Rest in Peace, Gil Scott-Heron

Was surprised and saddened to learn that he died today. I always respected him, although I rarely cued up his music. I do recall listening to a few of his records with Quinapalus-- quite possibly with a beer in one hand, a joint in the other, and bull-riding silently airing on the TV. I suppose Gil deserved better-- especially given the political and emotional weight behind so many of his songs-- but I'll always enjoy those memories.

Two Crazy Links

Ta-Nehisi Coates kicks back with Moby Dick, then goes into a weird, Star Trek-and-Marvel-Comics-infused reverie on the greatness of Melville. Very entertaining.

And on an unrelated note, Outdoor Life has an extensive interview with Vladimir Putin about hunting and conservation, among other things. Very weird.

The Disappearing Pleasures of Used CD Browsing

Yesterday I spent a good hour or so browsing in what may be, for all I know, the last great used CD store in Manhattan: Academy Music on 18th st. It's been so long since I had a used CD shopping spree that I went a little bit crazy. Academy Music is primarily a classical music store, so to start with I picked up a number of classical CDs. The one which has made the biggest immediate impression on me is Wagner's opera Siegfried. I'm not particularly familiar with Wagner, and didn't bother trying to listen to him for a long time, partly from the casual prejudice that I was dubious about somebody that the Nazis liked so much. But as with so many of the artistic discoveries I've made over the past year, Proust liked him, so I decided to give him a shot. On listening to Siegfried once all the way through, I'm too overwhelmed with it to say anything besides the fact that it's very good.

Academy also has a small but decent popular music section, and I picked up some old Bruce Springsteen albums that I'd never gotten around to owning, as well as Metallica's so called "Black Album"...which is exactly the kind of CD which I'd never seek out on my own, but stumbling upon it used for $2.99, I was more than happy to pick it up.

I'm pretty well a convert to the convenience and available variety of online music shopping, but I do miss the congenial atmosphere of a crowded record store, and the surprises and discoveries you can make flipping through the used music stacks.

One Rapper's Take on Obama

At first I thought it might be a stretch to put a Cornel West piece on a music blog, but then I realized that the man is a noted MC, so I guess it's okay to post about him on here.

I assume some of you already read about his Obama critiques, most notably that he's a "black mascot of Wall Street oligarchs and a black puppet of corporate plutocrats.”

This Washington Post article touches on the fact that West also said: "As a young brother who grows up in a white context, brilliant African father, he’s always had to fear being a white man with black skin. All he has known culturally is white. He is just as human as I am, but that is his cultural formation."

The article then goes on to brilliantly quote this piece in The Nation, wherein the author notes that West "has spent the bulk of his adulthood living in those deeply rooted, culturally rich, historically important black communities of Cambridge, MA and Princeton, NJ."

I certainly think West has some interesting things to say, but he made a total fool of himself with the Obama comments. He seems to completely disregard any component to Washington politics other than Obama himself. It's almost a teenage perspective on government. West is always a good interview subject, but he'd be about as good a president as he is a rapper.

O'Reilly/Stewart Video

Eric mentioned this in the comments section and I just watched it for the first time tonight. Stewart definitely waits for just the right moment to unload his arsenal.

Game of Thrones

Is anybody else watching this?

I've found it pretty entertaining from the beginning: a medieval themed political and social drama, with just a touch of fantasy around the edges, is exactly the kind of television likely to appeal to me. It was a little bit slow in laying out all the necessary exposition, but this week's episode really sealed the deal for me. I am totally hooked.

I don't suppose any of you guys have ever read the books this is based on? I haven't, and as much as I like the show I probably don't plan to. While I'm relishing this show as an hour long TV drama, I don't think I'd be able to deal with a whole dense fantasy novel cycle. Still, if anyone has ever read it I'd be curious to hear what you think.

On a related note, I've only watched 2 episodes of the latest season of Treme, but that remains a very good show as well. It's not flashy, and there aren't a lot of nailbiting cliffhangers, but once you wade a few episodes in it will really sneak up on you.

Steve Albini Blogs About Food

I don't know how many of you are Steve Albini fans, but I used to worship the guy. Not so much for his ascetic recording techniques, but just because I admired the array of bands he took on, his non-gouging flat-rate business model, and the meticulous degree of care he seems to put into all his projects. I also like the bands he's been in-- particularly Shellac.

Anyway, it turns out he also writes a comprehensive blog about meals he cooks for his wife. I could never put in the effort he does in his preparations-- for one thing, I'd probably eat everything as I was making it-- but I actually really enjoyed reading these entries.

Albini is a funny guy. I met him once, and I can't say he was particularly friendly, but his intelligence is instantly evident-- in a snide sort of way. I asked him to autograph a Shellac record and he signed a fake name. Which, in retrospect, is probably the best possible verification of its authenticity.

Anyway, read his blog and check out this video of Shellac live.

(via Pitchfork)

Noted Music Critics Sarah Palin and Karl Rove...

... apparently did not approve of Common's inclusion at the recent White House poetry night.

Mostly for Quinapalus, although he probably already heard.

Stay classy, Turdblossom.

Another Domino Falls!

As predicted here about two weeks ago, we have yet another Kittybrain tied up in the yarn of pending marriage. Congrats to Eric, who is marrying his high school sweetheart (although not before cycling through a few other ladieeez in between). The wedding will be at either Amoeba Records in California or Bull Moose Records in Maine, and Eric will be cued when it's time to leave a compelling selection of Zombies bootlegs in order to recite his vows.

Congratulations Eric! We're now down to just TexPlush and me. I don't know who will fall first, but considering one of us is in a multi-year serious relationship and the other one is waiting on his 5th date from some girl he met on the internet, we can probably establish some odds.

On A Last Waltz Kick

I feel like we all owe it to ourselves to revisit great works of art from time to time, no matter how exposed we may have been to them in the past. Recently I've gone through such a journey with The Last Waltz. I'm not going to definitively argue that it was the greatest rock concert of all time, but I will certainly listen to someone who does claim as much.

Here are my personal highlights:

Ophelia

Caravan

Acadian Driftwood (no video footage!)

The W.S. Walcott Medicine Show (again, no footage)

What a concert. What a band.

Congrats to the Doctor!

Congratulations, Dr. Kittybrains, on your nuptials this past weekend! I hope your first dance was Jack Logan. Wait, actually that would be a really bad idea. But maybe one day the two of you can dance to Jack Logan.

Eric and I attended a wedding as well-- that of my brother. (Let's call him Erischord.) It was a great weekend! (And their first dance, by the way, was George Harrison's version of "If Not for You.")

And with Quinapalus already engaged, I look forward to the world's first honky-hop first dance! And as I've already predicted, Eric will follow close behind. Really the only question is which British rocker will have the honor of serenading his first dance.

The New Lucinda Williams is Really Good

If you're like me, you'd lost interest in her after two meh albums (World Without Tears and Little Honey) surrounding a genuine clunker (West).

But this new album is quite good actually. It's not quite on the level of Car Wheels... but it's probably up there with Sweet Old World and Essence on that next tier. Here's a track...

The fact that her new guitarist sounds like Stevie Ray Vaughan doesn't hurt either!

Just a Damn Catchy Song

This song came out in 2000, and it has been stuck in my head for basically all of that time. The band is called the Rockfords, which was Mike McCready's band pre-Pearl Jam. He then revived it as a side project once Pearl Jam got famous. The singer is Carrie Akre, who was in Hammerbox. (I believe that reference might be for me only.)

Anyway, listen to this song and tell me how catchy it is. Just downloaded it today since I can't find the CD.

Honky-hop's moment has officially arrived

You'd Think That People Would Have Had Enough of Silly Love Songs

Preamble: Someone gave me Red House Painters' Songs for a Blue Guitar during a hard drive swap, but I haven't ever listened to it all the way through.

Anyway, I had my iTunes on shuffle while I was doing things around my apartment, and I heard this song come on that I assumed was some obscure Neil Young live jam-- acquired during a different hard drive exchange. :)

Turns out it was Red House Painters covering Paul McCartney's "Silly Love Songs." Duh!

At the end of the day, Mark Kozelek will probably be best remembered for his covers... AC/DC, Modest Mouse, and apparently also McCartney. Hearing this also reminded me of what might be my favorite cover of his. This is Red House Painters doing "I Am a Rock" by Simon & Garfunkel.

Good stuff.

WTF Podcast

Have any of you guys ever listened to the "WTF with Marc Maron" podcast? I've been getting into them recently: most episodes are interviews with comedians, but they're especially worth listening to because of Maron's interview style. He brings a lot of himself and his own complicated psyche into the interview, and while in other hands this could be self-serving, it has a way of making his guests feel comfortable and able to reveal parts of themselves that they might not have expected to reveal.

If you haven't listened to it before, a great place to start might be his interview with Louis CK, which was recent enough that it's still available to download free on iTunes. I was also very entertained by his interviews with Gallagher and Ira Glass.

I was prompted to write this post, however, because of how unbelievable his two interviews with Carlos Mencia are (Part 1 and Part 2 here). These episodes are older and cost $2 each, but they're some of the most fascinating celebrity interviews I have ever heard. I've never been much of a Mencia fan, but the conflicted, complicated, angry human being that Maron coaxes Mencia to reveal himself as in these interviews is absolutely fascinating. Part 2 is by far the most intense and interesting (and might qualify as much as an "intervention" as an "interview"), but Part 1 is probably necessary listening as a set up.

J Mascis Solo Album is very nice

And it's all acoustic! And I love the cover art. There's a full stream going on here.
It's also worth noting that J looks a lot better with a beard.

New REM Album...!...?

I've been taking a brief break from listening to golden age hip hop to listen to middle period REM. I've probably written about this before here, but I have a kind of funny relationship with REM. They were the first contemporary band I got into (before that it was all Beatles and Broadway) back in the Out of Time / Automatic for the People days. I remember being shocked that the "Losing My Religion" band had released SIX albums before that one. Anyway, then in college, when I got more into "indie" rock, I gravitated back to the early IRS albums. And I'd still say that their best album is Murmur. But listening to those peak-era Warner Brothers albums brings back more vivid memories of my youth, which is always nice.
I was inspired to pull this stuff out in part by this:
http://www.nerve.com/entertainment/ranked/ranked-rem-albums-from-worst-to-best

I was particularly struck by the high ranking of Monster, which is probably their most maligned album (and is probably the number 1 Used CD of all time). I had always thought it was seriously sub-par, especially because it was a total 180 from Automatic, which was my favorite album at the time. But listening to it now, totally out of context, it's actually fantastic! Every song is interesting and good, and the ones that, at the time, seemed like pale rewrites of their hits totally stand on their own. (Check Strange Currencies, which I always thought of as an Everybody Hurts rip, but is actually the much better song).

The other separately interesting thing is that a new REM album came out yesterday. I heard a bit of the stream from NPR and it seems reasonably solid, though not terribly exciting. But what I'm most excited about is that the REM Record Review Pattern seems to be holding strong.

I posted about this before, but this post did some great research on the phenomenon:

http://www.hitsville.org/2008/03/31/rock-criticism-101-if-you-cant-say-something-nice/
It's really a must-read illustration of the absurdity of mainstream rock criticism.

The pattern is, basically, that every REM that comes out is an improvement upon the last album, which was, for one reason or another, problematic. Thus, the new album becomes their best album since [an older album, usually from the Bill Berry era]. I would have thought that, since Accelerate was such a self-conscious throwback/comeback album, and it got such good reviews, that the pattern would break. It actually seems like the pattern did break, though, Pitchfork, of all things, sticks with the script:

Pitchfork:

After releasing the plodding Around the Sun, the band attempted a "return to rock" with 2008's Accelerate, barreling through a forceful but generic set and grasping at a raw, aggressive sound that was never really R.E.M.'s to begin with. So, it comes as something of a relief that Collapse Into Now sounds unmistakably like an R.E.M. album. At its best, Collapse Into Now evokes R.E.M.'s best work while capitalizing on the energy conjured during Accelerate.

To Rolling Stone's credit, they seem to have finally broken the streak:

Collapse Into Now is the first truly messy album R.E.M. have made in 10 years, since their underrated 2001 gem, Reveal. Their recent albums have focused on one musical approach at a time: 2004's Around the Sun was all slow-motion torpor, and 2008's excellent Accelerate went for spiky rockers. But Collapse Into Now touches on all their favorite tricks: punk raves, stately ballads, piano, accordion and the most mandolin they've put in one place since "Losing My Religion."

Relatedly, I was glad to see the AV Club's Steven Hyden partially acknowledge the ridiculousness of his article saying that REM was never all that good to begin with:
http://www.avclub.com/articles/rems-incredible-nonshrinking-legacy,52852/

Perhaps more than anything else I’ve written in my four and a half years with The A.V. Club, “R.E.M.’s Incredible Shrinking Legacy” left an indelible impression on readers. And by “indelible,” I mean “negative.” Very negative. Countless pieces with my byline have come and gone, but this particular essay has followed me around like an especially unseemly sex scandal. From time to time, whenever commenters wanted to cite an example of my writing that proved incontrovertibly that I was a buffoon, “R.E.M.’s Incredible Shrinking Legacy” was what they pointed to.

It's a pretty good read, and it grapples with the strange place REM occupies in the rock canon. For a long time they were sort of parallel to U2 as huge, mega-selling bands that had their roots in the postpunk/college rock scene in the early 80s. But whereas U2 keep making hits, REM have sort of returned to just having a cult audience (albeit a very, very large one). It's hard to imagine them having the kind of profile that U2 still have. (Though U2 are doing their best to tarnish it with the Spiderman musical).

Lupe Fiasco: "I hate this album"

This has got to be the most negative interview I've ever read from an artist about his own album, especially considering that said album was still a month away from being released at the time this article was written. An excerpt:

"There’s nothing really to tell about that record, to be honest. I didn’t have nothing to do with that record. That was the label’s record. That wasn’t like I knew the producer or knew the writer or anything like that. That was one of those records the record company gave me, [they even gave me] stuff they wanted me to rap about. It wasn’t like, ‘Hey I did this and I went to a mountain and found inspiration and it was this.’ [Last April] I was backstage at a show at the House of Blues in L.A. and the president of [Atlantic Records] came to me and said, ‘Hey check this out, I got this song.’ He played ‘Show Goes On’ for me on the iPod. I was used to it because they presented me like ten other songs in the same fashion or via email. So for me, at that point, it was just another record like, ‘Is this a song you want me to do?’ There was nothing special about it for me at that point. It was like, ‘You know we still want off the label, right?’ That was the conversations we were having."

I guess I'll probably still hear it, because at his best I love this guy...but this does not sound promising at all.

If You Haven't Heard the New Superchunk...

... you should. Now it isn't exactly "new" anymore; it came out almost 6 months ago. But I think it might be the most satisfying album I've heard from last year. In fairness, I thought last year by and large sucked for new albums. (Which is one reason why I still haven't written up a Top 10 list.)

That aside, everyone should still check it out. I think it's Superchunk's best ever. Great melodies, great production and Mascis-like lead guitar. What's not to like?