Category Archives: night music

Night Music: Toots and the Maytals, “Funky Kingston”

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It wasn’t an accident that I was holding Toots and the Maytal’s Funky Kingston in my modeling debut. It’s an amazing album and an amazing song, and totally in line with the Mono Brothers ethos to intimidate the winky Meeks into moving on from whatever weak stuff he liked to the good stuff. He would have thanked us, but it was only an ad, and we were only models.

In any case, maybe you haven’t heard Funky Kingston. Please do:

Night Music: Warpaint, “Keep It Healthy”

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I read about this band last year, and listened to some cuts at the time. Great name!

They played in the park by my house a few days ago, so I went to see them. I like girl bands. I’m looking forward to the day where we don’t notice a band is all girls, and I like watching videos of girls in bands acting goofy more than I like watching guys in bands acting goofy. Usually, though of course it depends.

The Beatles acting goofy almost always wins. REM, not so much.

But here’s the thing about Warpaint live on this night, they were ragged. On some songs the drums and bass were solid and strong, but the vocals and guitars and the whole shape of the song would shift, let’s say meander, toward the end.

I wasn’t going to write about them, but then today in the Times Jon Pareles did. He’s into them. He dropped a few clues about how sloppy they are, but he treated them like established artists. And, to his credit, put them in the lineage of Siouxsie Sioux and some other ladies bands of the 70s to 80s transition.

The band he didn’t mention that seems to pertain most is the Slits. The Warpaint studio recordings are fairly tight, but meandering. The live show was meandering and not tight at all. That’s a big difference. Let’s fix these guys up with Dennis Bovell and see what happens. But for now the name outstrips the tunes.

And still, I’m hearing this one in my head. Good night.

Night Music: Dum Dum Girls, “Bedroom Eyes”

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The last two Dum Dum Girls albums show an evolution toward a more reverby chiming sound, the rock solid mid-tempo drums and pulsing bass prop up the echoing rhythm guitars and delicate fills which serve as harmonies for the vocals. This isn’t music that swings really, or shows much in the way of dynamics, but it sounds as nice as a pretty non-precious jewel in a clever setting.

They were playing in the park tonight, so we went over and caught their set. I like the sound, I like their serious approach, but there is a sameness from song to song on elpee that plays a little more lively live. But they’re still drowning in the reverb and I think that’s a mistake.

This is their best recent tune, I’d say, though I’m far from an expert. It sounds a little classic, because you can hear the rumbles of Blondie, the Pretenders, Belly, Mazzy Star and no doubt others. That’s not great, but that’s okay, and still I miss the old stuff, which included a little Garbage, as well.

Night Music: Little Queenie and the Percolators, “My Darlin’ New Orleans”

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When I’m asked what the best live show I ever saw was, I sometimes say it was Little Queenie and the Percolators at Kenny’s Castaways in Greenwich Village, maybe in 1980. Other times I say it was the Wild Tchoupitoulas at the Bottom Line, which was perhaps that same busy week as that Little Queenie show. Or not too long after. Sometimes I say it was Rick Danko and Levon Helm at Gerdes Folk City, on West 4th Street in the Village (next to the McDonalds), a few years later.

Those are my three. Small clubs, unexpected delights, rollicking rhythm music pulsing in the big city, courtesy of the south. Mostly New Orleans.

This tune showcases Queenie’s plain spoken and lyrical voice, and a tough rhythm section. It’s one of those chamber of commerce tunes, which is how it ended up as the closing music for the first episode of Treme. But that’s okay. New Orleans has a lot of that and it doesn’t seem to matter. The band plays, the feet tap, memories are made. Imagine.

Night Music: The Rolling Stones, “I Am Waiting”

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When this clip started I saw the tow-headed kid playing the zither and thought it was cute, before realizing that it was Brian Jones playing a dulcimer. (So, it turns out that a zither is the large group of instruments that involve strings stretched across a resonator box. Specific types of zithers include pianos, guitars, autoharps and dulcimers, among many others.)

This song is the soundtrack to a big scene in Wes Anderson’s Rushmore, which we watched tonight, but it is also one of those songs that is permanently fixed in my head, my own soundtrack. If I’m standing, waiting for something to happen, for the theater to let us in or my daughter to come downstairs so we can go out, it is this tune I will start singing quietly to myself, for obvious reasons.

It was originally released on the Stones’ Aftermath album, their first great album, musically ambitious and accomplished. These Stones, in 1966, were a little bit artsy, trying hard to expand their range, while at the same time burnishing their images as provocateurs. More than eight years later, when I landed in college, the debate continued to rage about whether Stupid Girl was misogynistic hate or closely-observed satire.

Not so with this one, which is more mysterious than a challenge.