Category: Music

??The Denial Twist?? by the White Stripes is the siren song–it will lure you onto the rocks, yes indeed. Save yourselves, I am lost!

My God, It’s *Perfect*.

bq. If you think that a kiss is all in the lips
C’mon, you got it all wrong, man.

…I don’t see how you couldn’t find Taylor Guitar’s “Factory Fridays”:http://www.taylorguitars.com/video/factory-fridays/ anything but interesting. Take a look at how some awfully fine guitars are built.

That I knew exacty who was being referred to “in this rather amusing post”:http://crookedtimber.org/2005/10/10/the-far-side/.

It never would have occurred to me to wish for an instrumental Daniel Lanois album, even though the music, rather than the lyrics have often been what attracted me most.

And yet, here it is, an instrumental Daniel Lanois album, ??Belladonna??, and it is amazing and beautiful.

It’s strange how you can have almost your entire CD collection on your ersatz iPod, everything no more than a click of a mouse away, and yet some things will go un-listened-to for long periods of time.

So I put Michael Hedges on rotation for the first time in a *long* while.

Some of it is, indeed, too new-agey for my tastes. But some of it resonates in ways it never would have for me before–there are pieces that remind me of Satie, which isn’t something I used to have as a reference point. And some of it is more bludgeoning than you would think you could achieve with an acoustic guitar. ??The Rootwitch?? seems to involve beating the guitar within an inch of its life.

Of course, in the 8 years since he died, there have been a couple of posthumous releases. Nothing, I think, to write home about, though they’re pleasant enough.

He came to Birmingham in ’90 or ’91, though I didn’t see the show. I forget the exact sequence of events, but Mike Nix and I tried to get tickets, but as it was only a few hours to the show, they were no longer available in Tuscaloosa. Mike then tried to convince me to just go to Birmingham to see if we could get some at the venue. I initially decided against it, I suspect for reasons of sloth more than anything else. Some time after he had gone, I changed my mind, and drove to Birmingham, but then had an attack of…timidity or something. Turned around and drove back.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Mike was able to get tickets. He said it was the greatest show he ever saw–though I think he revised that when he saw Richard Thompson a few months later.

Oh, man, that sucks. Just three years after he regained the right to use of his own name in his company (Moog having become a trademark of another company when he was forced to sell off the assests of his original company), he was diagnosed with brain cancer. Three months later, this.

I would guess you have to have to be an afficianado of a certain period and style of music for Moog to be a household word, but you’ve heard the sound of his synthesizers whether you know it or not.

Tonight we went to a wine tasting dinner at “Panzanella”:http://www.panzanella.com/ (featuring the wines of “Hanover Park Vineyard”:http://www.hanoverparkwines.com/, which were quite good, incidentally, as was the food). We went with a couple of friends, but ended up, as one would hope, talking with the other people at the table quite extensively.

One of whom mentioned, apropos of something that I forget, the existence of the “Rap Canterbury Tales”:http://www.babasword.com/writing/rapcantales.html.

I really don’t know what one can add beyond the obvious, that the existence of such a thing is both delightful and horrifying.

Jeff “Skunk” Baxter “is a Missle Defense Analyst”:http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=16730? Wha?

This is hardly a huge portion of my CDs, and it has heretofore been utterly neglected–and I’ve figured out why: it’s a real bitch to tag those tracks. The track names are all inordinately long, and no one on CDDB seems likely to have done it the way you want it, whatever way that might be.

And then you have something like the disc I have by “Elaine Funaro”:http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/results.asp?CTR=820258 (not one of those listed) that is all her playing, but she’s doing stuff by a number of different composers.

It’s a nightmare. Because, of course, you *must* get the tagging exactly right, or better you not rip them at all–the sound’s not the point, it’s the tagging!

Yes, Virginia, there is a band named “Frickin’ A”:http://music.barnesandnoble.com/search/product.asp?userid=eAF3LEDLCL&EAN=676517101822&ITM=3.

Words fail me.

I’ve become resigned to the 5 year cycles that are all Trent seems to be able to achieve–yeah, yeah, I know that there’s always a ton of sub-releases in the intervening time (I’ve got a shelf full of them), but let’s face it: ??Pretty Hate Machine?? was 1989, ??The Downward Spiral?? was 1994, ??The Fragile?? was 1999–crap, this one’s going to be 6 years. He’s getting deep into Paul Simon territory here.

Because it’s ??NIN??, the fan community will, upon release, have to indulge in an immediate war about whether this is the best or worst album ever.

Imagine, then, my amusement at finding someone’s already released a “pre-emptive apologia”:http://www.theninhotline.net/meatpers/current.html for the album.

It will, I predict, be a fun rwar to watch, and I’m glad people are getting an early start.

Remember: ??With Teeth??

!http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2004/Convertible-Hot-Rod.jpg! For various “hysterical raisins”:http://www.jargon.net/jargonfile/h/hystericalreasons.html two of my primary guitars have old-school Stratocaster tremolo bridges.

However, I hate them. I don’t use them, I don’t have the bars screwed into them, I’d basically rather not have them. But there’s always been the problem of what to replace them with.

“Now there is an option, and it’s fucking cool to boot!”:http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2004/Convertible-Hot-Rod.html

U2 always seems to just take over SNL when they show up. Their 2000 performance (the day after the 20th anniversary of John Lennon’s murder) had Bono walking through the crowd, incorporating bits of ??Instant Karma?? during ??Elevation!?? (IIRC).

This time around, they did three songs (and the broadcast cut a fourth) and if you watch at the end of ??I Will Follow??, well, let’s just say that some fan will one day be able to tell kids about her lap dance from Bono.

And then Amy Poehler looks like she’s about to faint in Bono’s arms.

My, my.

bq. Jeff’s young new neighbour & his pal, on learning of Jeff’s professional area, asked him if he knew any rock stars.
JF: Have you heard of King Crimson?
A: Air-guitaring to the opening riff of 21st. Century Schizoid Man.
JF: How do you know that? (the riff was first played some 23 years before the neighbour was born).
A. Our friend used it for the music to his skateboard video.

Jeff didn’t mention Ozzy Osbourne is covering Schizoid Man on his next album.

I guess Ozzy just made another sale–I gotta hear this.

…at least insofar as ??Achtung Baby?? is listed as one of U2’s best albums. Regardless of whether you agree with Chet’s assessment (I certainly don’t–I think U2’s discovery of irony was a watershed moment for them), “the article in the NYT is worth reading”:http://www.nytimes.com/2004/11/14/arts/music/14pare.html?oref=login. And just so you know, they’ll be on Saturday Night Live this weekend.

Oh, and if anyone by chance has a copy of U2’s _last_ last performance on SNL, I’d appreciate a copy–specifically the rendition of ??Elevation?? that interpolated ??Instant Karma??.

Led Zeppelin III was, I think, the first album of theirs I ever owned. And now, sixteen years later, I’m just now noticing that the background guitar on the right-hand channel leading up to the chorus is going through an amp with a heavy tremelo effect.

I think Jason Boyles once suggested, based on more recent work (the Black Crowes live disc he appeared on), that Page was really not a great player live. I would dispute that–the DVD they released a couple of years ago has some great playing on it, and singlehandedly revived my interest on ??We’re Gonna Groove??–but it’s also beside the point: I think Jimmy Page was the first rock and roll guitar player to think in terms of orchestration of guitar.

Now, others followed on quickly–Robert Fripp debuted with King Crimson in ’69 (although even as a fan I would content that his guitar playing is distinctly un-rock-and-roll), Pete Townshend was starting to become more textured in how his guitar worked, Brian May would soon take the concept to its logical absurdity with Queen–but I don’t think it’s in any way inaccurate to say that Page started it.

…it’s probably not much of a suprise to hear me say that the age difference doesn’t matter a bit and if that whole Cameron Crowe thing doesn’t work out, Nancy, I encourage you to give me a call.

Which is an especially obtuse way of saying that I just saw some CMT (of all places) thing with Heart on it (and Wynona, so I guess that’s the connection), and Nancy Wilson is just as hot as she was when I had a crush on her when I was, at a guess, 8.

And she plays guitar, too. Hot, I tell you, hot, hot, hot.

I’m sitting here at the coffee shop listening to a CD that appears to heavily feature remixes of the White Stripes’ ??Seven Nation Army??. The one that’s on now is only okay, but there was an earlier one that was, uh, I think the current parlance is _slammin’_, though at my age I can only try to use such words with a healthy leavning of irony, as well as the knowledge that I might be mistaken in its currency, especially since I remember it from a 17-year-old Prince track…

Of course, _the bomb_ was current a few years ago and first showed up on Parliament’s ??Mothership connect?? in 1976, so what the hell do I know?

Before heading to Washington, I bought an iRiver IHP-140. This is a 40GB iPod-alike that knows how to handle “OGG Vorbis”:http://xiph.org/ files, has good linux support, etc.

I’ve been fairly impressed with the unit, really–like the iPod (as I understand it) you just mount it as a drive, dump stuff on it, and, later, play it. It’s a nice accompanyment on the 30-minute walk to and from work, and it’ll be nice company on the various bits of transportation necessary to get me back home this evening (Yay!).

One feature though, is that you cna index all your tracks based on tags. One thing I have never set on my .ogg files, though, is genre, but now I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be smart for me to subvert the tag the facility a bit–rather than trying to assigning a “genre” (always a slippery thing), assign a “mood”, and let the index play with that.

Of course, I haven’t actually tried to take advantage of anything the whole indexing scheme presumably allows, so I could be full of shit.

It is still true that I will occasionally pull out Concrete Blonde’s ??Free??, play along with the first half straight through, and then contemplate playing the second half, too. I can do that with the first album, too, and much of ??Bloodletting?? (Chet and Joy and Michelle and I saw them open for Sting in New Orleans after this album, as well as Vinx).

And then came ??Walking in London??, and ??Mexican Moon?? (on which tour I saw them play in a half-empty club in Boston during a blizzard) and then last years ??Group Therapy??, none of which did much for me.

Well, when ??Group Therapy?? came out, Chet made a comment about how he never showed so much optimism as at the record store. I decided to indulge in a bit myself, and bought ??Mojave?? last week, very shortly after it came out.

The executive summary is that I like it. It doesn’t feel as leaden as the last few albums, which, to me, have tended to make Black Sabbath look like a swing band. Now this isn’t a different band, mind you; it’s still a three piece, and Jim Mankey is still less about rhythm guitar and more about atmospheric additions, and Johnette’s lyrics still sometimes clang, etc. In other words, if they annoyed you in the good old days, they’ll annoy you now.

But it’s a lot more like the good old days than I ever expected. The track-by-track rundown is:

h4. The ‘A’ Road

A big distorted bass dominates this track, with Jim providing a wash of near white-noise in the background. Perhaps a bit by-the-book, but not bad.

h4. Because I Can

A less prominent bass line is the underpinning for this track–none of this should be a big surprise, Johnette’s bass has always played a prominent roll–with Jim adding a little texture and emphasis.

h4. True to This

I think it’s reasonable to say that this may be “True IV”–there’s something about the delivery that reminds one of “True, Pt III” (incidentally, the only track from ??Group Therapy?? that I remember really liking) and both versions of “True” on ??Concrete Blonde??. I like it.

h4. Ghost Riders In The Sky

Does this qualify as an old chestnut? Not that it matters, there’s something about the arrangement that seems to elevate it above a mundane cover.

h4. Hey Coyote

You might think, if you’ve ever been to a Concrete Blonde show, or listened to a live Concrete Blonde track, that a track with a lot of topical narration from Johnette would be, um, not a lot of fun to listen to. You’d be wrong, though, as I was. For some reason this works, and it’s actually one of the tracks I like quite a bit.

h4. Himalayan Motorcycles

This is kind of hard to describe. I don’t dislike it, but I find it somewhat forgettable.

h4. Mojave

This is another fairly ethereal track. There’s a strange sort of intensity to it that somehow makes it seem like the product of some desert fever-dream.

h4. Snakes

Nope, doesn’t do anything for me. To slow and plodding.

h4. Jim Needs An Animal

Apparently something happened to Jim’s cat. Most people wouldn’t think this was subject material for a song, but Johnette did. It’s fun, if not a masterpiece.

h4. Someone’s Calling Me

It doesn’t start off in a way that makes one confident–it sounds more like some odd outtake from Hooverphonic–but once the drums kick in, it finds its feet. A bridge comes out of nowhere.

h4. My Tornado At Rest

The first minute or two is a kind of interesting instrumental, and then it takes a left turn into another related-but-different instrumental. A nice way to finish the album.

Robert Quine “is dead of a heroin overdose at 61”:http://www.cnn.com/2004/SHOWBIZ/Music/06/08/music.quine.reut/.

I can’t say I have any significant knowledge of his guitar playing–Richard Hell and the Voidoids is on my perpetual list of “Probably ought to look into that”, and post-VU Lou Reed has never done much for me, and I haven’t gotten around to buying Tom Waits’ ??Raindogs??.

In fact, the only thing of Richard Quine’s I’m familiar with is his guitar playing on Matthew Sweet’s ??Girlfriend??. Even so, that’s enough. The opening of that song is something that makes me glad to be alive.

This is not entirely new–he’s done it before, and I suspect he’ll do it again; as best I can tell, it is in the nature of guitarists to accumulate guitars, and at least he’s got a good reason for unloading the extras.

Hell, I wish I was famous so I could unload a couple for charity; as it is, mine are merely “used”.

However, among various bits and bobs that I would guess never saw much use–their only real value is that Clapton has owned them for a while, not that he necessarily played them–there are two very special guitars being auctioned.

One is “Blackie”, his Frankenstein Stratocaster:

!http://news.harmony-central.com/News/2004/Crossroads-Blackie.jpg!

The other–for which I have no picture–is the Gibson ES-335 that he played extensively with the Yardbirds and Cream.

Wow. I mean, these guitars are very much a part of rock-and-roll history. He’s had the ES-335 since before I was born. I almost can’t imagine him parting with either of them.

Yeah, it’s kind of esoteric, but Dan Armstrong was responsible for some very cool guitars. I will always think of Jeff “Skunk” Baxter with a Dan Armstrong guitar. I always wanted one, and although it’s not like his passing is going to mean the end of their production, it’s kind of sad to see him go.

“!http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/1998/Dan-Armstrong-Guitars1.jpg!”:http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/1998/Dan-Armstrong-Guitars1-larg.jpg

But if I just _had_ to replace it, I’d be looking for something like “this”:http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2004/Fireball.html: !http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2004/Fireball-sm.jpg!

I bought the new Living Colour album, ??Collideoscope??. In a welcome change from most new-albums-from-old-bands, I mostly like it, though it is an incredibly angry album–it _seeths_.

The first three tracks just flow into one another, and they are a relentless assault, but there’s a little oasis of calm on track #4, ??Flying??.

I’ve taken to putting it on and sort of vamping over it off and on for the last week–it’s a nice little chord progression, plenty of open space, I get to pretend I’m Vernon Reid, etc.

I just now figured out that it is about 9/11. More specifically, it’s about the people who jumped out of the buildings, to their certain death, to escape the fire.

I am in awe.

In the ’30s and ’40s, the Library of Congress sponsored John Lomax and his son Alan’s peregrinations around the South recording folk songs (rather broadly interpreted, I suppose), in the hopes of preserving the music of a culture that was on the cusp of enormous change.

I can’t help feel that it is unlikely that a corporation would undertake to do this–there is no obvious market incentive. And yet this collection of music (and there’s a lot of stuff, not just music, “available at the Library of Congress’s American Memory collection”:http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/ammemhome.html) can reasonably be said to lead directly to rock and roll in some very easily traceable ways (these recordings mark the first appearance of Leadbelly and Son House, for instance, both influences on rock and roll bands to the present day).

_This_ is why we need “big government”. Businesses rarely see beyond immediate markets and easily defined and quantified results, and I don’t think anyone could have made a business case for doing these recordings based on the incredibly forward-looking (some might suggest prescient) notion that a decade or more on, an industry would begin to grow as a result of these recordings that would eventually become fantastically lucrative.

In much the same way, where would the Internet be without the government; the telecommunications monopolies of the time didn’t even think packet-switching networks would _function_.

An organization that does not have such market constraints can take a longer view, or a more minute one, or a more far-out one; that’s why governments have traditionally been the largest sources of funding for “basic research”–research that serves only to advance the state of our knowledge, with no direct intent to create products or solve particular problems; one assumes that some day it will come in handy. Often it does.

It also seems to me that many of the most prominent sorts of people who complain about “big government” conveniently ignore the ways in which they benefit from “big government”.

There seem to be mushrooms-after-a-rain quantites of “self-made” business persons who went to public university, or even public schools–“big government” in action.

There’s the Steve Forbes of the world who would probably not be making as much money if he had to ship all his magazines via Federal Express instead of the USPS.

There’s the Rupert Murdochs who would have a hell of a time distributing his newspapers and magazines without highways, and probably wouldn’t have made quite as much money if the FCC didn’t regulate the airwaves, because competing against existing larger companies would have been impossible.

Etc., etc. Often these complaints seem accompanied by comments about how efficient businesses are compared to government, which seems to me to be another specious claim.

Mind you, I’m not for having the government waste my money–but the amount spent on stuff like the humanities or basic reasearch or even meals for children is a tiny fraction of the amount being spent on the military or simply servicing the national debt. It seems to me that if you really want to trim the fat in the government, you might consider starting with the places that are eating the most, especially since there is plenty of documentation of waste and even fraud; I mean, “the Pentagon can’t even account for where it’s money goes”:http://www.taxpayer.net/TCS/wastebasket/nationalsecurity/5-18-00.htm.

The edited version just doesn’t compare. “Listen to the whole thing”:rtsp://real.npr.na-central.speedera.net/real.npr.na-central/me/20030806_me_sdanext.rm

But this:

“!http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2003/Hot-Rod-Single-Bridge.jpg!”:http://news.harmony-central.com/Newp/2003/Hot-Rod-Single-Bridge.jpg

Is almost enough to make a believer out of me.

…and you’re a guitarist, you might want to check out “this interview”:http://www.guitar.com/features/viewfeature.asp?featureID=178 with Reeves Gabrels, his guitarist from ’89 to ’01.

For my part, and, I’m sure, much to the dismay of people I know–including Anne, who has to endure the guitar turned up too loud–I find that the things he does on guitar just make sense to me.