Category: Music

At TV Party, a collection of articles written for Data-Boy magazine in the early 80s, direct from the heart of the L.A. punk/new wave scene. Dug-up, restored to their original luster, many of them complete with images and album covers. Tracking the rise of bands like Wall of Voodoo, Minutemen, X, Stiff Little Fingers, XTC, etc. Even though the writing isn’t particularly scintillating, it’s interesting to be reminded of how these bands smelled to the underground 20-25 years ago, rather than how we remember them.

While Wall of Voodoo has obviously made great investments of time and resources to make their concerts as polished as possible, XTC has taken the road of least resistance. Weak, bare, sloppy arrangements and performances prevailed.

Thanks baald.

22 years ago, one of my favorite albums was the double LP The Name of This Band Is Talking Heads — a collection of live tracks spanning the era of “Remain in Light,” “Fear of Music,” “More Songs About Buildings and Food,” and “77.” Name of This Band was released prior to the much slicker (although more afro-oriented) “Stop Making Sense” and Jonathan Demme’s accompanying film, both of which helped push the band into the mainstream, and marked the introduction of the more polished, less angular sound of later Heads.

Somewhere along the line, the album disappeared from my collection. Tried to replace it a few times, only to find it out of print. Thought I’d never hear it again, but the archivists at Rhino (who kick ass, btw) have re-released it in expanded and remastered version that I’ve been listening to non-stop for days.

From the Pitchfork review:

This live album is not simply a fans-only document or a curio or a means of padding the discography or exploiting fans. In many ways, it’s the best one-stop document of what made Talking Heads one of the post-punk era’s most dynamic and urgent bands, and a succinct argument for the merits of synthesizing rock with emerging, potentially oppositional sounds. The latter is a lesson that will hopefully be learned by today’s rock artists.

Name of This Band reminds me of everything that was once awe-inspiring about Talking Heads — artful without being artsy, defiant of simple categorization, inventive, always inspired. Some tracks, such as Animals and an early version of Electricity (Drugs) surpass the studio versions.

Available at iTunes music store for instant gratification, if you swing that way.

Musicologists are discovering similarities between Islamic holy music and early American blues — similarities that go beyond the likelihood of coincidence. Have a listen. The parallel is pretty striking. What’s the connection?

It’s really there because of all the Muslim slaves from West Africa who were taken by force to the United States for three centuries, from the 1600s to the mid-1800s. Upward of 30 percent of the African slaves in the United States were Muslim, and an untold number of them spoke and wrote Arabic, historians say now.

So if most great American music — all of rock history and all of jazz — ultimately grows out of early blues, then by extension, American musical heritage is tied intimately to the music of Islam.

Great story about how musician Matt Tuozo grappled with frustration trying to get people to listen to his music on MP3.com, AudioGalaxy etc. until he came up with a brilliant idea: Manufacture a hot female persona to “live” behind the music, in the same way that mega-stars like Brittney are manufactured by producers. With the creation of Joy Reid, Matt’s music took off. Same music as before, now with breasts! Joy’s face was generated by morphing images of Jodie Foster and Winona Ryder gathered from FTP servers.

“Joy” made the front page of MP3.com. A thriving fan base developed, and Matt made thousands selling “her” music online, until he could no longer maintain the ruse and had to kill her off in a larger-than-life manner befitting a faux pop icon.

It’s comforting to know that modern publishing tools not only empower the proletariat to make and sell its own music without help from The Man, but to manufacture celebrity itself, cost free. We now not only need to wonder whether a star is popular by virtue of their own talents or by pure marketing muscle, but whether the star even exists at all.

Thanks Michael Bazeley.

Mission of Burma tonight at the Fillmore with Roger. Their first new record in 22 years, “On Off On,” and touring again. Expected the show to mostly showcase the new album, but heard tons from “Vs.” and “Signals, Calls, and Marches.” First set didn’t seem to cohere as well as last time we saw them, but something happened in the margins, and the second set soared. Stratmospheric. Check out the MTV trailer for a sip. Something sounded strangely familiar. A cover. Was it Cream? No, wait. Early Pink Floyd — something from Umma Gumma, or Piper at the Gates of Dawn. Have to figure this out. Never heard Floyd sound like this. The only other cover I know of Burma doing is a version of The Stooges’ “1970” on “The Horrible Truth About Burma.”

Sudden strange impulse to know how Burma would sound unplugged. Maybe with Conley on Mariachi bass, Miller on Spanish guitar, Prescott with Tito Puente’s drums. Or even tablas.

Disproportionate number of Moby scalps and Drew Carey glasses in the audience. First encore Penelope Houston jumped onstage. Second encore finished with a totally plugged-in “Max Ernst.” Just electrified.

Caught the last few pieces by Kinski, one of the openers. Some blend of Hawkwind, Spacemen 3, and Can. Psychedelic jam bands still exist (Kinski, not Burma), with modern electronics. And flute! Should have heard more.

Composer Harry Partch didn’t write pieces to work with the standard set of 12-tone scale instruments popular in Western music. Instead, he composed with as many as 43 microtones to the octave, then built instruments capable of playing the compositions.

National Public Radio’s “Music Mavericks” has always done a great job chronicling the work of off-beat genius musicians, but their Partch site is a joy to behold. They’ve created a virtual museum of Partch’s instruments, where you can not only hear the instrument played and listen to Partch talk about instruments with names like “Gourd Tree and Cone Gongs” and the “Zymo-Xyl” and “Spoils of War” and “Quadrangularus Reversum,” but also, through ingenious use of photographs and Flash, play the instruments yourself.

LA Weekly has a very good tribute to the forgotten session musician — the fellow (usually) who is not part of any band per se’ but who has played with hundreds of them, with amazing flexibility and total professionalism. From ABBA to Zappa, the session musician is the opposite of the rock god — ego is probably not why he’s playing, and he will never have groupies.

“Most of the music you will ever hear will be played by people you will never see and whose names you will neither know nor think to ask. It will be recorded in windowless rooms, witnessed sometimes only by an engineer or producer, the now-ancient technology of the overdub making the presence even of other musicians unnecessary. For every superstar singer or guitar heroine whose name adorns a T-shirt or tattoo, there are hundreds whose work is done anonymously, or as good as. Who play their part, collect their pay and go home.”