My pal Greg Gardner is working on some night moves called Secret Seven Records. A few months ago, he released some friendly sounds by Mt. Egypt, and now he's getting ready to drop some more home cooking: The Two Sides of Tim Cohen. It's a solo album by a local rapscallion named Tim Cohen, formerly of Black Fiction, and it's a real nice collection of foggy folk songs. I tend to favor the loose, spacey side of rock music, and this album is open and astral — but with rough edges that reminded me of Panda Bear minus the Beach Boys-ish harmonies. More Floyd, early Floyd. Saucerful of Secrets, soundtrack to "More" Floyd. Whatever the vibe is, it's rough and quiet and psychedelic and probably has British roots. But I'll stop before I say more because it's better than I'm making it sound, and I'll probably be on someone's knuckle sandwich list if I throw around any more crazy notions. I'll attach a song that's more Leonard Cohen, or maybe mellow Replacements, than Floyd, okay?
Category: music
Regarding music, musicians, shows and other sonic events and experiences that moved me to write something down.
Karp, someone's apartment/bedroom/closet in Atlanta in 1996. This video makes me regret not rallying to see them at Gilman Street even more. Thanks for the memories, Jacob. PS, you may feel moved to add your own vocal track.
Categories
So you can't stop moonwalking
I won't bore you with my thoughts on Lisa Marie Presley's MySpace thing about Michael ("I wanted to save him. I wanted to save him from the inevitable which is what has just happened"), or relate my story of finding out that the rumor was true (upon reading this tweet from Lil' Jon: "RIP M J!!"), or discuss Justin's excellent email about how MJ helped him stay in his "eight-year old zone." I will only spread some love about my favorite MJ recording, which is a very scratchy demo version of "Working Day And Night" from the Special Edition of "Off the Wall."[audio:https://douglemoine.org/muz/mj_workin.mp3]Enjoy.
The fallout of greed and incompetence is once again trickling down to Main Street. Kiss my ass, you greedy Wall Street bastards. And you bureaucrats and cronies can kiss my ass, too. Is there anyone out there who thinks beyond the current economic cycle? Anyone? Is anyone trying to do anything other than make themselves rich, or keep their friends in office? Arrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrg. When I got laid off in 2001, I did a lot of soul-searching, ate a lot of Cancun veggie burritos (they were $3.29; they're $4.99 now), and did a lot of reading at Green Apple. One afternoon, I came across Woody Guthrie's autobiography, Bound for Glory. Now there was a guy who knows a thing or two about hard times. The title is deeply ironic, as Guthrie experienced a lot of hardship, but through it all he had deep confidence in himself and deep faith that he would do great things. Greed, incompetence and bad luck afflicted him, (and millions of others), but life goes on. And if you're a person like Woody Guthrie, you take the hard lesson and you turn it into something like Dust Bowl Ballads.[You should see a little Flash player below each song title; apologies if you don't. Working on it].
Woody Guthrie, "I ain't got no home" [Download]
[audio:guthrie_home.mp3] Of course, I was never close to being caught out on a literal road with other literally displaced people, but this passage deeply affected me:
My brothers and my sisters are stranded on this road,A hot and dusty road that a million feet have trod;Rich man took my home and drove me from my doorAnd I ain't got no home in this world anymore.
2001 was no Dust Bowl, and I was nowhere near as destitute as Tom Joad. But the feeling of alienation and disillusion really rang true to me, the sense that "a million feet" have trod a much worse path gave me comfort, I guess. (Guthrie also hated Wall Street bastards more than anyone, which gave me a great deal of comfort). So the next track is all about turning the corner, finding happiness, and being bound for glory. It's from an incredible collection of music called Art of Field Recording, Vol. 1, a collection of recordings made in rural homes and churches over the past 50 years.
Lawrence McKiver and the McIntosh County Shouters, "Jubilee" [Download]
[audio:mckiver_jubilee.mp3] For me, this track is an excellent reminder that a few people with a lot of spirit and some knee-slapping can make something deeply affecting. It doesn't take much. And that's the first step, perhaps, to being bound for glory.
We have a house guest this week, and we've been doing a lot of hanging out while reading and listening to music. Last night, the discussion turned to Auto-Tune, and it quickly revealed the beauty of being at least somewhat Internet-literate.
Speaking of Internet-literate, this is our houseguest: Dave.It started with Lil Wayne. I mentioned to Mara and Dave that Stereogum has an irritating post about Lil Wayne's use of Auto-Tune on SNL. It was irritating because, to me, there's a difference between using Auto-Tune to compensate for your own inability to hit the notes (e.g., Kelly Clarkson in "Since U Been Gone"), and using it to increase the funky quotient, as Lil Wayne does in "Lollipop." Anyway, Dave recalled a Pitchfork interview with Neko Case in which she has some salty words on the subject of Auto-Tune. [tappity-tappity]
Neko Case: When I hear Auto-Tune on somebody's voice, I don't take them seriously. Or you hear somebody like Alicia Keys, who I know is pretty good, and you'll hear a little bit of Auto-Tune and you're like, "You're too fucking good for that. Why would you let them do that to you? Don't you know what that means?" It's not an effect like people try to say, it's for people like Shania Twain who can't sing.
(It gets even saltier). Then the conversation turned to Auto-Tune's first major splash, which was recently discussed in a Sasha Frere-Jones piece in the New Yorker [tappity-tappity]
The first popular example of Auto-Tune's distorting effect was Cher's 1998 hit "Believe,†produced by Mark Taylor and Brian Rawling. During the first verse, Auto-Tune makes the phrase "I can't break through†wobble so much that it's hard to discern.
Of course, then we had to hear "Believe," so Dave suggested Favtape. [tappity-tappity] Bingo; briefly, we revisited 1998. Then, it seemed like it made sense to listen to Bedhead's cover as well. [tappity-tappity] It features a touch-tone phone as an instrument.So what's the story with using Auto-Tune on "Believe?" Did the producers seek it out because Cher couldn't hit the notes, or did they just want to get funky? [tappity-tappity] The Internet has your answer, sort of. It's from a 1999 article in the British magazine Sound on Sound, but the problem is that the producers don't admit to using Auto-Tune; it was still a trade secret at that point:
The … obvious vocal effect in 'Believe' is the 'telephoney' quality of Cher's vocal throughout. This idea came from the lady herself — she'd identified something similar on a Roachford record and asked Mark if he could reproduce it.He explains, "Roachford uses a restricted bandwidth, and filters the vocals heavily so that the top and bottom ends are wound off and the whole vocal is slightly distorted. It took a while to work out exactly what it was that Cher liked about this particular Roachford song, but in the end we realised it was the 'telephoney' sound. I used the filter section on my Drawmer DS404 gate on the vocal before it went into the Talker to get that effect."
Actually, we now know the truth. It was Auto-Tune. All of this happened in about 15 minutes; we explored the arc of Auto-Tune in popular songs, with examples of early incarnations and deep discussion about how and why it was applied. Nice. [tappity-tappity]
Muxtape has blown up — just a matter of time, I guess — but I hope this doesn't mean that they'll add a bunch of "features" to it. It's basically two things — the homepage where you pick a mix, and the player where you listen — and it doesn't need much more. Really! Please!
Part one of two: The home page. It's where the "navigation" is. There's no keyword search, no "categories." Just you, the name of each mix like a sticker on a cassette tape, and the sense of rooting around in a cryptic virtual shoebox, popping a mix in, listening for a little while, striking gold, or not, and moving on. It's a really lovely and evocative of the simpler, more mysterious times.
Part two of two: The "player." It's genius. No "friends" or "people who are also listening to this" or "messaging" or "you may also like." Just the songs, links to buy them, and an indication of which track is playing.For the record, I don't think it needs much else. Whatever happens, I really hope this stuff is NOT added:
- Search. Please, no search. Of course search would make it easier to find mixes that "match" your keywords, but who wants that? Well, I did, at first, but after I poked around I realized that I was having way more fun exploring, letting go of the way that I normally explore. We need more non-keyword-oriented ways of exploring! Seriously! It's way more fun to roll the dice than to look for what you think that you want, and it's somehow more appropriate to music
- Any kind of "profile-generating." The madness must be stopped somewhere, sometime. A way to connect with mix-makers would be nice, but no names, birthdays, pictures, blogs, or any of that.
- Any kind of more "predictable" homepage. Please. Just show the random stuff. Let people start here. It's scary and frustrating and annoying at first, but it becomes fun, magical. Perfect! Done!
A few years ago, it would have been surprising to see a San Francisco indie crowd move its feet around in a dance-style motion at a live show. Last week, Lightning Bolt got people moving at 12 Galaxies; it wasn't exactly "dancing" but (from my vantage point in the balcony), it appeared kinetic — lots of mass moving back and forth, a little crowd-surfing, a little flailing around. I took a lot of pictures from my perch above the drums.
A lot of collaborative work goes on at Cooper (where I work). Designers team up to understand a problem, or to envision a better way of solving it. Sometimes, we collaborate with clients to figure out what's possible and where possibility and desirability meet. In any case, it's hard to trace back any particular idea to a particular person or moment; once an idea is out in the world, it gets pushed, pulled, disassembled, reassembled, and so on by everyone until it fits. My friends and I used to argue over which Beatle wrote a particular song — John? Paul? George? In most cases, it seems pretty clear cut. Cheesy lyrics and a bouncy rhythm? Paul. More complicated, layered lyrics with more straight-ahead rock? John. A sitar in the background? George. In some cases, however, it's much less clear. "With A Little Help From My Friends," for instance; or, "Got To Get You Into My Life." Both have recognizable earmarks of John and Paul.Are these easy categorizations valid in any way? Is there any way of ultimately knowing who wrote what? I didn't think so. Until I Googled "beatles songwriting" and found The Beatles Songwriting and Recording Database, an obsessively categorized collection quotes about who wrote what, pulled from various interviews conducted over the last 40 years.For example:
With A Little Help From My FriendsJOHN 1970: "Paul had the line about 'a little help from my friends.' He had some kind of structure for it, and we wrote it pretty well fifty-fifty from his original idea."JOHN 1980: "That's Paul, with a little help from me. 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine' is mine."PAUL circa-1994: "This was written out at John's house in Weybridge for Ringo… I think that was probably the best of our songs that we wrote for Ringo actually. I remember giggling with John as we wrote the lines, 'What do you see when you turn out the light/ I can't tell you but I know it's mine.' It could have been him playing with his willie under the covers, or it could have been taken on a deeper level. This is what it meant but it was a nice way to say it– a very non-specific way to say it. I always liked that."
Especially intriguing: John wrote "And Your Bird Can Sing," which (to me) seems to be the most obvious Paul song ever. Perhaps those earmarks I discussed earlier are less applicable than one would expect.
Categories
Music / Sad anniverary for the quiet Beatle
Today is the fifth anniversary of George Harrison's death, as I found out when NPR ran a sweet tribute to him this evening. Back when such things mattered, George was my favorite Beatle. Why do such things not matter anymore? I mean, really, is there any question that is more revealing than "Who is your favorite Beatle?" Sure, it's dated, but any rational, music-aware person should have one, and if they don't, well, that says a lot right there. Here's a cheat sheet for what you can expect from the people you ask, based on very unscientific "research" …
- If they say "Paul," you can expect some (mostly superficial) charm, and a liberal helping of cheesiness. People who like Paul tend to see Sgt. Pepper as the height of Beatle achievement, and they probably enjoy "Yellow Submarine" and "story songs" about Beatles characters like Eleanor Rigby more than "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" or "Norwegian Wood."
- If they say "John," you can expect seriousness, outward lefty politics, a love of "meaningful" songs, and perhaps a disdain for both cheesiness and Paul. People who like John, I would guess, simply didn't like Paul to begin with, or liked him until they heard "When I'm 64" one too many times, and then dug around to see who wrote the lyrics to "A Day in the Life."
- No one ever says "Ringo" in this day and age, and that's too bad. He's charming, a good sport, and (I think) not as bad a drummer as people seem to remember. I challenge you: Listen to "Rain" and tell me that Ringo is an insufferably bad drummer.
- George, finally, will always be the favorite of people who you want to know. He represents humility, first of all. He's never mugging in the movies, and mostly he looks somewhat like you or I would look if we were thrown into the Beatles commercial juggernaut in the early 60's. On the creativity side, he wasn't Lennon/McCartney, but his guitar sound was an integral part of the Beatles appeal. It's always tasteful, and he never tries to get all Eric Clapton on any song, which is why I — for one — can listen to roughly 50 Beatles songs for every Eric Clapton song. Finally, George's solo stuff was way better than either Paul's or John's, and his low profile is endearing in a world in which the faces of rock stars' are perpetually up in your grill.
Beatles, Taxman — from Alternate Revolver
[audio:http://www.douglemoine.org/files/beatles-taxman-mono.mp3]Lately, I've been listening to Alternate Revolver, a bootleg album of demoes from the Revolver sessions. George's first contribution to the Beatles' catalogue — "Taxman" — is on Revolver; it's not my favorite Beatles song, but it's a little more straightforward and rockin' than later George songs. Is it contradictory to commemorate an artist by listening to a pirated version of his/her work? Hmm. I'll venture a guess that George would appreciate it, so check out Alternate Revolver's mono mix of the song, and toast the quiet Beatle.
Being car-less keeps me (mostly) around the southeastern neighborhoods of San Francisco, but every once in a while I'll venture out to the frontiers. Last Friday, we went out to Mollusk, the arty surf shop on 46th-ish Avenue and Irving, (i.e. WAY Outer Sunset), for an art opening and a performance by Peggy Honeywell, i.e. local art star and beautiful loser Clare Rojas. The surf shop setting was informal and cozy; the acoustics actually weren't bad; there were dogs walking around; all in all, it makes me wish that I got out there more. This intimate setting was lots better than the cavernous, loud, obnoxious-people-filled place I saw her perform last, Barry McGee's opening in Melbourne, Australia a couple of years ago.