You have to hand it to a guy—that it being an ADD diagnosis—which sets you to write a concept album about fantasy board games only to end up with an album that includes songs about Ozzy Osbourne, Waylon Jennings, and major league baseball pitching great Doc Gooden. Last I checked you won’t find Gooden playing goat ball. As for Ozzy, he’d have eaten the goat.

The guy responsible for 2019’s In League with Dragons is the Mountain Goats’ John Darnielle, whose novelist’s eye (he’s written four of them) and empathy for his creations make him perhaps the finest songwriter of our time. His precision-tooled lyrics haven’t changed much since his 1994 debut Zopilote Machine. His music, on the other hand, his evolved from frenetic one-man solo guitar workouts to a more mature but no less moving chamber pop. Plenty, including me, miss the hyperactive Darnielle of old, but there’s much to be said for the Mountain Goats’ more filled-out sound.

“Done Bleeding” is a piano-driven shuffle, but unlike most Mountain Goats songs I can’t tell you what it’s about. What I do like are lines like “List alphabetically/The toxins the doctors found in me/During my time in prison,” and “Grim faced pilots back from the bombing run/When I get done.” “Younger” mines similar musical territory (and boasts a great saxophone solo) and its lyrics are as cryptic as “Done Bleeding,” although I can’t help but believe the song’s closing lines hold its key: “It never hurts to give thanks to the navigator/Even when he’s spitting out random numbers/I knew what those figures meant/And what they hoped to represent/When I was younger.”

“Passaic 75″ is told in the first person by Ozzy Osbourne, who’s not sounding in the best of shape (“renew my assault on my lungs and my liver”) but has a message to the world: “Tell the person next to you/I want everyone to get high/Tell you boss/tell your mother/I want everyone to get high.” It’s every bit as good an “everybody join in” song as “Going Invisible 2,” with its repeated lines “I’m gonna burn it down today/Down today okay/Sweep all the ashes today.” Darnielle has always had a knack for the revenge song; take 2005’s “Up the Wolves,” where he sings, “I’m gonna get myself in fighting trim/Scope out every angle of unfair advantage/I’m gonna bribe the officials, I’m gonna kill all the judges/I’m gonna take you people years to recover from all of the damage.”

Read More »

VIA PRESS RELEASE | How would you like to hear a new side—or should we say sides—of the world’s greatest funk band?

This 3-LP, 40-track set presents the A and B-side of every single that organist Art Neville, guitarist Leo Nocentelli, bassist George Porter, Jr., and drummer Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste cut for the Josie, Reprise & Warner Bros. label, virtually their entire singles output (all but two co-produced by the late, great Allen Toussaint) save for a few odds ‘n’ ends issued mostly overseas. That means that you not only get every hit along with its hard-to-find B-side but also the rare single mixes, including the especially rare original mono single mixes of the 1968-1971 Josie sides (the first three LP sides are all mono; the last three, featuring the later Reprise and Warner Bros. singles, present all stereo single mixes).

These songs represent the mother lode of New Orleans funk, classic tracks like “Sophisticated Cissy,” “Cissy Strut,” “Look- Ka Py Py,” “Chicken Strut,” “Hand Clapping Song,” “Hey Pocky A-Way,” and more. And, with liner notes by Bill Dahl featuring quotes from Nocentelli, Neville, and Porter, this 3-LP set offers probably the best retrospective to date of this enormously influential band.

And how’s the sound? Well, after extensive and exhaustive tape research, we were able to come up with original tape sources for all but five of these single sides, and the remastering—by Mike Milchner at SonicVision—is tight! Crate diggers, take your marks!

You don’t have to be a musician to make great music. Sounds like a conundrum, right? Well, throughout history, there have been a number of producers behind the control room glass who have coordinated and instructed musicians to produce the music they hear in their heads; the musicians themselves become the producer’s instruments.

Meet Robert Waite. He’s not a musician, but he does love music and knows what he wants to hear. The project he has created is called Daylight Robbery! (exclamation point included) and while it’s not a band per se, by definition, it still sort of is. Robert connected with some musicians in Brooklyn, had them record parts of music, and then combined and arranged those recorded parts—after the fact—into the music you’ll hear when you listen to his latest release, Moons of Jupiter.

The project is a rich mix of jazz, hip-hop, and maybe a few elements of vaporwave mixed in for good measure. At first listen, it’s enjoyable music—that is, after all, what drew me in when I first discovered it on Bandcamp—but, as one learns about the unique method behind creation of the record, it becomes something completely different.

Robert joins me from South London to uncover the secrets behind Daylight Robbery! He’s also very eager to share some of his favorite recordings to give us a more accurate peek into what moves him as a music lover and creator. But, for goodness sake, whatever you do, don’t call him a musician. He’s a producer, goshdarnit.

Evan Toth is a songwriter, professional musician, educator, radio host, avid record collector, and hi-fi aficionado. Toth hosts and produces The Evan Toth Show and TVD Radar on WFDU, 89.1 FM. Follow him at the usual social media places and visit his website.

Celebrating Richard Carpenter in advance of his 75th birthday tomorrow. —Ed.

My youth was haunted by the specter of the Carpenters. My younger sister suffered from a form of demonic possession that caused her to play the damnable duo around the clock, and not in the privacy of her room, but on the stereo in the living room, making their easy listening palaver impossible to avoid. I was inundated by the band that President Richard Milhous Nixon called “Young America at its best,” and there were times when I thought if I heard their version of “Please Mr. Postman” again I would go postal, for real.

How the decades change things. I now love the Carpenters, love their squeaky-clean image (which Richard hated), immaculate arrangements, and total lack of soul. Because if there was one thing they lacked, it was soul. The Carpenters made The Captain and Tennille look like Ike and Tina Turner. But who needs soul? Some of my favorite bands are seriously challenged in the soul department. Killdozer has no soul. Cows had no soul. Besides, while my sister was subsisting on an All-Carpenters diet I was doing the same with Elton John, and when it really comes down to it the only difference between the two is that the Carpenters would have never have laid a finger on “The Bitch Is Back.” Otherwise, both bands were MOR all the way.

I’m not sure what led to my religious conversion; was it their bleached version of Leon Russell’s “Superstar?” Or their anodyne take on “Rainy Days and Mondays?” It doesn’t matter. What matters is that at some point in time I had a moment of Satori; sure they were soulless, but so was Kraftwerk, and I’d sooner listen to the Carpenters’ than that gaggle of Krauts on synthesizers any day. Karen’s voice was angelic. Their melodies were magic. And despite their reputation as the easy listening band par excellence they were more hardcore than I ever gave them credit for, as is proved by the fact that Richard (who turned into a Quaalude junkie!) used to make his entrance on stage by motorcycle, while Karen pounded away at the drums. In a way, the Carpenters WERE America’s Kraftwerk; both bands were really machines that produced songs that were perfectly crafted—machine-tooled, as it were.

Read More »

Celebrating Simon Nicol on his 72nd birthday. —Ed.

I know what you’re thinking—If you’re going to write about Fairport Convention, why not choose Liege and Lief, their undisputed masterpiece and the album that practically kick-started the English folk rock movement? Because I’d like to kick the English folk rock movement, that’s why. It’s what I call, unaffectionately, Renaissance Faire Musick.

And Liege and Lief exemplifies its most annoying hallmark, namely the tendency to recast Ye Olde English folk songs, complete with annoying verbal anachronisms, and add electric guitars. What you end up with is Sandy Denny singing in that ethereal voice of hers about kirtle greens (whatever they are) and dudes named Reynardine. Worst of all, she actually utters the word “maidenhead.” And unless used ironically (e.g., “Twas at a show by the Grateful Dead/That I lost my maidenhead/Beneath the bleachers/During ‘Tennessee Jed’”) I consider “maidenhead” (along with “merkin”) an automatic deal-breaker.

So while I like some of the songs on Liege and Lief—“Medley: The Lark in the Morning” hoedowns along like Roy Clark on Hee Haw—I ultimately opted to review Fairport Convention’s eponymous debut album instead. For one, the band recorded it before they got their folk freak on, and there isn’t a single song on it that goes, “So he’s gone ta fetch a claes prop/And he rammed it up the koondy.” (Rammed it up the koondy? His own koondy?? That sounds extremely painful.) Also—and this may be the real reason I picked it—Richard Thompson’s brilliant guitar playing is all over it.

Recorded in 1968 before Sandy Denny joined the band—vocals were handled by Judy Dyble, an eccentric with the odd habit of knitting dishcloths on stage, and Iain Matthews, later of Matthews Southern Comfort—Fairport Convention is a psychedelic folk rock LP with ne’er a koondy on it. Instead it includes a hodgepodge of covers by Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, Emmitt Rhodes, and American folk duo Jim and Jean (who were spoofed in 2003’s fake folk biopic A Mighty Wind), along with an adaptation of a poem by George Painter and six Fairport originals.

Read More »

Although they’d worked up an LP’s worth of material, the Brooklynite teen punk band Nastyfacts (also known as Nasty Facts) only squeezed out a sole three-song 45 in 1981. But what a 45 it is, enduring as a punk standout in the Killed by Death style, meaning it’s energetic and raw and frankly a lot more interesting than assorted higher-profile punk releases of its era and hence. The KBD designation also means that Nastyfacts’ record is rare in its original form, and so, Left For Dead Records’ new remastered reissue is a welcome turn of events. “Drive My Car” is out now on limited 12-inch vinyl (200 copies black and 100 copies blue), CD, cassette, and digital.

As a queer person of color, and a young woman (who today identifies as non-binary), Nastyfacts’ bassist and singer Cherl Boyze stood out in the early ’80s NYC scene, though the camaraderie and connections they found with other outfits featuring POC, including ESG and Bad Brains, is important to note, as is the reality that Nastyfacts was a legit teen punk band, on the scene alongside the Speedies (“Let Me Take Your Photo”) and The Stimulators (“Loud Fast Rules!”), the latter featuring Harley Flanagan, soon of Cro-Mags.

At 18 years of age, Boyze was the oldest member of the Nastyfacts, their lineup completed by guitarists Brad Craig and Jeff “Range” Tischler and drummer Genji “Searizak” Siraisi. Progressing from covers to originals, Nastyfacts played both Max’s Kansas City and CBGBs, and their 45 wasn’t a self-released affair (as was regularly the case with numerous KBD bands) but was put out by Jimboco Records; their labelmates included TMA, The Nails, Dizzy and the Romilars, and The Marbles.

If rawness and energy are prerequisites for Killed by Death bands, these qualities often go hand-in-hand with a solid melodic approach, and that’s exactly what’s up with “Drive My Car,” a track likely to leave fans of the early Buzzcocks pleased as punch. Produced by Ramona Lee Jan (of the Comateens), the execution and the levels are exactly right on “Drive My Car,” recorded loud and plenty distorted (nicely complemented with revving engine, tire squeal, and crash sounds) and with the vocals up in the mix, all the better for the group-sung choruses.

Read More »