The Audible Axiom

Birth of the Cool - Miles Davis (1949-50)

2010-03-21T22:14:00.000-04:00

Miles had more experimental records, more innovative records, more brilliantly improvisational records, more cohesive records, quite a few records that were, well, better. But only Miles Davis can make a record that seems to fail those standards and still is among the greatest jazz albums ever. This is Miles's greatest compositional album, where every tune isn't just played, but crafted to perfection. There is that sense of fragility present throughout the album, as if any moment if you alter its sensitive structure it will collapse, that makes it so beautiful and compelling. "Moon Dreams," in my mind, tops them all - it sounds like a house of cards just waiting for you to remove a card from its bottom. Miles just stands guard and never lets that happen.

Birth of the Cool was first released as a compilation on LP in 1957, but it was recorded in 1949 and 1950.

Alex Chilton is Dead at 59

2010-03-17T22:11:00.002-04:00

To me, there were very little musicians that sounded as American as Alex Chilton. That's weird, considering that along with his fellow Big Star member Chris Bell, they were about the most British-sounding band around. Maybe it's because we now associate so much of the subsequent "Power Pop" movement with lots of American bands, that we sometimes forget how much of their influence was from pre-Revolver British Invasion. Then again, the major influence of all of those groups was American R&B. Wherever the winding road ends up, Alex Chilton, one of Memphis's favorite sons, always seemed to create some of the most American music possible. It was in fact not too long ago that I discovered Big Star (remember, I'm a teenager), after having heard "September Gurls" many a time in numerous places. I heard Radio City and played, literally, nothing but that for about a week. Then I devoured #1 Record, then Third/Sister Lovers, then Chris Bell's posthumous I Am the Cosmos, and now I'm trying to track down Chilton's solo stuff. There really hasn't been any band like them, and there definitely wasn't a band like them when they were at their peak, which was actually the entire span of the band's existence - which was about 3 years, 6 if you count the later-released, really-more-of-a-Chilton-solo-album-but-equally-breathtaking Third. I'm rambling, not really making a point here, I guess. If there's a point, it's that they simply wrote beautiful guitar pop, and no one has come close to matching the beauty heard in their songs.

And now, just a few minutes ago, I found that Alex Chilton has died of a heart attack at 59. It's strange - he hasn't really made a well-received album in more than 20 years, it didn't really seem like he was on any sort of breakthrough, I always wanted to see him in concert or meet him, but that never seemed very realistic. So logically, besides the tragedy of an early death of a musical idol I've long admired from afar, it shouldn't really affect me. And yet, it feels like something like the "end of an era." The idea that there's a living, breathing human responsible for so much beauty is both obvious and slightly inconceivable. And now, the human's gone - but his music remains. So, thank you, friend / Wouldn't be here if it wasn't for you / I'm so grateful for all the things you helped me do.

Ornette Coleman Speaks

2010-03-13T15:52:00.001-05:00

Many thanks to a blog absolutely worth checking out, Bop and Beyond.

Television Play "Venus" at the Ork Loft, 1974

2010-03-11T20:34:00.000-05:00

Whoah! This is amazing! It's also great to track the evolution of "Venus" - this is the earliest version I've heard of it, but I've also heard demos, other takes, live performances... I will never, ever get tired of this song, even in its form here, which sounds almost nothing like the final product.

Chico Buarque: Minha História (1973)

2010-03-09T22:12:00.000-05:00

I wasn't sure if Buarque's 1971 album Construção, often considered the greatest Brazilian album of all time, would live up to hype, but for all intents and purposes, it has. Such a beautiful song right here.

Eric Dolphy Remind Us that He's a Genius (Mingus & Dolphy, "Take the A Train," 1964)

2010-02-09T22:27:00.001-05:00

Well, was a genius - he died way, way too young in 1964. One can only wonder how he would have evolved in the subsequent years.

By the way, absolutely amazing solo by the pianist, Jackie Byard - he's just swinging along, and then all of a sudden he goes stride on us. It's a real shame it's cut off.

My Bloody Valentine - Glider (Intro) / When You Sleep - Live in London, 1991

2010-02-03T22:57:00.000-05:00

You can't hear a thing, you can't see a thing, and yet despite - or perhaps because - of this, it's beautiful music.

Love Comes In Spurts

2010-01-29T20:48:00.000-05:00

There is curious pattern of listening. There are usually three alternate reactions upon first listening a song: you love it, you think it’s OK, or you hate. If you hate it, you usually don’t listen to it again. Chances are if you think it’s OK, after listening to it for another 10 times you’ll grow to like it to some degree. I don’t know why this is – perhaps we become more aware and perceptive of what we didn’t notice before. Perhaps our senses become number. Whatever it is, it almost always happens. The opposite happens for a song you absolutely love – sometimes it takes 10, 20, 30 listens, but eventually you’ll ease into a pattern of anticipation. And that is, after all, half of what makes a song beautiful – not the fact that you’re surprised at what happens, anyone can do that, but the fact that you don’t necessarily know the beauty you hear was coming, or know what form it takes. Once you know it’s coming, slowly the impact decreases, slowly but surely.

I’ve listened to Television’s song “Venus” for maybe, I don’t know, probably about 200, 250 times. For probably the last 49 plays before this most recent one (yes, it took that long) I’ve sunk into a pattern of surprisingly little reaction from the song. I still love it, I still find it beautiful, it still astounds me, despite the fact that I know every single guitar pluck by heart. Yet, it doesn’t astound me, doesn’t quite overwhelm me with beautiful sound like it did the first time. Well, the second time would be more accurate. I can actually recall how I discovered Television. It was summer, nearing the end of my freshman year in High School, sweltering of course, and amidst that heat somehow my teacher had enough energy to teach us about Hellenistic Greek art - and Venus De Milo. Somehow I remembered my father saying something way back when about a song about Venus De Milo. I can’t remember how I remembered it, because it must have been a random passing remark from two, three years before that. Yet somehow it stuck with me, and I remembered it that day. I arrived home and downloaded it from iTunes. Then I downloaded another song from the album, probably “See No Evil,” then another, and then finally the entire album a few days later. I listened to “Venus” the first time, and I liked it, perhaps even really liked it, but I hadn’t truly listened to it, I hadn’t truly understood what I was hearing. The second time it clicked. What I was listening to was near impossible to describe in words. It took my breath away. That day I listened to it about 20 times, and amazingly it never wore off. After every listen I would have been surprised my head wasn’t aching with some sort of traumatic bliss. It was that powerful.

And yet, how many listens later, and what’s happened? My ears had been slowly going numb into a pattern of complacency, but with little loss of breath. (Though I must admit, the other songs I hadn’t been wild about on the album – “Prove It,” “Guiding Light” – have slowly opened up my ears to sounds I hadn’t noticed before. “Guiding Light” used to be a fairly straightforward, pleasant ballad-like song, but now I notice its layering, its patterns and progressions and – brace yourselves – even its lyrics, something, despite my literary nature, I tend to place far behind a song’s sound in importance. The same thing for “Prove It.”) But today I listened to it again. Perhaps it was because I was much too tired, perhaps because it smelled like frying onions, perhaps just because I hadn’t listened to it in close to a week, which is an eternity for Marquee Moon. Whatever the reason, it opened up again. Suddenly I understood again why I had loved it so much in the first place. Maybe “understood” is the wrong word - this is not to say I hadn’t loved it all the time, but now I experienced it, felt why I loved it so much. Suddenly that traumatic bliss was back. But it’s probably not here to stay. As Richard Hell – who first began in Television alongside Tom Verlaine - once said, “Love comes in spurts.”

Picture Above: Television's 1977 "Prove It" b/w "Venus" single.

The Saint John Coltrane African Orthodox Church

2010-01-19T22:15:00.000-05:00

The complete and utter synthesis of spiritual connectivity and musicality achieved by John William Coltrane has arguably never been matched by any other composer and musician in the 20th century. One listen to Ascension can tell you that. In fact, Trane's impact was so great that an African Orthodox Church in San Francisco has beatified Coltrane - or rather, Saint Coltrane.

According to Wikipedia (no jokes please), "The African Orthodox Church is a primarily African-American denomination in the Anglican tradition, founded in the United States in 1919. It has approximately 15 parishes and 5,000 members." I'm frankly not too surprised that Coltrane has become such - not a religious figure, but, in a sense, a mythical figure. I'm not commenting on the African Orthodox Church in particular (I'm not implying that "saints" and "mythic" are one and the same), but, as with any great, there's always the potent combination of amazement and nostalgia. That combination makes "legends," but Coltrane in particular has all the right ingredients: A journeyman who gets a break with a star and suddenly takes the scene by storm, changing the face of the music forever, refusing to become still, constantly innovating and discovering, overcoming his personal vices, finding his inner spiritual voice, blah blah blah. It's all true of course, but Coltrane embodies it like no jazzman before him or since.

Oh, and have I mentioned that this performance is possibly the most breathtaking live performance I've ever seen?

Isaac Hayes Live at Wattstax performing "Theme from Shaft" - 1973.

2010-01-17T22:09:00.001-05:00

That cat Shaft is a baaad mothe-

Man, that wah-wah is like a percussion instrument. Wattstax isn't talked about a lot these days, which is an incredible shame. It was seen as the "black answer to Woodstock," which is a stupid comparison, of course, at least in terms of its social, political, and even structural aspects - unlike Woodstock, it wasn't held over a weekend in an upstate New York farm, but for one long day - August 20, 1972 - in Los Angeles Memorial Colosseum. It featured all the Stax stars and then some - Isaac Hayes, the Bar-Kays, the Staples Singers, Carla and Rufus Thomas, Albert King, etc.

Meanwhile, the Bar-Kays did their own, equally funky take on Shaft:

Above: Watt's most recognizable landmark, the Watts Towers.

John Cage and Morton Feldman in Conversation, 1967

2010-01-09T16:38:00.002-05:00

From archive.org:

This first of a three part conversation between John Cage and Morton Feldman was recorded at WBAI in New York between October 18-25, 1967. The segment begins with Cage and Feldman discussing the various ways people perceive intrusion in their lives. The composers then spend some time on the occupation of the artist as "being deep in thought," and what the goals or purposes of "being deep in thought" might be. A brief analysis of Black Mountain College follows before Cage and Feldman return to the idea of being in thought, and the role of boredom in life. The conversation ends with Cage explaining his hesitation towards taking on students.

Great stuff, one of three recordings, not only two of the greatest minds of the time under one roof, but two of the greatest voices - Cage with his distinctive, high pitched, almost floating voice, and Feldman, with his heavy New York accent that sounds more like the plumber next door than one of the greatest composers of the 20th century.

(Rahsaan) Roland Kirk - The Inflated Tear (1968)

2010-01-06T22:45:00.001-05:00

Rahsaan Roland Kirk said: "When I die, I want them to play 'The Black and Crazy Blues'. I want to be cremated, put in a bag of pot, and I want beautiful people to smoke me and hope they get something out of it."

Whatever you say, Rahsaan. This album remains the collector of some of the most beautiful jazz songs ever recorded, and it's definitely one of my favorite jazz albums. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that it's the most underrated jazz album of all time. Roland Kirk, who later added the name "Rahsaan," was known as a sideshow early on, an "act" rather than a musician: a man who played three strange looking reed instruments simultaneously, hummed into a flute, maybe punctuated a solo with a whistle more likely to be found at a child's birthday party than Carnegie Hall - and, he was blind. But the idiotic castigating from the critics, targeted at his unorthodox approach, eventually wore off, and soon people discovered he was one of the great innovators and creative geniuses in jazz of his time - and he proved that all without sacrificing his approach. On The Inflated Tear, so named after the condition that caused him to become fully blind (from only partially before) when a nurse overdosed him on eye medication, these are his credits:

Roland Kirk - tenor sax, manzello, stritch, clarinet, flute, whistle, English horn or flexafone

If you're wondering, a manzello and a stritch are two variations on a saxophone, with slightly altered bodies, which create slightly different tones. On his first major album, from back when he was considered practically a sideshow, "Introducing Roland Kirk," his line is similar - tenor sax, manzello, stritch, and whistle.

This, his magnum opus, is almost like a sprawling, yet concentrated jazz history that doesn't begin to approach mere nostalgia - it still remains and sounds fully contemporary. Here's the best way I've found to describe it: It's you dreaming of you having a dream tomorrow about the day before the real dream. Does that make sense? He's looking at the past, but there's a definite purposeful distance from it - he isn't the past, knows he isn't, but nevertheless wants to pay homage to it. He quotes New Orleans-esque funeral marches, early bebop, he even covers Ellington's "Creole Love Calls," and, at times, it seems like he's quoting himself. Picturing "The Black and Crazy Blues," the first track from this album, being played at his funeral doesn't bring up sadness - it's the one that sounds like a funeral march, but it's hardly mournful. It has a kind of remote optimism, or at the very least, a surreal sense of humor - a sense of comfort in sadness.

Sadly, Rahsaan Roland Kirk's death was not accompanied with any of the sense of muted optimism, any sense of comfort in its time and place, that is inferred from "The Black and Crazy Blues" - he died in 1977 of a stroke at age 42.

The Bridge - Sonny Rollins (1962)

2010-01-02T01:12:00.000-05:00

I have to say, I'm a bit disappointed at this 1962 album, the first album by Rollins after his voluntary three-year retirement, which is now the stuff of legend - supposedly, he wanted to almost relearn the saxophone and took three years off to do nothing but practice, during which he often played under the Williamsburg Bridge (the Manhattan side, of course). The main problem with this "comeback" album stems from the fact that Sonny is a great saxophonist, but not a great composer and arranger. In fact, I'd say his best work was as a side man, taking his amazing tone and his unmatched sense of subtle impact to songs that didn't sound quite so stifled and emotionless - I realize that sounds a bit harsh, and I hate calling any record emotionless, because obviously its not, but I was not feeling it. His mid 50s work with Monk is a prime example of when he did take his pure playing to a setting that suitably complimented it and showed the fully realized potential of Rollins's playing. On The Bridge, however, I don't feel the setting suitably compliments it.

The Most Brilliant Musical Move the Beatles Ever Made...

2009-12-23T00:35:00.001-05:00

...was referencing "She Loves You" in "All You Need is Love."

Discuss.

Public Image Ltd. on American Bandstand, 1980

2009-12-21T23:09:00.001-05:00

Well, it's got a good beat n' you can dance to it. I'll give it a 7, Dick!

How the hell PiL got on American Bandstand is one of the great miracles of modern music.

Oh, and don't forgot another one of their wildly successful TV appearances:

Stuff I Left Out

2009-12-14T19:03:00.001-05:00

As to be expected, I'm mad at all the stuff I left off yesterday's list of an "alternate" top 20 of all time. Some notable ones I left off:

	Arcade Fire Funeral (2004) Yeah, I don't love it that much either - but it's one of the great albums of the 00s, and it's nice whenever there's a new classic, something that's accepted by the old and young generations as one of the greatest records of this decade. In 10 years, 15 at the most, this should be on every publication's "top 20 of all time."
	Public Image Ltd. Metal Box (1979) I wanted something to represent British punk/post-punk, so I chose Entertainment! but I perhaps should've chosen Metal Box, which I love - probably more than Entertainment!
	Van Morrison Astral Weeks (1968)
	Prince Purple Rain (1984) I'm going to embarrass myself and admit that I've listened to very, very little Prince (I'm still young, after all!), but I don't have to tell you about the acclaim this album has received. I predict that, once I finally get around to listening to it, I'll probably like it a lot.
	TV on the Radio Return to Cookie Mountain (2006) Perhaps I should've chosen this over You Forgot It In People, but "People" has that aura of concise greatness that Return to Cookie Mountain.
	Neil Young Zuma (1975) Yes, I genuinely believe this is Neil Young's greatest album.
	John Lennon Mother (John Lennon / Plastic Ono Band) (1970)
	The Modern Lovers The Modern Lovers (1976)
	The Who Live at Leeds (1970) Probably the greatest live album ever, and definitely the greatest Who album - in my view, miles ahead of Who's Next, which I never liked that much, comparatively.

The Unsung Masterpieces - An Alternate Top 20 of All Time

2009-12-13T16:35:00.001-05:00

This list does not contain any albums from an artist that has an album in the top 30 overall rated albums from rateyourmusic.com. It combines overall influence with my personal opinion, and I've tried to keep in mind an equality of eras and genres. This is "pop" only - so, Rock, R&B, Rap, Country, etc. - but I left out genres like jazz and classical, because they can't be compared. Also, to increase diversity, I don't have any artist repeated.

This isn't meant to be definitive, just to make you think. Don't kill your idols; just elevate more people to their level.

Buddy Holly

Buddy Holly (1958)

Broken Social Scene

You Forgot It in People (2002)

Patti Smith

Horses (1975)

Hüsker Dü

Zen Arcade (1984)

The White Stripes

Elephant (2003)

A Tribe Called Quest

The Low End Theory (1991)

Nirvana

Nevermind (1991)

Little Richard

Here's Little Richard (1957)

Ramones

Ramones (1976)

Gang of Four

Entertainment! (1979)

Big Star

Radio City (1974)

Otis Redding

Otis Blue: Otis Redding Sings Soul (1965)

Talking Heads

Remain in Light (1980)

Johnny Cash

At Folsom Prison (1968)

Wu-Tang Clan

Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) (1993)

Aretha Franklin

I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You (1967)

The Kinks

Face to Face (1966)

Stevie Wonder

Innervisions (1973)

Sonic Youth

Daydream Nation (1988)

Sly and the Family Stone

There's a Riot Goin' On (1971)

Something Else - The Kinks (1969)

2009-12-12T22:05:00.001-05:00

What a great album. The Kinks, in my opinion, are easily the most underrated band of the British invasion, possibly of the entire 60s. When everyone else was singing, "all you need is love," the Kinks were singing, "Sylvilla looked into her mirror / Percilla looked into the washing machine / And the drudgery of being wed / She was so jealous of her sister."

That's from one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard, "Two Sisters." Actually, I should mention here that I always thought it was the drudgery of being wet, which I thought Percilla was associating with the washing machine - but it's wed, which although changes a lot of the meaning, it retains the tone that the Kinks were brilliant at. I love these lyrical misunderstandings; I'm not sure exactly what the literary equivalent would be - I hesitate to say impressionist, in a way, though there's not the aspect of misinterpreting individual words in impressionist poetry - but somebody could write a very good dissertation on this phenomenon.

Something Else came after Face to Face, which I find to be their magnum opus, even better than The Village Green Preservation Society, whose production I always found a bit lackluster compared to the previous two; Face to Face perhaps probably contained more harpsichord on a rock'n'roll record than any other at the time, and probably the most since then. It doesn't at all sound corny or like a pastiche - as a matter of fact, it almost sounds like a brilliantly sly fusion of 18th century pomp and circumstance with 20th century noise. No one did satire like the Kinks, reaffirming my belief that seriousness and humor are never incompatible - and that perhaps no other form communicates "serious" themes quite like humor. (See: Dr. Strangelove). Something Else doesn't quite have the mythic level of songwriting that Face to Face exhibited, but it's damn good. Listen to it.

DOWNLOAD (53 MB - RapidShare)

Top 10 Favorite Album Covers: 3-1

2009-12-08T20:10:00.001-05:00

I must be cursed! I say that I'll post my final three picks for my favorite covers the next day, thinking, "I'm sure I can make a promise like that, I won't be busy tomorrow!" Well, I wasn't busy at all - unfortunately, my computer crashed. So, here, almost a week late, is my final installment!

3. Ramones - Ramones. No other cover says "I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend" and "Now I Wanna Sniff Some Glue" at the same time like this one. No other covers says "rock 'n' roll" like this one, either.

2. Public Image Ltd. - Metal Box. For those who aren't aware: After Johnny Rotten of Sex Pistols fame found himself to be unemployed, he went against everything that the Pistols stood for and created the supposed antithesis of rock. Atonal, long, electronic, and brilliant, plus a supposed status as a "communications company" and not a "band." They said they did soundtracks, movies, videos, but of course they didn't really do anything of the sort and released albums and played gigs like any other band. But what better way to sell a "corporation" than in a metal box?

1. Sly & the Family Stone - There's a Riot Goin' On. Sly says: "I wanted the flag to truly represent people of all colors. I wanted the color black because it is the absence of color. I wanted the color white because it is the combination of all colors. And I wanted the color red because it represents the one thing that all people have in common: blood. I wanted suns instead of stars because stars to me imply searching, like you search for your star. And there are already too many stars in this world. But the sun, that's something that is always there, looking right at you. Betsy Ross did the best she could with what she had. I thought I could do better."

Sure, he might be trying a bit too hard to be profound, but I still love the image so much. Even if you don't know exactly what flag "means," it conveys a slight disturbance in patriotism, like America in a parallel universe. This isn't exactly the flag you know. There's something goin' on here... like a riot.

Labels

2009-12-03T16:03:00.002-05:00

Poor, poor death metal. The term, as it's now used, seems to refer to anything jarring, loud, fast, and probably evil. Casual metal fans reject it for the Cookie Monster vocals, the indie elite concentrate their attention on hipper metal media, like drone doom, and the general public treats any fan as a deeply disturbed individual. Of course these are all exaggerations, but the case remains that outside of death metal fans, the genre gets very little respect.

The saddest thing here is that death metal's lack of mainstream acceptance (if not mainstream appeal) is purely cosmetic. Death - scary, no? And yet, besides being generally abrasive, the concept of death doesn't have much to do with death metal. When the band Death chose to give themselves that name, they may have wanted to reflect the darkness of the genre. Perhaps they even wanted a name that the public wouldn't accept. And yet, I can't really help but wonder how public perception would be different if the genre had come to be known as Chuck metal, or morbid metal, or possessed metal. Maybe then, we wouldn't use death metal to refer to all the harsh noise in our life, or use it as a buzzword for the taste of the aggressive, crazed youth.

Of course, the whole problem goes deeper than death metal. Musical labels serve an important purpose, but they frequently lose meaning within a ridiculously short amount of time. Today, many of us perceive traditional punk rock as fast, short, political, angry, barely-produced and dead. And yet, when we consider the first punk rock, fast and short are the only adjectives that fit. And in the 21st century, punk fans dismiss bands like Green Day and The Libertines as corporate shit, even though they're about ten times closer to New York and early British punk than any hardcore punk. Ever.

And when's the last time you heard someone in real life use techno to mean techno? It's generally all trance, house, eurodance, synth-pop... you get the idea. Pop music made with a synthesizer or a computer. Then you've got your gangsta rap, like Eminem and Ludacris. Essentially scary men who rap about sex.

I suppose there's no real "so-what" here. Oh well. Enjoy some death metal, and take it easy.

Top 10 Favorite Album Covers: 10-7

2009-12-02T20:52:00.000-05:00

Alright, so here's my first installment of my top 10 album covers of all time, from 10 to 7 - the top 3 are coming tomorrow.

10. Sonny Rollins - Way Out West. No comment.

9. Caetano Veloso - Caetano Veloso. There's something about this photo - I love the slight blurriness of the picture, especially the background, combined with an almost haziness you get. Then there's that fur thing Veloso's clutching or wearing, you're not really sure - all topped with the look on Veloso's face.

8. John Coltrane - Ascension. That look in Coltrane's eyes is what made him a Saint in the African Orthodox Saint John Coltrane Church in San Francisco. Contrast the calm of Trane and the actual music inside, and you have a great album cover.

7. Pere Ubu - The Modern Dance. I'm not sure why I like this one so much - you kind of have to listen to the album to kind of put the two together - not that you suddenly realize the "meaning" of the album cover once you listen to it, but they just naturally seem to go together. Just looking at it, you know that this is going album is going to be great, even if you have no idea what it sounds like.

6. Talking Heads - More Songs About Buildings and Food. Artists only.

5. The Band - Music From Big Pink. The cover was actually painted by Bob Dylan, and it looks like the greatest piece of folk art ever painted, like a strange dream of Americana.

4. Jimi Hendrix - Axis: Bold as Love. A lot of crazy and great album covers came out of psychedelia, but this is the best, hands down.

The final three are coming tomorrow!

Looking back on this I realize that most of my covers are from the 60s and 70s - in fact, the only one that's not is #10. I'd say easily that the artists I listen to come from those two decades more than any others, but they defenitely don't make up 90% of my "library," as this list would suggest. Probably half of it is simply my graphics tastes, but the other half may have to do with the sadly slowly eroding practice of putting yourself on the album cover. Nowadays, there are very, very little "non-mainstream" bands that put a photograph of themselves on the cover, which is a shame because, though often it's a pointless waste of space to sell someone's sex appeal, sometimes it can tell a lot. In each one of these album covers, the photographs tell something about the artist and the music - Caetano Veloso's almost helpless stare, the meditative spirituality of Coltrane, the sheer purposeful awkwardness of Talking Heads.

Notice that I didn't mention Sonny Rollins there.

Bad Brains Live at CBGB's in 1982

2009-11-30T22:13:00.003-05:00

Phenomenal performance by Bad Brains, it's hard to come across such energy. Apparently Ian MacKaye, of Minor Threat fame, is in the audience, but it's hard to make him out. Watch for the moves by H.R. and those on stage from around 1:10 to 1:20 - it looks almost choreographed, and it is in a sense a modern dance. (Pere Ubu reference, anybody?) I also like the women in the red shirt sitting on the stage to the left, who seems to somehow know all the words to all the songs. I'm not sure if she actually knows the words or she knows the sounds coming out of his mouth - I guess it depends on whether or not their eponymous debut, also released in 1982, had already come out before this concert, and whether it came with a lyrics sheet.

The Hollies' Greatest (1968)

2009-11-28T23:17:00.001-05:00

The drums on this thing are mixed so low that if I stand more than 10 feet away from the speakers, it becomes A Capella. The Hollies were all about harmonies, as was the AM Pop of the time, and as more and more bands nowadays are starting to use harmonies again, perhaps for the first time in such widespread form in rock since either the glory days of Power Pop, it's easy to like the Hollies. For a long time, I swear I thought there actually was a brief A Capella interlude during "I Can't Let Go," but no, the drums are there all lone, quietly doing what I can only describe as "metronomic pattering," in the background, along with the guitars and bass. "I Can't Let Go" is arguably one of the finest pure vocal tracks of the 60s outside of the Beach Boys, but with other songs, you realize that this is that band on the radio that you're ashamed to admit that you like those two songs of theirs, but are genuinely annoyed when another comes on. Which is why it's a Best Of. Ah, sweet nostalgia for a time when not only were you not born, but your mother might not have even yet known exactly how people get pregnant... gotta love those harmonies!

ESG - Come Away with ESG (1983)

2009-11-27T18:23:00.003-05:00

ESG apparently stands for "emerald, sapphire, and gold," but rocks are about the last things I would use to describe them. This music doesn't "rock," it does something more powerful, yet something slightly nameless. Perhaps the best way to describe it is... it makes you want to dance. This music created by four sisters from the Bronx in 1983 is slightly indescribable. I think the song title "Parking Lot Blues" kind of sums up how this album would be if I dreamt it; black asphalt, surrounded by apartment buildings, people standing, dancing, making music in the heat. For a superficial equation, it seems to combine the kind of acoustic atmosphere present on Suicide, the bass of Jah Wobble on Metal Box, the arrangement of, dare I say it, Steve Reich, in its slowly developing, simple layers and the repeated entering and exiting and entering again of its musicians, with the funkiness of the funk. The songs are individual, yet, with their similar bass lines and progression, and one repeating tom run that seems to gleefully pop up in every song, they almost resemble a song cycle. ESG is the kind of band that's meant to make only one record; the impact of 11 perfect songs is there, and with any more it would become repetitive. But as it is, the 11 song simply slowly reveal themselves even more every time and never lose their feel. They only need 11 songs because only 11 are needed for a singular impact, repeated over and over, party after party. 11 more songs - i.e., another album - would create a secondary "impact group" that would only seek to compare itself to the first group, and thus, lessen the impact of both groups. And the lyrics are so pure that you're almost unsure if they're subtly with a wink paying tribute to the sensibilities of girl groups past, or if they're just trying to make a damn good dance songs. And I couldn't care less which one it is, because either way, I'll be dancing.

DOWNLOAD (Mediafire)

Erykah Badu's "Baduizm" (1997)

2009-11-26T00:07:00.003-05:00

Neo-Soul is such a sad term - it implies that anything remotely influenced by the soul of the 60s and 70s is a conscious revitalization act, rather than a natural evolution from a prior genre. And it's not that - one listen to ?uestlove and The Roots' production will tell you that it belongs in nowhere else but the 90s. Everyone compares Badu to Billie Holliday, and I wouldn't have really thought of it if I had not been previously told so, but her voice is actually strikingly similar, but, of course, much funkier. The hit here is "On & On," but "Next Lifetime" is that one that really sold it for me.

Now what am I supposed to do
When I want you in my world
How can I want you for myself
When I'm already someone's girl?

I guess I'll see you next lifetime
No hard feelings
I guess I'll see you next lifetime
I'm gonna be there

No, I never really care about lyrics, but it doesn't hurt that these compliment the best groove on the album. It's high time pseudo-intellectual white people stop obsessing over the past and realize great music that charts still is a reality, and has been, always - particularly in 1997.

DOWNLOAD (RapidShare)

Super Black Market Clash!

2009-11-24T19:13:00.000-05:00

OK, so it doesn't have an exclamation mark in the title. Without or without the exclamation, this is an album that all Clash fans should have but probably don't know about. This compilation combines a lot of B-sides and random songs that either were never released or singles and stuff that were just forgotten through the cracks of time. (Yes, I did just combine two metaphors there.) Either way, it's worth it. As for any albums of this sort, most of the songs were left off albums for a reason. Nevertheless, considering how prolific the Clash were, you would have to imagine that they wrote plenty of great songs that they just couldn't all fit on the damn record.

"City of the Dead" is a song with an unbelievably catchy sax riff, and one of the best on the album, and the more well-known "This is Radio Clash," another song with some nice saxes in there. It's got some interesting instrumental tracks, like "Listen" and "Time is Tight," and "Mustapha Dance," which for the first three minutes is kind of like an instrumental intro to "Rock the Casbah" - or, on second listen, perhaps it's part of the original song with the vocals and some instruments taken out. It's also got a sort of strange rendition of Toots and the Maytals' "Pressure Drop." It's a decent Clash song as long as you don't listen to the original, and unfortunately I heard the original first, so I'll forever be cringing slightly when I hear their take, which takes a lot of the groove out of the original. The highlights, though, are perhaps "Justice Tonight - Kick it Over" and "Robber Dub" (which cam from "Bank Robber"), in which the Clash try their hand at dub and do not do bad at all.

My only complaint: it doesn't include the fantastic "White Man (In Hammersmith Palais)," the best song the Clash never put on an album. In fact, it's probably better than every song on Give 'em Enough Rope, with perhaps the exception of "Tommy Gun."

John Cale on "I've Got a Secret," 1963

2009-11-22T14:45:00.002-05:00

In 1963, a team of pianists, including John Cale and John Cage, participated in a marathon performance of Erik Satie's Vexations, from 6 p.m. to 12:40 p.m. the following day, playing the same phrase 840 successive times.

3 years later...

On Free Jazz

2009-11-21T00:59:00.002-05:00

On the left, Donald Ayler, the brother of Albert Ayler, on the right.

Listen to Albert Ayler's "Ghosts - Second Variation" from his 1964 album, Spiritual Unity:

In 1965, Charles Mingus and drummer Roy Brooks assembled a new avant-garde free jazz ensemble to make its debut at the Village Vanguard in New York. Brooks and the rhythm section played conventionally in front of a curtain while a cacophony of brass sounds erupted out from behind the curtain. The audience sat and listened contently. After the concert, the curtain went up to reveal three children playing a trumpet and two clarinets for the first time. The audience had been witness to a hoax. Mingus had firmly put his stamp on an anti-free jazz stance. This was supposed to prove Mingus’s point: put anyone up there with an instrument, and it’ll sound no different than the most respected “free jazz” artists of the time – Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, John Coltrane. “My kid could play that.”

Only Mingus got it all wrong. If anything, he created the most perfect free jazz ensemble that could be assembled. Free jazz is about spontaneous emotion – emotion via sound. Disregarding general conventions about meter and pitch, free jazz is supposed to illustrate a player’s conscious and/or subconscious through something like wordless expression. I’ve done an acting exercise, to heighten actors’ senses to emotion, to become less self-conscious on stage, in which a scene is improvised without speech – just moans and mutterings and screams, primal expression, if you will. What better way to show a child’s personality than listen to what the child does on an instrument for the first time? Fiddling around with it, testing its limitations and its effects, its timbre, etc. This “technique” is not be foolproof, of course, it’s not guaranteed to illustrate a child’s entire personality and a typed lists of their hidden desires on the side, but it certainly has the potential to say something about a person - and to say that because it’s children and not adults playing, then it’s immediately not at the same quality as free jazz made by adults, is insane.

One of the criticisms of free jazz by Mingus was that the musicians didn’t know what they were playing – they just randomly moved their fingers around, blew hard into the mouthpiece, and hoped something cool and hip would come out. This is a perfectly valid criticism, which is why there are better free jazz musicians than others, and why the “children” performance works so well. Anyone who tries to express themselves, forcing their emotion out into an instrument, is immediately in another realm than fiddling that might “unconsciously” reveal emotion or personality. The great free jazz players are not just marked by the innovations they made, but how they successfully transferred their emotional energy into an actual coherent structure of a sound, something that could be understood immediately, leaving little room for varying interpretations. Take an 80 year old man who’s never played an instrument in his life and ask him to try to express himself on a tuba with no regard to melody or structure could easily outplay someone who was amazingly technically proficient at a tuba but didn’t know how to transfer their message and emotion into the sound coming out of the tuba. Technical proficiency and virtuosity simply can – but not always – heighten expression, which is why even I’ll admit I’ll defenitely take Ayler over a child. That's mainly because Ayler is one of the most revolutionary, creative, and expressive jazz musicians of all time - if not the most expressive. Simply put, free jazz harder than you think. Though I encourage you to try.

The Greatest Punk Singles

2009-11-19T18:01:00.011-05:00

OK, that's a bit of a bold statement, but if I were to list some of my top singles from the "punk" era - I'm saying that's 1976-1980 - these would be on the top. Punk brought the definition of a "one-hit wonder" to the table every week, mainly because so many of these bands did something unique for a single, or an EP, or, rarely, an entire album, before burning out creatively, or just breaking up - so that means there are a lot of great singles. Record labels scrambling to get some of this new sound combined with the first "indie" labels to make an impact sped this all up - or, at the least, added to the field.

To streamline this a bit - no, make that a lot - I've excluded post-punk, art punk, electronic punk, new wave, and all other child genres of punk from this list. I'm just focusing on the loud and fast ones. However, since American punk, with the exception of the Ramones, Dead Boys, and, to an extent, Richard Hell and a few others, didn't really get into the loud and fast act until hardcore emerged in the 80s. So, this list is largely British, with a few Americans and Australians thrown in. Also, I should note that none of these "rankings" are set in stone, it's all very approximate, and I'll probably want to change the order of one ten minutes after I decide on an order. And, if anyone so requests, I might try my hand at a post-punk list of this very nature. I've provided YouTube links for all the A sides, except for #5, for which I could only find "Armalite Rifle," for some reason.

(I'm) Stranded / No Time - The Saints
Teenage Kicks / True Confession - The Undertones
I Wanna Be Sedated / The Return of Jackie and Judy- The Ramones
(White Man) In Hammersmith Palais / The Prisoner - The Clash
Damaged Goods / Love Like Anthrax / Armalite Rifle - Gang Of Four (Very close to the post-punk line, but none of these songs aren't loud and fast.)
Blank Generation / Love Comes in Spurts - Richard Hell and the Voidoids ("Spurts" gets my vote for the best B side on here)
Aloha Steve and Danno / Anglo Girl Desire - Radio Birdman
Neat Neat Neat / Stab Your Back / Singalonga Scabies - The Damned ("Stab You Back" is 59 second long, and probably the... third best B side on here!)
Babylon's Burning / Society - The Ruts
Suspect Device / Wasted Life - Stiff Little Fingers

So, what do you think? What are some of your favorite punk songs? (And should I do a post-punk version of this?)

What Makes Up Television, Continued

2009-11-18T17:02:00.002-05:00

A reader kindly notified me of two things regarded my previous post on Television, so I'll take a time to address both of them.

First of all, I should clarify about Verlaine's solo work and Television's eponymous third album, released in 1992 after a sort of reunion. I said that, "even Verlaine’s solo work lost a lot of its Television edge." In other words, Verlaine's subsequent solo work, and even their third album, lost that kind of layered complex guitar interplay that you find on Adventure and Marquee Moon. Verlaine's work is wonderful, particularly his first two solo albums, but it has a different texture and a different sound - Verlaine, without Richard Lloyd, is a different musician, though hardly a much more inferior one. 1992's Television almost sounds like a Verlaine solo album, since it doesn't have that same texture, to an extent, as well.

Also, the word "lush." By "lush," I don't mean a Phil Spector lush, but as a sort of a weak adjective to describe that texture which I've been blabbering on about. Indeed, there's an intense sense of silence in Television's work, as our kind reader notified. However, it's almost alternating between "silence" and "lushness" in a way, since sometimes the guitars create a dense texture, and sometimes they create a more simplistic alternating layering. Take Guiding Light, for example:

The simplicity of the verse versus the more layered, arpeggiated chorus, which is only heightened with a piano and then an additional guitar during the solo. Its a minimalistic kind of lush.

Coltrane Plays Naima in 1965

2009-11-17T19:33:00.002-05:00

Before you read all this, make sure you watch the video and listen. Don't read until you've listened.

Now that you've listened: I'm a fan of jazz, a huge fan, in fact. I'm the kind of person - or rather, the kind of listener - who always pays more attention to the music of a song than the lyrics. Always. I even usually listen to Bob Dylan for the music more than the lyrics, and jazz is to me seems to be the most perfectly realized purely instrumental art form there is, so there's no reason I'm so in love with it. (No disrespect, I should add, to "classical" music - in quotation marks because I hate that term.) I listen to anything from Coltrane to Bud Powell to Sam Rivers to Pharoah Sanders. I guess what I'm trying to get across is, I listen to a lot, and pretty broadly. And yet, this single video, which I happened on by chance one day on Youtube is one of my favorite jazz recordings I've heard, ever (perhaps after Thelonious Monk's "Pannonica" or Trane's own Love Supreme). I haven't been able to find an audio recording of it, I don't even know where it was recorded (my guess is somewhere in Europe), or when it was recorded in 1965. When exactly in 1965 it was recorded is crucial, because it's either before or after Coltrane's free jazz magnum opus, Ascension, recorded on June 28 of that year, which gives some light on Coltrane's thoughts while playing this, and how much of a drastic change it is from his other material at the time.

In this performance, Trane takes an old tune for his former wife that he recorded for Giant Steps - which was beautiful when it was recorded then - and reworks it, but only slightly. It's not drastic at all, really. The melody is the same, at the same basic tempo. Only instead of the soft ballad on Giant Steps, everybody's intensity is increased one thousand percent: Elvin Jones at times crashes those cymbals like Keith Moon jumping into a hotel pool of polyrhythm, McCoy Tyner exerts a subtle sense of rashness, flying all over the keys, at some times pounding them, and Jimmy Garrison seems to be plucking the strings like he's afraid that at any moment, if he stops, a ship somewhere will sink. And then of course there's Coltrane, who, beginning at his solo, plays a solo of unmatchable near anguish. He uses his beautiful screeching that he used in reservation on A Love Supreme and later brings out full force on Ascension. (Pharoah Sanders later perfected it.) He shows a little bit of his early "sheets of sound" style, a constant onslaught of sixteenth-note arpeggios. He also goes low on the sax, creating a contrast between the high squealing and his best attempt to be a baritone. The greatest quartet of all time simply is at their peak here. I've already watched it five times today. I suggest you do the same.

On Music in Film

2009-11-16T14:09:00.004-05:00

In the late sixties and early seventies, a young Martin Scorsese began using pop singles to score his films. It seems odd to even mention this today as a revolutionary idea, because the technique is now so common in mainstream American blockbusters. And yet, that idea can be seen as the threshold that truly brought Hollywood into the era of the modern film.

During the 1910s and ‘20s, a orchestral score was the only real choice. Some theaters would hire a lone pianist to provide music during a film, others a full band. When sound was introduced, scores still took their cues from the Birth of a Nations (Births of a Nation?) and the Metropolises: Big films with big budgets and big music. There were deviations, of course. Fritz Lang's M features little music, other than the whistling of "In the Hall of the Mountain King", perhaps film's first leitmotif.

Even when taking movies like M into consideration, that rule held true for quite some time. The big budget, blockbuster score, as we think of it today, however, only really found its place in the '50s, '60s and '70s. There are two major schools for such scores: First, the Max Steiner/John Williams score. I combine the names not because the music is similar, but because of the common intent. Simply put (and this is an over-generalization, but bear with me) the music reprents the crucial moments of the film. Steiner, in Gone With the Wind and Casablanca (nobody mention "As Time Goes By") used music to convey the emotion of the characters and the audience. Williams used the same idea in films like Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark, more obviously and more iconically. In fact, in Raiders of the Lost Ark, the same triumph motif repeats at virtually every moment of Indy's success.

The second school, the Bernard Herrmann/Ennio Morricone score, is more abstract. The sludgy jazz of Taxi Driver seems to reflect Travis Bickle's growing discontent, and bubbling anger. The unyielding spiraling nature of Vertigo's score ties back to obsession. These scores can be just as iconic as the previous school's (try The Good, the Bad and the Ugly) but they're both more interesting and more important. Instead of reflecting isolated moments, they reflect the film as a whole.

Between the '70s and the 21st century, Steiner/Williams scores went out of fashion. I don't mean to suggest that music of that sort is gone today; I just mean that it more often serves as incidental music than anything else. There are exceptions, like the enormously mainstream Harry Potter series, but those scores are largely gone from Hollywood. Herrmann/Morricone scores are more present today, especially in artier big budget releases. Even this may be beginning to change, though; 2007's No Country for Old Men was widely praised for its very limited use of music.

But of course, there's still the pop song. "The Eye of the Tiger" in Rocky III springs immediately to mind. Anything by Quentin Tarantino is loaded with examples. To circle back to my first paragraph, the transition from Steiner/Williams scores to pop music is a fairly sharp representation of the change between the '60s and the modern age. Pop music is both more immediately relateable, and more ironic than bloated scores. Consider the fight scene set to "Please Mr. Postman" in Mean Streets, and A Clockwork Orange's scene of rape and attack with Alex singing "Singing in the Rain". Both are intensely (and immediately) striking, because of the sharp contrast between the audio and the visual. Both of those films are somewhat iconic of the '70s. Perhaps that's because both would be so out-of-place in the '60s or before. Of course, scenes like those are risky. When done without style, such scenes comes off as lazy and derivative.

So, whether done with or without any sort of ironic detachment or camp value, pop music in film is intrinsically modern. And it's a tool that modern filmmakers would be wise not to abuse.

What makes up Television?

2009-11-14T22:25:00.002-05:00

L to R: Billy Ficca, Richard Lloyd, Tom Verlaine, Fred Smith.

What is in Television? It’s not necessarily a plethora of layers, no shoegazing electric wall of sound. It’s not minimalism either, not Steve Reichian or Philip Glassesque or Terry Rileyical. In comparison to some other bands obviously directly influenced by the repeating and alternating single note patterns of minimalism, it’s not quite that approach. At the most, there is occasionally overdubbing for three guitars throughout Television’s two albums, but never more and usually only two and a bass, and the third guitar is either playing a double lead or straight chords every first beat of a measure. More to the point, the structure is often like a pop song, save for a long solo in there; there is none of the pulsing of Reich’s Music for 18 Musicians, no slow, subtle expanding on a theme like Philip Glass does. What Television creates, for lack of a better word, is a tapestry – a rarely achieved ability to create an ocean of sound with few instruments. Well, “ocean” makes it sound elegant and lush, which often times it is, yet it’s also very garagey – Tom Verlaine sights the Ventures, an instrumental surf guitar band of the early 60s, as one of the primary influences on his guitar style. And, indeed, one of the things that mark Verlaine particularly, and what set him apart from his peers at the time, is that he is almost completely free of the blues, hardly ever touches the minor pentatonic scale. It’s like what rock’n’roll jams would sound like if B.B. King or Robert Johnson had never been born. And even when Television is “lush,” it’s an almost metallic kind of lush, a guitar lush, straight out of an American garage.

Marquee Moon (and it’s very underrated sibling, Adventure) are incomparable – and I’m not just saying that because it’s my favorite album, like, ever ever ever, and probably always will be. I’m saying it’s incomparable because there’s nothing like it. There are bands that use intricate riffs, non-blues solos, subtle layering, etc., etc., etc. But nothing at all sounds like Television, which can not be said for even some of the greatest bands of all time. Perhaps what’s more impressive is that nothing after it has sounded close to it, either. Even Verlaine’s solo work lost a lot of its Television edge. Nothing sounded like the Velvet Underground or the Ramones or My Bloody Valentine when they started their respective revolutions - but now, 20, 30, 40 after the fact, imitation bands are a dime a dozen. But nobody seems to be even really trying to replicate Television, let alone trying to and failing. Is it that hard to emulate, or is their influence not actually as large as their acclaim? Probably both. And I couldn’t care less, because I have the real thing, and I could listen to that every day until I die.

Funk = Rock?

2009-11-13T22:18:00.002-05:00

“Who says a funk band can’t play rock?” Who says a funk band isn’t playing rock?

Let’s name all the major food groups of music… rock’n’roll, classical, hip-hop, R&B, jazz, electronic, folk, country, and, what the hell, polka.

Now how many of those genres have lineups that typically consist of at least drums, electric guitar, and electric bass, with possible variations on the rule? Only one, rock. In fact, drums, electric guitar, and electric bass are so much the foundation of rock that “post-rock,” which bears little resemblance to traditional rock in terms of structure, melody, or dynamics, is called post-rock simply because it often uses traditional rock instrumentation – guitar, bass, drums – to create sounds so untraditional that it’s supposedly already writing “traditional” rock’s eulogy.

But there’s another sound out there, largely extinct as a genre unto itself, yet can be found in traces across the spectrum of popular music. And, at least in its beginnings, in its true great moments of early fruition, its sound revolved around guitar, bass, and drums. You’ve read the title, so you know, of course, that I’m talking about the funk. A passing listen of that great funk masterpiece “Maggot Brain,” with guitar work by the legendary Eddie Hazel should seal the argument alone: that much of the funk of the early 1970s – Funkadelic and Sly & The Family Stone being the height of its achievements – is heavily rooted in that loud, white R&B ripoff, rock’n’roll. As great and innovative as Eddie Hazel is, much of his licks are borrowed from Hendrix, not from any of the Kings (B.B., Freddy, and Albert – for the record, Albert is my favorite). In a rare moment of truth, Hazel’s often considered to have invented “funk-metal.” True, much of funk is just as much rooted in horns as guitars, but funk revolutionized how horns were combined with guitars – or rather how guitars were combined with horns. Funk was the first – and, come to think of it, last – predominantly African-American music to put the guitar on display. Ultimately, funk shares just as much in common with rock as it does with R&B and soul.

So why so little recognition from the rock community? Unfortunately, the answer’s pretty obvious; I am convinced that if Funk originated as white guys being heavily influenced by the R&B of the time and put out nearly identical albums as those early 70s, rock-based funk (with slight vocal changes, of course), it would be called something like funk-rock. There would be no doubt that it would be heavily influenced by R&B, probably so much that people would debate if it belonged in rock or R&B. However, the rock side of the equation would be instantly heard and recognized. This is how genre categorization works – and ultimately the concept of a genre itself. As somebody (I forget who) said, this is why sometimes you often find Stevie Ray Vaughan in the blues section, but Eric Clapton in rock. (And I should note that this is all despite Sly & the Family Stone’s integration, heavily noted at the time.)

The thing about funk is that it’s rooted in rock – rooted, like rock is rooted in blues and country and, yes, plenty of R&B too. Funk uses rock as its foundation (which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the most obvious material in the building, and yes I’m aware this metaphor has gone on long enough), then builds around it with R&B to create the ultimate product. For the first time, could it be that it wasn’t the white guy who borrowed another ethnicity’s music, then kneaded it to his liking? What only would have made this turn of musical events complete is if Funkadelic started covering songs by Cream or Blue Cheer – just like the Beatles and every other British invasion acted started covering Motown tunes. The fact that the Funk bands didn’t isn’t only because perhaps that isn’t a perfect comparison. The main reason is that a whole lot changed racially between 1963 – the year of “Please Please Me” - and 1970 – the year of Funkadelic’s eponymous debut album. One wonders if musical integration would have sped up or slowed, had Britain not invaded with their Motown covers – and how the resulting music would sound. My guess? A lot like funk. Not funk, but something more like it than Blue Cheer. The main reason I’d argue this is in part because of the British skiffle craze of the 50s. Blue became a focal point of rock – and, thus, the focal point of a predominantly white genre – because of British influences - the blues bands like the Yardbirds and the like who evolved from (and because of) skiffle to their interpretation of B.B. King. The blues became such a pillar of rock that, after the mid-60s and the beginnings of psychedelia, almost no one didn’t solo on a variation of the minor pentatonic until, arguably, Tom Verlaine and Television came around, and the subsequent punk movement. The natural musical spring to drink from, then, if not from the blues, would be R&B. Take Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels, as close to white R&B as comes to mind, psychedelicize it a bit, add distortion and solos and vamps, and there you have it – something that might sound suspiciously like funk’s right hand man.

Funk is just rock ‘n’ roll from a parallel universe.

About

2009-11-11T22:36:00.003-05:00

Here we talk music. We are all teenagers.

The audible axiom is the musical postulate that we all take for granted. It is self-evident; in a word, it is unexplainable - and that is why we take it taken for granted. It is the sound you love, it is the sound you hate; it is the sound that makes us all tap our feet and squint our eyes and shake our heads and dance - and it is audible. Here, we're going to attempt to explain the unexplainable, and fail epically in the process. Hope you'll join us.