Hilly Krystal, dead at 75

R.I.P. Hilly Krystal

Hipster Olympics

This is beyond awesome, and it's applicable to places besides Williamsburg.



(thanks to Ingo for this)

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Now playing: Rachel's - Tea Merchants
via FoxyTunes

new Rilo Kiley

Looks like Jenny Lewis, et al. went and wrote a disco record. I'm only about halfway through it and so far it's my favorite thing of theirs I've heard. I can't tell how much influence Warner money has had yet - the title track is a little glossy sounding, and there are shades of...Fleetwood Mac, mabe? But still! It's got a funky beat, and I can dance to it.

I'm hearing some vocal harmonies that are a bit reminiscent of the Watson Twins' contribution to Jenny Lewis' terrific solo record, but outside of that, this is a very different beast.

"The Moneymaker" is the first single, but you'll probably be able to steal that from somewhere else on the internests, so take this one instead:

Rilo Kiley - "Close Call" [5.2mb]

edit: watch the video for "The Moneymaker". It's got porn starlets in it.

covers

I've spent the better part of the last two days listening to Regina Spektor's cover of Madonna's clunker of a single "Love Profusion". Now, I love love love Regina, and I am ambivalent, if not downright hostile, toward Madonna. But I've found that there are several instances of artists making something more out of the source material at hand.

Sure, it's all subjective and crap, but sometimes these covers have led me to explore the original group's catalog. Sometimes I end up getting into the original artist, and sometimes not.

Cases in point:

• Joel RL Phelps - most of the Inland Empires EP (featuring songs by Iris DeMent, Townes Van Zandt, the Go-Betweens, others). I love this record. I bought Iris DeMent's My Life because of it, and did not like it one bit. I think it was the production moreso than the songs themselves that I didn't care for, but still - I sold the CD. Same goes for the Go-Betweens. I'd actually given them a shot a few years before the Phelps disc came out at the behest of both a girl I was dating, and Tim Cook. I was, and am still, distinctly meh about them.
• Silkworm - "The Chain" (Fleetwood Mac). I remember hating Fleetwood Mac as a kid. I thought their music was pure schlock (except for "Tusk" with all the marching band shit going on). But after listening to SKWM's version about a hundred times, I decided I at least liked the original.
• Shannon Wright - "I Started A Joke" (Bee Gees). I first heard this when I worked for KCMU/KEXP. I got a copy of Shannon's Perishable Goods EP for review, and having already been a fan, I pushed to get this some airplay. Sometime after this came out, I asked her after a show if she knew where I could get a copy for myself. (Before you ask: I didn't have a computer back then, so I couldn't just burn it.) She basically said "Good luck." About the Bee Gees? I own the Saturday Night Fever soundtrack on vinyl.
• Bauhaus - "Ziggy Stardust" (David Bowie). I've never had a problem with Bowie. I like Bowie. I just happen to like Bauhaus' take on "Ziggy" more than Bowie's.

Those are just a couple of examples. Hip-hop led me to soul, funk, and R&B, and covers lead me to...Fleetwood Mac. Or even Madonna.

The performance this track is culled from took place at the 2005 New York Jewish Music festival. It was kind of a tongue-in-cheek song selection, considering Madge's questionable Jewishness. Regina totally makes this song her own though, and I will keep enjoying it, despite myself.

Regina Spektor - "Love Profusion" (live at the 2005 New York Jewish Festival) [7.1mb]

Cake Like

Kerri Kenney (from Cake Like/The State/Reno 911)'s dad was the voice of Lion-O from Thundercats. Who knew?

Cake Like was a great, totally underappreciated band. Their first album, Delicious, was put out by John Zorn's Japanese affiliate Avant. It's not as strong as their sophomore disc Bruiser Queen, which is the first of their recordings I purchased. It's also one of the first releases from Neil Young's Vapor imprint, as well as one of the first HDCD-format compact discs*. I saw them on the Conan O'Brien show and was blown away by their combination of weirdness and pop sensibility. Kenney's flat vocal delivery and their rudimentary playing could have made for a boring listening experience in clumsier hands, but their sense of humor and clever songwriting made Bruiser Queen one of my favorite records of the late 90s.

Their third disc, Goodbye, So What, wasn't quite as good as Bruiser Queen, but still had some rockers on it - namely "Dead To Me", which lyrics supply the title of the album, and became a mixtape favorite of mine.

Below is the video for their "hit" (perhaps only) single, "Lorraine's Car" from Bruiser Queen.




*don't ask me why I remember shit like this. I can't help it. It's part of the reason I have a music blog.

Max Roach

R.I.P. Max Roach

The importance of cover art:

In this age of digital downloading, I believe that the disconnect between music and packaging is becoming even greater than when die-hard vinyl purists decried the reduced real estate of a CD jacket. At least CD packaging allowed for some art, some sort of visual to go along with the audio. For me, the packaging is a huge part of the whole presentation of an album.

Here are the covers of five of my all-time favorite records. See if you notice anything similar about them:


Crescent EP
Unwound New Plastic Ideas
Six Finger Satellite - Severe Exposure
Silkworm - Libertine
Boxhead Ensemble - Dutch Harbor: Where The Sea Breaks Its Back

Something hit me recently. The covers to at least five of the records that I've listened to hundreds and hundreds of times are all black & white. Save for a little yellow here, a bit of red there, and Severe Exposure's black-on-silver motif, they're black & white. (My personal copy of Severe Exposure is an advance release version with - you guessed it - a black & white cover).

I love the music on these albums dearly. I love how they sound, and how they were recorded (which would probably be considered 'dirty' or 'lo-fi' by a lot of engineers). The music on these records is largely dissimilar - Crescent is all drones and unintelligble vocals. Unwound (on this record at least) trades in abrasive post-punk and full-on stoner jams. I refer to 6FS as "cocaine rock", all ugly 80s synths and sleaze. Silkworm's Libertine (which was recorded by Steve Albini) sounds massive and airy, whilst being angular and jagged in spots, and achingly pretty in others. And the Boxhead Ensemble record is the mostly improvised and entirely haunting soundtrack to Braden King's eponymous documentary, which deals with life in the fishing community of Dutch Harbor, AK (a bleak place by most accounts).

I realized that these records sound like they're in black & white to me. Not to say that they sound monochromatic. It's more of a noir feel. Despite the differences in the music, there seems to be a common thread throughout. Possibly it's the way the guitars sound, or the sense of melancholy, and the preponderance of minor key tonality.

There are typographic and graphic similarities as well - what I've always thought of as a "1960s encyclopedia" look, for lack of a better description. The cover art for these albums have been nearly as big an influence on me as the music contained therein.

We're moving back into a singles-driven market. In the olde days, 45s usually came in paper sleeves with the record company's logo on it. There were no pictures of the band, no information about the players anywhere. Then the LP came along, and the listener obtained a new way to connect with the people who made the music they loved. This is going by the wayside again. Of all of the mp3s I've downloaded off the internet, I know so little about so many of the bands. I don't know what they look like, or who the band members are, or where they recorded the music, who produced it, even what label it came out on. These things may not be important to a lot of music listeners, but for me, it helps create a richer, and more important experience.