Category: Music

In preparing for this year’s holiday party at the EMP’s Liquid Lounge, we tried to get “Nobody’s Fault” ready but it didn’t quite happen. However, we did find a tune that worked better: Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing.” It’s a gorgeous song, with lyrics that, while trippy, don’t get in the way of the beauty of the melody.

I learned the song from Sting’s version on his …Nothing Like the Sun album. His approach to the melody is more sympathetic with my vocal chords, so I’ll end up singing that version while George Bullock and my general manager, Tim Sinclair, do the axework. It should be fun.

I also get to sing backup on some Stones, Springsteen, and other tunes. If I have any vocal cords left by the end of the evening it’ll be a miracle.

All this is by partial apology for the light blogging this week. This has been one of two things keeping me busy. The other? You’ll have to wait another couple of days to find that one out.

Last year at about this time I had my rock and roll debut at the EMP’s Liquid Lounge. I’m returning with some of the same musicians this year for additional holiday party musical jam goodness. I get to go a little further afield this year, doing backing vocals on a bunch of rockabilly, Motown, and country/bluegrass tunes. And then some lead vocals, this year on a cover of Led Zeppelin’s version of “Nobody’s Fault But Mine.”

“Nobody’s Fault” is a really old song that I am still coming to terms with. The earliest recording I’m aware of is the Blind Willie Johnson version from 1927, which is a straightforward gospel lyric (“I have a Bible I can read/If I don’t read then my soul be lost/Nobody’s fault but mine) given a growling, urgent delivery with a slashing slide guitar accompaniment. When Page and Plant turned their attention to the song in the mid-seventies, the instrumentals were turned up to 11, and Page wrote new lyrics that describe a battle with&8212;what? Addiction, possibly, or the life of excess he was leading in general. Add to that the controversy in the traditional blues world about Zep’s refusal to credit Johnson for the song (on Presence, it’s credited to Page and Plant, and Plant has said that the song was “public domain because he’s been dead so long”), and there are about a million ways you could go in performing this song.

So there are going to be some challenges, but I think it should be tremendous. I’m working with two fantastic guitarists with George Bullock and Don Chappell, and if I can just get some rehearsal time so I don’t shred my vocal chords going for the high A on every chorus I’ll be all set.

Funny article in the Washington Post yesterday about the Foo Fighters’ remake of the infamous “Darling Nikki” (from Prince’s Purple Rain). I think this was the moment when we all knew Prince had Arrived: on the schoolbus, on the way to middle school, a chorus of white suburban kids gleefully singing along, “I met her in the hotel lobby…”
(The rest of the lyrics are in the Blogcritics article through which I discovered the Washington Post story.)

Our friend Shel is getting married around Thanksgiving. I’ve written a bit about Shel before; suffice it to say that the “happily ever after” day for the woman who introduced me to my wife is a pretty big deal. So we’ll be driving down to Portland the weekend after Turkey Day for the party, music in hand.

Music? Yeah, Shel asked me to roll a mix for the reception and party. Being the overachiever that I am, I obliged with three cds worth of a monster mix that takes the party from first dance and family friendly stuff all the way through 80s memories deep into funk grooves before ending in trance and “Classic Girl.” The track listings for the three discs, entitled You’re the First, The Last, My Everything, are up at Art of the Mix, so check them out.

I was all set to do a rant about how I was so stupid as to sign up for a one-year contract with eMusic, so I couldn’t cancel immediately now that they’re in their new business model. But I found the coolest Halloween song ever there today, and since I’m still paying for the service I downloaded it there rather than paying $0.99 at the iTunes Store.

Anyway, the track: Philly Joe Jones’ Sextet: “Blues for Dracula”… with Lenny Bruce voicing the legendary count as some sort of beat vampire in the first half of the track. Dig.

Update: Looks like the track isn’t in the US iTunes store any more, but it’s still at eMusic.

Rolling Stone says that Beck, Beth Orton, Grandaddy, and Conor Oberst from Bright Eyes are confirmed for a memorial concert for Elliott Smith on November 3rd in LA (assuming the city is still standing at that point).

Update: Beck and his band posted remembrances of Elliott on his official site.

I was quick-surfing this morning when I caught it out of the corner of my eye on Scary Go Round. “Elliott Smith 1969-2003: I am very sad to hear about the death of one of my favourite musicians, Elliott Smith. A hugely gifted man, but also someone who seemed very fragile. What a waste.” I thought, Oh no. There was nothing in my aggregator, though, and I began hoping it was a rumor.

The Feedster search showed otherwise: along with the eight pages of eulogies, primarily on LiveJournal, were the news stories and encomiums. Elliott Smith, brilliant singer-songwriter whose work spanned guitar rock, orchestral pop, and despairing lyrics; who had five albums including three really brilliant ones; whose work spoke of loneliness and drugs; who apparently stabbed himself with a knife in his LA apartment on Tuesday.

I didn’t listen to Elliott’s music until I was in grad school, but the combination of the sweeping melodies and dark lyrics hit buttons for me then. If the rumors of suicide are true, I’m sadly unsurprised. And angry. Damn it, what a stupid waste of a brilliant mind and voice. But I’ll be listening today and thinking.

Got bitten fingernails and a head full of the past
And everybody’s gone at last
A sweet sweet smile that’s fading fast
Cause everybody’s gone at last
And you don’t get upset about it
No not anymore
There’s nothing wrong
That wasn’t wrong before
Had a second alone with a chance let pass
And everybody’s gone at last
Well i hope you’re not waiting
Waiting around for me
Because i’m not going anywhere
Obviously
Got a broken heart and your name on my cast
And everybody’s gone at last
Everybody’s gone at last

I appear to have been too eager last night when I posted the list of artists whose songs weren’t showing up in the iTunes Music Store. Though I was unable to follow the links I posted to get to actual music from home before 8 am, by the time I got to work they all worked and sent me reliably to fully populated albums. So 4AD, Beggars Banquet, and Too Pure (otherwise known as the Beggars Group) appear to have climbed aboard; I hope this means more Dead Can Dance, Mojave 3, Breeders, and Badly Drawn Boy tracks soon.

A number of 4AD, Too Pure, and Beggars Banquet releases, including the Pixies, Love and Rockets, Bauhaus, David J, Peter Murphy, Kristin Hersh, Mclusky, Tindersticks, Throwing Muses, This Mortal Coil, and others are showing up in the Just Added lists at the iTunes store, but when you click on the albums there are no songs there. Another Sigur Rós/Radiohead fiasco? Or have they just not quite finished adding the albums yet?

I posted three new mixes over at the Art of the Mix last month that I neglected to point to, partly because I was trying to keep them a secret from the birthday girl. Now that she’s had them for about a month, no reason to hide them any longer. For those who received these mixes on CD from me, here are the missing band names (sorry):

• Your Favorite Scary 80s Songs: A set of stuff that I’m alternately ashamed to admit I listened to and still gleefully do the white man dance to.
• Your Favorite Not-Scary 80s Songs: Stuff that it’s still hard to believe was actually released in the 80s, some of it on major labels.
• a page I was meaning to send her: like the description says, a mix of stuff I happened to be listening to at the end of the summer. One of my favorite mixes to date.

Arbitrage=the art of buying low and selling high with no risk. If one could sell online music at the same rates as the iTunes music store, there would be real arbitrage opportunities this week.

To wit: eMusic is shutting the doors on its unlimited downloads policy at the end of the month, but until then it’s all you can download (meaning, there are a ton of people including myself doing just that right now). Meanwhile, the iTunes Music Store seems to be adding a bunch of labels that were formerly found only on eMusic, including Matador (Cat Power, Pizzicato Five, Mark Eitzel, Pavement, Yo La Tengo) and Fantasy/Prestige/Riverside (John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Coleman Hawkins, Eric Dolphy, Freddie Hubbard, Bill Evans, Joe Henderson, and other brilliant 1950s jazz sessions), and Lakeshore (Granddaddy). Alas, no arbitrage. Otherwise I could download all the albums for free on eMusic, resell them on iTunes, and make a killing. I’ll have to settle for just downloading the albums for free.

In compensation for the lack of arbitrage, the iTunes Music Store has added a few artists and albums that never made it to eMusic, like the White Stripes and Pop Will Eat Itself’s 1989 album featuring the insanely brilliant “Can U Dig It?”. If music keeps getting added like this, I’ll forget all about my disappointment with eMusic. Eventually.

I wondered the other day how it was that eMusic, or its artists, made money on the $14.99 a month unlimited download plan. I generally, when I remember to do so, find about four or five albums that I want to listen to for that $14.99, and that happens about every two weeks.

So this morning’s email that eMusic was being acquired by “Dimensional Associates LLC,” and changing their pricing model to eliminate all-you-can-download, came as no real surprise. The two tiers in the new pricing scheme: 40 songs a month for $9.99, or 300 songs for $50 a month.

Neither tier is really tempting, but I suppose I’ll stick with the basic pricing scheme just in case I discover another band I should have been listening to all along—like Pavement, Yo La Tengo, Red House Painters, or Cat Power—through the service. And between now and October 30, when the new pricing scheme takes effect, I’ll be pretty busy, especially in the Prestige/Riverside jazz part of the eMusic store.

Of course, the fine What Do I Know beat me to this post this morning…

I was hoping to go for a whole week with album covers that consisted of black and white portraits of two men, but didn’t quite make it. Still, I continue to be slightly creeped out by the Kruder and Dorfmeister cover, which is like a bizarro version of the Bookends cover. And is the pose on the cover of Songs From the Big Chair coincidence? I don’t think so. Check out the Past Listening page for the whole picture.

A ton of Library of Congress, Rounder Records, and Alan Lomax recordings have arrived in the iTunes Music Store, including Lomax’s Southern Journey series, the LOC recordings of LeadBelly and Jelly Roll Morton, Lomax’s recordings of world music from Italian peasant songs to Irish reels to Caribbean songs, Rounder collections of zydeco and Cajun and cowboy music… Oh man. Not enough hours in the day.

Seen on Boing-Boing: Paul’s Boutique samples and references list, a collaborative guide listing all samples and cultural references on the seminal 1989 Beastie Boys album. Kind of understated: for “Shadrach,” the commentators note that “Sly & the Family Stone’s ‘Loose Booty’ comprises most of the song.” Yeah, like just about all of the non-rapped contributions, including the “Shadrach, Meshach, Abednego” chant.