Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts

Friday, December 5, 2008

WANTS! But cannot has :(

I am currently madly in love with Mayer Hawthorne & the County's debut release, "Just Ain't Gonna Work Out" (download here). Check out Hawthorne's bio on his label, how-are-they-sooooo-damn-cool Stones Throw. Bio of said "29-year-old white kid from Ann Arbor [Michigan]" includes a download link on the right of the page to the "Hawthorne Radio" podcast - but you should really just subscribe to all the Stones Throw podcast thru iTunes or some such.

Even more amazinger than the track is the limited-run vinyl:


Unfortunately, I was a couple weeks late to the Hawthorne love-in, and the initial run is sold out all over teh interwebs. I've signed up at a few sites to be notified if/when it comes back in stock, but even then I fear the overseas postage is likely to make it extremely difficult to justify. Damn living at the end of the earth!

Oh well, the next post will be more happy-making ... with cartoons!


Ooh, purdy...

Thursday, December 4, 2008

"Dear God she is wielding a sword"

(If these gorgeous pictures are cropped, just click on them to behold their full glory.)

Pitchfork has pointed out the amazing album artwork on recent/upcoming Neko Case releases (if you check out her website, refresh the loading page a few times for some more great images). Here's her latest, Middle Cyclone, due out next March on Anti-:



which is possibly even more awesomer than the art for 2006's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood:



Possibly.

And doesn't she have amazing hair?

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

I Can Has Musics: Office Naps

Yeah, yeah, I know this is exactly a week late. My bad. Worth the wait, though...

Thanks to Booooooooof for recommending this gem. Office Naps promises "Fresh 45 rpm curios every Monday," but that tagline should have been modified when blogmaster DJ Little Danny went back to school at the beginning of this year, as he updates far less frequently now. However, even with less quantity, he's got quality by the crate load. And his academic pursuits - graduate study in audio archives and preservation - clearly ties in with the consuming passions of Office Naps.

DJ Little Danny says, "Thinking about music's place in the context of American post-War history is a big thing for me. I wanted to freely elaborate [ooh, split infinitive!] on music and, moreover, I wanted to do so online, where much discussion about records is either acutely anti-intellectual or mired in hopelessly cutesy collector talk."

Danny's discussion is fiercely anti-anti-intellectual and uncutesy. As a complete sucker for serious consideration of pop culture 'ephemera', this blog is right up my alley. Essays on various aspects of generic, geographic, thematic, etc, history are accompanied by three-song playlists illustrating the main points.

Everything on here sounds great and is accompanied by some fantastic essays, so check out all of it. Here's what I played on the show last week:

Del-Rays, "Night Prowl", from "Booker T. and Beyond"
Tony Martinez and His Mambo Combo, " Pharaoh's Curse", movie music from "Vibraphones, flutes and California Latin jazz"
Eden 'Nature Boy' Ahbez, "Tobago", from "The sea" (truly fascinating back story!)
The Other Four, "Once and For All Girl", from "12-strung"


PS. Booof recommends the sitar pop posts here and here.

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

I Can Has Musics: Flea Market Funk



*If you do nothing else, skip to the bottom of this post to nab the amazing Marsha Hunt track*

Flea Market Funk (tagline: "FUNK SOUL JAZZ REGGAE") provides the scratchy 45 awesomeness that can only be found through the most thorough digging of crates (well, and some Kool & the Gang). Not being a particular audiophile myself, I love it that so many people of impeccable taste (and more patience for flipping through bloody great stacks of records than me) are ripping old 45s and LPs for teh benefit of teh denizens of teh tubes.

And DJ Prestige certainly does a thorough job of it, with posts covering the artists and labels behind his chosen tracks, descriptions of just why he thinks the tracks are so damn awesome, and anecdotes about how he came to acquire the records or decided to post about them. Here's a representative example: his post on Jean Austin & the Choir's "Straight 'Em" (dig that 'fro!).

Unfortunately, the file-sharing service DJ Prestige uses is quite temperamental, with restrictions on downloads set by intricate formulas involving the time the tracks have been available and the number of downloads they've had. I think this is why I couldn't download the most recently-posted track, Chick Willis' "Mother Fuyer", even though all the other tracks I tried were available, and it had had less downloads than most. I'll keep an eye out though, 'cos I understand it'll unlock eventually and the description sure sounds tantalising. And that album cover, oh that album cover (see above).

Anyhoo, of the tracks that were available, I played:

Jean Austin & the Choir - Straight 'Em (great gospel)
Kool & the Gang - Funky Granny ("weaves a tale of a hot pant wearing Grandma")

and one of the bonus tracks you can access by following the download link to "Funky Granny" (Easter egg!). Download this one right now, it's absolutely fantastic:

Marsha Hunt - (Oh No! Not) The Beast Day (srsly, right now)

Finally, DJ Prestige has a whole swag of mixes and live sets available for your downloading pleasure. Go nuts!

Monday, September 8, 2008

My random gift to you



I had to put this track online for another reason, but I thought I'd share it here as well.

I discovered Eric "Monty" Morris' great track "Enna Bella" through the soundtrack to Jim Jarmusch's Coffee & Cigarettes. I tracked down the CD for the Skatalites track that plays over the "No Problem" scene with Alex Descas and Isaach de Bankolé, but as you would expect with a Jarmusch soundtrack, there's plenty of other gems in there.

Including this track from ol' Monty - teh internets knows very little about him, except that he's been around since the birth of ska and is still touring as of quite recently. What I do know is that this song makes me happy.

Eric 'Monty' Morris - Enna Bella

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

I Can Has Musics: Pinglewood.com

This week's featured blog was a recommendation from sneaky ol' Luci. Pinglewood.com is light on background info, heavy on stacks of fresh tunes, vids, etc. A wide range of genres is covered, and it's still alty enough for Luci's demanding standards.

Check out a fantastic video for Fiasco's "Oh You Horny Monster".

And download tracks from Japan's Avalon, Young Jeezy (he's Michael Phelps' favourite rapper, doncha know?) as well as the original Billy Paul track he's working from, and - my pick of their recent posts - fantastic weirdness from Volcano!. For my money, that last one is probably the only real keeper from the tracks I downloaded, but Pinglewood has enough variety you're sure to find something to your own taste.

Tuesday, September 2, 2008

After the Massacre

So, the Brian Jonestown Massacre played their first-ever NZ gig at the Backstage last night, and it was an amazing night of really, really happy wasted people and some first-class psychedelic droney freakoutery. Absolutely no complaints there.

The whole mythology surrounding the BJM makes for an interesting experience. As someone who has never really listened to or otherwise followed the band (heck, I haven't even seen DIG!) and - despite my best efforts - as someone who was pretty much stone-cold sober for the entire concert, I felt like a detached observer of this intriguing phenomenon. The audience were clearly there expecting an amazing show - which was delivered in spades - but a big proportion of them also expected to see the fireworks the band are known for. There wasn't much of that at all, and as far as I was concerned that was a good thing, but for some the night wasn't really complete without Anton Newcombe throwing some kind of hissy fit. There was some light heckling of one crowd member, and you could tell that that piqued the audience's expectations before not really going anywhere. The band put on an amazing show, playing for a couple of hours before going out on an epic tide of drone and feedback. Then they put on The Thirteenth Floor Elevators over the soundsystem, which topped of the night wonderfully for me, even if I seemed to be the only one still grooving around on the d-floor to "You're Gonna Miss Me."

The most surreal moment of the night, and the real point of this post, was chatting to some guy (I think he may have been a member of my party at some point earlier in the evening, but I'm not entirely sure) about the show. He was raving on about how amazing the show was, but also about what bastards the band were for getting fucked off at the audience, giving up on the gig, and storming off early. This was not what happened at all - as I said, they played a totally-committed, really long show before going out on a perfect wall of sonic overload - but this was clearly the BJM show this guy had been expecting to see, and so that's what he did see. Now he shall forever have the memory of going to one of those BJM gigs, and therefore feels a part of that whole mythology surrounding the band. I tried to point out that they played a really long, really epic set that we should all be very grateful for, but beyond that I didn't push it - he had had the experience he wanted, and who am I to argue? And that's not a phrase you'll hear me use very often...

Saturday, August 30, 2008

Mmm, Dustbowly...

Now that I'm a dab hand at this whole filesharing malarky, I thought I'd start adding a couple of links to my favourite tracks discovered in the course of putting together Dustbowl Diner shows. So here's my picks for the August 31 show:

Dinah Shore - Buttons and Bows
So materialistic! But so cute!

The Band - Out of the Blue
This was the Band's last ever studio recording, and it's all sad and poignant and right purdy.

Also, Jolie Holland has a new album coming out in October. The advance single to The Living & the Dead is "Mexico City," available at here at Stereogum. When I interviewed Steve Abel about his new album Flax Happy I was delighted to discover that the tracks he recorded with Jolie Holland were recorded in the Wairarapa, my old stomping ground. That means I'm totally famous! Or something. Although I must confess, I didn't find the tracks in question overly inspiring.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

I Can Has Musics: Lost in Tyme

Tonight's featured blog on I Can Has Musics? was freak-fest Lost In Tyme, a site that specialises in posting out-of-print records that aren't otherwise available unless you happen to get your grubby paws on a secondhand vinyl copy. They've got over 2000 records up, which is totally amazing (and potentially very tme consuming). My selections from the goodies on offer were Jeremy & the Satyrs' self-titled 1968 album and a CD re-release of mid-sixties albums from the Bad Seeds and the Liberty Bell.

The Satyrs serve up a dose of psychedelic rock that is the sound of 1968 (the producer also worked with the Electric Flag and the Paul Butterfield Blues Band).

Jeremy & the Satyrs - In the World of Glass Teardrops
Jeremy & the Satyrs - The Do It

I was particularly excited to find the Bad Seeds album, as I've been dying to check the first Bad Seeds out since I saw them on a DVD of TV appearances/proto-music videos of mid-sixties garage groups. I still like Mr. Cave's group better, but this is hella awesome too.

The Bad Seeds - Taste of the Same
The Bad Seeds - I'm a King Bee

Let me know if I've got these postings wrong - it's my first time!

Tuesday, August 26, 2008

I Can Has Musics omnibus!


One of the main reasons I decided I could justify adding yet another weblog to the ridiculously crowded weblogosphere was that I thought it made sense to provide handy clickable 'hyper' links to the music blogs I feature on my Radio One Wednesday Drive feature 'I Can Has Musics'. However, since establishing the Honkytonk Lagoon I've actually been unable to host my Wednesday show for one reason after another. To celebrate getting back into it tonight (4-7pm, 91fm in Dunners or www.r1.co.nz elsewhere) I'm posting the best of the blogs I've already featured:

Soul Sides: Crate-digging awesomeness from Oliver Wang. Soul, latin, boogaloo, funk, etc. Links up for a limited time, and it's all gold, so check in regularly or subscribe through a reader. Who can argue with posts like "JIMMY MCGRIFF: GIANT OF THE ORGAN" or "DESPERATE TIMES CALL FOR DESPERATE PLEASURES"?

Waxidermy: More crate-digging delights. Perhaps a wider range, with great categories like 'Field Recordings', 'Garage/Freakbeat', 'Incredibly Strange' 'Instructional/Educational', and perhaps my favourite, 'Kids/School Bands'. I think the way that this blog works is that the most recent entry includes downloadable tracks, all other posts have streaming versions, so you have to be on the ball.

Dr Forrest's Cheeze Factory: In these days of ever rising cheeze prices, it's reassuring to know it exists in such vast quantities on teh internetz for FREE! One of my best I Can Has Musics finds: a whole swag of different versions of "St. James Infirmary". Score! The site is appropriately kitschy and quite busy - looks similar to a lot of personal websites circa 1998. It took me a while to work out how to actually download stuff from here (hint: click the cheeze).

If It Rotates We Can Control It: More funky souly stuff, with a 'world' focus. While there's a handful of links to individual tracks you can download, it mainly provides downloads of host Alex Panther's radio shows. Unfortunately, while the music selections are amazing, his radio voice doesn't really live up to his hep selections or groovy name...

Mutant Sounds: Entire albums of obscure weirdness. Fantastic music accompanied by pix of brilliant album art.

Said the Gramophone: Generally speaking, lighter lovelier stuff with rather floral blurbs that you could call poetic or precious. I just picked up a new Jolie Holland track from here, which makes me very, very happy.

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

Say, who the heck is Shanghai Lil?

I've been vaguely thinking about starting a blog for a while now, but didn't really have anything momentous enough for that all-important First Post. Until recently, when I came across The Greatest Thing Ever. That's a deliberately vague and far-reaching description - of all the things that ever were, this is the greatest.

So what is this momentous Thing, you ask? It's a ten minute musical number from Busby Berkeley's 1933 feature Footlight Parade. The beauty of the backstage musical is your ridiculous musical numbers don't have to have anything to do with the central storyline, so Berkeley wasn't limited by the need to actually, y'know, make sense.

"Shanghai Lil" certainly shows that making sense doesn't always need to be a priority. It has everything, and then some. For starters, James Cagney getting drunk and brawling, and singing and tapdancing all in one number is awesome enough. Then there's the opium den full of zonked hookers, and a row of more alert hookers complaining to their johns a
bout Shanghai Lil - "That Oriental dame is detrimental to our industry" - before the aforementioned brawl (started when Cagney decks a sailor for saying "She's every sailor's pal, she's anybody's gal," and from which Cagney emerges in a sailor suit). Turns out Shanghai Lil was hiding in a box in the corner the whole time - and also that she's clearly a Caucasian actress in whiteface and a black bob. Swept into Cagney's arms, she sings, "I love you velly much a long time; I think that you no love me still." Fortunately, it's scientifically proven that tapdancing on a bar redeems any amount of racial stereotyping, 'cos that's what happens next.

Just when you think it couldn't get any better, an entire army joins the fray, marching in formation and waving their guns around to form kaleidoscopic patterns. And just when you think it couldn't get any more betterer, the soldiers are joined by a crowd of girls in coolie hats, and together they hold up placards (a la an audience at a sports game) to form a picture of the American flag... and then flip them over to display President Roosevelt! Then they march-dance around a bit more to form the logo of the NRA (not the Nuts With Guns Club, sadly, but Roosevelt's National Recovery Administration).

You can watch "Shanghai Lil" below, and there's plenty more Berkeley clips on Youtube (although it really loses something on a tiny or really grainy Youtube screen).