Shelley/Devoto - System Blues

Twenty-five years after releasing Buzzcocks' Spiral Scratch EP (featuring 'Boredom,' 'Breakdown,' 'Times Up,' and 'Friend of Mine') on their own New Hormones label, Pete Shelly and Howard Devoto collaborated again . In 2001, Cooking Vinyl produced Buzzkunst, an album that manages to capture both previous discoveries while simultaneously treading new ground. Buzzkunst finds Devoto resigned to a life as a photo-librarian, no longer seeking to live off of his creativity, but with over a decade's worth of credentials from Magazine and Luxuria. And while Buzzkunst owes heavily to Magazine and Luxuria's art-damaged electronica, it often feels more akin to Eno's Another Green World or Bowie's Low.

Buzzcocks crossovers do appear occasionally, perhaps as entrance for curious fans ('Till the Stars in His Eyes Are Dead'), the majority of the album explores analog synth soundscapes, dark wave, and distorted drum machines. Devoto supplies an eerie vocal presence similar to his previous work but remains detached emotionally from this often bleak electronic/synthetic soundtrack. God, I hate to resort to hoity-toity literary allusions, but his delivery is akin to Meursault from The Stranger. Cold, detached and unaffected. His comfort with his disconnection is hardly soothing but seems to be a perfect fit for the trapped-in-the-CPU sound underscoring his sterile delivery.

Devoto on the 'System Blues', " I wanted to write a blues song. Pete came up with this wonderful murky soundscape instead. Legend has it that "Tell them it's been wonderful," were the dying words of the philosopher Wittgenstein." (So that sort of one-ups my brooding-teenager level reference.)

(Buy it from Amazon)

Twista - Had to Call (ft. Snoop Dogg and Sleepy Eyed Jones)

After having been thus far under whelmed by any new hip hop in the first couple months of '06, but still being in a hip hop kind of mood lately (brought on by an impromptu road trip last week [thanks Jeff for covering for me on Friday] flying down Highway 15 bumping Sirius satellite radio), I decided to focus today on an album criminally slept on last year.

The Day After, Twista’s follow up to his multi-platinum 2004 breakthrough album Kamikaze, was in many ways a disappointment. It barely certified gold, all three of its poorly chosen singles stalled on the charts, it suffered from a mostly lackluster roster of guests, and, perhaps most detrimentally, from a lack of any of the Kanye West Midas touch production that blessed Kamikaze. Aside from a couple so-so Neptunes tracks and the currently obligatory Scott Storch joint, The Day After sticks with mostly unknown local Chi-town producers. And while that didn’t translate into big sales it makes for a much more diverse and interesting record. There are many bright moments on the album, from the moody lover’s quarrel duet with Lil Kim “Do Wrong” to the amazing verbal sparring with an R. Kelly sample on “I’m A Winner”, but the standout track is the inexplicably non-single west-coast-flavored “Had to Call”.

Produced by newcomer MAD, “Had to Call” is a bubbling pseudo 70’s soul jam, all pimp cups and pinkie rings, built on a smooth Midnight Star sample and anchored by the throwback baritone of Sleepy Eyed Jones. Twista, whose ludicrous speed flow is too audacious and dexterous here to be gimmicky, is as perfect in guest verse form as on his best singles like “Slow Jamz” and “Is That Yo Bitch?” and Snoop hasn’t been this good since Chronic 2001.

Unfortunately for Twista, his fifth album was overshadowed by a slew of great hip hop albums released in 2005, not least of which being one by the man who rescued him from novelty rap obscurity and made him an “overnight celebrity”. But if Twista had just waited a couple more months to release The Day After he definitely would have had the best album of the year so far.
(Click here to buy it from Amazon)

Chisel - Spectacles
Brian, Colin and Vince - Spectacles

Maybe it's a gimmick, but I'm a sucker for a split seven inch where bands cover each other's songs. Especially when you get bands that seem to typify opposite ends of current underground musical spectrum. Examples include the splits between Screeching Weasel/Born Against (early 90's punk) and The Get Up Kids/Coalesce (post-hardcore/'emo').

But rather than an oddity among the discography, a novelty or throwaway, the split between Chisel and Brian, Colin, and Vince, seems to encapsulate a moment, a mutual admiration and respect. For a period of time, all the members in these two groups lived within blocks of each and their lives were intertwined. Reinterpreting each other's songs seems like sincere homage to a shared history. (Brian, Colin and Vince cover 'One In Ten')

When Brian Muller (who penned 'Spectacles') passed away, Chisel played this song as their closer at a tribute show in South Bend, Indiana, 1993. The moment was so powerful it inspired an entire film, "Songs for Cassavetes." The soundtrack for this film features a live version of 'Spectacles' performed by Chisel, but I am unable to verify if it is indeed the live recording from the tribute show.

Colin Clary, the Colin in Brian, Colin and Vince, sums up their band as:

3-part harmonies, a million songs, Brian was the leader and star – such a great songwriter and guitar player, Vince sang great harmonies and played bongos... Trees hugs and rock and roll was a motto one day. We were not hippies, but I think hippies thought we were fun... Some ex-ND kids think this is the best band I’ve ever been in.

The seven inch includes this great scorecard insert, which asks the listener to respond and let the bands know how they did.

(Songs for Cassavetes Soundtrack at Amazon)

(Buy a copy of Chisel/Brian, Colin and Vince split 7" at MusicStack... only 88 cents!)

The Starvations - Breakin’ my Black Heart

There's nothing like when a great song you've never heard before makes it into your adolescent tape deck. I was probably around 16 when Alan popped in a mix cassette that first exposed me to The Starvations. Something in the raw sincerity of the vocals or that haunted roots-guitar line reached out and summed up everything I was looking for, everything I was feeling under the Laguna Canyon moon. I tracked down the seven-inch and proceeded to record it onto nearly every mixtape I've made since. Ten plus years later I can still listen to "Breakin' my Black Heart" and say to myself, my God, that's a beautiful song.

Luckily, The Starvations were something of a local band and through friends of friends I was able to keep up with their releases for a good while. (I even got a chance to ‘stick it to the man’ by printing the covers of their split seven-inch with Throwrag on the sly at work.) And though this song comes from their debut seven-inch, their entire 100-song body of work is worthy of attention. I counted it as a near personal victory when the band signed to GSL and cherished this debut seven inch even more.

The Starvations played their final show December 15, 2005 and Patrick and I were able to attend one of their last shows knowing the end was near. They no longer played "Breakin' my Black Heart," in fact, I never got to see them play it live, I suppose I didn't turn 21 soon enough. But they did supply their patented soul clenching fury of timeless punk tinged with blues that seems to still be echoing off the walls of suburban emptiness.

Chris Ziegler sums up the 11 year run of The Starvations far better than I could. (OC Weekly)

Singer/Songwriter Gabriel Hart has a new project which is not his ‘post-Starvations solo project,’ called Gabriel Hart and His Upset Black Guitar.

(Buy The Starvations at Insound)
(Buy from the GSL online-store)

Gay Crosse and the Good Humor Six - No Better For You

There’s something very satisfying about hearing one of your heroes outside of their prime. Unreleased songs, discarded demos, rare early recordings: these are the kind of things fans live for. And while finding that unknown gem that should have been a hit but wasn’t is great, finding garbage is, on at least a subconscious level, equally rewarding. This song I think falls somewhere in between.

Gay Crosse was a popular vocalist, saxophone player and band leader of the late 40’s and early 50’s who specialized in a proto-R&B jump blues and employed an ever-revolving assembly of musicians to make up his Good Humor Six. In January 1952 he headed down to Nashville for two recording sessions with his current cast of players, including a 25-year-old journeyman tenor sax for hire named John Coltrane.

“No Better For You” comes from the second of those Tennessee sessions and was recently reissued on the Lost Highway compilation Night Train To Nashville Volume 2 . It’s definitely not a bad track, it’s a fun up tempo Louis Jordan inspired number and Crosse has Jordan’s sing-speak vocal style down pat (if not necessarily his lyrical cleverness). But Coltrane’s 45 second solo, while without a doubt the highlight of the song, is a far cry from the dizzying sheets of sound technique that would make him a star in Miles Davis’ Quintet a few years later. And when put into context with the genre-reshaping innovations of his later free jazz work, it’s hard to believe that this thoroughly enjoyable but relatively average solo is being played by the same man.

And that, of course, is part of the appeal. When have you ever heard John Coltrane sound average? Coltrane taking such a straightforward chord-based solo (which is something like hearing Django Reinhardt bashing out power chords) allows us a glimpse of genius being human. And if Coltrane at 25 was still struggling to find his voice, well, hey, maybe there’s still hope for me.
( Click here to buy it from Amazon)

Romeo Knight - Ballblazer (feat. Beastie Boys)
Russell Lieblich - Ballblazer (original SID tune)

I swear I'd never post a track featuring the Beastie Boys aside from this context. Perhaps one could make a difficult and intensely geeky argument about digging through SID files on a Commodore 64 or c64 emulator being comparable to digging through crates of records, but I certainly wouldn't qualify c64 remixing as ‘hiphop.’ So, with that said, this remix was too irresistable not to post.

Romeo Knight (Eike Steffen) has been composing chip music since 1987 and recently his “Speedball” remix was voted Remix of the Year: 2005 over at Remix64. [In a tie with Makke's Artura(Dublin Delight Mix)]

This posted remix is based on Ballblazer, one of the first games from Lucasfilms’ newly formed Games Division. It was released on the Atari 5200, 7800 and the Commodore 64. Essentially an easily played soccer-type game, Ballblazer is set in 3097 and each player manuevers a Rotofoil hovercraft over a large, green checkerboard field. The object being to grab the Plasmorb (basically, the ball) and get into position to force it into the opposing player's goal.

The original Ballblazer score was composed by Russell Lieblich, who also worked on ‘classics’ like Web Dimension and Master of the Lamps. He graduated with a Master’s in Music from UC San Diego after doing under-grad work in physics. (Seems appropriate, right?) Lieblich produced music for Intellivision and Activision while performing live jazz shows at night. He died in January 2005 in Long Island, New York at 53.

Ballblazer Remix available at Remix.Kwed.Org. Orginial SID tune available from The High Voltage SID Collection.

Aretha Franklin - Didn't I (Blow Your Mind This Time)

It’s easy to take Aretha Franklin for granted. Her music was so ubiquitous when I was growing up that the power of songs like “Respect” and “Chain of Fools” has been significantly dulled after hearing them as supermarket Muzak for so many years. And unlike other artists with whom discovering the albums behind the pop singles became a de rigueur adolescent right of passage (remember the first time you found out that the same band who sang “Surfin’ U.S.A.” was responsible for Pet Sounds?), Aretha is never quite included in the same music nerd canon. That’s why hearing a song like this is such a revelation.

A cover of the Delfonics’ Philly soul classic, buried near the end of side two on her 1971 album Young, Gifted and Black, "Didn’t I (Blow Your Mind This Time)" is as perfect an example as you could find of what makes Aretha Franklin one of the greatest artists of all time. It’s not just her technical brilliance as a vocalist – she’s a great singer to be sure, but there are a lot of great singers. It’s the authority in her voice, her complete control of the song. Aretha doesn’t just cover “Didn’t I”, she owns it.

Young, Gifted and Black is packed with a phenomenal line up of musicians: Donny Hathaway, Billy Preston, Dr. John, the Memphis Horns - but here they all take a backseat to Aretha. Once she starts singing it becomes clear who the star of the show is. Even the chorus backing vocal punctuations from the Sweet Inspirations only serve to prove how masterful Aretha’s interpretation of the material is. Especially towards the end of the song, around the three minute mark, when Aretha really starts belting out that refrain, you’re left dumbstruck, thinking, “Holy shit. You mean she was holding back this whole time?”

She invests the lyrics with such emotion, like this song was written for her and her only to sing, she obliterates any familiarity you might have had with the original version and recreates it in her own image. I can only imagine how poor Otis Redding must have felt the first time he heard Aretha sing… “What you want. Baby I got it”.

(Click Here to buy it from Amazon)

Black Eyes - ‘Some Boys’

Consider funk as a metaphor. As long as everyone's together on the 'one' we're going to be all right. Syncopate your rhythms as needed but don't ignore the groove.

Consider free-jazz as analog for collaborative creativity. Let's all get together under some agreed upon psuedo-structure and freak-out. Don't even worry about the groove.

Consider Black Eyes as the embodiment of both these movements strained into a contemporary existence. With Black Eyes nothing is fixed. Members trade instruments and production credits rarely bely any clue to who is playing what. A typical arrangement consists of two drum kits, two basses, a guitar and dueling, hi/low vocals, though horns and an occasional synth show up more and more on the band's later work. Referencing post-punk, dub DC gogo and jazz each member seems to autonomously provide his part, as layers of rhythm, conflicting squeals and yelps, and driving bass lines coalesce into a fragmented frenzy. The lyrical content ranges from the cryptic personal to the oblique political and always remains open for the reader. Black Eyes namechecks Langston Hughes and Yusef Komunyakaa and these poetic references are evident in their well-crafted lyrics. And the medium matches the message.

"Some Boys" was my first introduction to Black Eyes, and their first seven-inch (recorded in January 2002). This song is available in CD format from Ruffian Records. (http://www.ruffianrecords.com)

"Some Boys" moves through a lot of material relatively quickly but returns to central themes. Opening with disconcerting off-funk grooves, the song slowly opens up and reduces down to a central rhythmic riff. When the distorted bass drops back in it kills. Soon the call-and-response between bass and vocals is answered with a disco beat and we are reminded that dance-punk could be more than "do you do you wanna." As the vocals belt "And with their tongues they lie," the assault begins anew with nervous open-note bass riffs and percussive blasts. Suddenly there is an attempt to regain some sort of composure but instruments echo anxiously on and off as a contemporary, thoroughly desperate version of Coltrane's "A Love Supreme" chant is channeled in: "Where is your love?"