Category: Music

Not sure whether to be afraid or ecstatic — Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band are reuniting after 20 years (without the good cap’n, of course). One show in LA, two in the UK. I just pray it doesn’t become an embarrassment for them, although I have confidence they wouldn’t be doing it if they’d lost their thang in the meantime.

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Music: Fess Williams And His Orchestra :: Eleven-Thirty Saturday Night

Happened across gnod’s statistics – an amazing applet that connects artists and musicians in a stringy gooey web of interrelatedness. Click on an artist and similar artists will gather ’round the strange attractor, showing you that people who like artist X will also like artist Y. Keep digging to swim through your own constellation of tastes.

You’ve probably seen Janis Ian’s testimonial in USA Today, Music industry spins falsehood. What we need are about 1,000 big-name stars to do similar experiments themselves, and make similar testimonials that they actually made more money by giving away their music, rather than the other way around.

Meanwhile, the MC5’s Wayne Kramer now testifies for Apple.

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Music: Godley & Creme :: Cry

The Large Hot Pipe Organ is the world’s only MIDI controlled, propane powered explosion organ. The LHPO’s pyro-acoustic explodo-rhythmations will throbbatize your earholes and dance-ify your booty and make you realize what “Industrial Music REALLY means! .”

Get one of the MP3s playing and look through the picture galleries, or watch one of the movies. When is this coming to my town?

Dinner and music with Mike, then off to the Starry Plough with him and Roger to see The Mekons, still Mekons after 25 years, without fading and then re-appearing, or having to “get the band back together” or any of that nonsense, they’ve just always been, though I had never seen them …. raising the question, “What if Donovan and the Clash fell in love and got married and had a baby, would it be The Mekons?” … Which raises the question, “What year will it be when you flip to the oldies station on the radio and hear punk rock?” And so a very worth-it night, shredding raw guitar with violin and accordion, sense of humor and also some shredding raw politics. Sally Tims, she has a strange allure.

Spent most of the weekend looking for a dresser for the baba’s room in SF’s Mission district. About half a dozen vintage and antique stores. Neither of us have bought new furniture before – both of us have come this far on sidewalk trash, improvisations. Amy made the comment that this is a fork in the road – where we decide either to trade in the mismatched dishes for a matched set from Crate and Barrel or continue on the path of funk for the rest of our lives.

Today we found a perfect 1930s deco dresser for cheap, and bought it. A bit worse for wear, not fancy, but bearing the character of its previous owners. We are both gratified to have stayed on the path of funk. For now.

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On Valencia St., saw a baby in a stroller coming at us *very* quickly. Soon realized that its father, who was pushing the stroller, was riding a skateboard. Father and child on wheels, on an SF sidewalk at 15mph. As they passed, I realized the father was wearing a skirt. I love the 21st century.

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Last night off to see Daniel Popsicle perform at New Langton Arts – sort of a Braxton set for kids, or a Willem Breuker Kollektief with fewer dodecahedrons. Enjoyable, but wished it would have featured more banjo-bass duets, or trombone solos, or something. Very orchestral in other words – all 13 of them playing together at once, never any featured instrumentalists. Sort of orchestral modern jazz with a child’s melodic mindset. Very odd, very fun.

Went with Roger last night to see Mission of Burma, who haven’t toured together since the Reagan years. Amazing to walk into the Fillmore Auditorium – as I said to Roger, those walls have witnessed more great music in the past 40 years than just about any building on earth. It’s a great vibe. The walls are plastered on every floor with photos and posters – name just about any great post-50s musical act and they’ve probably played the Fillmore at some point.

Mike Watt was opening, along with Silkworm. We were half there to see Watt, and crushed that we missed him – they must have started the show on time, which threw us. Crap. Another time. For the record, Silkworm was boring.

Burma, on the other hand, ruled. Forced to break up just as they were peaking 20 years ago, due to Roger Miller’s creeping tinnitus -today he wears big bulky noise-reducing headphones to block out the sound. Birdsongs of the Mesozoic was formed out of Burma to create chamber rock, and Miller switched to piano – all an attempt to protect his ears. But now he just goes with the blocking phones and plays what he’s always wanted to play.

Anyway. It was like all of that antique art-punk was bottled up in them, perfectly preserved, and came rushing out, unravaged by time. Totally inspired and brilliant, just dada enough, rhythmically and melodically intense. Kind of the Magritte of punk. Or should that be the King Crimson of punk? Just totally righteous.

After much recent LJ debate on the recurring subject of whether musical tastes are 100% relative (and therefore meaningless), this stunning algebraic formula appears to set the record straight for once and for all. No longer will we have to argue about whether Moby is meaningless or Beefheart is irrelevant. It’s all simple math, and math doesn’t lie!

Jaguaro is running this piece “One Hundred Albums You Should Remove From Your Collection Immediately“. Designed as a counterpoint to all those “100 Must-Have Albums” lists, the list attempts to disrobe the emperor and convince you that half of your favorite records of all time are actually unlistenable crap. I use the term “unlistenable” because that’s the term the reviewers use, approximately once every other review.

The thing about this list is that I agree with it in principle – there’s a hell of a lot of stuff out there that gets all kinds of undeserved credit for being “seminal” or “inspirational” or “groundbreaking” but that is in fact just plain tired, or that wasn’t actually very good to begin with. But agreeing with the idea of the list in principle is very different from agreeing with what they came up with. About half of what’s on their list I agree with. The other half boils my blood. I’m sure that’s the idea – they intended to rankle feathers with it, and I’m sure everyone who reads it will be pissed off by something.

For example, it’s beyond me why the Pixies aren’t on that list – the Pixies are the single most overrated band of the late 20th century, IMO. I’ve never understood what’s supposed to be so interesting about them. But these clowns recommend discarding Trout Mask Replica – the single album that had more influence on my formative musical tastes than any other. I don’t get it.

Anyway, the list is alternatingly hilarious and maddening. What pissed you off about it?

P.S. : Can you please translate the Einsturzende entry? It’s hilarious without even being able to read it… but I’m curious.