Return of the son of a random hour with my iPod (Valedictory Edition)

Why vale­dict­ory? Two reas­ons. One, I dunno…it’s a fun idea, and a fun thing, to, you know, put up here…but I don’t wanna get to the point of it being too much of a good thing. Also, because I care so much, the more often I do it, the more time it takes. Ugh. The second reas­on is more pos­it­ive. Which is, I’ve lost about 44 pounds since mak­ing cer­tain, ahem, life­style changes, one of which included hit­ting the gym every day. I’ve got­ten to the point where, among oth­er things, I do four miles every time out on the tread­mill, and I’m gradu­at­ing from power-walking to run­ning. And for run­ning, the shuffle func­tion on the iPod just won’t do. I can groove out on any kind of music, but to keep my run­ning energy up I pretty much want the equi­val­ent of the Yardbirds’ “Train Kept A’Rollin’ ”/“Stroll On” and/or The Ramones’ “Gimme Gimme Shock Treatment” for fifty minutes or more. Which means I’m gonna have to con­coct some high-energy playl­ists like, pretty much as soon as I’m done with this thing. Because I’ve got anoth­er 30 or so pounds to drop. And then, watch out, N.P. Thompson; I will bear zero resemb­lance to William Conrad, so you won’t recog­nize me when I approach you, shove my fist down your throat, pull your heart out from your rib cage, and show it to you, still beat­ing, before I spit on it, and then throw it into the gut­ter, as you draw your last miser­able breath.

Ha ha, just kid­ding! I’ll prob­ably still look a little like William Conrad. Just thinner. 

Okay, let’s go. 

“I Had To Give Up Gin,” East River String Band, Some Cold Rainy
Day (2008)

The “band” here is a duo, John Heneghan and Eden Brower, who play nifty old-time string instru­ments such as banjo, ukelele, and man­dolin, and are enthu­si­ast­ic arche­olo­gists of American song;
  I believe the ori­gin­al of this ditty was done by The Hokum Boys. I’m very glad to own this record but have to admit that I bought it for the R. Crumb cov­er. When I have dough to throw around, I’ll by any record with R. Crumb cov­er art. Because has R. Crumb ever done cov­er art for a bad record? No. Even Cheap Thrills, which Crumb him­self isn’t par­tic­u­larly a fan of, is a very good, if not great, record. 

“Don’t Play With My Emotions,” Ron Rogers, Going Places: The August Darnell Years 1976–1983 (2008)

Producer, song­writer, front­man and all-around vis­ion­ary, Darnell is one of those cats who just nev­er got enough cred­it dur­ing his cre­at­ive hey­day (and then, to add insult to indif­fer­ence, wound up with a music­al guest role in Lambada: The Forbidden Dance);
  I think they shoulda put him in the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame on the strength of the mon­ster single “There But For The Grace Of God” alone. This comp is a good begin­ner­’s guide, but old-school adepts might find it a trifle skimpy. The track is a bouncy plea from one of Darnell’s pro­teges who was­n’t Kid Creole. I won­der if our obstrep­er­ous friend Jeffrey Wells would cat­egor­ize this music as “wretched disco jizz.” 

“Edward L. Bernays Flies The Hindenburg,” Vijay Iyer and Mike
Ladd, Still Life with Commentator (2007)

As a rule, “spoken word with music” is a genre, or sub-genre, or what have you, that I tend to avoid like many plagues. But innov­at­ive jazz key­board­ist Iyer (who I’m Facebook friends with, aren’t I the shizzle) is a super-genius, and Mike Ladd is a pretty sharp cus­tom­er, and together—it’s just the two of them, with Iyer hand­ling an array of elec­tron­ics besides just the pianos—they’ve con­cocted a thor­oughly enga­ging “ora­tor­io” for an ADD era. So those who avoid spoken word with music like many plagues may want to check this out.

“Orchesterstucke: III. Sehr bewegte Viertel,” Anton von Webern, Pierre Boulez con­duct­ing the Berlin Philharmonic/Complete Webern (2000)

Everybody’s got this on their iPod. Right?

“Ghost Bitch,” Sonic Youth, Bad Moon Rising, 1985

A very nice, nuanced bit of feed­back and string tap­ping and whispered Kim Gordon vocal­iz­ing (“You’re the first day of my life”) from what some would call their, I dunno, break­through album. Could it really have been 25 years ago? Yes, it could have. I inter­viewed the band for the cov­er story for the fan­zine Matter when this came out, when Kim and Thurston Moore were still liv­ing on the place on Eldridge Street immor­tal­ized by my friend David Browne in his SY bio Goodbye 20^th Century. I had many sub­sequent gab ses­sions with the group before I made the lat­er­al move from rock crit to film. In 2005, at the Cannes Film Festival, at a party for Picturehouse (remem­ber them?) I saw Kim and Thurston for the first time in about a year (pri­or to that was at one of Derek Bailey’s last New York shows, and am I name- drop­ping enough for ya?)—they were there with Gus Van Sant’s Last Days, in which Kim had acted. It was almost twenty years to the day after I had inter­viewed the band at Eldridge Street, and I said, “Who would have thought then that we’d meet up on the Riviera two dec­ades later?” “I knew,” Thurston dead­panned. (And by the way, are you able to get a feel here, of just how cozy and con­geni­al my rela­tions with these alternative-rock gods were/are? About how my world was, and maybe still is, some sort of hip­ster demi-paradise? My sense of insec­ur­ity is such that I really need you to admire me on account of these con­nec­tions, this world. Maybe it would be more effect­ive for me to “Tweet” about it all. I’ll have to look into that.)

“A Cello,” Stan Kenton, City of Glass (1953)

What an odd and beau­ti­ful record this is. It’s Kenton and his orches­tra play­ing com­pos­i­tions by Robert Graettinger, a California-born sax play­er whose music was a mix of com­plex big-band jazz and very advanced con­tem­por­ary clas­sic­al influ­ences. Here’s a good inter­net art­icle about the com­poser. As its title implies, this par­tic­u­lar piece does­n’t even start reveal­ing any sort of jazz proven­ance until about three-quarters through. 
 

A lot of folks tend to asso­ci­ate Kenton with Eisenhower era-blandness and square­ness, but records such as this one really give the lie to that notion. There’s some­thing a little quaint about the self-consciousness of this par­tic­u­lar record’s modernity/modernism—a feel summed up nicely in Donald Fagen’s song “New Frontier,” and those lines about anoth­er great, Dave Brubeck—but hardly fatally so. A genu­ine music­al adven­ture, this.

“Requiem—Affirming,” Robert Fripp, Love Cannot Bear: Soundscapes Live In The USA (2005)    

Those who think that they’ve heard it all as far as Fripp’s “sound­scapes” are con­cerned should give this one a spin. Where the “loops” where once laws unto them­selves, on this out­ing he’s using them as com­pos­i­tion­al build­ing blocks of a sort. That, com­bined with the sheer lush gor­geous­ness of his tone, make this some of the most stag­ger­ingly mov­ing and express­ive music of his always intriguing career. 

“Baby Lee,” John Lee Hooker, Hooker (2006)

With Robert Cray, whose geni­us lies in being both red-hot and thor­oughly under­stated. Great stuff on a great box set that would have been great­er had it included the blues’ greatest protest num­ber, “I Don’t Wanna Go To Vietnam.”

“Tight Like This,” Louis Armstrong, The Complete Hot Five and
Hot Seven Recordings (2000)

We dis­cussed Mr. Armstrong’s music a little last time. 

 “One One One,” Hot Chip, Coming On Strong (2005)

There’s no post­mod­ern art dance pop like enig­mat­ic post­mod­ern art dance pop, as these guys prove. The only prob­lem I have with them is that one of their sing­ers sounds way too much like who­ever that balls-less won­der from Royksopp is. 

“The Doon,” No Neck Blues Band, Qvaris (2005)

Both loose and droney, a rudi­ment­ary gui­tar fig­ure played in a rudi­ment­ary style and someone rat­tling a brace­let made of wooden parts in the back­ground, or some­thing. Yeah, it is pretty psychedelic…but not in a dated way. Heaven forbid.

Badia, Weather Report,Forecast: Tomorrow (2006)

A lot of this band’s for­ays into “world” music res­ul­ted in exot­ica that teetered on the brink of kitsch, and I’d be lying if I said there was­n’t any tee­ter­ing hap­pen­ing on this track, which Wayne Shorter sits out. Still, it’s hardly unpleas­ant, and it’s a giv­en that the playing—here by Joe Zawinul,Alphonso Johnson, Alyrio Lima, and Ndugu—is spectacular.

“Everything’s Fine Right Now,” Incredible String Band, Incredible String Band (1966)

It took me a long time to get this out­fit, who can sound insuf­fer­ably twee if you’re in the wrong frame of mind (or “head space,” if you will) for what they’ve got to offer. But their eccent­ri­city (which is easy to mis­take, giv­en the con­text, for hip­pie dip­pi­ness) brought some­thing genu­inely new to the folk styles they tried on, and their play­ing and singing has a genu­ine warm charm. This par­tic­u­lar tune, from their debut album, really is just as sweet as pie.

“Be Deedle Dee Do,” Phineas Newborn, Jr., The Newborn Touch (1964)

Newborn was a pian­ist with chops to match the very best of them and a fant­ast­ic blues feel that dis­tin­guishes him from oth­er vir­tu­osi. Everything he did is worth a listen, but I espe­cially love his work with Roy Haynes and Paul Chambers on Haynes’ bril­liant We Three. Stanley Booth has a very sad and troub­ling bio­graph­ic­al essay on this bril­liant musi­cian’s tur­bu­lent, mys­ter­i­ous life in his excel­lent col­lec­tion Rythm Oil: A Journey Through The Music Of The American South. 

“Big Belly Guns,” Tony Matterhorn, Top Ranking: A Diplo Dub (2008)

A peppy little num­ber from a Santogold dub mix. Based on a sample from Rocket From The Tombs’ latter-day ver­sion of “Sonic Reducer,” of all things.  For this Rocket/Ubu/Dead Boys fan, an oppor­tun­ity to mut­ter “Fuckin’ a.” 

“Dress Rehearsal Rag,” Leonard Cohen, Songs of Love and Hate, (1971)

Did I ever tell you about the time I flew home from Cannes and Jena Malone was in the seat next to me and she was read­ing a col­lec­tion of Leonard Cohen’s poems AND Notes on the Cinematographer by Robert Bresson? No? I did­n’t? What was I think­ing? Jena Malone and I are BEST FRIENDS…okay, I’ll stop, as it’s likely none of you are really get­ting the likely point­less joke I’m mak­ing any­way. And it’s not your fault.

Anyway, Leonard Cohen. An artist you likely already have some sort of opin­ion on, and not someone you can “talk into” lik­ing if they hap­pen to not. I dig him in lim­ited doses. But not in a pay-$400-for-a-ticket way.

“National anthem and judge­ment,” Otomo Yoshihide/Music From ‘Prisoner,’ a
film by Adachi Masao (2007)

More feed­back and sound effects, from the tire­less Japanese guitarist/composer/orchestra leader. 

“Don’t Mess With My Ducktail,” Joe Clay, The Best of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour (2007)

Pretty much as the title says. In rocka­billy, of course. A con­tem­por­ary of Elvis, Clay was known,when he was known, as Joe “Ducktail” Clay. Because of the hair. That he did­n’t want you to mess with. A fun little ’50s number. 

“Tallmansville, W. Va.,” Tralala, Is That The Tralala? (2006)

Kind of a protest num­ber, about a dead-end min­ing town one of them must have been nat­ive to, from the pomo girl group that mixes Velvety drone and for­ce­beat with Shangri-Las sass. Cool. 

“Lonesome Georgia Brown,” Chris Smither, Another Way to Find You (1991)

A spe­cial ded­ic­a­tion to Armond White. 
 Just kid­ding. One of those best-kept-secret types, Smither’s a sing­er and song­writer of aston­ish­ing depth and warmth, and an amaz­ing gui­tar­ist. I could listen to him pick and strum his  acous­tic for weeks on end. This album, recor­ded in a stu­dio before a live audi­ence, is kind of the defin­it­ive doc­u­ment of what he does best. Check it out. 

“She’s An Angel,” They Might Be Giants, They Might Be Giants (1986)

No, really, I really was friends with these guys back in the day, I’m even vis­ible on the back cov­er photo of their “Don’t Let’s Start” EP, hon­est, Flansburgh used to come by the Video Review office now and then and we’d have lunch, you can ask Doug Brod, really…okay, I’ll stop. 

But seriously—not that the above isn’t actu­ally true—I did see these guys at a lot of Darinka gigs where me and my girl­friend at the time (who had gone to Antioch with “Flansie,” as he was some­times called) were pretty much two out of an audi­ence of five. Why I was­n’t asked to be a talk­ing head in that doc­u­ment­ary about them only attests to the pig ignor­ance of its dir­ect­or A.J. Schnack—hey, wait a minute, I know that guy, too! or at least I’m Facebook friends with him—who instead enlis­ted that dilet­tante Ira Glass to weigh in on how, while the band’s songs are “funny,” they’re also unbe­liev­ably sad and tra­gic at the same time, ima­gine that, is bey­ond me. Jesus.

This, which is sung by the oth­er John of the group, Mr Linnell, is one of my favor­ites of theirs; after all these years, the lead-in to the chor­us still makes me swoon in meta­phys­ic­al awe: “Why? Why did they send her/Over any­one else?/How should I react?/These things happen/to oth­er people./They don’t hap­pen at all, in fact.”