Levon Helm

The History of Pitchfork

(lifted from Eric's Facebook page)

This is a long read, but a very good one.  My favorite parts are the direct quotes from Pitchfork.  To whet your palette, here are a few Ryan Schreiber nuggets...

On Thelonious Monk: “The man could play a piano like it was a goddamn video game.” And on John Coltrane, recorded live at the Village Vanguard: “‘Trane takes it to heaven and back with some style, man. Some richness, daddy. It’s a sad thing his life was cut short by them jaws o’ death.”
Here's the whole thing: http://nplusonemag.com/54

Nevermind Gets a 7 out of 10

Guys, you're all going to want to run, not walk, to the iTunes Store to get your hands on an ancient album that a leading critic at the Yale Daily News has given a 7 out of 10.  The ancient album is called Nevermind, and it's by Nirvana.  You may have heard of them because they're the band the Foo Fighters grew out of.

Anyway, this is definitely worth hearing because Nirvana has inspired everyone from Nickelback to Lana Del Rey, and Pitchfork declared the record to be an all-time classic.  Now granted, they're no Radiohead, but for an ancient band, they're really not that bad.

http://www.yaledailynews.com/news/2012/jan/28/album-review-nevermind/

[postscript: It's also possible that this review is one of the best dry, sarcastic jokes put to paper.  But all of the guy's other by-lines are legit.  Also the YDN is not known for dry, sarcastic humor.  I think it's real... but if it's fake, the guy's a genius.]

Amour mama! Not cheap display

The first 100 or so times I listened to Joni Mitchell's The Hissing of Summer Lawns, I didn't really take much notice of the opening track "In France They Kiss on Main Street". It's the most conventional sounding pop song on the album, and for a long time I was so focused on the enticing strangeness of all the other songs that this one just didn't make much of an impression. The other day, however, I pulled up this album on my iPod and without warning the greatness of this song suddenly knocked me flat. It's a nostalgia song about being young and wild in a very specific time, when "rock 'n' roll" stood for a certain kind of rebelliousness that sounds almost quaint now. It's sort of a short story about being a teenager in a very different time and place.

I'm not sure if it takes most people a year or so of listening to this song for it to suddenly come through and take life, but I'm glad it finally did for me. It's great. Below is a slightly weird video of a live version...judging by her hair and clothes, a live version from the 1980s.

"He Speaks French Too"

The latest Newt Gingrich ad really plays like a parody of a Newt Gingrich ad that Drischord would put together.

10 Reflections on 2011

Well, as the blog sputters into 2012, it looks like no one has posted a proper Top 10 list yet, and I'm not going to either.  Instead, I'll just list 10 things that I liked or observed in 2011-- several of which were created in years past.

10. Best Rock Concert Ever- "Queen Rock Montreal"  I actually first saw this on PBS, and then I acquired the DVD for repeated viewings.  This is the best rock concert I have ever seen, including the many I've seen in person.  You will not find 4 musicians more on top of their game than these guys were at the time of this concert.  Mind-blowing.

9. Best archival discovery- Jobriath.  Speaking of flamboyant glam rockers (see above), I was amazed to learn about this guy, who was completely lost to history.  His manager said that comparing him to David Bowie was like comparing a Ferrari to a Ford Model A.  He's basically everything that Bowie and Marc Bolan and Bryan Ferry were-- but in total overdrive.  And it so happens that his 2 albums are awesome-- particularly the first one.  (I should also mention that Lost Moon Radio created a character partially based on this guy.  We didn't push it much farther than the real life Jobriath.)  Read about him online and then check out his music.





Second-best archival discovery- Roy Harper (Led Zeppelin's "Hats Off to Harper" couldn't be less representative.  His actual records sound more like a mystical Nick Drake.)

8. Past raves of mine that held up nicely in 2011: Superchunk "Majesty Shredding" and Guns 'N Roses "Chinese Democracy" (and I'll spare you further editorial comment; all I'm saying is it's still great, as recent listens have confirmed)

7. Two Observations: First, the best way to listen to Radiohead's "King of Limbs" is in rush hour traffic.  It helps calm you and it focuses you rather than putting you to sleep.  I've definitely appreciated that record more in my car than in my home stereo.  Second, Nick Cave's cover of "All Tomorrow's Parties" is way better than the Velvet Underground original.  Just wanted you to know.  (This will be my only mention of a Lou Reed-related work in this post.  Sorry, Metallica.)

6. A couple new releases I enjoyed this year: St. Vincent "Strange Mercy," Buffalo Tom "Skins,"  Wye Oak "Civilian," Wild Flag s/t, The Rosebuds "Loud Planes Fly Low," Tom Waits "Bad As Me," PJ Harvey "Let England Shake," Drive-By Truckers "Go Go Boots," Jason Isbell & the 400 Unit "Here We Rest" (huge step forward from his last one), J Mascis "Several Shades of Why," R.E.M. "Collapse Into Now," Bill Callahan "Apocalypse," Fleet Foxes "Helplessness Blues," Robbie Robertson "How to Become Clairvoyant" (surprisingly enjoyable!), TV on the Radio "Nine Types of Light," Lucinda Williams "Blessed," Bonnie Prince Billy- Wolfroy Goes to Town

5. Indie bands from the past that I got into: The Grifters, Mule, Beat Happening, The Wipers, the Ryan Adams album (Love Is Hell) where he decides he wants to be Jeff Buckley and is admittedly pretty good at it

4. Band that I love just as much now as when I discovered them 17 years ago- Buffalo Tom. I happened to be in Boston the weekend of their 25th anniversary concerts.  So awesome, and that was either my 5th or 6th time seeing them.  Really criminal that they never got bigger.  Honestly, listen to "Let Me Come Over" and "Big Red Letter Day." Two of the best albums of my lifetime.

3. Album that I finally appreciate to its full degree- "Dark Side of the Moon."  I was lucky enough to be invited to play this record live from start to finish with a very cool band here in LA.  In performing/listening to it live, I realized how much awesome raw power the record contains and how good all the individual parts are-- particularly David Gilmour's guitar lines.  I gained all new levels of respect for that dude.  But really it's all of them-- great set of songs.

2. Thoughts on Wilco's "The Whole Love"- While it was among my favorite releases of the year, I'm not quite sure where it ranks for me in terms of their total output.  I'd say it might settle on the second tier of three for me.  I know we all have our own opinions, but for me, I think it's: Tier One- YHF, Ghost, Sky; Tier Two- Whole Love, Being There, Summerteeth; Tier Three- A.M., (the album)  Either way, I'm still planning to listen to this many more times before rendering a final verdict.  It's definitely a return to form after a record (the album) that I consider unfinished.  It also utilizes the full band much better than (the album) did.

1. Top ranking that Pitchfork actually did get right- Bon Iver had the best record of the year.  Totally haunting and more fully realized than the one before it.  I've been listening to this one a lot lately.  It really holds up.

Happy New Year!

Top 5 Opening Sentences from Pitchfork's Top 50 Album Reviews

The other day I went meandering through the Pitchfork year-end lists, just to see what was there. And as you might expect, I was met with quite an overwhelming volume of words--so I decided to just read the first 2-3 sentences of any given review and then move on. Pretty soon, however, I started finding opening sentences that I found so amusing or confusing that I started cutting and pasting them to save for later. I therefore present to you: my Top 5 Opening Sentences from Pitchfork's Top 50 Album Reviews:

5."I don't give a fuck about you, you, her, him, that bitch, that nigga, y'all them," hisses DJ Quik on the very first line of his eighth album. To be fair, not many rappers will cop to "giving a fuck," but Quik is able to stay truer to his word than most.

4. On 2008's Saint Dymphna, Gang Gang Dance made their most succinct set of statements to date. Their desire to sift a broad range of pan-global signifiers through concise pop frameworks continued on this year's Eye Contact, but it also found them building bridges to their past.

3. Hymns are designed to unite a crowd of people in praise, aiming for a communal religious trance through the power of group vocalization. On Tomboy, Noah Lennox tests whether a congregational spirit can still be achieved by a single voice slathered with enough multi-tracked harmonies and reverb, a chorus of one worshipping secular matters.

2. There's a startling moment on Clams Casino's debut mixtape when a phlegm-soaked scream rises above the gorgeous murk before quickly being subsumed once again. It sounds like the last gasp of all the East Coast rap this New Jersey producer grew up on-- Dipset, Wu Tang, Mobb Deep-- making its presence known, handing the beat down.

And the #1 slot on this list goes to the review which came the closest to being 100% incomprehensible to me:

1. If you're a promising young artist partly responsible for turning a Hipster Runoff punchline into a viable (but still often maligned) subgenre, what do you do in order to stand out? Do you chart a course in a different direction, or hope that the wheat will eventually separate from the chaff? Chaz Bundick escaped the increasingly long shadow of chillwave by getting a synthesizer and an arpeggiator and (temporarily) throwing his computer out of the window.

Best Op-Ed of 2011

Instead of posting a single best-of list, I'll post a few things over the course of this week.  Here's my first one: My favorite op-ed of the year, written by Nicholas Kristof in June.  I'm guessing many of you read it when it first came out, but it's worth another look...

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/05/opinion/05kristof.html

Year-End Roundup

Blog's been pretty dead lately-- any interest in doing any year-end roundups? I know Tex dutifully filed his last year and no one else followed suit. Any interest this year? Mine will, as usual, probably be more focused on the non-2011 stuff that I spent the bulk of my time listening to, but there were some worthy/interesting things released this year that may be worth discussing. Anyone? Bueller?

A Reunion to Celebrate

I never watched this show back in the day, but since I like everything else Mike Judge has done pretty well, I decided to give the premiere of the new Beavis and Butthead a shot. I have to say, it was pretty damn funny!

Chuck Klosterman on LuLu

Because Drischord seems to be interested in all things LuLu, I wanted to make sure you saw this Chuck Klosterman musing on the album. It contains the usual Klostermanian excesses that can sometimes grate, including the fact that it inexplicably concludes with a set of typically broad pronouncements about the NFL quarterback, Tim Tebow (viz. "[N]o one who follows football thinks Tebow is anything other than who he is."). But I like how he ties the whole thing in to the collapse of the music industry, and his general takedown of the quality of the album is pretty great:

If these cagey tunesmiths had consciously tried to make a record this simultaneously dull and comedic, they'd never have succeeded; the closest artistic equivalent would be what might have happened if Vincent Gallo had been a script consultant for The Room. . . . Lulu is as appalling as logic demands. If the Red Hot Chili Peppers acoustically covered the 12 worst Primus songs for Starbucks, it would still be (slightly) better than this. "Loutallica" makes SuperHeavy seem like Big Star.

I had to google "SuperHeavy," and I was appalled by what I found out: "a supergroup consisting of Mick Jagger, Joss Stone, Dave Stewart, Damian Marley, and A. R. Rahman." Supergroups in general tend to be a bad idea, but supergroups with anonymous rhythm sections are completely unforgivable.[1] Say what you will about Chickenfoot-- at least it had Michael Anthony and Chad Smith. But either way, even putting aside that sin, this group is a pretty horrifying combination.

[1] Traveling Wilburys are the exception that proves the rule.

Sonic Youth on the Ropes?

Today's Pitchfork headline: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/news/44318-kim-gordon-thurston-moore-separate/

I don't really know what to make of this.  Obviously on a personal level I'm sorry for them.  From a band level, it's hard to say what will happen.  Obviously 93% of Sonic Youth fans would just like Kim to leave and to have them continue on with Thurston, Lee, Steve, and Mark Ibold.  That would be an unspeakably awesome band.  But more likely will be the decision that there is no Sonic Youth without Thurston or Kim (or Lee or Steve, you could also argue) and they will thus break up.  That would suck.

I suppose they could also continue their professional relationship and keep things more or less status quo, although their press release was far from assuring in that regard.

Relationship aside, I'll say this:  From Murray Street through The Eternal, Sonic Youth has been on what's easily the best run of their career, and in the past decade, they've gone from being only an occasional listen for me to one of my favorite active rock bands.  It would suck if this spells the end of that run.

Rest in Peace, Bert Jansch

Several great people died this week.  Bert Jansch was one of them-- probably the one you heard least about.  I've posted about him before, and Dr. K has linked to some of his work with Pentangle.  Anyway, on the event of his death, a proper acknowledgement is in order.

As a folk guitar player, he reminded me more of Nick Drake than probably anyone else has.  He didn't have Drake's beautiful voice, and he strayed from genre more often, which probably limited his appeal.  (At least with this generation; I know he was fairly big in the '60s.)  I'm no folk music expert, but I think he remained pretty widely revered in today's folk community, both in England and the U.S.

As recordings go, "The Best of Bert Jansch" is a pretty good retrospective, although he put out a whole bunch of albums.  And I myself need to hear more Pentangle, especially after reading the NPR obituary linked to above.



I was more of a casual fan than any sort of expert on his work.  All I can say is he was a special musician, and he died much too young.

Wilco-Related Audio Complaint

No, it's not about The Whole Love, which I continue to find awesome.  It's this: This morning, Jeff Tweedy's solo acoustic album Sunken Treasure came up on my iTunes shuffle, and it confirmed something I've subconsciously thought for years now: Tweedy's live acoustic guitar tone SUCKS.  He's got such a great array of guitars, and he sticks some shit pickup into them-- or maybe it's the amp-- but it's terrible.  So obnoxiously treble-y with no natural decay.  It makes his guitars sound so cheap.  Hard to believe a tone freak like Nels Cline would let him get away with that.

Listen for yourself:



It's not like I feel "entitled" to a better acoustic tone from Tweedy, but I feel inspired to articulate something that's bugged/disappointed me for several years now.

Heavy Lifting

I've only listened to The Whole Love a few times so far, and as a super hard core Wilco fan I LOVE it. That said, I can accept the proposition that someone less devoted to the band could enjoy it less than I do. That said, the AV Club review really annoys me. Not because they give it a "B," but because of the condescending, "advice to the band" kind of approach the review takes. It's something nearly worthy of Pitchfork:

As enjoyable as The Whole Love is—and it’s an appreciable improvement over the wan Wilco—it still has some of its predecessor’s slight, low-stakes feel. The Whole Love is an album of reliable, occasionally exceptional, but mostly just solid pleasures from a very good band that doesn’t seem interested in doing the heavy lifting it takes to be great. Wilco’s early records seemed like the product of painful deliberation and unmitigated tension, a real life-or-death proposition; The Whole Love breezes by like a sunny Saturday afternoon among best friends. Now that Wilco has finally found its comfort zone, it might be time to venture elsewhere for a change.

I just have two comments:
1. Wilco "doesn't seem interested in doing the heavy lifting it takes to be great"? What does that mean? If they'd just worked a little harder and shown some dedication they could have written another Yankee Hotel Foxtrot? It's like saying: "what happened to the Martin Scorsese of Goodfellas? If only he'd been willing to do some more heavy lifting, The Aviator could have been just as good, but he lost his nerve."

2. Does he think Wilco needs more "unmitigated tension" to get back to its old self? It reminds me of an interview I once heard with Joni Mitchell from the mid 1970s, in which the interviewer said that lots of her fans thought she'd lost the sense of "vulnerability" that she'd had in her earlier work. She said something to the effect of "maybe I don't want to be so damn vulnerable anymore." Hard to argue with that.

Who Needs This To Work More?

Lou Reed + Metallica.  Two artists on the back end of their relevance, who have been increasingly pigeonholed in recent years.  Metallica still sells out stadiums and plays really well, but nearly all of their fans agree that they peaked 25 years ago, with Master of Puppets.  (Mayyybee ...And Justice For All is better, albeit with terrible production, but even that's 23 years old.)

And then you have Lou Reed, who quite possibly peaked 40 years ago, and who some (ahem, me) would argue was overrated at all stages of his career.  And most of his recent career lies in the realm of performing shitty faux-beat poetry for yuppies who paid $175 a pop to be there.

And now they're collaborating, which frankly seems to fit in the general narrative of Metallica post-Hetfield Rehab, where the guy is all about exploring his feelings and embracing the same '60s music he used to openly despise.

Here's the preview track, and I have to say, while it starts pretty badly, it ends up in a pretty cool place.  It's enough to make me interested in the record as a whole.

  The View by Lou Reed & Metallica

 Also note how the promotional website continues in the Lou Reed tradition of describing Metal Machine Music as though it were actually a pre-conceived work of art, as opposed to a stream-of-consciousness piece of crap motivated by disdain for the music industry and fans that had written him off.

Why You Should Avoid Watching Your Adolescent Artistic Heroes Be Interviewed

He was a great songwriter, but I have to admit I'm no longer mesmerized by his interviews. 20 years later, Kurt Cobain just reminds me of the somewhat pretentious goth kid who lived down the hall from me in college.

Get More: Nirvana, Music News

R.I.P. R.E.M.

You knew the day was coming, but it's always a little jarring when it actually happens.

http://remhq.com/news_story.php?id=1446

On the one hand, you could argue that they had long since peaked and weren't doing anything particularly 'important' these days.  On the other hand, you could argue that they survived their creative valley of Reveal and Around the Sun and had just made two solid records in a row.

But the fact that R.E.M. made it 31 years is pretty cool.  They were never the most superlative band in any category, but they challenged themselves and their audiences and they definitely tried a lot of things over the course of their career.  I never saw them live, although I was supposed to-- festival got rained/lightning-ed out before they came on stage-- and I never heard the greatest things about their shows.  But I do know they put out 5 or 6 of the best records in my lifetime.  (Which also raises the point that since we're all about the same exact age as R.E.M., it's weird to think about the end of a band that's existed for basically your entire life but not before.)

I'm saddened by this news, yet I can also see why now was the time for it to end.

Wilco Streams Live Shows On Their Website

Did you guys realize this? Here's the link: http://wilcoworld.net/#!/roadcase/

I'm currently listening to a New Orleans show, which has a local horn section on about half the tracks. Not the greatest sound quality, but certainly great playing.

And in other news, I pre-ordered the deluxe edition of The Whole Love. Anyone shelling out for the vinyl? (And by anyone, I mean Tex and possibly Dr. K.)

Tears on the mausoleum floor/ Blood stains on the colosseum doors

I haven't had much time to listen to Watch the Throne yet, but the very least you can say is that Jay-Z and Kanye definitely know how to come out swinging.

Human beings in a mob
What's a mob to a king? What's a king to a God?
What's a God to a non-believer who don't believe in anything?