIZE New Forms
BIG BUD Spiritual
METALHEADZ Dial Up
30m
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Posted in Beats & Breaks, Dub Collision Mix, web of music
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Portal: AmericanRoots.com
Given that one of my founding musical prejudices issues from being awestruck as a 15 year old at the virtuosity of Flatt & Scruggs, I’ve always tracked all those cosmic cowboys and cowgirls. In fact, as I wandered the country road from bluegrass through country rock through americana, it amazes even me that a couple of dozen or so chord progressions and a modest number of lyrical variations on human themes has compelled a big chunk of listening time over four decades. But, I’m also talking here of music really close to my heart. Yeah, Gram Parsons fer sure, but you have to grasp the excellence of Miranda Lambert too!
Now that the implosion of the music industry has even chipped away at country-music proper, one has to be resourceful at following the country and folk rock tracks.
Fortunately, there’s a lot of resources, and, AmericanRoots.com is essential to the task. Podcasts and all that…
Link: Aurgasm
Aurgasm is a great music blog from a quartet of musos, guided by Paul Irish.
In their own words:
Aurgasm seeks to bring you an eclectic menagerie of aural pleasures. We scout out music you’ve never heard and deliver only the finest. Expect music curiously different, yet simply enjoyable.
Lots of popup player tasters and videos, and smart commentary. Seems to emphasize pop envelope pushers such as Russian Red.
