Everyone ought to see this video of Prince covering Radiohead's "Creep" before Prince makes it too hard to come by—copies have already been disappeared from Youtube. You know that's what Prince does all day: Surfing the Web for unauthorized copies of his music, while attendants bathe his feet in fresh yogurt.
The most remarkable part is that Prince's voice cuts out before he can say "creep" at any point during the song. The man is constitutionally incapable of making a self-derogatory claim, so he can't actually bring himself to sing the lyrics, "I'm a creep." Loud and clear on the perfect body line, though.
I was totally won over by one of the bands who played the show with us last night: Make a Rising, which sounded live like a clarinet-driven Usaisamonster, though the recordings sound a lot less math-y. Plus, they all were wearing sparkly shirts and furry costumes.
Is that The Roches I detect sampled at the beginning of "Sneffels Yokul"? The band doesn't include any women members (sexists) and the women voices on that chorus certainly sounds like The Roches do on Phillip Glass's Songs From Liquid Days.
Improvised and scripted jazz-funeral sounds at the Velvet Lounge on U Street, tonight. We're playing with one other band, but I don't know whom or when. Ten's a safe bet. The photo's by Drew McDermott.
UPDATE: I remembered! We're playing with Philadelphia's Make a Rising.
On travel to Texas, where I'll be writing a SXSW blog for Campus Progress. More details (and a URL) soon; the festival begins Wednesday. Lykke Li, I'm looking for you.
A conversation today about art-music videos reminds me that the Wpa hasn't hosted a lecture in its Experimental Media Series in some time. I hope it's an ongoing program that will return to the Corcoran soon.
In the meantime, and acknowledging that I'm totally copping out on the lack of posts around here lately—art videos!
OCDJ!
Dan Deacon!
Videohippos!
All good things come from Baltimore. Note that if you play all these videos at the same time, it sounds like any song by your run-of-the-mill, cool-kids Baltimore DJ.
Finally, this gem:
I can't explain that one but I adore it.
Last night was my first time seeing The City Veins since they trimmed down to a three-piece and the show did not disappoint, though I disappointed myself by arriving after they'd started. Their next show is at Iota, which ought to be a good venue for them.
I understand you are planning on seeing your favorite dark-calypso combustion ensemble, Gestures, play tonight at the Velvet Lounge. This is a good plan that you have devised. It is, frankly, one of the more sensible decisions that you can make, given a primary season full of confusing candidates, inevitable disappointments, and electronic amplification. None of that is on the agenda tonight at the Velvet Lounge—and that's a promise I intend to keep.
Now I find myself in a band called Gestures. I'm playing tenor saxophone. The picture above does not feature me; nor do the songs on the Web site. You can only find me by showing up at the Velvet Lounge on Wednesday, January 9, where we're playing with Adventure (from Baltimore) and Terrior Bute and Big Fun (both from Milwaukee).
Gestures seems in this case to be the butt of a which-one-doesn't-belong joke by the booking agent, since the other acts on the bill are crisp and electronic whereas we proffer acoustic noise. But the hope is that we'll find instead that we all belong (and you, too).
I'm stealing this post whole cloth from Sadly, No!, if only to introduce it to an ever-so-slightly larger audience. It's the video for the Silver Apples' "Oscillations," from 1968's pure piece of pwnage, Silver Apples:
How much would you pay to see the Beatles play live?
All alive and in full vigor of youth, of course. Playing at a mid-sized venue (say, the 9:30 Club, whose upcoming shows include Editors, Blonde Redhead, Lupe Fiasco, for size reference).
. . . the City Paper, if it has not run its critics' lists yet, and to The Field, whose From Here We Go Sublime was worth brushing off the nonmandatory and totally arbitrary cap of ten selections—my top ten favorite albums from 2007 drum roll ba-dum-ching:
Battles, MirroredIt only goes to show how mercurial this process of assigning best-ofs is: For the list I submitted to CP I ranked the submissions, and looking at that ranking just now, I clearly didn't know what the hell I was talking about last week. So today they're in alphabetical order. And I haven't given that Panda Bear album a listen, but I think that maybe I don't like it. Look in the City Paper on Thursday for a year-end essay on District art galleries and so on.
Caribou, Andorra
Dan Deacon, Spiderman of the Rings
Deerhunter, Cryptograms
Dirty Projectors, Rise Above
Feist, The Reminder
Liars, Liars
Radiohead, In Rainbows
UGK, Underground Kingz
White Williams, Smoke
As for the Best Show in 2007 That I Barely Remember Attending, that has to be Raccoo-oo-oon, a band I like okay but loved that night. I'm pretty sure I bought one of every piece of merchandise they had to offer.
Today I filed my list of top 10 albums from 2007 for the City Paper and UGK's Underground Kingz definitely made the cut. Sad news, then, that Pimp C was found dead in L.A.. Spencer and I listened to UGK's album (and Computer World for what that's worth) for a while today, so the news seemed especially incredible.
Fine song:
Soulja Boy's report card. There is no decoding the accent used for the intro and outro of that song. Some kind of M.I.A.–style imagining of an immigrant who learned English in the UK? It strikes me that that's the voice Umberto Eco was striving for in Baudolino, but I digress.
| Subject | Grade |
|---|---|
| Math | 47 |
| English | 67 |
| Science | 14 |
That's really not very good.
I fear I'm coming down with something kind of bad right before the single most important day of the year—Halloween (Observed). I've got a review of Radiohead's In Rainbows for Campus Progress but little else to say, I'm sorry to say, so long as I'm under this weather.
Jiha Moon, Jade Cycle, 2007.
Read about that show here. And if you grab the paper that's on stands today, you can read about Nelson Vergara's "Anni" at Meat Market Gallery.
I paid £5 for In Rainbows, which was like, twice as much as my cheapskate friends put down.
The Telegraph, reporting on Radiohead's decision to allow fans to download their forthcoming album for free:
Radiohead could even benefit from those who ignore the box set and choose to pay nothing to download the album from Radiohead's online shop, where they will be required to register their details and therefore become targets for future marketing campaigns.Thom Yorke wants my private data? For marketing purposes?
Pitchfork, on Sonic Youth contributing to a Starbucks compilation:
During New York City's recent Fashion Week, [videographer Liz] Glover approached [Kim] Gordon to ask exactly why the band chose to go with Starbucks. The result is . . . Gordon's pithy, pretty awesome reply:And Thurston Moore on same: "Starbucks is the new record store, right?" The sorry thing is, I'm more sympathetic than not with the adults in both cases."They're less evil than Universal."
Since Tiny Shiny first posted "Crank Dat" I have been following Soulja Boy in the news, and it must be said that we still lack a clear understanding of his role within the Crank Squad or the goals of the Crank Squad more broadly. We know that Soulja Boy releases his training videos over the Internet. And we now know that he recently infiltrated the entire University of Texas Longhorns football squad, recruiting them to his crank-dat regime and lending Soulja Boy a militia of unparalleled strength. The ability to negotiate from the I-formation with QB under center? Consider Soulja Boy a regional authority to be reckoned with.
Soulja Boy's modular message has been adopted and transformed by other figures in the global hip-hop community who are interested in cranking dat for a variety of purposes. Using freely available p2p technology, I was able to locate instructions for cranking dat vis-a-vis a number of significant world leaders across the globe. In addition to Soulja Boy's original Crank Dat Superman, I was able to acquire:
On Campus Progress: Reviews of new stuff from Travis Morrison Hellfighters, Montag, and Stars—a veritable cornucopia of indie blather. Later today or this weekend, I'll put up a link to a piece on The American Prospect on presidential portraiture and the controversy surrounding an (un)official portrait of President Bush.
Check out this jam. Doesn't this sound as fresh as anything you'd expect to hear out there?
You'll be creeped out by how much you enjoy this song—it's a perfect dance track, recorded by a woman (!) named Q Lazzarus whose career amounts to this and little else. Would you fuck you? You'd fuck you. You'd fuck you hard.
For Campus Progress, I've got a trio of electronic rock record reviews up: Mirrored by Battles, Fancy Footwork by Chromeo, and † by Justice.
Beck's Sea Change is a album I've overlooked; I figured I was above West Coast countrypolitan dabbling, but as it turns out, it's a wonderful record and when weather and circumstances conspire, it's the only one that does the trick.
According to the New Yorker: Steve Earle will perform the opening theme for the next season of The Wire. That is all, and that is enough.
I'm on the Outer Banks with some confederates until Saturday, but nevertheless, work returns in full this week. But before we get back to the sober stuff:
Holy hell! That's Mastodon!
Did you know that Walter De Maria was the original drummer for the Velvet Underground? No joke. Courtesy of the invaluable U B U W E B, two De Maria percussion tracks:
. . . plays tonight at the Warehouse, 9:30/$8. What I didn't mention here is that no two sources list their names spelled the same way. Wtf, Usaisa.
Tonight you'll find me at the Velvet Lounge, where The City Veins are playing their first show. Charles promises that he/they don't sound like Rush, but don't take his word for it: You can catch their whole album here.
Nobody in the District stops for anything but Starbucks in the morning, whatever, whatever. A gimmick that gets people bit-torrenting Bach's "Chaconne" is a win for old-music nerds. But I must interrobang: Is there a better proper name for an instrument than the Gibson ex Huberman‽ Ben suggests the Hammer; the Cannone Guarnerius (Canon, Il Cannone, Cannone del Gesu) comes close.
(Little-known fact: In 7th grade, I dubbed my saxophone Bobby Valentine, after the manager of the Texas Rangers.)
One of the Going-Out Gurus put a song on his April mix tape that I recently put on a mix tape, too. An intersection! One that I will share with you, gratis, until someone sues the pants off me or absorbs all my awesome bandwidth. Hell, I'll put up the whole playlist. Note that almost none of these acts will be appearing in your area any time soon.
Peter, Björn, and John, "Young Folks". Confirming yet again that pop improves with latitude. Don't know whether I'm going to plink down the $20 to see the Swedes' show at the 930 Club at the end of the month—but this song alone is worth the price of the PB&J album.
The Vaselines, "Slushy". My roommates live on the bleeding edge, and not often do they get behind the vintage-bin stuff I play. But I've caught every one of them humming something or another by The Vaselines, which owes either to their catchy hooks or the fact that I won't put them away.
Stereo Total, "I Love You, Ono". Carnival music? French–German Tropicália? I don't, in fact, love Ono.
Os Mutantes, "A Minha Menina". Bona fide Tropicália. I don't want to hear about how you saw them at Pitchfork. This song appears on most any mix I make from April through September: so sunny. And Wreck sings along to this one.
The Fall, "Totally Wired". Can you believe they just released a new album? Their 26th? Jesus Christ. It's got a Merle Haggard cover on it—that sounds pretty sweet. Once, when I was a wee lad, I asked an older and wiser record store clerk I sort-of knew what really great Fall album I should check out, and his response was something like, "First one [idiot]." Thank you, Letters to a Young Rock Fan.
Love, "Alone Again". Where's the love? Here's the love. (Getting bored with this format.)
Dusty Springfield, "Some of Your Lovin'". A beautiful, confident, experienced, bittersweet song. It's absolute gold.
Harry Nilsson, "Everybody's Talkin'". Not only will Wreck sing along to this one, but on the part where Nilsson launches into his stratospheric falsetto, Wreck matches pitch, duration, tone, the whole shebang. Wreck won't let you leave his love behind.
Ris Paul Ric, "Valerie Teardrop". Picking up the pace a little, I turn to local-boy-done-good Chris Richards. This song I think of as his solo single, in part because someone else put it on a mix tape for me once, also because I remembered it well after seeing it performed live just once.
Beach House, "Saltwater". My current Baltimore sweetheart act. (I understand there's a big war between the District and Baltimore scenes? Sorry, I'm totally rooting for Baltimore. Charm City, let me know if you need any intel from the inside.)
Visitors, "I Know". These guys are friends of mine from Austin. Recently, after I'd been out playing some records with some friends, I wrote these guys a retarded, drunk message on MySpace. If that's not grounds to have my Internet taken away, I don't know what is. I'm fond of the walking-tempo, minor-key arpeggios on the organ.
The Usaisamonster, "No More Forever". I had to buy, like, three different EPs by these guys to find the copy of this song that I wanted. On some recordings, the treble falls off entirely during that blazing guitar riff. Accept no substitutes.
Marnie Stern, "Grapefruit". How great is this album? Pretty A-OK, says everyone. The combination of maximum-riffage noodling with stop-and-start metrics and layered, fussy vocals is a profitable formula. I think she could mine three albums' worth of material without tweaking her concept too much, and damnit, I want to listen to all those albums. Spencer listened to this song for the first time and observed something about the frisson of perfect pop clarity that arrives with the heavy chords. That's about right: Despite all the things he and I are saying about it, it's really accessible music.
Sentai, "Everything Change Everything". More District favorites.
Stephen Malkmus, "Jo Jo's Jacket". Every once in a while a song from Brighten the Corners will electrocute my brain. I've never been all that into Pavement; I don't feel like my behavior lumps me with the at-risk community for this affliction. This song from Malkmus's solo stuff greatly enhances the threat of guilty-pleasure aneurysm.
TV on the Radio, "Mr. Grieves". An a capella Pixies cover comprising twenty-eight (!) vocal tracks, every last one recorded to creep you right the fuck out. In Tunde Adebimpe's phrasing, a lyric like "What's that floating in the water?" takes on the sinister inflection of ghost story. He's the stuttering librarian who says that things have always been amiss in this town, the shuffling carnival hand who wouldn't ride the ferris wheel under the full moon out if he were you.
Susannah Hoffs, "I'll Keep It With Mine". I'm collecting versions of this song—Dylan, Nico, Fairport Convention, Rainer Maria. This one by Hoffs (ex-Bangles) is my favorite.
I'm someone who cares not one whit about chocolate Jesus sculptures—especially since, as you'll see below, the "Immaculate Confection" quip was claimed a long time ago—though I do appreciate the snarky e-mails about it. Don't say I never gave you anything in return!
Here's Tom Waits performing "Chocolate Jesus" on the David Letterman Show:
Last night, roommate and gal-about-town Catherine A. and I were batting around the notion of pitching a gotcha! piece on scumbags scalping tickets to the Dismemberment Plan benefit show. Nothing doing, says one diligent craigslister: The Black Cat and Ticketmaster are distributing tix only via will call to buyers with ID and credit card in hand. Sure enough, every post on the page is an ISO plea.
But check it, y'all. Ticketmaster didn't cap the number of tickets per transaction, so ostensibly, some hieroglyph-fluent prospector might have snagged 50 tickets under the assumption that he could make his heartless fortune the old-fashioned way: ripping off math-rock nerds. Fans seem to believe that more than one speculator lost his membership card to the human race—despite the fact that no such villain has yet played his hand. I wonder what happens when a mob willing to go to great lengths to acquire tickets but hell bent on preserving a price well below the intersection of the supply and demand curves spots someone outside the club pocketing bonus tickets. Wouldn't they, you know, render apart the physical person of anyone who's holding?
The Black Cat should have charged $45 for these tickets. Maximize the charity benefit, weed out the scalper, and dissuade the casual listener who bought tickets on a lark and will sell them after asking D-Plan fans to jump through silly hoops to prove their fanhood.
I have a ticket and the luxury it affords. I assure, I can assess the question with academic remove. Other narrators, however, seem less reliable:
catherine: you HAVE a ticket, don't you?
kriston: yes
catherine: i'm going to dismember you
Cache-Cache and Lexie Mountain tonight. Beach House tomorrow night. There's a lot to love about you, District of mine, and I'm determined to make this thing between us work, but my attraction to Baltimore is really sometimes quite overwhelming.
The next time I have a chance to see Marnie Stern, I'll be lucky—lucky—if I'm peering on my tip-toes around the lanky hipsters who hole up at the Black Cat. Just last week, she played to what I imagine was an intimate crowd at my favorite venue, the Warehouse (which can only really fit intimate crowds). A few days later, the District's own Chris Richards was singing Stern's praises; today the NYT's Kalefa Sanneh crowns her new album "the year's most exciting rock 'n' roll record" and, more to the point, says that a universe in which this record isn't a hit is not a good universe. Well, the universe might not be all bad after all: Pitchfork's Brandon Stosuy gives it a recommendation with caveats, a provisional thumbs-up, a lukewarm "yes, but . . ."—the surest sign so far that Stern's album lives up to the hype. If I may add to it, I haven't listened to anything but Marnie Stern all week. She nails Helium's drone (but livelier), Karen O's vocals (but tinnier), and Don Caballero's rhythms (but rawer).
Granted, In Advance of the Broken Arm has only been out now for a week. Maybe the chatter is premature, but I say, L.H.O.O.Q. out, folks—elle a chaud au album.
Spencer doesn't lie: Lombardo flopped on "South of Heaven" last night. I was sure this would prompt chaos from the crowd (panic! at the disco), but that's the advantage to a fan base that is prone to rioting. They already were! The drummer drops the drum solo and no one in the audience skips a beat: elbows fly, blood is spilled, there is much wailing & gnashing of teeth, etc., etc., etc. Live by the sword—die by the sword. Or get a pass.
A shame that I missed Marnie Stern, though. She played at Warehouse, one stop on her grueling tour, the kind that would make the angel of death whimper. But who could skip Slayer? And who knew: Outside of Royal K. Memorial Stadium in full attendance, I've never seen so many people throw up the hook 'em horns at once. Hook 'em, Slatanic Wehrmacht! Hook 'em, every last one!
Dan Flavin's permanent installation for Santa Maria Annunciata at Chiesa Rossa in Milan, 1997.
The Arcade Fire's new Neon Bible isn't kicking my ass. But I've heard enough to look forward to tapping my foot along when the band plays the album live. I was expecting something more ambitious from a sophomore effort and was willing to forgive them a misstep—but hey, they still sound like The Cure and I still like that sound, so. It doesn't surprise me to find out that the band self-produced the new album, which comes close to sounding like a live performance. The instrumentation is as spare and as crisp as on Funeral, and expansive pop songs that avoid a lot of clutter win me over. The Arcade Fire is touted for their stadium anthems; I like that they do it without a lot of to-do.
Not looking forward to fighting for tickets for this show, though.
Don Giulio Greco, priest of the Red Church in Milan, in a letter to Dan Flavin in 1996: "I'd be delighted if someone like you could help us to find an ambiance in our church. By 'ambiance,' I mean a living space, a place inhabited by the Word."
Check out Austin-based, friends-of-friends, Google-proof artists Pink Nasty and her brother, Black Nasty. If you don't like Pink Nasty's cover of "May It Always Be" by Bonnie Prince Billy, you may still not like Black Nasty's "Gimme Your Butt"—but you will have listened to two new songs.
Franz Ferdinand, "Do You Want To?"
K. tipped me off to this one. Fun for art nerds and dance-y to boot!
Stocking stuffers!
Charles Downey writes up the December concert series by the Folger Consort:
Most of the program was anchored around the reign of King Henry VIII (1509-1547), a monarch who loved music, who composed and sang as well as being a patron. Of the three selections credited to Henry in this concert, the lovely carol Green Groweth the Holly stood out from the others. The best instrumental selections were arranged for three recorders, like the anonymous Ave rex angelorum and the arrangement of Christ Church Bells, with its opening repeated note motif meant to evoke tintinnabulation. Fa la sol, arranged for two recorders and violin, was also charming, the work of William Cornysh, one of Henry VIII's best chapel musicians.Plus, the Folger Consort revives older music for new-to-you carols. Price wise, it's a more reasonable candidate than the Kennedy Center's Nutcracker Suite for an annual holiday music tradition, and I've been in the market for one of those. No threat of black snowflakes, either.
With 98 percent of precincts reporting, the City Paper has elected its top 20 music releases of 2006. I can safely report that three from my own top 10 list made the cut. If I had known that instrumental post-rock music had such a fan following at the alternative weekly—indeed, who could have guessed?—I'd've allocated those points to Cox & Combes, driving them from the hinterlands of YouTube hyperphenomena to the megalopolis that is free newsprint.
The arts writers' selections were all strong (those that were known to me), and I'll say more after that issue's released. Another thing: One very deserving local band made the cut.
Banks Violette, SunnO))) / (Repeater) Decay / Coma Mirror, 2006.SUNN O))) & Boris brought their collaboration, Altar, to the Walker in Minnie last May. For a June exhibition at Maureen Paley in London, sculptor Banks Violette cast in salt every piece of equipment that SUNN O))) uses—guitars, heads, pedals, synthesizers, enough stacks to bring down the walls of Jericho. As part of the installation, the band performed, but viewers were only permitted to watch the facsimile instruments. (Scene & Herd was there to see and hear; Joe Beres has pictures of the casting process.)
To my readers at the Hirshhorn: I would like to get in on some of this action.
In fact I think it would take special-event programming at the museum to get either of these bands here. SUNN O))) and/or Boris only ever come as close to the District as Baltimore (which is, not coincidentally, the nearest city with personality). It's not for lack of venues. The Warehouse doesn't seem to book noise acts, but I don't see why it couldn't. And though the All Souls Church doesn't seem to adhere to the traditional Unitarian practice of hosting non-mainstream musical performances, it's in the right location and brags about its large in-house music program. Unitarians, they're pushovers, of course they won't mind hosting your doom concert, they'd be thrilled.
Neither of the bands are touring now, so the point's moot, so I'll keep listening to Altar. It's a satisfying November soundtrack, especially before the gloomy weather lifted: Bill Herzog's bowed bass for the early evenings, Atsuo's cymbal rolls and scattered drums for the rain. (Kim Thayil—that Kim Thayil—plays on the record. So that explains this week's freaky spot of sunshine.)
I've been tempted to abandon showers and shaving and go for a monosludge look to match the sound, but this plan has been greeted by considerable consternation from my nearest and dearest. Possibly because I was two days into the operation when I mentioned it.
* The title shouldn't make any sense, unless, like me, you mentally pronounce "SUNN O)))" as "sun ought" (with just a little bit of reverb at the end—though when you're speaking about the band you say "sun-oh-parenthesis-parenthesis-parenthesis," because you honor the band's titling convention, even if more often than not you're interrupted before you say "parenthesis" a second time because your listener knows the band, or doesn't want to hear about it), in which case you arrive at "The Sun Ought So Rises"—and, I don't know, that's clever? Ben, Ian, someone want to help me out?
Rainer Maria calls it quits. It strikes me as more than sad that the band announced the news via Pitchfork—Yglesias and I have long maintained that that site's hegemonic sway over the market is just plain bad for music, and a genuine Internet curiosity. Show after distressingly empty show, I the declining attendance on the silly and solipsistic pans that Pitchfork's Rob Mitchum gave their latest albums Catastrophy Keeps Us Together and Long Knives Drawn. I don't think I'm knocking the guy for not sharing my tastes when I say that. These albums aren't perfect or anything—the Village Voice noted some reasonable flaws, flaws I'm willing to overlook for affection's sake. But Pitchfork treated the band to vacuous, bad-faith reviews. Pitchfork called Rainer Maria lame, and Rilo Kiley fans stayed away.
I don't take it as much comfort that even the writer who posted the news praises R|M and complains about her site's manhandling the band. It's unfair and partisan of me to assume that poor sales drove them to break up, and I'm sure a less bitter person will tell you that they outlasted the faddish genre they came up in, even if they could never quite shake the derogatory tag—that's an accomplishment beyond just surviving as creative collaborators and succeeding as musicians over several years and albums. "Atlantic" stands up as a meandering and perfectly toe-tappable pop song; "Tinfoil" is a sentimental favorite; "Artificial Light" irritated me until I decided to love it; "The Contents of Lincoln's Pockets" is a narcotic singalong. Catastrophe Keeps Us Together is the band's best album, and they have a hits album, too. But (getting into the spirit of the band, now) I'll miss them in great part—not the new music they won't make, I mean there's that, but also just knowing in the back of my mind that they're out there and playing—because a lot of their songs remind me of good times, and some sorry ones also, and these associations feel interrupted, and maybe less brilliant, for watching the band close on a down note.
