Static--Mad Dog Music Blog

October 2010 Top 10 Hit List

2010-10-15T00:18:00.000-07:00

Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
Neil Young, Le Noise
Corin Tucker Band, 1000 Years
Leyendas de la Fania, Volumes 1-2
The Ultimate Rock 'N Roll & Rhythm 'N Blues Collection
Drive-By Truckers, Southern Rock Opera
Ninja Tune XX, Volumes 1-2
Sharon Van Etten, Epic
Marnie Stern
Gold Panda, Lucky Shiner

Andy Hummel 1951-2010

2010-07-20T12:16:00.000-07:00

Big Star's first bass player, who checked out to go into aeronautical engineering after contributing the beautiful "Way Out West" to the brilliant second album, Radio City. He was a bassist of the McCartney-Entwistle school, getting fancy while (kind of) holding down the bottom for Jody Stephens' wonderfully manic drumming, and a creditable singer to boot. Sad to see him leave us just a few months after Alex Chilton, even if he had very little to do with the band's legacy (or with music in general) since '72.

July 2010 Top Ten Hit List

2010-07-18T00:49:00.001-07:00

M.I.A., /\/\/\\//\ (sic)
Sleigh Bells, Treats
Big Boi, Sir Lucious Left Foot...The Son Of Chico DustyL'Etoile de Dakar, Once Upon a Time in Senegal - The Birth of Mbalax 1979 - 198
Emily Remler, East to Wes
Carissas Wierd, They'll Only Miss You When You Leave: Songs 1996-2003
Various Artists, Soundway Presents Palenque Palenque: Champeta Criolla & Afro
Various Artists, Unheard Ofs & Forgotten Abouts
The B-52s, Funplex
Joe Farrell, Moon Germs
Various Artists, Si, Para Usted - The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba Vol.1

Barb says and Christine says that I should

2010-07-18T00:46:00.000-07:00

start writing about tunage again. Hey, does anyone know how to cross-post to FB? I will find out.

I should set this in Comic Sans to make designers' heads explode.

TV On the Radio Dear Science (Interscope)

2008-11-28T02:39:00.000-08:00

Though this came out a couple of months ago you feel the hope seeping up around the funky riffs ans sex-celebratory lyrics. So when I say I was touched more deeply by the melancholy and grit of Escape to Cookie Mountain, don't take it as a disrecommendation. I always preferred Exile to Sticky Fingers, Slanted & Enchanted to Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain and Rid of Me to Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. But even if I like mine a little rough around the edges, in these times I'll take the joy where I find it.

Music Reflects Its Culture and Culture Reflects Its Music

2008-06-18T10:27:00.000-07:00

Amy Winehouse, your influence is everywhere

AP's hitting the sizzurup again

2008-06-17T20:39:00.000-07:00

Lil Wayne, 25, has been a star on the rap scene since he was a teen, but only in recent years has his star rivaled that of contemporaries like West and heroes like Lil Wayne — both of whom are contributors on his new CD.

- Nekesa Mumbi Moody, "Lil Wayne's `Tha Carter III' sells 1 million"

Lesa Aldredge, 1973

2008-06-08T19:49:00.000-07:00

I was reading today about the creation of Big Star 3, aka Third, aka Sister Lovers, aka St. John Beale, aka The Most Depressing Record Ever Made Except For Billie Holiday's Lady In Satin. In addition to the complete craziness and dissipation that went into this masterpiece, the common thread seemed to be Alex Chilton's completely dysfunctional love/hate relationship with one Lesa Aldredge.

Lesa has always been kind of a mystery woman to those of us outside the mid-70s Memphis music scene. She sings the French part on Third's cover of the Velvet Underground's "Femme Fatale" and also covers the Velvets' "That's The Story of My Life" on the It Came From Memphis anthology. But the book I was reading today, Rob Jovanovic's Big Star: The Short Life, Painful Death, and Unexpected Resurrection of the Kings of Power Pop, is a prepublication reader's copy with few pictures in it. And I wanted to see what this woman who was able to live (more or less) with Chilton during his most depressed and debased years looked like in the flesh.

So thanks to Smithsonian (by way of Google Images) for this beautiful picture by her famous second cousin, William Eggleston. I think I see what all the fuss was about now.

Oh, and guess what? Apparently, taking a break from teaching high school English in Nashville, last year Lesa participated in a reunion of her late-70s all-woman punk band, The Klitz. That's German for "pistol", in case you were wondering.

Update: The Klitz have a MySpace page, too!

Donna Summer, "Stamp Your Feet"

2008-06-04T01:36:00.000-07:00

Madonna wishes she could sing like Donna. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Queen of Electro Marshmallow Dance Music has returned to school Mary J. Blige, Mariah, Fergie, Gwen Stefani, Beyonce, and Rihanna in what makes a real diva. Listen up.

First Listen--Santogold

2008-05-31T00:00:00.000-07:00

A lot of different flavors here--M.I.A. polyglot, Prince-y pop, dubby hip-hop. And she brings the hooks. Yay for the trip-hop revival (hi, Portishead!), and yay for artists like Santogold who (like M.I.A., TV on the Radio, and a bunch of Brooklyn bands) know that the originators left a lot of colors to be explored by creative people like her.

Most fucked-up album ever?

2008-05-26T15:14:00.000-07:00

This one, recorded when the mighty Trux was wallowing in heroin-induced paranoia and degradation out in San Francisco, is certainly on the short list. And what do you know, a much-later appreciation that actually kind of nails it!

First Listen: Subtle, Leaving Arm

2008-05-26T14:29:00.000-07:00

I hear these guys used to do hip hop styled stuff, but this sounds more like a West Coast version of TV on the Radio--dreamier, more lyrical, more beat. Either way, a nice surprise. I'll bet it kicks the upcoming Beck album from here to Sunday.

The Vulgar Boatmen have a page

2008-05-13T16:40:00.000-07:00

Most folks who know my musical loves know that they include The Vulgar Boatmen, an Indianapolis/Gainesville band (two different versions!) that combine Buddy Holly sensibilities with Velvets/Feelies New York minimalist rock (and elliptical songs). Near as I can tell, the band still exists and plays occasionally. And a piece in today's Pitchfork about the death of a member of the Indianapolis music scene led me to this page--full of live Boatmen, including several songs that have never made it to albums. So when can we expect to see their lovely faces out West again? It's been 18 years, for God's sake!!!

Madonna, Hard Candy

2008-05-02T20:41:00.001-07:00

I know reviewers haven't been frothing over this album, but I was totally unprepared for how awful it was. At least doing an album of dance-music protest songs the year we started the Iraq war was going out on a limb for something. At least Fergie, as stupid as her songs are, sounds like she's having some fun. Mads sounds like she's really, really, really working hard to sound this lame. (Though I'll bet Timba and Justin are laughing all the way to the bank at sticking her with their beat seconds.)

Music Minute: Fleet Foxes

2008-04-15T01:08:00.000-07:00

It seems like every generation, kids rediscover the joys of hippie music (like they do with disco, Eighties music, and alt-country). And interestingly, Fleet Foxes aren't the first or only Northwest band that plays baroque-f0lkie music with a lot of reverb. (Green Pajamas, to cite one example, has been putting out albums of the stuff for 20 years.) But damn, it's pretty, and just like with Love and the Left Banke in the Sixties and with the Paisley Underground bands in the '80s, I'm glad to see people enjoy formless, jammy music if it partakes of a loving, communal spirit.

Music Minutes 4-11-08

2008-04-11T00:54:00.000-07:00

The Breeders, Mountain Battles (4AD) Much twistier and more fragmented, like Pod, but also dreamier and sweeter (mostly). And Kim and Kelly still sing and arrange like totally drug-damaged weirdos, and more power to them. That's why I keep listening to their albums, not (much as I enjoy it) "Cannonball".

Nigeria Special: Modern Highlife, Afro-Sounds and Nigerian Blues (Soundway) This one will rock you 'til you drop if you love long, jammy, swinging Nigerian music (think Fela, not Sunny Ade).

The Saddest Breakup Song

2008-04-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

I might as well admit my prejudice (sadly, one I share with many Boomers whose values I otherwise disdain): I think The Beatles was the greatest group of pop musicians of the 1960s and after, and I think Revolver (in terms of unprecedented sounds up to 1966 as well as sounds people have been ripping off for 42 years) the greatest pop album. And it contains "For No One", which has broken my fucking heart every time I've heard it for 42 years.

John Coltrane Sextet, "The Father And The Son And The Holy Ghost"

2008-04-04T01:13:00.000-07:00

There's a reason this may be the most cataclysmic of John Coltrane's late-music ecstatic-noisefests: two drummers. And Because Elvin Jones and Rashid Ali hit hard, everyone has to kick the intensity up a notch to get heard. Great music for watching the sun devour the earth in a giant fireball.

Uncle Markie's Music Heroes: Thelonious Monk

2008-04-03T00:55:00.000-07:00

As I type this post, I am listening to the live version of "In Walked Bud" on Misterioso. Johnny Griffin plays tenor sax on this date, and it reminds me that the reason Thelonious Monk is a great jazz composer is that his tunes invite all kinds of creative exploration. Not all players sound good playing with Monk, but the ones who do (Milt Jackson, Art Blakey, Sonny Rollins, John Coltrane, Charlie Rouse)very often sound at their best when playing his music, either in his bands or in their own.

I'm not kidding when I say that Monk is, to me, a genius-level music intelligence. The man started writing forward-looking music in the early 1940s and kept writing and performing it for another 25 years. Writing about Monk, the jazz critic Martin Williams said the way you could tell his compositions were real compositions is that it's hard to whistle a Monk composition without missing the non-melody parts. Each piece is part of a perfect, interlocking musical machine in which the middle and bass voices are always as important as the melodies. It sure sounds like he heard and wrote his music whole.

Monk can (and certainly did to 1940s and early 1950s audiences) sound alien to you if you're used to more traditional bop playing. The other thing I noticed when I tried to learn how to play Monk's tunes is that they're really hard to get right. The accented beats come at completely unexpected, surprising intervals. When I first heard Monk play piano as an 11-year-old who knew Miles and Clifford Brown were hip (thanks, Mom! thanks, Dad!) he sounded like a drunk guy who kept partially hitting the piano keys next to the keys he was supposed to be hitting. But even then I could tell the melody lines made sense within their musical universe.

So Monk basically created his own music, which has opened up worlds for other musicians. There's a lot to hear in the music. Monk's music can be wonderfully funny (like "Little Rootie Tootie"), or really frightening and disorienting ("Evidence" and "Trinkle Tinkle"). It almost always swings. And unlike even Ellington, he could write and play deep, beautiful ballads like "Monk's Mood" and "Crepescule with Nelly" without a bit of sentimentality. It's probably no accident that his best-known piece, "'Round Midnight", is also the definitive ballad of the bebop era.

[discography to come when I'm not feeling lazy]

Uncle Mark's Rock and Roll S.A.T. Analogy Answer 1

2008-04-03T00:40:00.000-07:00

Ramones : Punk :: Descendents : Emo

Music Minutes

2008-03-07T20:19:00.000-08:00

Dengue Fever are interesting in an L.A. way. There's that interesting superimposition of very polished Khmer pop melodies and singing on top of very rehearsed L. A. New Wave. So it's a world-mashup hybrid like Manu Chao and M.I.A., but very L.A. and ironic and showbiz.

Janet Jackson, Discipline, man, where'd she get those beats? And that production? Homegirl really brought her game, and her whip. Candy porn dance music!

Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks, Real Emotional Trash, Did I completely miss the Kinks influence on Pavement? Apparently so, 'cause Malkmus gets deeply in touch with his inner Davies (both of them). Meanwhile, Ray Davies is rocking out pretty decent for an old guy (See: Working Man's Cafe). Good for survivors like him, Van Morrison, Nick Lowe, Neil Young--hell, Bob Dylan! Keith Richards! Steve Winwood! Sixty is the new twenty, baby!

Well, thanks to Robert Christgau for recommending No Age to me. That opening on Weirdo Rippers is epic! These guys are rocking my world.

Status Ain't All Stupid

2008-01-19T10:57:00.000-08:00

Much as his writing annoys me 98% of the time, I'll give it up for Tom Breihan for coming up with sentences like this one (in a post on the Wu-Tang Clan's homecoming show in NYC):

And maybe the Germans have a word for it: the smile you get when you're standing on a stage in front of a few thousand white people and your dead son's rap group is performing his song celebrating unprotected sex, passing you a mic so you can sing along.

Kate Nash

2008-01-12T13:02:00.000-08:00

We fiftysomethings like to keep up with what the kids are blowing their hearing out with these days, and Rhapsody is perfect for sampling without paying (much) money. So while I'm not blown away, I do like how her songs at least have stories with details in them, like getting up after tending the drunk boyfriend all night and finding dried puke on your sneaker and ending a fight with the now-hungover boyfriend who left the puke by saying, "Intelligent input darlin' why don't you just have another beer then?"

Interesting that she's got a major label pushing her. I remember back in the day (Nineties) Liz Phair just handed cassettes out to her buddies who were in bands. Pretty far ahead of her time, that girl was.

PJ Harvey, White Chalk

2008-01-10T20:26:00.000-08:00

If I tell you my favorite PJ Harvey record is Rid of Me, you probably peg me for an admirer of Polly Jean, grunge rocker, beating Albini and Cobain at their own game. This is true, but what's equally impressive is that she's a rare pop musician who gets bored easily with one style, so we've heard her do trip-hop, Beefheart blues, straight-up pop. And on last year's new one, she puts the guitar away and takes up the piano and beats Galaxie 500 and Opal and Cat Power at their own game, turning the volume way down, turning the reverb up, keeping the intensity level high. I've never listened to the lyrics but they all sound like they're telling some Brontean ghost story.

Listening late June 2007

2007-06-23T23:42:00.000-07:00

Rawk rules: Queens of the Stone Age one week, White Stripes the next. This may be a summer for driving around with the windows down and the guitar music cranked.

Dizzee Rascal, Maths & English (XL) This time he tones down the spazzed-out rhythms, comes on much straighter and maybe a little radio-friendlier (though I doubt stations'll stop playing Rhianna for him). A couple of good mixes and, believe it or not, a ray or two of sunshine.

Bad Brains, Build a Nation (Megaforce) Well, King Ad-Rock aced the production job--none of their classic early Eighties recordings on ROIR and Caroline and SST sounded anywhere near this great. And, probably appropriately for guys in their 40s now, their dub reggae sounds more in-the-bones. Too bad HR has lost a half dozen of his best voices--psycho crooner, top-end screecher are probably gone for good. But rub a dub and he's your man.

Songs setting my world on fire tonight

2006-12-06T00:50:00.000-08:00

...or at least my guitar strings:

"Shake It And Break It (But Don't Let It Fall)," Charley Patton
"It Don't Come Easy," Ringo Starr
"Bootleggers' Blues," Mississippi Sheiks

Winner of the Husker Du Memorial Sandblast/Sugarblast award:

"Set Fire to the Face On Fire," Blood Brothers

What I'm listening to: Clipse, Ornette Coleman, Hem

2006-12-02T01:11:00.001-08:00

Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury (Re-Up Gang/Star Track) Best, most schizo gangster rap album since Ghostface's Fishscale. Best Neptunes album since...ever?

Ornette Coleman, Sound Grammar (Sound Grammar) A tight, well-rehearsed band recording in top form live--Wayne Shorter has really started something with the format, and Ornette's band (with one "harmolodic" bowed bass shadowing the leader and one plucked bass locking in with Denardo's drums to move the music forward) sounds even better. This man has never played better or more lyrically, and it's wonderful that tunes like "Song X" and "Turnaround" have resulted in wonderful, completely different-sounding music over the years as different configurations have played them.

Hem, Funnel Cloud (Nettwerk) They sound honest and homespun and tuneful, like if The Vulgar Boatmen had a woman singing lead and were influenced by Gram Parsons instead of The Velvet Underground. Well-wrought songs, thoughtful arrangements.

Don't tell anyone

2006-10-13T00:37:00.000-07:00

...but new songs are starting to arrive. These seem roots rocky where the last ones seemed...????

What I'm Listening To 10-10-06

2006-10-10T23:54:00.000-07:00

Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass (Matador) One of the two greatest middle-aged bands in the world (the other is Dead Moon, and I think they're even older), after two albums of soft, sunny pop they stretch out and treat us to Memphis soul, reverb-crazy rockabilly, dreamy ballads, and psychedelic jams. And you can hear the fun they're having--in the mystery goofball title, the review they had David Cross write for eMusic, and of course the songs. I think this one is as good as their acknowledged best album I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One and wider-ranging to boot.

Fela, Army Arrangement (Wrasse) Pretty prime midtempo from the master, even if the drummer isn't as madly propulsive as Tony Allen.

Kaoding Cissoko, Kora Revolution (Palm) Beautiful kora playing throughout, but a third of it sounds like Westernized World Beat kind of stuff. Those pieces are pretty, too, but not nearly raw enough.

Nomo, New Tones (Ubiquity) These are second-generation, Caucasian Afro-whatever musicians, but they mix up some interesting pieces: Congotronics, non-Afrobeat Nigerian funk. Very jazzy, more instrumental than vocal, you can probably dance to it.

Rootical Saturday

2006-09-30T10:37:00.000-07:00

Positive Vibrations (KEXP FM) Listening to this show today (3 days before my 50th birthday), I'm reminded that Saturday morning reggae shows are a gift to: people who didn't sleep well, frat boys recovering from hangovers, people planning a day of housework in the apartments they live in alone--in short, to everyone who wakes and bakes on a Saturday.

Listening to this show also tells me that Jamaican music is going through a really creative phase. For awhile, everyone seemed to focus on getting the baddest rap ever on top of riddim X. In other words, it got old fast. Now producers are mix 'n' matching roots, rockers, classic dub, hip hop, dancehall, and whatever else (grime, jungle, soca) in the rythmic stew. Also, it sounds like producers are learning how to use the sharpness and clarity of digital special f/x to make distinctively digital-sounding dub versions.

What I'm listening to 9/15/06

2006-09-16T00:28:00.000-07:00

Los Lobos, The Town and the City (Hollywood) When people write that this sounds a little like Kiko, they mean it's about textures and atmospheres rather than about rocking out. I was a little disappointed in these songs, despite all the imagination and fluency they reflected, until I flashed: call Los Lobos L. A.'s version of TV On the Radio, which in turn is Brooklyn's version of Radiohead. So I'll listen some more, but for now call this a ***

The Shins, Oh Inverted World (Sub Pop) So I love sweet, slightly fucked-up slacker pop music. Isn't that what most great pop bands, from Big Star to Pavement, sound like? I am such a pop romantic I really loved the scene in Garden State where Natalie Portman tells Zach Braff the Shins will change his life. ***

Marisa Monte Universo Ao Meu Redor (EMI) After a few years away to raise a new son, my favorite Brazilian singer is back with two albums. This is the non-muzak one. It sounds like Marisa is getting back to classic sambas, and she's always sung freest in a samba-like context. So even though she's not as lightfooted as she was on Rose and Charcoal, she's a lot more convincing than the generic romantic balladeer she's been on her past couple of albums. ***

The first

2006-09-16T00:22:00.000-07:00

If someone asked me what skill I was proudest of and that most truly reflected my heart, I'd have to say "being a musician." (Or "being a writer," which is the other one that fits the description.) One thing I know about musicians is that they're all obsessive about something. Often, about different things: musicians who practice nonstop (Coltrane, Hendrix), musicians whose whole aesthetic is about getting first takes down (Dylan, Neil Young), or (like me) musicians who are endlessly curious about music and find out about new artists, different styles of music, and different ideas to steal for their own work.

So since I'm too lazy to be the first kind of musician and generally identify with the second kind, I decided to dedicate a space to write about music as I listen to and think about it. Whether or not those thoughts are interesting (or of any use) to anyone besides myself, it's always nice to have a record.