Monday Music Roundup

Color me tickled pink.

I had such an interesting, surreal time at the Radio & Records Triple-A Summit in Boulder on Friday. I got to meet a lot of interesting record reps and label folks, came home with a huge stack of new CDs to listen to, and learned about some cool radio stations and programming in the U.S. right now.

The day was this weird combination of folks who truly KNOW and LOVE music (I had more fantastic conversations in 18 hours than I have in the last 18 weeks) right smack alongside the business side of things, this pushing of music as a commodity. I saw the side of marketing and branding and distribution and all the things that are undoubtedly necessary in today’s world to have music be heard, but also seems in a weird way (to my naive and idealistic mind) to somehow contrast the beauty and art contained in a great song. But it’s necessary, so there you go.

It also felt a bit conspicuous being a blogger alongside radio programmers. I love radio, I love a good radio station, there is fantastic variety and quality on a lot of these stations. But I felt as if I might get run out of there at any moment because a blogger is kind of the anti-radio-programmer: instead of me waiting for a radio programmer at a big station to add the artists I feel passionately about, now with the internet and mp3 blogging, I can just go right to my computer, find cool new stuff, create a playlist, and essentially be my own programmer. So I am not sure how the two fit side by side. I think that a lot of folks there may have felt the same way: there was certainly a lot of warmth and interest towards what I do, but I was very aware of the dichotomy and wondering how, in the future, the two will intertwine.

The best thing about the day was that I found enough fodder for dozens of posts about new artists. Musicians were milling about, I got to talk to several on your behalf, hear about their musical philosophy, how their records were created, their backstory and their songs. It was beyond cool.

Here are some of the best new songs that caught my ear from the event:

Balancing The World
Eliot Morris
I believe this recommendation came about from a conversation wherein I was saying something about Counting Crows. The name of this artist immediately followed, and if you like Counting Crows, please give Eliot Morris a shot (I also hear some reminiscence of Matt Nathanson here). Uplifting, intelligent pop at its best. Check him out on MySpace – his album What’s Mine Is Yours comes out August 15th on Universal and I will definitely pick it up. The new release features collaborations with Dan Wilson of Semisonic and David Lindley (Jackson Browne, Bob Dylan, James Taylor). Funny, I just noticed that he is on tour with Counting Crows. Well, good pairing I guess.

You Made It
DJ Shadow feat. Chris James
From DJ Shadow‘s upcoming release The Outsider (Sept 12, Universal), and featuring Chris Martin Chris James of Stateless, this sounds like nothing I would have ever thought I’d hear from DJ Shadow. The electronic effects are restrained; this is mostly an acoustic guitar based song over a subtle, tense beat with soaring, melodic vocals. Very nice. DJ Shadow is currently on the road, through Asia and the UK (with one rad stop at the Greek in Berkeley, opening for Massive Attack in September).

I Wish I Was A Punk Rocker (With Flowers In My Hair)
Sandi Thom
Please be aware before you listen to this that it will stick in your head and you may find yourself singing it all day long, with its clever lyrics of nostalgia and being born in the wrong era. I saw Sandi Thom perform at the luncheon on Friday and I was impressed. She’s in her early 20s, a rosy-cheeked, passionate Scottish-Irish vocalist who was quite charming. There was a definite rootsy vibe and strength to her demeanor. Her accompaniment on this tune was a guy sitting on and playing an amplified wooden box, which fascinated me. Check her out on MySpace and her album Smile . . . It Confuses People. She plays Atlanta tonight and has a handful of U.S. dates coming up. I liked her and would see her again.

Fire Island, AK
The Long Winters
Okay, so one of the best sessions for me was the Rate-A-Record deal on Friday afternoon. Moderated by my friend Bruce, ten “mystery tracks” were played for us and we had these little handheld boxes that let us rate the songs on a scale of 1-10 and then discuss them. I could do that every single day of my life and be content. Sitting around and talking about music with real people (as opposed to blogging about it) was stimulating. This was one of the toe-tapping tracks that I liked (others hated), from The Long Winters‘ third release on Barsuk Records: Putting The Days To Bed. The Long Winters are doing what I think every band should do by offering 5 full-length mp3s on their website, if you want to hear more. “Members Emeritus” of their band have included Chris Walla of Death Cab For Cutie and Ken Stringfellow of The Posies.

Timely note: Nada Surf just sent a post on MySpace saying that The Long Winters are playing a secret show tomorrow in New York City. They say, “If you are interested in attending a free Long Winters show on August 8th in NYC (and are at least 21), send an email to secretshow@barsuk.com and we’ll send you all the details.”

To Go Home
M. Ward
Another one I liked from the Rate-A-Record session, from M. Ward‘s forthcoming album Post-War (August 22, Merge Records). Where the Eliot Morris track above is pleasant and melodic and everything fits together, this track is thrumming and thumping with borderline dischordant piano in the background – but somehow it still all works together in a very compelling way. If you’d like to check out more from M. Ward, eMusic has a good selection of stuff from him. He is also currently on tour, and SO WORTH NOTING: The 3 California dates are supported by the formidable Mike Watt.

More music from the conference to come. Stay tuned.

Scratch: “Here is a story that must be told”

The exciting thing about exploring different kinds of music beyond your own personal niche is that you sometimes find common threads in the most unexpected places. Take the fantastic 2001 documentary Scratch from writer/director Doug Pray, which traces the musical and cultural evolution of turntablism & record-scratching from its ’70s roots in New York, through the ’80s craze and early ’90s, into the state of the genre at the start of this century and beyond.

As a music lover, I found it be a fascinating look at a world that I didn’t know much about, but one that traces common elements of the creation of music, the passion behind a new sound, the fury to create something fresh. It is a vastly entertaining 84 minutes that flies by to a consistently thumping background of interesting beats, with appearances by many of the major players in this scene from its inception to today (DJ Shadow, Cut Chemist, Mix Master Mike, Z-Trip and more). Filmed mostly in hallowed haunts of the hip-hop scene in New York and San Francisco, I also was tickled to see several places I know from California – from freeways and suburbs to Amoeba Records and The Fillmore. Visually, the variety of filming locations were interesting and authentic.

Throughout the film, the most-mentioned “revelation moment” in the interviews was the 1983 Grammy-nominated hit “Rockit” by Herbie Hancock. This was the first time that the sound of the scratch had made it into a song that was a commercial hit, and many were electrified in listening to that scratch for the first time. Mix Master Mike (of the Beastie Boys and solo DJ) recalls a sentiment oft-repeated throughout the film: “What is that zig-a-zig sound? I knew I wanted to do THAT.” Scratch captures some of the early passion and the fire that spread when this music was first created and played, and I related to the feelings of urgency in hearing a new sound.

Self-confessed record junkie/NY ad exec/DJ Steve Stein (aka Steinski) says he remembers thinking when he first heard these sounds: “There is nothing in this music that I don’t want to hear. This is music that I’ve been waiting all my life to hear . . . and I didn’t know it.” That’s a quote that could just as easily be applied to the birth of the rock ‘n’ roll sound, but here the same sentiment is cropping up 20-30 years later in the birth of turntablism and hip hop culture.

One thing that resonated with me was the assertion that scratching together records is just another way of making music: a turntable instead of a drum kit, different samples and breaks instead of guitar riffs and bridges. I had never thought of that before, and it is a fascinating concept. In the film DJ Swift explains, “The turntable is a musical instrument as long as you could see it being a musical instrument. You’re dealin’ with notes, you’re dealin’ with measures, you’re dealin’ with timing, you’re dealin’ with rhythm — It’s just, you know, different tools but the outcome is the same: music.”

I also recognized some of the same fiercely independent spirit in the production of this new sound, one that could just as easily be applied to garage rock bands of my youth. Producer Billy Jam from Hip Hop Slam Records said of the early days, “If you’re doing something and no one even gives a fuck about what you’re doing, and you’re just doing it in your bedroom for yourself, it’s like how you really feel, it’s like a painter goin’ crazy — That’s what happened and that’s why they would come up with this. It wasn’t like ‘Will this work at the club Saturday night.’ It was ‘Well, what sounds good to me and these people in the room with me?’”

My favorite segment of this documentary (that I completely related to & loved & appreciated) was entitled “digging.” The filmmakers followed DJ Shadow, Z-Trip and others as they go on the hunt through hundreds and hundreds of stacks of old vinyl, looking for that perfect beat, that hook, that break to insert into their mix to make it truly unique. DJ Shadow takes us to his favorite record store in Davis, California that has a basement filled to the rafters with old, forgotten pressings. He says, “This is just — it’s my little nirvana.”

After years of trolling the regular stacks and hearing references to “let me go check the basement” from the owners, Shadow finally got the guts to ask to see the basement himself, and has been coming back several times a month ever since. He says, “It’s an incredible archive of music culture. I couldn’t believe that there was still something like this, a cache this large. And it’s largely untouched.” Musical archaeology, baby.

This film also talked about the element of fun & surprise in scratching. Each artist wants to find something awesome that they can use, dropped into the middle of a mix, to just blow their audience out of the water. There was a passionate and enthusiastic story in the film, about the early days of seeing this music performed in a live setting. Zulu Nation grandfather/musician/cryptic dude Afrika Bambaataa apparently has a reknowned ability to uncover the perfect deep cuts to add to a mix: One night at a club in NYC, he handed the DJ a record and told him to play cut 2 – “The Clapping Song” by Shirley Ellis. “And everyone went crazy,” the story says. The perfect sound at the perfect time.

Since I was a wee child in 1983, I had never heard the backstory behind the famed Lessons, which were produced in ’83-’85 by Double Dee & Steinski — the first records made entirely from other records. Their innovative purpose was to be fodder for the turntables, a collection of sounds to scratch into others. Watch for the entertaining segment (and mindblowing to Steinski himself, who says “it was never intended to be done live!”) where DJ Shadow and Cut Chemist recreate the Lessons in a live setting.

Look, just this month the kids have all gone a bit nuts over the supremely enjoyable, ADD-inflicting sounds of the mile-a-minute mashups of Girl Talk, showing the debt that modern music owes to these guys who pioneered a fresh sound — even though their parents said “For God’s sake, be careful with that turntable needle. And don’t scratch up our records!”

Rockit – Herbie Hancock

The Clapping Song – Shirley Ellis

Lesson One (The Payoff Mix) – Double Dee and Steinski

Lesson Two (The James Brown Mix) – Double Dee and Steinski

Lesson Three (The History of Hip Hop) – Double Dee and Steinski

Ayúdame, por favor

A little help needed on the Fuel-Friends front. Apparently I messed up the code on my blog a few days ago when I was trying to follow some instruction on the Blogger help pages to do some fancypants features. Now it appears to be slightly whacked for me and for you.

If you are a web genius, and are willing to take a look and help me clean up my CSS or HTML or whatever went awry, please let me know. Then we can all be happy campers again, viewing our favorite blog with joy and aesthetic ease. Who let me access the HTML side of things anyways? Man alive.

The Firefox Revolution

Holy lord. I just viewed this blog in Internet Explorer and I am horrified. Apologies if you view it in IE. I switched recently to Firefox (at the behest of Chad and iGIF, among others) and it looks fantastic – clean, easy to read. IE is a nightmare – big font, weird picture & video placement – AHHH! I would never voluntarily make my site look like that, as if it had been hacked by a seventh-grader who had drank too many Mountain Dews.

So consider switching. It’s free, and from the hushed tones of those who speak of it, it is vastly better in terms of virus protection and security and stuff. Plus it looks good, which, as we all know, is clearly most important in life.

New G. Love: “Hot Cookin’”

What, pray tell, is summer without some G. Love & Special Sauce playing on the radio? No kind of summer, I’ll tell ya that much.

G. Love and Special Sauce hold the coveted place in my musical book of “One Of The Best Names Ever” for the self-effacing and lighthearted brilliance of their moniker. Just try and tell someone what concert you are going to when Garrett and crew roll into town without smiling.

Here is the first single off G. Love’s new album Lemonade (Brushfire Records) which features guest appearances from the usual suspects (and some new ones): Ben Harper, Jack Johnson, Marc Broussard, Blackalicious, Tristan Prettyman, Donavon Frankenreiter, and more.

Hot Cookin’ – G. Love & Special Sauce

Kevin at So Much Silence has the fun G. Love & Blackalicious track from this album: “Banger”

I’ll have to give the whole album a fair shake, but I must say — as much as I would really like to like this song, I find it a bit on the b-o-r-i-n-g side. Yes, it is has a good mellow groove, but it’s almost as if he’s just pumpin’ out the same kinds of songs without that edge and that sass of some of his previous releases. No one has ever listened to G. Love to find the meaning of the universe, but he’s laid down his bluesy share of clever rhymes, sick harmonica, and unique (kickass) beats.

Here are some of my favorites:

Booty Call
(from The Hustle, ridiculously fun)

Baby’s Got Sauce
(from G. Love & Special Sauce)

and, my favorite slightly-guilty pleasure:

Cold Beverage (from G. Love & Special Sauce)

Stick it in the fridge, stick it in the fridge, stick it in the fridge.

Stick in IN the fridge.

As for me, I’ve been invited to drop in on this today. Sounds pretty cool, huh? Yeah, that’s what I thought. It’s a big step up for me in terms of conferences – the ones I am used to going to have session topics like “New H1-B Immigration Visa Rules” and “Health & Safety Action Plans: What YOU Need To Know Now.” While those were all good in their time, this thoroughly-saturated musicfied environment will be most enjoyable.

Odds & ends

Ûž In my past (i.e. California) life I was a study abroad advisor at a university, and I spent a fair amount of time with students discussing academic matters: majors, minors, what have you. If only I had seen this Wikipedia list of musicians and what academic path they followed, it would have made it so much easier – or at least more interesting.

Student: “Yeah, I really dig Bad Religion.”
Me:“Perhaps you should try a Ph.D. in Zoology. We don’t have a program here, but I hear Cornell’s is really good.”

or

Student: “Wow, you know Audioslave rocks my world. And I can’t decide what to major in.”
Me: “Hmmm. I hear that the Political Science program at Harvard is, like, awesome.”

Imagine the possibilities.

Ûž I have to say that this completely rad post over at My Old Kentucky Blog does NOT make me any more in favor of little moustaches (“fuzzy eels,” if you will). My lips feel itchy just thinking about being near one of these fellas. But an A+ for effort to Mr. Dodge for his fine peoplewatching skills. That should have been my major.

Ûž I don’t know why I care about Lindsey Lohan (maybe, honestly, it’s that Ryan Adams thing and the whole “I can’t believe he dated her” train of thought) but I found this letter to be hilarious. In sort of an “oops, sucks to be you” fashion.

Ûž My boys over at iGIF posted up an interesting link to a bunch of Flaming Lips-related jazz from Rolling Stone: Check it out here (I like the playlist feature). You can also listen to the mp3 of the interview with Flaming Lips frontman Wayne Coyne.

Mark Binelli, the Rolling Stone interviewer, is far braver than I. The few times I have conducted an interview, it is almost painful for me just to listen back to the track just to transcribe it. It’s as if I’m listening to Chris Farley interview Paul McCartney: “‘Member . . . ‘member when you were with the Beatles? . . . That was AWESOME.” . Okay, not that bad, but man alive do I love that sketch.

Ûž Speaking of the funniest men on Saturday Night Live, this collection of Will Ferrell‘s ten best video clips from Cracked.com just made my absolute WEEK. Yes, you get more cowbell, but you also get Harry Caray musing, “I’m just curious I guess. That’s why my friends call me Whiskers,” as well as Robert Goulet‘s slick turtleneck stylings and the “frickin’ service” he’s done to the music world with his Coconut Bangers’ Ball covers CD. If you are anything like me, you might find yourself laughing out loud, so use caution in public places/quiet cubicles.

Ûž Finally, I have decided that I need a private jet and/or a good friend with hundreds of thousands of extra frequent flyer miles to freely bestow upon those they love. You see, someone offered me an extra ticket to the Pearl Jam/U2 blowout in December in Hawaii. Now I just need to get there. C has some ideas over at Scatter ‘o’ Light. Brainstorming welcome.

Plucky and eclectic pop from Morello

One thing you will never catch me composing is any sort of love paean to Los Angeles. Call it my Northern California-roots snobbery. However, I am glad that someone is taking the time to do it because this disc is a quirky, thoroughly enjoyable romp through the City of Angels.

Malcolm Cross (aka “Mal”) is the brains and the brawn behind the band Morello. Their 2003 debut album Minimal (Bumbo Songs) is, as Mal (a Londoner by birth) says, “A total celebration of just being in L.A. – all the friends I made, the spirit of discovery and good times and being in California for the first time.”

At first listen, one might think Minimal to be a bit uneven, since there is so much variety. Literally, no two songs sound the same at all. But open your mind, and look at it through the rubric of the city of Los Angeles, and it all falls into place. From the kitschy opening montage of vocal snippets of conversations about Los Angeles over a bluesy jam beat, to the recurrent lyrical themes of California, this is one man’s representation of the city he loves in a sonic nutshell. Here’s a traipse through how I hear it:

If we’re talking vistas, “Turnaround“ would be the approach into the city, driving over the San Gabriel Mountains. Slide guitars lend this track a bluegrass vibe over a clean drumbeat and pleasant harmonic vocals. Clearly a car song.

“It’s All Good“ could be my new theme song for the summer just for the sheer-good-naturedness of it all, even though I am not in L.A. My contender for best song of the album, this gem begins with some lazy piano noodling, the track builds easily into a retro-pop love song in the tradition of all the ’60s greats. Give it ’til 1:15 or so to hit its (ace) stride.

“Too Sweet” is suitable for bumping in your car with the windows down on the smoggy freeway; it incorporates a bit more dance beat & synthesizer experimentation, which I love. “Say You’re On My Side” is full of straight-up brass funkiness that would make Stevie Wonder bob his head from side to side with a huge smile on his face.

“Summer Haze” is the classy July evening tune you cue up when you are having a fancy grown-up dinner on a terrace somewhere overlooking the ocean with strings of those little globe lights strung up everywhere. And to wrap things all up in true California style, the closing doo-wop harmony of “Joy Sangalang” is the equivalent of your basic California gay men’s chorale.

Plucky & eclectic, this record reflects a good-hearted love of music in all of its styles, and a solid representation of place amidst the variety of the tracks. Like the city itself, Minimal has a thousand different faces, depending on where you look. It’s a fun little discovery.

Morello has a new album coming out in September called Handheld. Cross calls it “a celebration of love, video games, and electronic synthesizers.” (I laughed and remarked that only a guy would make a album celebrating both love and video games). The samples I heard are funky, dance-inspired Prince grooves and Japanese pop jangle. Sounds good, can’t wait.

Take Minimal for a refreshing spin (available on CDBaby and iTunes), and check out Morello if they swing through your neck of the woods in the months to come.

On the nature of songs in everyday life (or, the unbearable lightness of music)

Do you ever get frustrated with the fleeting nature of music, while simultaneously being overwhelmed with the immensity & weight of it? Weird thought, I know, but one I’ve been thinking about lately.

By its very nature, a song is such an ephemeral, abstract thing. Such a small thing, two or three minutes. It’s just a combination of sounds, notes, beats, and words.

And there are so many songs in existence. Thousands and thousands of songs are being written every day. The ones you hear may not be the best. There may be an astonishingly beautiful piece that no one will ever listen to.

It can be so hard to write about music, to share it with others in a meaningful way. It’s like pinning down a butterfly in a photograph album (thanks Adam) and trying to dissect what makes it beautiful. Then what are you left with?

I once read somewhere (if you can find the article, holler) about how Rivers Cuomo from Weezer actually tried to technically deconstruct his hit songs, as compared to the other songs they’ve written that weren’t hits, and tried to see what “the winning element” was. That kind of stuff can drive you crazy. Do you think there is any rhyme or reason behind what makes a “good” song? A “memorable” song? Why do people latch onto one song on an album and not another? Does it make that hit song better than its counterparts?

And what elevates a song or a certain band’s work to hold such meaning in our lives? Someone wrote me recently and said, “I compartmentalize memories into songs or albums and vice versa.” That made me think about the role of music, and I decided that was a fantastic realization because I, too, do the same thing. There are certain songs that I can hardly listen to for the memories it evokes (whether powerfully attractive memories that I can slip into through song for three minutes, or some that are not so pleasant, bringing back melancholy so real I can taste it).

There are days when I want to scrap this whole blog business (but I know I won’t) because, as Elvis Costello famously said, “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture — it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” Really stupid. How could you possibly sum up a song in logical words?

But then you read someone like Nick Hornby, who has this magical gift for writing about music and capturing exactly the essence and the passion and the unbridled joy that can be found amidst the vinyl grooves, who says, “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….”

It’s just that richness, that strangeness, and that personal internal connection that makes music writing simultaneously so HARD, yet such a compelling and rewarding adventure. That connection with music does indeed defy our best attempts to spit it out.

It’s that moment alone in your room when you first put on a song and just fall silent, transfixed for whatever reason. It’s the time you are driving in your car listening to something and suddenly, unexpectedly, your eyes are brimming with hot tears. An ambush. It’s a turn of a lyric that resonates with something deeply beautiful inside of you. And perhaps it’s the moment you pick up an instrument to make your own unique contribution to the musical landscape. And the cycle continues.

I don’t know how to quantify it, but it is something wild and beautiful. Expressing that wildness is a fleeting, challenging undertaking. Perhaps the weight is a gift.

Purple parallelogram I got in Amsterdam (made me dream a dream I didn’t understand)

I’ve had this one in my queue for months now, and heartily singing it out the other day in my car made me finally decide to post it up. This is a rockin’ little pop song, written by Noel Gallagher from Oasis and Evan Dando from The Lemonheads. According to Dando, speaking around the time of the release of Definitely Maybe: “We met about a month ago and hit it off, then last night we collided in Paris. We’d both been playing the Lowlands festival in Holland this weekend and we wrote a song together called ‘Purple Parallelogram.’”

Purple Parallelogram – The Lemonheads/Evan Dando

A friend once bet me a shiny nickel that no version existed of Noel Gallagher singing this:

Purple Parallelogram – Noel Gallagher

It does, it does. It’s rough, but fun.

Makes us all want sing heartily about psychedelic drug excursions (but not in front of the kids).

New Ryan Adams song: “France”

Just in time to get you excited about his Lollapalooza appearance, there is a new Ryan Adams song called “France” (now called “Lovely and Blue”) streaming on his website.

Others have said (and I will concur) that it sounds like something that The Clash or The Strokes might feel a certain affinity for. I do like Ryan’s rocker side (this sounds like it could have been on Rock N Roll), but I am not sure if I like this one yet. I am giving it a few more listens.

I would post the mp3 here, but at this point in time I think I am good with no jail time. Thanks. (Justin, however, is braver than I)

BONUS TUNES: Ryan debuted three new songs at the 7/22/06 Norfolk show, which is now online at the Live Music Archive (he allows live recordings). If you are interested:

Promises – Ryan Adams

Breakdown Into The Resolve – Ryan Adams

Everybody Knows – Ryan Adams