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07-26-2009, 09:40 AM
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#21 (permalink) |
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Model Worker
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,248
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Song of the Day
 WARNING: Do not try this at home. Man in photograph is a professional stunt guitarist. Antenna- Sonic Youth Sonic Youth, America's most celebrated makers of joyful noise got sacked by last year by Geffen Records and released their latest album, The Eternal is on the venerable indie label, Matador. The music is bold and experimental but songwritting has a dreamy harmonic sheen that is beguiling. It's as about as close to revisiting the fabled territory of Daydream Nation as our heroes have gotten in the past twenty years. When I frist heard the trippy guitar intro on Antenna, I had an acid flashback and finally recalled the horrifying details of a lost weekend in the Dali Lami's ashram in Dharamsala India. The Eternal is great music to discover the dark and swampy region of your subconcious mind.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 07-26-2009 at 02:40 PM. |
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07-27-2009, 11:21 AM
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#23 (permalink) |
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Model Worker
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,248
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Three Rarities from the Nico Archives
 Nico- Good cheekbones are a girl's best friend I recently came across a couple of rare video tapes of Nico that predate her days in the Velvet Underground. From about 1960 until 1966 Nico was first tier fashion model in Europe and was beginning a promising career as a movie actress. The first video Striptease is from a 1963 movie soundtrack composed by Serge Gainsbourg. The song is accompanied by a slide show of photographs of Nico in her early days as a fashion model. It's a side of Nico that few people have ever seen: Striptease - Nico with Serge Gainsbourg (1963) The second video is I'm Not Saying, was made in 1965 roughly a year prior to Nico's involvement in the Velvet Underground. Nico was midway between her career as a European actress and model, when she burst upon the scene at Andy Warhol's Factory in New York. Nico was introduced to producer Andrew Loog Oldham by Rolling Stones' guitarist Brian Jones. It was Oldham who cast her as a folksinger and chose Canadian Gordon Lightfoot's "I'm Not Sayin'" as her debut release. Jones played acoustic guitar on the session. I'm Not Saying- Nico (1965) This final video I wanted to post was a performance of Femme Fatale by the Velvet Underground. Femme Fatale is a song about the self destructive Warhol factory girl Edie Sedgwick written by Lou Reed at the request of Andy Warhol. Edie was also the subject of the Bob Dylan song Just Like A Woman. This performance is one of the few videos of a VU live performance in which both the sound and video are of good quality. The performance is also notable because of the chemistry between Lou Reed and Nico. Nico's battles with stage fright were legendary and drugs were a way for her to cope with her severe performance anxiety. At the beginning of the video, you'll see a reassuring nod and smile passed by Lou Reed to Nico as he plays the guitar intro. A similar nonverbal exchange between Reed and Nico happens at the end of the song. It's a very tender moment of intimacy between two key members of a band that is most often celebrated for it's dark and decadent music. Nico is often remembered as a world weary diva and cruel social dominatrix but the video shows the vunerable and insecure soul of Nico that coexisted with her many demons . It goes without saying that the greedy chuckleheads at BMI wouldn't allow me to embed such a remarkable historical document without getting their $250 performance fee for embeds of the song. To view this video you have to hit my link to at the YouTube page where it's posted.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 07-27-2009 at 07:26 PM. |
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07-27-2009, 03:25 PM
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#24 (permalink) |
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Model Worker
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,248
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Song of the Day
 Yekermo Sew- Mulatu Astatke In the late Sixties and early Seventies, hypnotic grooves of Astake and his Epiothique Orchestra had a big influence on American jazz players like John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Pharoah Saunders. Post-bop jazz was moving away from the traditional blues and ballad structure of bee-bop jazz and began to experiment the avant garde, modal music, afrocentric jazz and fusion. Old school jazz players like Wynton Marsalis has agrued that those African influenced musicians like Miles and Trane, were no longer playing jazz, and in strict sense of jazz theory, Marsalis was correct. Traditional jazz had it's roots in the blues but that doesn't mean that modern jazz isn't capable of absorbing influences outside of uniquely American musical forms like blues, ragtime and swing. The translation of the title from Astatke's native Ethiopian is A Man of Wisdom and Experience. The densely layered sound, the Eastern atonality of the main theme and the loosely structured riddims lend an aura of seductive mystery to the song. The wacked out, acid drenched guitar solo which begins around 2:44 has the kind of fuzztone distortion you'd expect to hear from a garage band like the Seeds, the Wipers or the Electric Prunes. All of which adds up to a magnificent if not slightly strange musical offering. The Ethiopiques broke up in the mid-Seventies but the 66 year old Astake continues to tour the world as both a soloist and with jazz ensembles. The inclusion of Yekermo Sew in the soundtrack to the Bill Muarry movie Dead Flowers, awakened an interest in Mulatu Astake's music in the United States.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 07-27-2009 at 07:27 PM. |
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07-28-2009, 09:57 PM
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#27 (permalink) |
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Model Worker
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,248
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Song of the Day
 Young John Fahey discusses chaos theory with his blue singin' pal Son House Poor Boy - John Fahey Poor Boy is one of the oldest songs in the American blues folkways and it's origin has never been determined and probably won't be. John Fahey who referred to himself as a "primative American guitarist" re-recorded Poor Boy eight different times during his 43 year career in music. Each version had subtle differences from the other ones. At age 19, Fahey first recorded Poor Boy his debut album titled Blind Joe Death, which Fahey self produced and recorded in 1959, partially by the unauthorized access to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's music recording lab in the middle of the night. The first and only pressing of Blind Joe Death appeared in a generic looking cover with no information about the name of the artist or the titles of the songs. It's first issue Blind Joe Death on Fahey's do-it-yourself homemade record label sold 95 copies and the album promptly disappeared without any critical notice. That failed enterprise might have caused many an aspiring musician to throw in the towel and look for a real job, but young John Fahey was a glutton for punishment.  Cover of the 1959 issue of Blind Joe Death In 1967 Fahey re-recorded the Blind Joe Death album for Vanguard Records and it sold 9000 copies, a runaway hit by Fahey standards. By the Seventies his album were creeping toward the 30,000 mark in the first issue. Music collectors were beginning to demand long forgotten and out of issue titles in John Fahey's back catalog and by the time of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo people were standing in block long lines waiting to get their back-ordered copies of Fahey classics like The Dance of Death and Other Plantation Favorites Ummm...well... maybe not. There really weren't any block long lines... I just got carried away with an great allegorical opportunity. In reality, by 1990, music critics were hailing Blind Joe Death as one of the most influential jazz, blues and folk albums of the contemporary era. Nobody could ever quite figure a musical genre to describe Fahey music and he also recorded albums of South American folk music, Indian ragas, Christmas songs, and West Indian music. Fahey always had a healthy cult following and he earned a living as a working musician for over 30 years. In 1986, he contracted Epstein-Barr syndrome, a long-lasting viral infection that, combined with diabetes and other health problems, sapped his energy and resources. Although the Epstein-Barr virus was finally overcome, the mid-'90s found him living in poverty in Oregon, where he paid his rent by pawning his guitar and reselling rare classical records. The appearance of a major career retrospective on Rhino, Return of the Repressed, in 1994 boosted his profile to its highest level in years. In 1997, he returned to active recording. Fahey recorded and tour until his death in 2001. More Notes on the History of Poor Boy The first known recording of Poor Boy was made in 1927 by Barbeque Bob an obscure blues guitarist from Atlanta Georgia. Every musician has a gimmick and since Barbeque Bob was a barbeque cook, he performed in a chef's hat and a long apron. Nobody ever figured out if Barbeque Bob was playing music to promote his barbeque establishment or the cooking gig was just a day job until his musical career took off. (Which it never did) The reason why I love the blues is you couldn't dream up the kind of characters I've met in the world of the blues.  Barbeque Bob in full performing regalia A Partial List of Artists Who Have Recorded Poor Boy Some of the song titles vary but it's the same old song that's been around since the 19th Century
Rolling Stone Magazine Bio of Fahey
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 07-31-2009 at 06:00 AM. |
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07-29-2009, 07:02 AM
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#28 (permalink) | |
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Model Worker
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,248
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Quote:
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt |
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07-29-2009, 02:44 PM
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#29 (permalink) |
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Model Worker
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,248
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Song of the Day
Ye Me Le - Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66  Blame it on the bossa nova- Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 Okay...okay, I confess. I'm guilty as charged loving for dance oriented electronica groups who play bright bouncy pop music. Blame it on the bossa nova and Brazil 66. My shameles craving for coma inducing saccharin pop goes way back to my childhood. It all began with my father's martini-before-dinner ritual when I was growing up. Every night without fail, my father would come home from work, mix up a martini then go straight for his prized hi-fi set and put on a song. He usually put on the jazzy bossa nova offerings by Sergio Mendes and Brazil 66 then he headed over to his Lazy Boy recliner, took a sip of his beverage and closed his eyes and drift away into some girl from Ipanema fantasy. My father worked a thankless and stressful job and I firmly believe his nightly ritual of a martini and music were his own form quaint form of psychoanalysis. Whatever name you want to call his ritual, it worked. My father never raised his voice or his hand to any family member, he never made nasty remark about anyone, and the only time I ever saw him lose his temper was when a sadistic Catholic nun left welts all over my legs as a result of a severe beating she gave me with a barber's strap for talking in class. Brazil 66 played pop oriented songs fearturing exotic samba rhythms and two comely female vocalists doing seductive renditions Brazilian bossa nova and samba classics along with Latin infused covers of current American pop songs. For many years Brazil 66 was dismissed as a lightweight, easy listening pop band by it's critics. When the public interest in international music came to the fore in the Nineties, it slowly dawned on Brazil 66's former detractors that the group was one of the earliest if not the first band to experiment with the fusion of global music rhythms with jazz and popular music. From my father’s love for this dreamy pop music, I learned of the mystical properties of music and it's p[ower to cure pain and restore the human soul.10 years ago when I was still in grad school studying clinical psychology, the medical literature on music therapy was just beginning to emerge. In my own personal experience I’ve seen music heal more far more folks with mental health problems than drugs, self help groups or counseling. With every one of my therapy clients I use music as way to earn their trust and form a theraputic bond with them. Music will become an even more important curative tool when the rest of the medical research world finally realizes what Bob Marley already told us in Trenchtown Rock: One good thing about music When it hits you feel no pain So hit me with music Hit me with music now It doesn't matter if your taste in music is Sergio Mendes or Bob Marley, the end result is what's important. I can even imagine that William Shatner's stark raving, straigh outta of the looney bin rendition of Mr. Tamborine Man helps a few troubled souls to make it through the night. Ummm, well... maybe not. There has been a sudden interest by deejays, rappers and remixers in the sambanistic riddims of Brazil 66. The Brazil 66 song Mas Que Nada has been sampled, remixed and rapped over by dozens of prominent artists and club deejays during the past year. If you browse YouTube you will see a large assortment of remixes of the Brazil 66 by younger deejays. Two of my favorite bands Stereolab and Saint Etienne were influenced by Brazil 66's breezy pop approach. On Stereolab's earliest albums the vocal harmonies of Laetitia Sadier and Mary Hansen sound strikingly like Lani Hall and Janis Hansen's blended vocals with Brazil 66. Listen to the Sadier and Hansen’s vocals on the first four Stereolab albums and you’ll see what I mean. Saint Etienne’s similarity to Brazil 66 is less obvious and has more to do musical tonality and timbre. Electronica stylists like Ivy, Annie and Owl City have explored and expanded the musical territory of Brazil 66 opened up. On the video below if you listen to Lani Hall's modulating voice when she sings the chorus "ye me le" the timbre her vocal like is remarkably similar to that former Cocteau Twin vocalist Elizabeth Frazier. ============================================== Bonus Video Smile of the Century The video posted below is a remix by a group called the Rapture Riders and it's a great mashup of the Blondie's Rapture and the Door's Riders of the Storm that's been around on the internet for a couple of years now. The music isn't the reason I embedded the video. The real star of the video has made his appearance in the first 10 seconds of the video and disappears back into immortality before the music ever begins. At the opening is an old newsreel film of Jim Morrison sauntering up to a customs counter at an airport. Wacth for the reaction on Morrison's face when the customs agent asks him for his occupation. The clip is only 10 seconds so keep your eye on it. That two second moment frozen in time, tells you more about inner workings of Jim Morrison's mind than the all the words in the in the dozens of biographies of his life. A printed screen shot of Morrison's devilish smile at that very moment, should be hung next to the Mona Lisa where it's on display in the Salle des États at the Louvre. Jim's spirit undoubtly prowls the street of Paris and when gets bored with his afterlife in the Père Lachaise Cemetery just down the boulevard; I'm sure he spends more than a few restless afternoons roaming the halls of the Louvre. If Jim came across a framed picture of his own smiling image next to Mona, he may give us all one last enigmatic smile to remember him by. For now all we have is this priceless video on YouTube.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt Last edited by Gavin B.; 08-05-2009 at 05:51 AM. |
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07-29-2009, 11:32 PM
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#30 (permalink) |
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Model Worker
Join Date: Jan 2009
Posts: 1,248
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12 Year Old Nordic Kid Has Bad Case of Dem Ol' Texas Flood Blues
I don't quite know what make of this. It's video of 12 year old Norwegian blues guitar prodigy, Fredrik Strand Halland. Fredrik has the angelic face of a Vienna Choir boy but plays the blues on his Fender Stratocaster like he sold his soul to the devil at some remote rural crossroads near the Gaularfjellvegen fjiords. Fredrik looks far too innocent to be playing the the devil's music. Just one word of career advice, Fredrik: Stick with the guitar and hire a vocalist for your band.
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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff. Townes Van Zandt |
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