My daughter Zoe turns 21 today. It’s not a surprise that a song or two would come to mind. Parenthood, like birth or death, is a life event beyond words. I put the opportunity to use assembling this week’s playlist to express and “feel” these last 21 years.
Blue, songs are like tattoos / You know I’ve been to sea before / Crown and anchor me / Or let me sail away / Hey Blue, here is a song for you / Ink on a pin / Underneath the skin / An empty space to fill in / Well there’re so many sinking now / You’ve got to keep thinking /You can make it through these waves /Acid, booze, and ass / Needles, guns, and grass / Lots of laughs, lots of laughs / Everybody’s saying that hell’s the hippest way to go / Well I don’t think so / But I’m gonna take a look around it though / Blue, I love you
“When I was growing up everyone had record players and most people had tape players. The nicer cars had a tape player so I grew up in a golden era of mixtapes—that we would make from records—and later, CDs. I have collected records since before I can remember.”
“I remember being in a department store and my mother agreeing to buy me a record when I was very young. I picked out the one with a dalmatian on it, it turned out to be Rush. When I was in junior high, trips to the record store became regular and religious events. I looked at every record and wanted to absorb all of it. I was very careful with which ones I bought but they were no listening stations, so it was always a risk. Hence the Beatles, they were a sure bet.
There was a record called Hit Explosion and another one called The Beat put out by K-Tel Records that were huge influences to me when I was growing up. They were collections of hit singles with songs like “New World Man” by Rush, “Stepping Out” by Joe Jackson, “Vacation” by the Go Gos, “Young Turks” by Rod Stewart. I loved that music very much. Records were expensive though, so I listened to the radio for a lot of my musical pleasure – and also bought tapes.
Saturday night, there’s gonna be an inferno erupting from the stage of the Maple Leaf Bar when bassist Bru Bruser celebrates the life of the one and only Afrobeat pioneer and Nigerian superstar Fela Anikulapo Kuti with two bands and three big sets. Expect the night to go into the wee wee hours.
The legend passed away in 1997. October 15 would have been his 77th birthday. Bruser’s Dirty South Afrobeat Arkestra Gov’t Majik will play two full sets followed by a late night set by his new band, Full Orangutan.
Gov’t Majik doesn’t play that much around town due to the size of the aggregation and the difficulties corralling so many a-list musicians. The above vid will give you an idea of their sound, but expect many more musicians. The musicians make the effort this time of year to pay tribute to their inspiration. If you’ve never seen this band and you are a fan of Fela, horn sections, wild percussion and/or booty-shaking music—consider yourself warned. This is not music for the faint of heart or those with sore feet.
“It’s hot. I’m following the seductive notes of Mark Knopfler’s guitar as he growls about a Six Blade Knife.”
“There’s a cold cocktail in my hand and outside of Mr. Knopfler’s music it’s the only other source of cool I have against the heat, but dammit it’s working. My friend Dave is searching through his vinyl collection, selecting what will be next and I completely trust that his choice will be great. Dave’s never really let me down there. We’ll talk about the music and our lives, but mostly we’ll just listen. Perfect.
That to me is really how I’d summarize what vinyl means to me. It’s a chance to just appreciate an artist. Is it possible to gain an appreciation for an album on another format? Of course it is. Is it easier with a cold cocktail in your hand and the record spinning at Dave’s (or insert your friend’s place). Absolutely!
I’m fond of the freedom, surprise and versatility that can come with a playlist but they don’t seem to elicit the same kind of memories for me. Of course you can still choose to listen to an album in its entirety if you want, but I think vinyl is the symbol of this choice.
Before I attack James Taylor like a rabid dog, I should say that I like him—or at least I like a couple of his songs, which is more than I can say about such contemporaries of his like Seals & Crofts, Joni Mitchell, Loggins & Messina, and all the other folkie singer-songwriters who sought inspiration not from the world at large, but from their own navels. The sixties left everybody burnt out, creepy-eyed, or dead, and everybody made for high ground as the flood of psychic casualties hit the counterculture like a tsunami of bad vibes, looking for soothing and gentle consolation from singer-songwriters like Taylor.
I suppose I should feel bad about hating a guy who seems so likeable, but I’m far from alone. He’s the fella who inspired the great Lester Bangs to write a long essay entitled, “James Taylor Marked for Death,” and Robert Christgau to close his brief and negative review of Mudslide Slim and the Blue Horizon with the immortal words, “Interesting, intricate, unlistenable.” And that was after Christgau critiqued “the conniving, self-pitying voice that is [Taylor’s] curse.”
1970’s Sweet Baby James made Taylor an overnight star, in large part because his voice was so damnably soothing. It’s going to be alright, his every vocal inflection seemed to say, and the only problem was that his voice was the personification of utter wussification. His attempts at funk and soul (see “Lo and Behold”) are risible, and he’s nobody’s idea of a blues man (see “Steamroller”), not with that voice that is too white for words. And along with the album’s good tunes, you get outright monstrosities like “Sunny Skies,” which is too vapid by miles.
Legacy Recordings announces limited edition vinyl exclusives for Record Store Day’s annual Black Friday event: For RSD Black Friday 2015, Legacy is catering to connoisseurs of classic sounds delivered old school, offering a range of RSD exclusives and numbered limited vinyl editions.
Adelaide Venue Jive To Operate As Record Store During The Day: By day, you will be able to peruse hundreds of used records, CDs, cassettes and tour tees, with secondhand turntables, speakers and amplifiers also be up for sale. By night, the venue will continue operating as a much-loved live music venue.
Geo’s record store settles in at Downtown Draught House: Geo’s has always been a cool spot in downtown Youngstown, albeit a little out of the way. But as of this weekend, the record store will be closer to the action. The store will open Friday in a new location: the second floor of the Downtown Draught House on West Federal Street.
Wax Record Fair will have a bunch of cool vinyl-related festivities: The point is that vinyl doesn’t seem to be going anywhere anytime soon, so a new event going down this weekend in Hollywood is looking to capitalize on the attention by hosting a celebration of the medium: the WAX Record Fair. Taking place at Capitol Records on October 24 and 25, the fair describes itself as “the first music industry event of its kind to focus on vinyl, music lifestyle goods, and record collecting culture.”
The 10 best skate punk records of all time: Skate punk is something taken seriously in the desert. We’re always looking to finish an argument about what constitutes a good slab of skate punk wax.
Jersey to host record fair as vinyl makes a comeback: Two islanders are hoping to capitalise on that resurgence with a record fair in aid of Jersey Hospice. All sorts of records that have been donated will be sold there.
PHOTO: KEITH CORCORAN | Rangy San Franciscan Chuck Prophet has a great little band in the Mission Express, but every so often he breaks away for a solo tour. Armed with just an acoustic guitar and a couple of microphones, Prophet can’t play some of the songs he does with his band. But then again, the arrangement allows him to try some old things, give a different emphasis to some newer ones, and let him tell long stories about each between songs.
And it’s surprising how much rock ’n’ roll verve he can still inject into a show even though he’s the only one up there. He could also roam around an otherwise empty stage as a club in a strip mall in suburban Vienna, Virginia, Monday, and let his compositions really shine.
An appreciative crowd at Jammin Java saw all that, while participating in necessary call-and-response or hand clapping when necessary. (When he asked for finger-popping at one point, they clapped, too, indicating that they might not have known what finger popping exactly was).
Since his days in the old paisley underground band Green on Red, Prophet has been known as a songwriter of considerable skills, able to toss off catchy things like “Wish Me Luck” from his latest album, “Night Surfer,” to enduring reveries to the sunny season in “Summertime Thing.”
After a long summer on the road playing festival dates all around the globe, Irvin Mayfield and the New Orleans Jazz Orchestra are playing both nights this weekend at their new space, the People’s Health Jazz Market on Oretha Castle Haley Blvd. in Central City.
The NOJO features some of the best players in New Orleans jazz in a big band setting. In keeping with the organization’s tradition of exposing music lovers to the music of iconic composers in the jazz canon, they are highlighting the music of a man who claimed to have invented jazz, Jelly Roll Morton. He was born October 20, 1890, making this is 125th birthday week.
The program will include many of the tunes Morton composed during his career including popular songs that should be familiar to many listeners, including “I Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say” and “The Crave.” Other tunes on the program including “Mr. Jelly Lord,” “Shreveport Stomp,” and “Winin’ Boy.”
The Modernist spirit has remained contemporary for nearly sixty years, and so too has Paul Weller. It seems impossible, but there he is, sitting across the table with a cup of milky tea and a pack of cigarettes. He’s impeccably dressed in a black tee shirt, slender trousers, and dapper pair of shoes. That’s the thing about being a mod; it’s a sharp, timeless style (really, a way of life) that’s all about attention to detail, and it gives a snapshot of what Weller is all about. But that’s not where Weller ends.
While he may be difficult to describe to someone unfamiliar, the most important thing to know is that the authenticity he stands for mattered at a time when it was possible for musicians to really matter.
And he still matters. While music may feel as if it’s spiraling into a madding cacophony of styles, Weller has perched himself above it all as he usually does. His latest LP, Saturns Pattern, is another musical point of reflection for him. He has always stretched and twisted his sound, abruptly departing from expectations only to find him again, and Saturns Pattern follows that M.O. It’s a rush of cosmic soul, psychedelia, blues, dance, and myriad other sounds. It’s opinionated, soulful, rollicking, and so much Paul Weller.
Hours before his sold-out show at The Fillmore in San Francisco, Paul talked about the importance of the new, being content with where he is, and even got a little wistful when talking about putting a record on a turntable for the first time.
On my way here, I was thinking about my college radio DJ days. I decided to start a mod music show and nobody had a clue what I was doing.
[Laughs] That was brave! Was that here in San Fran?
No, it was in a small town in Arkansas.
Where is that, then? Midwest?
It’s in the south, right on top of Louisiana.
Ah, okay!
Mod culture follows you around in one way or another. You seem to embrace it. What do you think makes it so enduring?
Well, it’s just something that I’m really into, y’know? It’s kind of like any sort of code, philosophy, religion—whatever you want to call it. I think it’s something that once you’re into it, it’s integral to you. It’s really part of your life and the way you think and all that. But the reason why it’s endured so much is because it’s adaptable. I think because every generation comes along and discovers it, and kind of just adapts it and fills it and it becomes something else again, and mutates a little bit, and I think that’s why, really. It’s quite a concise way of living and thought, really.
There’s a famous old Pete Meaden quote that mod means “Clean living under difficult circumstances,” which is very apt, really.
There’s definitely a kind of mystique that drew me to it. In this day and age, the Internet has sort of demystified that whole scene…
It’s Thursday, which means A Badge of Friendship are here with their weekly new music podcast!
This week is a conspiracy theory special, so who better to talk to than Andrew WK, who partied so hard in the noughties people started accusing him of being an impostor! They discuss the effect the theory has had on him, and how he’s not managed to lose himself in the mother of all identity crises.
Jeremy Allen, the writer behind the NME blog ‘The 9 Most Batshit Crazy Conspiracy Theories In Pop” also joins the gang on the phone to talk about some of his favourite theories. It just wouldn’t be ABoF without the trio throwing their own favourite conspiracies around the studio, and they’ve picked three doozies for you to enjoy.
You’ll be happy to hear that you can now finally hear all of the tracks on the podcast!
If you’d like to be considered for the show, please email A Badge of Friendship: info@abadgeoffriendship.com. Or, follow A Badge of Friendship on Twitter.
The rep of the UK DIY scene has significantly grown since its initial subterranean emergence at the hinge of the ‘70s and ’80s. As a member of The Homosexuals, the coordinating voice behind the storied It’s War Boys label, and a recording artist of various pseudonyms, Jim Welton was a major figure in DIY’s narrative; on October 23 Superior Viaduct reissues the 1979 LP The Way Out and bonus “Move” 7-inch, returning to print the entirety of Welton’s output under the moniker L. Voag.
Jim Welton first turned up in The Rejects, recruited by Bruno Wizard for a new lineup of a band that had previously opened for The Damned, Generation X, Sham 69, and Wire. The Rejects’ four surviving songs deliver vaguely Wire-ish punk, though overall they were more about ragged propulsion than angular tension.
As punk began growing stale in the eyes of many who’d witnessed and participated in its birth, The Rejects morphed into The Homosexuals, who along with the Desperate Bicycles, Alternative TV, Swell Maps, and This Heat helped to form a solid foundation for the whole Brit DIY shebang. This Heat and Swell Maps are often considered in adjoining contexts, the former as top-notch punk experimentalists and the latter as a Rough Trade-fostered post-punk cornerstone, but the Desperate Bicycles and the Homosexuals have essentially remained at the heart of the DIY impulse.
The Bikes lent the rallying call (“it was easy, it was cheap – go and do it!”) while The Homosexuals thrived in near obscurity to rediscovered acclaim; in the beginning of 2004 The Homosexuals’ CD expanded upon their 1984 LP for Recommended Records and by that summer Astral Glamour, a 3CD compilation on Chuck Warner’s Hyped to Death, had arrived.
Queen Announce Special 40th Anniversary “Bohemian Rhapsody” Release For Record Store Day: Freddie Mercury may be a poor boy and nobody loves him, but ironically Queen is releasing a special 40th anniversary edition of “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Record Store Day. Record Store Day will release the album on Black Friday, November 27, as a special edition limited 12-inch vinyl with original B-side single “I’m In Love With My Car.”
What goes around comes around: Vinyl gets a new spin, “The ongoing revival of vinyl demonstrates this format’s enduring power of reinvention and popularity,” the ARIA media release read. The surge of vinyl sales is consistent with global trends, with countries such as UK and the US recording similar trends.
People who are now dead once used this to record their voices… Today you can too: There are only two Voice-O-Graph recording booths left in the world. One is round at Jack White’s house and the other is in Soho, London’s Phonica Records for the next two weeks only.
Record Store Day’s Black Friday Event 2015: The List of Exclusives So Far: Record Store Day is charging ahead with its vinyl-celebrating mission despite being on the receiving end of a widespread backlash. Not only is its April event bigger than ever, but RSD continues to recognize Black Friday each year with a secondary celebration. This year, Black Friday takes place on November 27, and news about exclusive releases has begun to trickle out.
Main Street Record Fair 12 – November 15th: The Main Street Vinyl Record Fair returns to the Heritage Hall for its 12th edition on Sunday, November 15th, 2015. Join us for Vancouver’s biggest vinyl record sale of the holiday season!
Last time I saw My Morning Jacket live was at SXSW in 2008. At that time they were the critics’ darlings and an industry buzz band that everyone was talking about. Labels had high hopes, record sales hadn’t completely tanked yet, and there was still a bit of optimism that the industry would figure out the digital model.
MMJ was truly coming into their own having recently graduated from the club scene, and thanks to a major label, launched directly into the limelight. I was a casual fan at the time, but what I saw that night changed my life.
This show was otherworldly. There’s really no other way to describe the sheer magnitude of awesomeness that I witnessed. I think it was one of the only shows that I’ve been to where I looked around and the entire crowd had their fucking jaw on the ground in pure awe of what Jim James and his band of gypsies were swirling up on that magnificent stage. It was truly one of the most amazing shows I’ve ever seen before, and I’ve seen thousands.
I don’t ordinarily play advertising shill, because I’ve nothing to sell or want to sell, and have never sold anything in this life but gasoline, at the gas station job I got fired from when my friends more or less poured me from the car one drunken Labor Day noon. My boss took one look at me and said, “Shitfaced and fired may just be your destiny.”
Besides, selling music is what record company people are paid to do. My job is to blow raspberries at what they’re selling. But not always. Take Rhino Records’ new and comprehensive anthology of the works of my favorite band the Faces. I’m only too happy to play Willy Loman for Rhino on this one, because despite its hefty price tag ($129.99) it’s worth it. Now only does it include their four studio albums on vinyl and outtakes from those sessions, most of which I’ve never heard, it includes a fifth LP of singles and miscellanea that never made it onto their studio LPs, including four songs I’ve never heard in my Faces-obsessed life. In short, if you love The Faces as much as I do, this album is as much of a necessity as air, lager, and, well, lager. There are unheard songs on this completist’s compilation so good you’ll simultaneously praise Jesus and curse God for letting Rod Stewart turn himself into a clown and self-parody.
The two unheard outtakes from their debut, 1970’s First Step, are raucous blues. “Behind the Sun” features lots of great organ by Ian McLagan and guitar by Ron Wood, and Stewart burns, while “Mona—The Blues” is a funky instrumental that demonstrates that The Faces, who had a reputation for playing it on the loose and shambolic side, could play it formidably tight. Meanwhile, the outtake “Whole Lotta Woman” from 1971’s Long Player, with its hilarious pre-song chatter, demonstrates just where the band got its reputation for playing it fast and loose.
Halloween is getting bigger and bigger in New Orleans as events associated with the holiday expand across the weeks leading up to October 31. This year, the Krewe of Boo! takes over this weekend.
The biggest event is the annual after-parade costume party, dubbed the Monster Mash, which takes places at Mardi Gras World after the parade marches through the French Quarter. FunkiFIYA, a New Orleans funk supergroup featuring Meters’ drummer Zigaboo Modeliste, keyboardist and vocalist Ivan Neville, bassist Tony Hall, guitarists June Yamagishi and Ian Neville, along with trombonist “Big” Sam Williams and saxophonist Khris Royal, headlines the party. DJ OttO will keep everyone grooving late into the night.
Before the parade, the Krewe is hosting the first-ever King’s Party on Fulton Street to honor this year’s king, Sidney Torres IV. This free and open-to-the-public pre-parade party will last from 2 PM to 7 PM and feature musical performances by Rockin’ Dopsie Jr. and Amanda Shaw.
