I’m gonna see you on a Saturday night.
Happy Holidays: Marc Bolan and T-Rex, “It’s T-Rexmas”
I’m gonna see you on a Saturday night.
Night Music: Vampire Weekend, “Unbelievers”
The third Vampire Weekend album came out a couple of months ago. I gave it a listen back then and found confirmation of my previous thoughts about the group.
I listened to the first album a lot. The synthesis of African guitar sounds and punchy rhythms was appealing, especially coupled with clever often funny vocals. It was kind of like the first Talking Heads album’s lyrics coupled with Fear of Music’s music, at least it seemed at first. But the more I listened the thinner it became. Clever wears out, and the jangly sounds started to feel flat. They didn’t swing, they just chirped, a quality exacerbated by a lead vocalist with a razor sharp inflection and little warmth. I didn’t mind if I heard one of those songs on the radio, but I never put on the record after a while.
The second album seemed like more of the same, and I never really gave it a shot.
The third album was different, at least on the surface. The music and rhythms were more varied, the arrangements were more ambitious and grander. But I played it just once and didn’t go back to it, despite the good reviews, because I was still bothered by the vocalist. Too many smarts, too little heart, I thought. The music was making grand gestures to rock history, to the popular canon, but the words sounded too brittle and perfect, too much part of the guy’s head, too little a part of any place farther down.
At the same time, this seemed to be a year with little guitar rock, and so when the best records of the year lists started showing up and Modern Vampires of the City seemed to be on every one, I thought it might be good to give it one more try. I haven’t gotten through all of it, but my first impression is mostly intact. Still, there is a little more here than I was giving it credit for.
I like the drums and the keyboards in this song, and the words aren’t always irritating. It’s a good tune, strong musically, kind of sing-songy and neither dumb nor overthought (mostly). I still hate his voice. He sounds like a liar to me. I guess that’s not going to change.
Song of the Week – By and By (Poor Me), Rising Sons
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
We’re in a golden age for music lovers.
As a long time record collector, I can remember having a very long “want list” of records I knew to exist, but had never seen – never mind heard!
But technology caused things to change very quickly. First there was the CD boom of the 90s that made it economically viable for record labels to reissue long lost cult favorites. Soon you could by CDs by obscure groups, classic albums with bonus cuts and boxed sets with tons of previously unreleased cuts and alternate takes.
Next came peer to peer file sharing and blog sites that posted full albums “in the cloud” for download. The treasure trove of bootlegs available on the internet is incomprehensible. And now we have YouTube, Spotify, Pandora and other streaming services that put the entire history of recorded music at our fingertips – mostly for free!
There’s hardly any artist’s repertoire that can’t be found with a little persistence. The SotW would be impossible – or at least a whole lot less interesting – if it weren’t for these advancements.
So then, what does all of this have to do with today’s SotW? Well, today I’m featuring a song by Rising Sons.
Rising Sons was a band formed in LA in the mid-60s. The band included Taj Mahal and a very young Ry Cooder (only 16 when the band was founded) in addition to Gary Marker, Jesse Lee Kincaid and Kevin Kelley. (Kelley replaced original drummer Ed Cassidy who went on to later fame with Spirit.)
The band played gigs all around LA and attracted kudos from a who’s who of record business stars. This led them to a signing by Columbia Records who quickly sent them into the studio to record. They laid down about 20 tracks of American roots music (blues, folk and country) and several originals penned by Kincaid. Columbia was unhappy with the results and never released the album. The band broke up in 1966 and the tapes languished in the Columbia vaults until 1992 when the album was finally released during the aforementioned CD boom.
Have a listen to their take on Charley Patton’s “Poor Me” retitled by Rising Sons as “By And By (Poor Me).”
This isn’t the most rockin’ cut on the album, but to my ear it’s the one that shines the brightest light on the early work of Mahal and Cooder. It has some very tasteful guitar interplay and a nice country-blues vocal by Mahal.
Thank goodness that this record was finally released so we can all hear and enjoy these early recordings.
Enjoy… until next week.
Night Music: The Rolling Stones, “Something Happened to Me Yesterday”
The first Rolling Stones album I ever owned was Between the Buttons, and it’s a fantastic and often forgotten disc, full of fantastic songs. The Stones were feeling somewhat arty at this time, Brian was still alive, but what stands out today is how deftly the Stones appropriated all the artsy crap everyone else was throwing off and made it their own.
My Uncle Henry, my father’s brother, died last week and I went to the memorial today, and was very glad to see my cousins for the first time in ages. I was also reminded of my uncle’s gentle personality. What I remember best is his funny smirk. He was funny without saying anything. But when he said something he was funny, too.
I was also reminded that my aunt and uncle brought me Between the Buttons for my 12th or 13th birthday, and at that moment I was pretty sure they had no idea how much that meant to me. All of a sudden I had the Stones in my house, and it was good.
I didn’t talk about this today, since it seemed more about me than he. I did delight in talking to my cousins. And my aunt. About other stuff.
And thanks for this:
Love, Peter
Night Video: Bill Brand, “Masstransitscope”
This is so very nice, and the only noise it makes is the click and clack of the subway track. It doesn’t really belong here, but it belongs here. It’s well worth the time.
Back in the day I went out and took the train to see this, and had now forgotten about it. But the MTA is restoring it. Very nice.
Happy Holidays: The Kinks, “Father Christmas”
Too much emphasis on the toys.
Night Music: The Pixies, “Dig for Fire,”and Frank Black “(I Want to Live on an) Abstract Plain”
I had to drive up to our house near Lake Tahoe on Wednesday for the simple task of installing our new DSL modem.
You see, even though the house is buried in the Tahoe National Forest, and we neither get–nor want–television or our cell phones to work, we do often have to work from the house. So, being able connect with the world is essential.
My whole time at the house took about 20 minutes for the install, but the drive is around three hours each way. But, since we do rent the house out, particularly to skiers this time of year, and we advertise the house has high-speed, well I had to make sure we delivered upon what was advertised.
I usually would have just streamed KTKE in Truckee (the town about ten miles from our house) but for some reason I just plugged in my iPhone, put it on shuffle, and let it go.
Most of the storage on my iPhone is gobbled up by music (7.2 GB as I write) so there is a pretty good array of stuff, and it was good fun listening to the digital DJ take a turn at spinning tracks, and as Pavlov (one of our dogs joined me for the trek) and I wound our way up in altitude, shuffle handed out a few songs by The Pixies, a band I really love a lot.
Among them was Dig For Fire from the band’s terrific Bossanova album. Such a great cut (I saw the band once, opening for U2 on the Achtung Baby tour).
Well, since I am a big Pixies fan, it presumes I am also a Frank Black (aka, Black Francis) fan as well, so I figured I would throw in a cut from his album Teenager of the Year, with Frank and his band The Catholics.
Night Music: Elmore James, “It Hurts Me Too”
Compare and contrast!
Happy Holidays: The Pogues with Kirsty McColl, “Fairytale in New York”
A classic. “I coulda been someone/Well so could anyone.”
I Like This Song: The Edward, “It Hurts Me Too”
This is an oddball album that came out in 1972, featuring a “band” made up of Nicky Hopkins, Ry Cooder, Bill Wyman, Charlie Watts and Mick Jagger. The story apparently, is that during the Rolling Stones’ Let It Bleed sessions, their producer Jimmy Miller, brought in Cooder to play slide guitar. This made Keith mad and he took off for a few days, during which the boys he left behind recorded these six sides.
One of them, Boudoir Stomp, is Midnight Rambler with different words. This one is a lovely cover of the classic Elmore James song. Great stuff.
For some reason, when I was in high school, I owned this but not Let It Bleed.
Nicky Hopkins drew the cover cartoon.