“Others may know where you’ve been, but honey I know where you’re from……you’re from California. . .” — Mason Jennings
While wasting time browsing other music blogs when I should have been sleeping (or something like that), I stumbled across this excellent little musical tribute piece to my old stomping ground, my Golden State, my roots, over on Trees Lounge blog. There are a whole bunch of songs about California (beyond the usual fare) that you can download and almost feel the sun and the surf. He says:
“Oh California, you glutton for publicity. You bastion of public relations and sunshine. The golden rays always cast you in a favorable light. You are honey-colored in perpetuem on every map ever made. Until you make that great swan dive into the Pacific you will remain the west of which there is no wester. You are always the destination, never the departed. You can shake people, suffocate them, burn them, leave them in the dark, and yet you are still at the top of every kid’s wish list.”
I LOVE it. Featuring tracks by folks like Led Zep, Dead Kennedys, Kings of Leon, Roy Orbison, Ryan Adams, Bad Religion, Elliott Smith, Neko Case, Arctic Monkeys, and even a little 2Pac and Dre. Zip on over.
So that is the perfect low-maintenance post for this afternoon. I was already thinking of posting Mason Jennings’ “California, Part 2″ in honor of my trip out to that great state this very afternoon, but Robert spared me the uploading because he’s got it on his post. This week I am *so* going to find my way up over Highway 17, into Santa Cruz or thereabouts, and onto the beach. I WILL put my feet in the ocean (in addition to work-related feats that need to be accomplished). Get rid of these land-locked blues. Off to the airport!
“Nothing I Can Do“ Ben Taylor I am love, love, loving the warm and good way that this song by Ben Taylor makes me feel. All the warm-fuzzies that accompany listening to James Taylor hold true for his son as well. I highly recommend this song from the 2005 CD Another Run Around the Sun. Ben Taylor is on tour right now (including SXSW). As for the Rocky Mountain stops, do I want to drive up to a major city? Or would I be as happy dancing around to this song at my house on the hardwood floors with the sun streaming through the windows? Ah, yes, I think so.
“Sleep Song” Rooney The thing about this song that first caught my ear about this new Rooney song is the drumbeat, which I do think I will have to learn. It’s not complex but pleasant (and if you expect complex drumming from me, you shall be disappointed). This song has a hypnotic and loping feel to it. It dates back from before the quintet signed with Geffen, and was featured on the soundtrack of the 2005 film The Chumscrubber. The Los Angeles-based Rooney is releasing their sophomore album on March 21.
“Shocker in Gloomtown“ (Guided by Voices cover) The Breeders Ah, The Breeders. They make me feel 15 again, yearning to be in a kick-ass girl band. Between The Breeders, The Pixies, Throwing Muses and Belly, I spent a lot of time in high school listening to Kim & Kelley Deal and Tanya Donelly. Here they cover all fast-and-furious 1:17 of a Guided by Voices song, with their trademark clean and thick riffs. From the 1994 Head to Toe EP. Thanks Jennings! Also see Ten Cool Breeders Songs That Aren’t Cannonball.
“I’ve Been Thinking“ Handsome Boy Modeling School, feat. Cat Power To put it straight, this is one of the sexiest things ever laid down on record. It skitters and lolls, like a twisting flame, with teasing guitar licks. Love it, listen to it on repeat. From 2004′s White People. Thanks B.
“Speed Of The Sound of Loneliness“ Amos Lee The beautiful, pure voice of this beautiful man shines here on a stripped-down cover of a John Prine tune. While nothing extraordinary, it is lovely in its simplicity and sadness. I hunted this down after I saw Amos Lee perform it live last fall in Boulder (well, in between trying to prevent my drunk-on-Jager sister from TOUCHING PEOPLE’S HAIR.)
Oh, I am SO out of season. What the heck, Heather? Well, compare this post to your half-off after-Christmas sale. You can get really good things after the holidays are over.
I was a little slow on the uptake finding this new Black Crowes cover of an old R&B/Blues song, and didn’t find it until after Christmas (like January), and then I forgot to post it. But take a listen, it is so good, so swaggering, so Southern-moonlight that I had to post it.
Chris and Rich Robinson are heading out on an acoustic tour in April, just the two of them. That will be insane – just look at the intimate and rad venues in San Francisco alone! Tix onsale next week:
There is a live DVD coming out from the Crowes in March, titled Freak ‘N’ Roll into the Fog, recorded at the Fillmore in San Francisco in 2005. There’s also a new album alleged in 2006 from these guys, but nothing concrete. Let’s hope.
Jason Forrest has designed a sonic assult of samples from, well, 36 of his favorite punk songs, all squeezed into 2 minutes and 21 seconds of madness. Listening to this was like being on a really fast train (like Willy Wonka in that tunnel, original version of the movie), trying to pick up on something, but before your synapses could process it, it’s gone, and something else is competing for your attention.
So, how many can you pick out? I am only at like 6 that I am relatively sure of. If anyone gets over, say, 20 (without Googling for a list of the answers), I will write you a limerick and you will have my undying admiration. And that’s something, champ.
I was lucky when I was at Santa Clara University to get to work with the Cuba Study Abroad Program. Even though I was never clever enough to secure a site visit to the program (which taught Cuban music, percussion, dance, and culture), I did learn a lot about the Cubans over the years, and developed a greater interest in the country and the musical culture.
The professor who championed and led the Cuba program also coordinates the free-to-the-community Music at Noon series at the University, and he regularly brings Cuban artist Omar Sosa (now S.F.-based) for lunchtime concerts. Sosa is classically trained in piano and also studied at Cuba’s Escuela Nacional de Musica and Instituto Superior de Arte in percussion. Both beautifully permeate his music.
I only saw him once, but I was totally blown away by his absolute joy in the music and the beautiful sounds that flowed from the small stage. The time I saw Omar Sosa, he performed on the piano with the only accompaniment being drummer Gustavo Ovalles, from Venezuela. The two of them made eye contact for most of the show, almost daring each other back and forth with musical challenges, laughing, appreciating the sounds coming from the other. Sosa made the piano into a beat-driven, funky, gorgeous, moving instrument unlike anyone else I have ever seen. Look at the picture above. That’s what it was like.
He has released a dozen albums, and all are different, ranging from jazz, to Afro-Cuban funk, to North-African inspired melodies, to remixes and piano-based instrumentals. So I profess to be nothing close to an expert here. But I have selected a few tracks that I could find which reminded me of the hour I spent listening to him and the images that the music drew in my head. He also released an album of intricate remixes in 2005 of his Mulatos album (Mulatos Remix) which was nominated for a Grammy and is really good.
Africa Madre Viva and Toridanzon – Omar Sosa & Gustavo Ovalles, Live at Ayaguna 6/25/02. Here is where you can hear the playful exploration of these songs that I got to see at their concert. Savage percussion, and the piano just leaps to life.
El Tresero (Plush Vocal Mix) – Omar Sosa, from the Mulatos Remix album (Mmmm hmmmm, listen to that bass line)
BONUS: Redemption Song – Omar Sosa & Richard Bona, reinvented with African influences and Cuban percussion.
Give him a listen, and especially go see him live if you get a chance. He is in Australia right now, then heads to Europe, and then back to the States, with 4 dates at the amazing Yoshi’s in Oakland in April. It’s always a treat to see someone this in love with music.
I am liking the beat on this advance single from The Streets. And I’ve got a small penchant for accents, esp of the English/Irish/Scottish variety (maybe that’s why I could watch So I Married An Axe Murderer over and over and over again?), hence I like to listen to Mike Skinner ramble on. He’s got a sense of humor (humour) and this track is good times. And, you know, in-depth, thought-provoking lyrics that really make you think, like “when you’re a famous boy, it gets really easy to get girls…it’s oh so easy…”
The single will be released March 27, and the new album ‘The Hardest Way To Make An Easy Living’ is due April 10. Thanks to Zombies blog for tracking this one down.
Hey, a million thanks to Kevin for posting this up. Here are a few songs from a superb live set with Pete Yorn from the Roxy Theatre in Los Angeles on June 14, 2001.
Just four little tunes, with two great covers thrown in the mix. Cheers & enjoy!
I rocked this album probably hundreds of times in high school. All I knew is that it featured some of my favorite artists, which truthfully is why I bought it. I didn’t really know at the time the imitable punk-rock legend that Mike Watt (of the Minutemen and fIREHOSE) actually is. But it was a great introduction.
Released in 1995, Ball-Hog or Tugboat? wins for the most eclectic & confounding title in my collection. 17 tracks, Watt plays thud-staff (bass) on all of them and wrote 14 of the tracks. His steady, bumping presence is complemented by Ed Vedder, Evan Dando, Dave Pirner, Frank Black, Adam Horovitz, Mike D., Flea, Dave Grohl, Pat Smear, Krist Novoselic, Joe Baiza, J Mascis, Thurston Moore, Henry Rollins, Mark Lanegan . . . it’s just madness is what it is.
The thing that I like best about this album is its diversity. You have every type of song on here from classic pleasing (rocking) pop songs to hardcore rock, and punk, and jazzy funk, and Henry Rollins (angry! angry!). There are also great stories told throughout the songs, such as “Drove Up From Pedro,” which tells of Watt discovering punk at a Germs show in Los Angeles.
Here are three of my favorite cuts, but you gotta just buy the album because there are so many great tracks I didn’t post. I somehow got the big massively tall version (above) of the CD case, but it also comes in a nice square blue cover as well. Which would be easier to file in the ole IKEA CD cabinet.
Chinese Firedrill – Frank Black on vocals (*gorgeous* acoustic guitar )
E-Ticket Ride – with Mike D. and Flea (and the baby of Sonic Youth’s Thurston Moore & Kim Gordon providing, uh, background vocals)
Other songs I like that I left off here are “Big Train” (little double entendre lyrical content with Dave Grohl, Ed Vedder, and J Mascis), “Against the ’70s” (with Ed Vedder, Krist Novoselic, and Dave Grohl – and didn’t that track get some radio play too?), “Sidemouse Advice” (swingin jazz with Carla Bozulich and Flea), and the title “Intense Song for Madonna to Sing” (and indeed it would be) always makes me laugh.
Mike Watt was instrumental in the Southern California post-punk movement of the ’80s, along with his band the Minutemen, and later fIREHOSE. He began playing music in his early teens, along with friend D. Boon, who would be a co-founder of the Minutemen. From his innocent beginnings (“I didn’t know what the bass was,” Watt says. “In arenas you couldn’t really hear it. But we saw on album covers that every band had a bass player, except the Doors and the Seeds. So we knew it was a big part of the band. In the pictures it looked like a guitar that had four strings. I didn’t know they were bigger. I didn’t know it was lower.”) Watt grew into a kickass & well-respected bassist.
Watt and Boon were in on the very beginnings of the Southern California punk scene, and the way it slowly began to change the face of music. Watt was there as bass became more of a crucial element in the music that he loved to make. “Before punk, bass was kind of where you put your retarded friend,” Watt theorizes. “Left field. It was a real inferiority complex dumped on me because of the bass guitar. But with punk, you had everyone lame, so all of a sudden the bass player was elevated and everybody was brought down. It was a lot more equal, and the bass drove the songs more. They were all learning, they were all beginning.”
The Minutemen released 5 albums before D. Boon’s death in 1985 in a car crash. Watt then went on with fIREHOSE to release more music (Watt says that he got the name fIREHOSE “from watching a film short of Bob Dylan doing Subterranean Homesick Blues using cue cards for the lyrics. I thought that it was funny when he held up the card that said ‘firehose’.” So there you have it.). Watt has jammed both solo and as a temporary member of bands such as Porno for Pyros, J. Mascis’ band Fog, and, most recently Iggy Pop & The Stooges. Not too shabby.
Turns out this is also a timely post because there is a wonderful documentary out about the Minutemen and their influence on the punk-rock movement. Titled “We Jam Econo — The Story of the Minutemen,” the film premiered last year in San Pedro, California, and is still making the rounds to cool venues across the U.S.
Happy Valentine’s Day. Although I really don’t subscribe to the theory that you need to be sent someone to love today more than any other day, this does kind of fit the occasion. Here is a little bit of Jeff Buckley love, sent to me by wonderful reader Lisa, along with the absolutely amazing picture above.
Jeff Buckley, WFMU Music Faucet, 10/92 [expired] Please Send Me Someone to Love, original by Percy Mayfield
Name: Heather Browne Location: Colorado, originally by way of California Giving context to the torrent since 2005.
"I love the relationship that anyone has with music: because there's something in us that is beyond the reach of words, something that eludes and defies our best attempts to spit it out. It's the best part of us, probably, the richest and strangest part..."
—Nick Hornby, Songbook
"Music has always been a matter of energy to me, a question of Fuel. Sentimental people call it Inspiration, but what they really mean is Fuel." —Hunter S. Thompson
Mp3s are for sampling purposes, kinda like when they give you the cheese cube at Costco, knowing that you'll often go home with having bought the whole 7 lb. spiced Brie log. They are left up for a limited time. If you LIKE the music, go and support these artists, buy their schwag, go to their concerts, purchase their CDs/records and tell all your friends. Rock on.
While wasting time browsing other music blogs when I should have been sleeping (or something like that), I stumbled across this excellent little musical tribute piece to my old stomping ground, my Golden State, my roots, over on Trees Lounge blog. There are a whole bunch of songs about California (beyond the usual fare) that you can download and almost feel the sun and the surf. He says:
Jason Forrest
I rocked this album probably hundreds of times in high school. All I knew is that it featured some of my favorite artists, which truthfully is why I bought it. I didn’t really know at the time the imitable punk-rock legend that Mike Watt (of 
Mike Watt
Name: Heather Browne
