We (I) hated Jesus and Mary Chain when they came out. They seemed then more derivative of good stuff than, hmmm, Joe Jackson. But that was wrong.
Jesus and Mary Chain didn’t always make great songs, but often did, and always made a sound that you couldn’t help but like. It was a sound that had listened to all of rock history, and most importantly didn’t forget the Crystals and Suicide and the Clash (though the Ramones are in there too).
With the holidays behind us, I wonder how many of you heard enough of Brenda Lee’s standard, Rocking Around the Christmas Tree?
It is a fun song and the diminutive Lee (she was around 4’9″) could really belt out a tune. She had hits like I’m Sorry and All Alone am I, and played with some pretty good sessions guys.
As in, did you know that Boots Randolf provided the sax solo in Rocking Around the Christmas Tree and that Hank Garland played the guitar on the same tune.
So, how many of you remember Lee’s 1964 hit Is it True?
Lee, who was more popular in England before she really broke through in the states, recorded Is it True in London, at Decca studios, when BritPop was just breaking through, so the song is full of the sound.
Is it True? features Bobby Graham on drums, and Jimmy Page playing some killer guitar (the piano is also deadly), and was produced by Mickie Most, who also did work with Herman’s Hermits and The Animals, among others.
Here it is: Brenda belts, Bobby slams, and Jimmy wails.
The Bad Plus are playing at the Village Vanguard this weekend. That means they are a jazz band. But when I first saw them five or six years ago in the bandshell in Prospect Park, as part of Celebrate Brooklyn, the thing that impressed me was their aggressiveness. A rockish aggressiveness.
Ethan Iverson, I’ve learned over the years, is a great piano player, but what I gleaned that night was that he was great and always pushed forward. He was loud, he accelerated the tempos, he’s the king of the Bad Plus.
Curiously, the Bad Plus drummer’s last name is King. His name is Dave King. He is a loud, muscular banger on drums. Aggressive is a good word here, too. He pushes the tempo constantly, and on that night I saw them in Brooklyn he was a total force. This is a jazz trio that plays with a rockish intensity. Dave King brings the heat.
I don’t want to diss the bass player, but I have no memories of him when I’ve seen the Bad Plus live. But this clip is a down tempo version of a crinkly new wave song originally recorded by the band Tears for Fears in 1985. The Bad Plus bass player, Reid Anderson, kills on this tune. Maybe slow and thoughtful helps the four-string guy.
Ethan Iverson and Dave King will show their massive chops in other clips you can find everywhere, or when you go see these guys live (as you should), but covering Tears for Fears it is Reid Anderson who captures the groove.
Suicide had a singular electronic sound back when electronic sounds were fairly rare. What made the music work, however, wasn’t so much their sound as fact of the New York and rock ‘n’ roll attitude they brought to it. In this trancy music there are echoes of Phil Spector and the Everlys and the NY Dolls, harmonies from the Brill Building and of course the long shadow of the Velvet Underground.
Then, some many years later, Bruce Springsteen himself saw fit to do his own version with the E Street Band, which turns it from a loving back alley incantation to an epic inspirational hymn, something Pete Seeger could probably get behind.
Oh my goodness, this is a gorgeous tune. The Thing are Swedish jazz dudes. Neneh is the daughter of jazz giant Don Cherry. But Neneh is famous for making one of the great pop/dance/alt/fuckingfantastic albums of the late 80s. Called Raw Like Sushi, we will visit it at a later date.
Dream Baby Dream is a song by the 70s punk/no NY rockers Suicide, and, well, it was the tune from 2012 I probably played most in 2013.
In a word, freakin’ gorgeous.
A while back I wrote about the Faces, noting when Rod Stewart became the lead singer of the band.
Peter commented that one of the strengths of Stewart was that of a storyteller, and if you listen to some of Rod the Mod’s early stuff, like Gasoline Alley and Every Picture Tells a Story, Don’t It, you will hear that Peter is more than correct.
Well, at birthdays and holidays, I like to burn mix discs (I guess they used to be called mix tapes, back in the days of cassettes) for my niece Lindsay (who also burns said discs for me).
This way she can keep me up to date on the likes of bands like Starfucker and Deerhunter, and I can make sure she has Miles Davis, Cracker, and Bill Frisell on her shuffle.
I made Linds an Xmas disc last week, and since I have worn thin the number of artists I wanted to turn her onto, I noticed there is no shortage of great songs I can dig up.
So, this disc I focused on just that: deadly songs, some of which made the list by virtue of that strong storytelling. And, for my money, Lucinda Williams is as good as it gets at painting said visual picture with words. And, her song Car Wheels on a Gravel Road, from album of same title, is my favorite said example.
It made Lindsay’s Xmas playlist, but here it is for your New Year’s Day ears.
This performance is in the Museum of Modern Art in NYC. For about a month the microphone was set up in the atrium with the piano and people were invited to play or say anything. There was a placard saying that the piece was by Yoko Ono.
When I was there I went up to the microphone tentatively and grunted out a few sounds, but the space is too big, filled with too many people, to feel comfortable to me, and I quickly moved on. During the rest of our visit, however, we could hear people singing and groaning and screaming echoing through the modern MOMA’s clean white spaces.
Clearly Yoko has her own ideas about how to perform in this space. Have a happy new year!
I listened to this band because they derived their name from the fantastically weird and talented and interesting harpist Joanna Newsom. I’m sure that’s what they wanted, but it’s hard to see what the connection is. Newsom, from the Bay Area (her uncle used to be mayor of San Francisco) is an alt-harpist, a master of long form storytelling suffused with lyrical whimsy, surreal autobiography and pinpoint musical control. Gruesome, from Wales, features pounding hyperactive drums, many layers of guitars, other sounds and reverb, and oddly reticent (undermixed) yet attractively authoritative vocals (with impossible to discern lyrics).
At low volume, like if you’re working, it sounds a mess, but crank it up and you’ll wish you were in the club hearing them do this live. And the whole album is this way (check out their cover of Galaxie 500’s Tugboat).
To my mind, one of the most perfect of pop songs because of it’s infectious beat and rhythm changes, a singalong melody, and a brilliant first person voice that captures innocence, desire, self-consciousness and rebellion, all in a chewy piece of minimalist cotton candy.
A friend of Gene’s on Facebook got me thinking today of my 10 albums that easily came to mind that stuck with me, and most of those I thought of were classic disks from the 60s and 70s. As they should be. Two others were a little less obvious: Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen’s Lost in the Ozone and The Mekons Fear and Whiskey, both great albums by bands that are central to my listening life. That got me to nine.
But No. 10 was hard. There were scores of records from the 60s and 70s that qualified, but I didn’t want just oldies. And I could have chose lots of classic artists’ later work, or albums by 90s artists like Pavement, the Pixies, Nirvana, Hole, that I loved at the time. But as I thought about it I thought they all echoed the earlier choices. What, I asked myself, have I been listening to in the new century that has stuck with me?
The answer came down to four artists: John Legend (soul crooner love man), Stars (arty rock band), Jens Lekman (international electronic singer songwriter) and Nellie McKay (neo cabaret political activist).
These are not rock bands, though all turn it up at times. But what I love about all of them is that they have made great music that pumps the heart and strokes the head, is filled with beauty and ideas, and I’ve wanted to play over and over again. Of them, Nellie McKay is the boldest. She’s a fierce animal rights activist, has been staunchly involved with trying to limit Columbia University’s illegal use of eminent domain to expand its holdings in Morningside Heights (where Nellie grew up), and her records are full of incredible jazz, rap and pop arrangements and songs full of lyrics. Whip smart lyics. She is, of course, cabaret first and foremost.
This clip is pure corn, but it is withering corn, satire that Randy Newman wishes he could pull off (just like the pink ensemble, I’m sure). Some might see this as light, especially given the View’s awful hucksterism, but when I look in Nellie’s eyes I see Johnny Rotten’s. I’m pretty sure that’s what she sees too.
