More 2012 (and older) Favorites

I'm still deciding about Danilo Perez' CD. It came out in 2008 and KPLU loves to play the title track "Across the Crystal Sea" -- and it really is fine. Claus Ogerman supplies his usual gauzy background strings, and the whole album is warm and languid -- maybe TOO languid. Cassandra Wilson's version of "Lazy Afternoon" makes Diana Krall sound hyper. I enjoy the album a lot, it's just some tracks take a little work to actually hear.

Manuel I've mentioned before, very Tangerine Dream-ish. Live, he plays everything, which means he sets up keyboard patterns and plies on more patterns, then plays guitar over that. I've loved his work for years, and this is such a wonderful package.

 

 

If you listen to CBC much, you've most likely heard SOME of this. Very nice melodic modern choral music for the most part, but the solo "Goodnight Moon" (using the text of the children's classic) is the highlight, but so much of this collection is aces, though the glam cover...???

 

 

Other titles I've mentioned earlier, the Beach Boys reunion CD, the soundtrack to "The Descendants"

are also favorites. In addition, I've always like Fleetwood Mac's 'lost period', after Peter Green left and before the massively popular Lindsey Buckingham/Stevie Nicks period. There are 3 or 4 albums post-Green when Bob Welch, Jeremy Spencer, Christine McVie and Danny Kirwan wrote some good atmospheric songs, but they were miles from the initial blues-based early albums and some fans lost interest. Then there were the drug-fueled breakdowns, the unorthodox religious detours, the fact that their manager sent out a fake FMac to fulfill tour obligations -- really, if you don't know this era, pick up one of the recent band bios -- you couldn't make this stuff up. Anyway, when Bob Welch passed away last year, I decided to replace my ancient cassette copy of "Future Games". I really wish someone would compile a "Best of" from this era, because there are some gems tucked away on less-than-stellar albums. The FMac box "The Chain" covered some, but you could get a decent CD with some judicious plucking

 

 

My son gives me crap for listening to albums like "Blue Funk" because he says it sounds like a bad blaxploitation soundtrack. Exactly! That's why I love it (only I don't think it's bad, but I don't have much in the way of street cred, so there you go.) Anyway, I picked up "Black Byrd" by Donald Byrd (edges to the brink of disco, and I'd lose the vocal tracks), "Blue Funk", and I've been re-evaluating Herbie Hancock's "Head Hunters" album from 1973. The blurting bass-synth notes that occupy most of "Chameleon"'s rhythm track sounded like a blatant attempt to ring up some Sly Stone sales numbers, but listening to it now, I hear the obvious Sly and funk influences, but Herbie brings more to the sound than imitation and pastiche. In retrospect, I hear later Miles (of course) and some things that wouldn't be out of place in a Weather Report album. 

 

 

So that's 2012 laid to rest, at least for now. I'm looking forward to hearing the Neil Young and Crazy Horse CD "Psychedelic Pill", the solo album by Blue Nile's Paul Buchanan, the old-time 78 collection of classics and obscurities "Return of the Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of", more John Fahey, and a 2012 New York Times pick "Terpsichore: Muse of the Dance" with the Capriccio Stravagante Renaissance Orchestra. Excited? Me too!! 

 

Oh, and yes, I did pick up "Steel Rails Under Thundering Skys" (that's how they spell it on the cover). It's a classic train sound CD (no, really, there are a few) and I first heard about it when John  Fahey spliced a bit onto one of his albums. The package feels like a bootleg, on-line you can find 'correction's to the train models cited on the CD...really a glimpse into a world gone by, and evocative of vast expanses.

 

 

 

Everybody Else's Best of 2012

2012 must have been a crap year in music. I don't have much to go on here (don't spend too much time listening to pop radio, Spotify, yada yada) but I have this hunch...

Clue #1: Uncut Magazine includes a "Best of 2012" CD in their year-end issue, and after listening to it, I was truly, deeply, totally depressed. Really? This is it?? It sounds a) bad, b) derivative, and c) totally nondescript. I was depressed because here it was, proof positive that I was totally out of the loop, ready for  my senior discount at the local buffet trough. And yet...and yet. I checked Entertainment Weekly's list, as well as Rolling Stone's. Not one single title from Uncut made it to either list. Understand that Uncut is a British publication, but they fawn over non-Brits like Neil Young and Leonard Cohen, so wouldn't there be at least some cross-over? Then I figured it out; it's not a "Best of 2012" so much as a "Best of 2012 That We Could Get The Rights to for Our Free with Purchase CD" -- but that doesn't scan so well, does it?

Clue #2: My son and I have remarked over the years that Rolling Stone reviews don't hold up very well. Take Led Zeppelin, for example. Cut to ribbons in the reviews of their first 2 LPs (not that I don't disagree), but a few years pass, and now Rolling Stone crowns LZ Rock Gods, over and over and.... Umm, rewrite history much? And here we have the "Best of 2012", and it's packed with what originally earned 2 1/2 or 3 stars out of 5 earlier this same year. Hard to compile at "Best of" in a duff year without padding out the team.

My best? I'd have to take a page from Stephen King (yes, yes, I get it) who listed the best books of the year by which ones he's actually read in 2012, so with that caveat, here goes, in no particular order, CDs I purchased in 2012 that I can recommend:

Ry Cooder and Manuel Galban: Mambo Sinuedo
I came late to the party to the whole Buena Vista Social Club thing, but I eventually succumbed. Both BVSC and Ibrahim Ferrer's albums are favorites, but I liked the "Mambo Sinuedo" album because they avoided the museum preservation intent, and just played some tacky surf-Mex K-Mart music out of sheer joy.

Kate Rusby: Sweet Bells
Yorkshire accents, Christmas tunes and local brass band arrangements: total Christmas bliss.


                                       

Radiohead: King of Limbs
I'm writing this while listening to Bill Laswell's remix/reconstruction of some Miles Davis tracks, this one is "Rated X/Billy Preston"...and I'd swear Radiohead know this music inside out. "King of Limbs" was a long, long process of assimilation for me -- but then I saw YouTube clips of their live versions and I think I began to grasp the muli-layered inventivesness of their approach -- and by being so inventive (like Miles), they forestalled the whole "play the hits as we remember them" future that encases rock bands in amber.

Next: Fleetwood Mac! Tony Rice! Blue Nile! and, ladies and gentlemen, "Steel Rails Under Thundering Skyes" (their spelling, not mine).

 

 

Rod, Rod -- Why Do You Continue to Break Our Hearts?

The title of this post is from a note I wrote when I caught Rod Stewart singing on some Christmas special on TV. He looked great, commanded the stage (tiny though it was), gave off an air of relaxed fun, a man born to entertain and just have a good time in front of thousands of his best mates. But...Christmas songs? He's worked his way though umpteen 'songbooks' trawling through the Standards, now he's looking to snatch the Christmas crown from Der Bingle? Is this the Rod we fell in love with when we first heard "Cut Across Shorty", or "Maggie May", or, bless 'im, "Mandolin Wind", and of course, the mighty mighty "I Know I'm Losing You".

I've been skimming through "Rod: The Autobiography", and I recommend it, but... (and as Pee-Wee Herman once sagely replied "Everyone I know has a big but".)

Here's the deal: Rod's Mercury label albums ("Gasoline Alley", Every Picture Tells a Story", that era) are wonderful, a fine mix of acoustic and electric, folk and soul with a dash of blues and some real rock 'n roll thunder. Then, the story goes, Rod moves to LA, becomes posh, wears make-up and then... "Da Ya Think I'm Sexy", "Hot Legs",,,well, the Mayans have recalibrated their calendar and that is the new sign of the end times. "Rod" (the book) addresses these concerns with a nod and a wink, and he's the first to complain about his wardrobe choices, but the catch is, he's having it both ways. He comes across in print as a good guy, someone self-deprecating with a quick wit, someone you'd be happy to share a pint with -- and then he tells the story about how he triple-timed his wife with 2 other models.  I get the sense of the golden boy, told he's a rotter but, well, how can you not love the darlin'?

One example from the book: he talks about touring with the Faces and the tensions caused by his nascent solo career -- the Faces had one record label, and Rod had another, so Rod's label would send round limos for him and fancy hotel suites, while the Faces fumed with their cheaper options. Rod says, "Well yes, I could have taken one for the team and refused the fancy suites .... but then I wouldn't have had a suite, would I ?"

So every time Rod 'redeems' himself (certainly not his view) with an "Unplugged" album that restores his cred, we know that soon he'll go for the gold and leave us old fans disappointed once again. I have no doubt that Rod's next album or two, supposed to be a return to his rock/folk/soul roots, will be warm, matserful and a total hoot. And that sets us up for the next folly ....

Vinyl Memories: Those Great Warner/Reprise Loss Leaders

There was a time, youngsters, when unless you had friends with deep pockets or access to some really good radio stations, a lot of great music went unheard. There was no Interweb where you could instantly track down practically every song ever recorded --- and I'll thank you to GET OFF MY LAWN!!

Sorry, where was I? In the very late '60s through some of the '80s, Warner Brothers/Reprise Records released nearly a dozen of so single and double LP sets with selected tracks from their new releases, only available by mail for -- get this -- $2 for each 2 LP set! These records were such a varied cornucopia, where you'd have bubbling-under emerging artists like James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Jethro Tull or Seals and Crofts rub elbows with more obscure (at the time) artists like Little Feat, Tim Buckley and Van Dyke Parks. And they were good songs, not junk, because of course the whole idea of a loss leader is to get you spend money further down the road on more albums. My favorite juxtaposition was probably one from 1977 or so that had new material from Seals & Crofts, and on the flip side, something named the Sex Pistols. What a hoot!

I naturally spent lots of money tracking down the albums featured, and I don't think I was ever disappointed, but oddly enough, I'd still listen to the the loss leaders because they were sequenced very well and really held up as a listening experience. Liner notes by Barry (Dr. Demento) Hansen were also a big plus.

Other labels followed suit, but with varied results, and usually with cheaper packaging and single LPS only. I remember samplers from A&M (very good), a jazz sampler from CBS (all over the map), and later when I discovered import albums, good stuff from Island, Antilles and Virgin.

These days, British pop magazines like Mojo, Q  and Uncut all come with sampler CDs (though Mojo seems to focus on the same back catalog over and over), and of course, better blogs than mine let you hear new music samples all the time. But there was something about taking a chance with your two bucks and getting a package in the mail 6 weeks later. It was like the record company was your pal, and they thought you had taste so they wanted to share their treasures with you. Marketing has come light years from that primitive model, but there's still money to be made by making that emotional connection, and the best companies (and stores) still do that.

This year's Christmas find

 

Kate Rusby's "Sweet Bells" is a few years old, but I only discovered it recently. This is a collection of mostly traditional Christmas/wintery songs, but as often in traditional circles, many of the songs have been spliced onto a different melody than is commonly used. Kate's pure silvery voice, combined with guitar, accordion, fiddle and the occassional brass band makes for a wonderful musical experience. Check out the YouTube clip below to hear a sample. Cheers!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwyOnLeyk6I

Sing a Song of London

Can't remember where I found this, advertised in a catalog I think. The subtitle is "A Vintage Portrait" because it features recordings from 1916 through 1953. I don't know much about British Music Hall, so many of the performers are new to me, but I did recognize Noel Coward, Eric Coates (British light music composer), and Vera Lynn, plus Duke Ellington, the Mills Brothers -- no, they're not British but the music is -- each song reflects either a place in London or an aspect of London life. And "Forty Fahsend Fevvers on a Frush" sounds like it could have been recorded by Ian Dury with its great Cockney rhyming slang.

Lots of great fun here: "If It Wasn't for the 'Ouses in Between" (great view of the Thames, if it wasn't for the 'ouses in between), "Underneath the Arches", "The Changing of the Guard", "Christopher Robin at Buckingham Palace", "London by Night" -- 53 songs on 2 CDs.

This is a collection done right, and the ASV label deserves kudos for taking the time. The songs betray their origins a bit, but they've been spiffed up enough so it's not distracting.

Recording the Soundtrack of Nature

 

 

Gordon Hempton records nature sounds; "Soundtracker" is a DVD that shows him in action.Gordon's nature CDs are some of the best around (I'm a sound effects dweeb), along with the "Solitudes" series and some of the "Nature Recordings" series distributed by World Disc Productions out of Friday Harbor. Good luck finding any of these, I'm sure they're long out of print. And a WARNING: avoid at all costs any of the CDs that combine nature sounds with Mozart or tinkly piano -- you get the idea. It's not good for the nature and it's not good for the music.

Like I said, "Soundtracker" follows Gordon as he attempts to record nature sounds before they disappear. He travels -- a lot -- and the conversations with his college-age kids (and none with his ex-wife) reveal the price paid for his single-minded devotion to his craft. Plus there's the increasing frustration with the sounds of civilization encroaching more and more into previously remote locations. Gordon will set up his microphones, wait patiently for whatever bird or animal he's been tracking -- and then a plane flies overhead and ruins the take, a plane that hadn't registered its flight path.

There's a great sequence near the end where Gordon tries to set up a "sound event" by recording a particular bird singing during the approach of a train. Yes, he could just record them separately and layer them, but he's adamant about recording real events in real time.

And now I'm gonna have to track down some train recordings -- is that a geezer move or what?