Category Archives: night music

Night Promotion: Chrissie Hynde, Stockholm

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I listened to Chrissie’s new elpee this evening while making dinner. Distracted listening, but loud enough, and only a first time through, so there was no time for things to grow. My first reaction? I love her voice, her sultry melodicism, the way she speaks directly. What I missed here were the pounding drums. The Pretenders’ most of the time drummer, Martin Chambers, was a monster of drum aggression. Hitting the skins hard. They were a band propelled by the rhythm section, which seemed to skew every lyrical instinct Hynde and guitarist James Honeyman-Scott had. The Pretenders worked best because these giant musical personalities blended in ways that created unimaginable swing and melodic tension. Everything wasn’t in its exact place, but yet it seemed to be perfect.

I also missed Honeyman-Scott’s vibrant up front guitar. Bjorn and Hynde worked out lovely pop rock arrangements on these songs, but except on the tune Neil Young plays on the top comes up a little short. It’s nice, but I wondered if Chrissie might have had more fun in the studio with Hellacopters, instead of the mild and mellow and nice Bjorn. I suspect she might have. After all, she wrote Tattooed Love Boys. Could be her next elpee. She wouldn’t even have to leave Stockholm.

So, maybe you’re getting the idea that I’m a little disappointed with this record. Maybe. But before I had a chance to listen again I came across these trailers for the album. They’re short, they feature Chrissie Hynde talking about the process, and they sell me. On her, on the album. Not completely on the music, yet, but as I relisten I’m getting into it more.

There aren’t many old rockers (CH is five years older than me) making real new records of rock music. That doesn’t grant Chrissie a pass, but it puts into perspective the challenge. Rather than play more tunes tonight, let’s see and listen to some of the trailers. Winning stuff, as far as I’m concerned.

Okay, I’m up in the air about how these tunes are going to last in my music masher. But I posted these promotional pieces because they do a great job of selling the process and the sound. Way better than my first listen to the elpee did.

Which got me wondering. Has any post 60s rocker made a real album of new songs that came close to rivaling their past performance? I love that Chrissie has the ambition and the gall to go for it.

I just wish she’d demanded more guitars and bigger drums. Hmmm, I guess I wish she’d commanded the dead and distracted original Pretenders.

Night Music: Chrissie Hynde, “Dark Sunglasses”

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Her new album, Stockholm, is being pitched as her first solo album, something she said she would never do, but the last two Pretenders albums, in 2008 and 2002, both felt more like her work than the band’s. In any case, this time when she tried to rally them they said, “nah,” and so she headed off to Sweden to record with Bjorn, of Peter Bjorn and John.

Here’s the first song, an arch critique of an aging rock star, I think, though it’s more notable for a light reggae feel and a bizarrely undernourished guitar solo that actually kind of works.

Night Music: Epic Rap Battles of History, “Stephen King versus Edgar Allan Poe”

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Until about 20 minutes ago I didn’t know this was a thing. Two characters rap against each other, two characters from history tell their stories competitively, and then an expressive announcer asks us all to vote.

This video has more than 9,000,000 views. The John Lennon versus Bill O’Reilly battle has more than 30 million. Lady Gaga versus Sarah Palin? More than 34 million.

This is big business, and has obviously touched a chord. I’m not sure which one that is. There’s cursing, bad costumes, historical facts spouted too fast to absorb, and bad music.

But once I started I had a hard time stopping. We’re doomed.

Stay up all night, there are a lot of them. Here’s the Gaga Palin smackdown.

Night Music: The Master Musicians of Joujouka

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At the Ornette Coleman tribute I went to this past Thursday, the roll of guest musicians was impressive.

We first saw Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Bill Laswell and the guy who invented the boxes that the guitars fed through on Metal Machine Music.

Next up were Branford Marsalis and Bruce Hornsby.

Then Thurston Moore and Nels Cline.

Then Ornette’s son Denardo came back out and played drums with a band backing Ravi Coltrane, John Coltrane’s son, who lives in the neighborhood and has become a potent force as a sax player in his own right..

Then Hornsby and Marsalis rejoined the band, along with James Blood Ulmer, the master guitarist, and then finally a couple of guys in green robes came out, the Master Musicians of Joujouka. Just two of them. Descendants presumably of the guys Brian Jones played with and recorded as the Master Musicians (so dubbed by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin in the 1950s) in 1968, sessions that were released in 1971, after Jones’ death. Ornette Coleman also visited the Master Musicians about that time, which is why they were a good fit in this show.

They do not play the flute, but they do interesting things with pan pipes and drums. The style is a trance music of seeming incoherence, but in its shifting rhythms and simple melodic patterns something new is created, the way two sets of visual patterns superimposed can set off a third animated moire pattern. Something new.

Timothy Leary, at one point, called them a 4,000 year old rock band. Definitely don’t judge this one on the first 16 bars, and don’t expect Going Up the Country. Though that’s what you’re doing. The difference is the country is Morocco.

Night Music: Jethro Tull, “Teacher”

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Tom reminded me today with his Tull post that I had been looking at Tull a month or two ago, with an eye toward Teacher, their first big hit in the States.

It’s a terrific song that works as rocker, as arty noodling, as spiritual quest and intimation of hedonic paradise, plus it’s hook-y as hell. All pied piper material for a certain type of 14 year, the type that was me. The problem is that there is no story, except the sound of this tune at peak volume in my headphones, over and over and over again, over a period of time in 1970 and 1971, while I thought about the government and the girl next door and that other girl in the next neighborhood and the war. Plus photography and basketball, the Knicks were kings, and playing basketball. Teacher made it all sound great.

I never saw them live. I retrofitted Stand Up into my collection and liked it, but Aqualung and Thick as a Brick, while they had some good riffs, also had too much flute, and too much canned pretension. And they may have represented the first time a band I felt like I’d discovered, not really but among my friends, went on to become something that lost its cool by becoming even more popular.

Night Music: Ebba Grön, “We’re only in it for the drugs”

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I went to see the new Lucas Moodysson movie today. Lucas is Swedish, like the Hellacopters and Supershit 666. Also like Ingmar Bergman and Lars Van Trier. Moodysson’s new movie is called We Are the Best! and it is set in 1982. Based on what I assume is an autobiographical graphic novel by his wife, Coco Moodysson, it tells the story of a couple of disaffected 13 year olds who recruit a disaffected Christian guitar player and start a punk band.

Moodyson is one of my favorite directors. His films have mostly centered on teenagers, mostly involved with music, yet the tone and attitude has ranged widely. He can be light, dark or experimental, all with dexterity and energy. But that’s a subject for a different time, in a story about Lucas Moodysson.

We Are the Best’s girls start a punk band in Stockholm in 1982, when everyone is telling them that punk is dead, because they have nothing else to do, but that’s just a talking point. It’s a wonderfully acted story of friendship and music and acting on impulse. And it turns wonderfully on their ambition turning to fruition, even though the music isn’t, um, quite there yet.

One of the running gags in the film is which Swedish punk band everyone likes best. Bobo, the lead character, like Ebba Grön, and is challenged when her friend switches her allegiance to, um, a different band. One with four letters as their name. I’ll dig for that, but for now enjoy this (and see We Are the Best!).

Night Music: Ornette Coleman, “Lonely Woman”

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There was a concert honoring Ornette Coleman in the park near my house tonight. Ornette’s son, the drummer Denardo Coleman, was involved. Henry Threadgill was on the bill. I planned on going, but dinner ran late and rain was on the way. As we were clearing the table I checked Twitter and there was a picture of Ornette himself sitting in. Dang! Hadn’t expected that.

We arrived during a break. The rain was close, but Weather Underground put it on the other side of the park. Other than a few drops it was humid and not too hot. A guy in a magenta suit, or maybe even pink–if you want to be unkind–came out and thanked us for our patience, and then introduced Hal Willner, who is a famed producer of lots of different music and shows. Willner puts together a tribute show each June in Prospect Park, lassoing all sorts of talent for a single night of unusual pairings and fantastic connections.

Willner started talking about how much Lou Reed loved Ornette, and how he and Lou, for the last four years of Lou’s life, had had a radio show together. It sounds like they made 80 or so shows over the years, (I assume on SiriusXM because I didn’t know about it) and the first song played on every one, Hal said, was Ornette’s Lonely Woman. He then introduced a recording from one of the shows, with Lou explaining why this is a great song, but it doesn’t need that at all. Just listen.

Willner then introduced the next band to perform: Laurie Anderson, John Zorn, Bill Laswell and the guy who invented the boxes that helped the guitars make the sounds they made on Metal Machine Music. But their performance, and what came after, is a story for another day.

Night Music: Jonathan Richman and the Modern Lovers, “Anthony and Cleopatra”

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Live, at the Peppermint Lounge, in Manhattan, which was kind of next door to the original and awesome Barnes and Noble Store.

Not that Barnes and Noble had anything to do with it, except that rents were cheap in that belly of Manhattan, for reasons that are hard to imagine now, at that time.

As far as Jonathan Richman and his white reggae goes, this live cut explains a lot about what he’s thinking. And the band executes. Richman was a legendary originator of the punk sound, and later a performer who repudiated much of what came before, and still made a bunch of music that was passionate and individualist and passionate.

Night Music: Spoon, “Eddie’s Ragga”

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Spoon has a new record coming out in August, and today a song escaped or was pushed, called The Rent I Pay. It’s okay, a thumping beat and some layers of guitars and distortion, with lyrics I’m not obsessive enough to understand just yet.

Back in 2007 I bought Spoon’s rapturously reviewed album Ga Ga Ga Ga. Actually I downloaded the tracks from my music vendor of choice then, eMusic. So while I have the files, I don’t know the package, which I’m sure had a torturously tiny lyrics sheet. Which may be why I played the stuff a bunch of times and then it oozed back into the deep well that is my music library. I remember liking it well enough, but obviously not indelibly.

And from a couple of listens today to the Rent I Pay and a revisit to Ga Ga Ga Ga, I think the problem is obvious. These guys are, as everyone says, one of the best rock n roll bands of our times, but they’re not quite right. The tempo isn’t pushed forward enough, the songs don’t swing. The crunch is big, but echoes over a static landscape into which it curls up and dies. The problem of comparisons is that there aren’t that many rock bands these days, apart from the ones playing the oldies. Call that small pond syndrome.

And these guys aren’t young, like Fidlar. Spoon formed in 1993, in the heights of rock’s last gasp, Grunge.

Sorry to make this sound like such a drag, Spoon isn’t really that. But it doesn’t burst with excitement, the way the Black Keys sometimes do (or did, in their early days). This bit of white reggae is just fine, but it really makes me want to hear Dreadlock Holiday.