Category Archives: video

Night Music: Afrika Bambaataa, “World Destruction”

by

I’ve founnd myself in conversations with friends over the past few weeks talking about how things are worse now than they’ve ever been. It feels that way, there is lots of dark stuff coming out right now, but I grew up in the 70s. There was dark stuff then, for sure. I think the amount of dark stuff is always the same, it just isn’t always in our faces the same way.

And there is some notion that what is in our faces now will help us address the problem of institutional bias, and find ways to diminish it’s effects in the future. Probably wishful thinking, but a goal worth pursuing.

At dinner tonight our host was spinning a new Bill Laswell record, on vinyl! It sounded great, and was in keeping with Laswell’s lifelong attempt to mix up all the genres of music. There was some techno, reggae, and ambient on the disk.

Which reminded me of Laswell’s production of Afrika Bambaataa’s World Destruction, which features Johnny Rotten on backup vocals. This is crazy early 80s hip hop, end of the world punk hop, so I’m sure you’ll grok it.

There is much more to be said about Laswell, but for now, let’s agree that the world sucked in the early 80s, too.

Night Music: Lemonheads, “Mrs. Robinson”

by

As we saw with Joan Jett punkifying the Mary Tyler Moore theme, and my previous post of Hole’s version of Clouds, it’s punk’s illusions I recall.

I also recall the Lemonheads, who did the same thing with Simon and Garfunkle’s Mrs. Robinson, long before Joe Dimaggio’s 100th birthday. This is not serious, but it is hopeful it would upset Paul Simon. (Further research indicates Simon hated it, Garfunkle loved it. Beautiful.)

Evan Dando is a callow privileged ass, based on this video, but there is something theatrical that builds here. The song gets darker, despite his insipid smiles. Maybe that all derives from the movie clips. Let’s not give the Lemonheads more credit than they deserve.

Is there any reason to cover this song except the easy access to market video clips? This version certainly doesn’t improve on the original, at least not without the clips.

And, of course, you have to ask, why Venice?

Night Music: Forest for the Trees, “Dream”

by

There are many things wrong with this song, or maybe I should say there are things that seem wrong at first that start to cohere (in a dreamy incoherent way), once it gets into your earworm. Carl Stephenson, the brains here, was Beck’s collaborator on Mellow Gold, co-writer of Loser, which launched a giant career that wasn’t Stephenson’s. As Beck broke he had a nervous breakdown, though I have no idea if there’s any causation there.

I thought of this tune after playing the Vintage Caravan’s excellent tune, “Expand Your Mind” over and over the other day. I think the video (which is someone’s art project) is trippier than the tune, but I like the tune, which percolates in a world music way, a lot.

Breakfast Blend: Wild Tchoupitoulas

by

Lawr’s post about the Neville Brothers reminded me of a great show I saw at the Bottom Line in NYC some 30+ years ago. The draw was the Wild Tchoupitoulas, a band of Mardi Gras paraders who made a stomping rocking record of parade chants that seemed, despite their lavish costumes, more organic and rocking than anthropological.

It was a show that had the whole club up on its feet, dancing in the aisles, strictly against NYC cabaret laws. Dancing against the law! Powerful stuff, like Footloose!

What I didn’t understand at the time was that not only was the Wild Tchoupitoulas’s band the venerable New Orleans group, the Meters, but the band’s album was the launching point for the Neville Brothers band, who were the opening act that night. Dressed up in parade costumes, who knew?

I only put this together because a few years ago I went to see the Nevilles, who still perform a fine set of NO funk, too polished because that’s what the popular ear wants. And they talked about getting together 30 years earlier, which is when I’d first seen them at the Bottom Line, at which point they seemed like grizzled vets.

In part, because some of them were.

But the seeds of the Nevilles were born in the Meters, who included Art and Cyrille. Good god.

Night Music: The Troggs, “Wild Thing”

by

Came upon this funny homemade video featuring feral women like Barbara Bach, her husband Ringo Starr, and Charlton Heston, for the Troggs’ No. 1 US hit, the song that got Reg Presley out of the building trades. This is a song we’ve all heard about a million times too many, and I don’t mind it at all.

Breakfast Blend: Sonny Curtis

by

Reading Bobby Keys’ astounding obituary I learned that not only were Keys and his buddy Keith Richards born on the same exact day, but that Keys was taught to play the baritone sax by his high school buddy, Sonny Curtis, who took over as the singer/guitarist in the Crickets after Buddy Holly died. Curtis is now in the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame as a member of the Crickets, and in the Texas Songwriters Hall of Fame, best known for writing two indelible songs.