Category: Music

If you haven’t already, run — don’t walk — to rent Ray, the musical biography of Ray Charles. The cinematography is gorgeous, the story of his life honest and gripping, the history tragic and fascinating, the music… speaks for itself. Jamie Foxx perfect as Ray. We split this over two nights (it’s around 3.5 hours short), and wished it wouldn’t end. Neither of us have enjoyed a movie this much for ages.

If you’ve met a 10-year-old lately, you may have discovered that most of them have no idea what a vinyl LP is. But when records ruled the world, many of us enjoyed the occasional thin plastic “Flexidisc” found on the backs of cereal boxes, sandwiched into the pages of magazines, given away as promotional materials. One of my fond memories was of a flexi tucked into a copy of Mad Magazine with four different endings — a single starter groove bifurcated into four separate playout grooves near the end of the disc; the path chosen by the needle was determined by circumstances beyond the listener’s control. National Geographic also included Flexis from time to time — sounds of men walking on the moon, or of howler monkeys doing their thing. A flexi you could cut out from the back of a Honeycomb cereal box had a song by the Jackson 5, I remember.

WFMU in New York has a cool collection, and documents some of the funkier flexis as well as some interesting novelty record players like the Mighty Tiny, which I remember a neighbor kid having. You can even hear just how frightening the Mighty Tiny sounded. This “yodeling hankies” oddity is a trip.

Went with friends to see the Kings of Leon at Slim’s tonight. Totally jamming Tennessee rock by a band of stringy-haired brothers (and one bearded cousin — the drummer, of course). Solid, enjoyable, but not quite the “magical” experience I had heard that their live shows can be.

We had set ourselves a question at the start of the night: Are these guys for real, or some kind of Spinal Tap for down-home rock? There’s something slightly unbelievable about them, hard to put your finger on. Something in their image that seems … overly intentional. Like they’re trying too hard to be from Tennessee or something. If you believe their biography, the Kings are the sons of an alcoholic preacher man. Sounds too good to be true. But then again, life is strange. At the end of the night, I’m still not sure, but am inclined to agree with Eggers that these guys are for real.

Just bummed the show was way short, and that I didn’t get to hear that track with the kick-ass yodeling.

Dave Eggers has apparently started doing a monthly column for Spin Magazine (once upon a time, i.e. back in college, I subscribed and read like religion). His debut article is on why you should be digging Kings of Leon and why, no, they don’t sound like a cross between The Strokes and The Allman Brothers. The timing is perfect. My initial impression of Kings of Leon was that they were a less-interesting Strokes, with less city in their blood. Two days of Kings on the iPod and I’m begging forgiveness for forming opinions too quickly. Eggers explains why.

Kings of Leon are motorboats on crowded lakes and waterskiing in cutoffs and hiding Milwaukee’s Best in the forest, in the snow, in January, because your parents caught on that you were keeping cases in the fridge in the garage. Kings of Leon are knowing a guy in juvie and having a cousin who’s been in jail twice. And that cousin, by the way, the one with the burns all over his right forearm–nothing interesting, just an accident with coffee–that cousin, Terry, would love Kings of Leon if he gave them a chance.

Thanks Andrew

For fans of The Good Cap’n: At Beefheart.com, an interesting entanglement of letters and articles (check the links in the top grafs) by members of The Magic Band on what it was like to work with Don van Vliet (consensus is, generally miserable but rewarding) and on whether Beefheart actually wrote every note of every track of Troutmask Replica on piano in 8.5 hours — a factoid that’s casually tossed into most cocktail conversations about Beefheart but that turns out to be almost certainly untrue — a leftover from an old Rolling Stone article, now almost canonical. Or even whether he wrote most of the music at all.

Amazing (or perhaps not) to hear that the band to this day hasn’t seen a single check from royalties (Bill Harkelroad tells of running a record store and re-ordering Trout Mask regularly, even into the 90s, without ever receiving royalties).

And some weird bamboozlement about a Henry Kaiser interview that Kaiser claims never happened. But “You can read Henry Kaiser’s statement about a non-existent interview and made-up quotes, along with Dave DiMartino’s response and a full transcript of the interview which Kaiser claims never took place.”

Trying to make sense of it all feels like it might have felt to play in The Magic Band for even five minutes. Got to check out some of this reunion material (sans van Vliet).

Thanks baald.

Chris points out that my antique P-Funk article showed up on memepool today, in the midst of a bunch of links to other bits and pieces on funkentelechy. Wish I had time to write pieces like that these days… Maybe I need a lifestyle adjustment.

Buying more music at iTunes Music Store over the past six months; their catalog keeps expanding in ever-widening circles. Increasingly, it seems that when I buy a CD, it only gets touched once. Not because it’s not good, but because it only needs to be ripped once. After that, it’s in iTunes, on the iPod, or pumped to the living room via Airport Express, and the meatspace disc does nothing but take up space. If all I really want is bits, why futz with atoms (especially if I can still support the artist, kinda, by buying it electronically?)

When I told a friend this recently, he remarked (nicely/half-jokingly) that I was “part of the problem.” “What problem is that?,” I wanted to know. “Encouraging the proliferation of lo-fi digital music.” Well, he has a point. On the other end of the spectrum, another friend recently rejected a large-ish collection of music because my 192kbps MP3s were of too-high quality. Even with disc space so cheap today it may as well be free. You can’t win this one. There’s nothing to win.

Can’t help but think that too much discussion about formats, codecs, and bitrates falls prey to the traditional and sometimes true criticism leveled at Hi-Fi freaks: Energy spent thinking about gear is energy stolen from enjoyment or discussion of the music (which is why I love it when an audio tweak puts an old scratchy mono LP on the turntable — I know they have their ears in the right place).

Now excuse me as I return to my regularly scheduled MC5.

Related: Mary Hodder at Napsterization: The Musician’s Era: Do We Still Say ‘Album’?

So will musical development change as more people download by the song and musicians know and work with this new way of interacting with music? Or will both musicians and listeners maintain the convention of the reference to an album, even though we don’t have them for the other reasons mentioned, to describe an associated grouping of music as a complete work?

The best thing I ever accidentally stumbled upon at the once-great MP3.com was the music of Bruce Lash – a Chicago musician with a sparkling thing going on: equal parts George Harrison, Joe Strummer, Donovan, Spacemen 3, and some other influences I haven’t yet put a finger on. But I don’t mean to paint him as a mere collection of influences – he’s all Bruce Lash.

At a certain point, Lash “realized the music business was a business” and, sadly for all of us, took his early self-published CDs off the market (check these clips of 1996’s High Water or 1997’s I Went to Tea With the Elephant Man). Totally off the public radar, Lash’s music would still be in my personal Top 100 lists today, if I kept Top 100 lists (I don’t).

On the side, he started doing easy listening / lounge versions of classic 70s and 80s rock, under the name Prozak for Lovers, covering anthemic tracks such as Love Will Tear Us Apart, Rebel Rebel, London Calling… but with vibraphone, bongos, and soul-soothing vocals. Spellbinding.

Lash and I have corresponded a few times over the past four years, but I hadn’t heard from him for a while. Then, out of the blue last week, received email from him saying that Prozak for Lovers II was almost out. Received a copy yesterday, and have been listening non-stop. Three years since the last one, but flowing in perfect sync with the first. Insanely great new lounge songs for your next dinner party: Mexican Radio, Misty Mountain Hop, Heart of Glass, Psycho Killer, Alabama Song, and Blister in the Sun (samples here).