Ain't it funny how time slips away

Can it really be two and a half months since my last, essentially placeholding entry here? Dear lord! It's a miracle I haven't been removed from Jen's list of Buffalo bloggers, since a note at the top of that really helpful resource insists that "If you don't update at least once a month, then you're off the list."

(Speaking of Buffalo blogs, here's a new one I am happy to recommend: BolognaSnowflake, which is the work of my onetime student/oft-time collaborator/now longtime friend Katie Young. Check it out--it is the Essence of Katie, in handy online form!)

Do not for a moment believe that I have abandoned this here blog, gentle reader. Far from it--I continue taking pictures and making mental, sometimes physical, notes for entries I plan to write. It's only that I am so fucking busy every goddam day lately that there is no time left in the day to keep up with this thing as often as I would like. (Coming soon: my picks for the 2006 Ehmke[e] Awards, announced every year at Thanksgiving. But not tonight.)



Thought I'd try something different tonight and actually write something here while it's fresh in my mind. (Turns out there are things about music that I can quite easily get out of my head, after all...) I have been listening to a CD I just got in the mail today, DJ Ze Pedro's The Brazilian Remixes. It's a good points/bad points compilation of dance-y versions of songs by the likes of Clara Nunes, Elis Regina, Milton Nascimento, Joyce, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, Marcos Valle, etc.--in other words, some pretty heavy hitters. Some work (Adriana Calcanhotto's "Jogo Linguistico" is a trippy revelation), others don't (the world simply did not need a gay bar-friendly remake of Caetano's "Eclipse Oculto"), but the whole project is inoffensive, even mildly interesting throughout, and well worth the six bucks I paid for it.

Anyway, in my search for reviews or any other writing about the album or the DJ, I came up nearly empty handed except for this item, from a blog that was brand new to me: Made in Brazil: Contemporary Brazilian Music. (Not to be confused with this "Made in Brazil" blog, which consists largely of beefcake shots of hot Brazilian guys who have forgotten to wear shirts.)

From MIB I learned that ...
*Caetano has a new album out! (It appears to be available only in Brazil at the moment, judging from the price Amazon wants for it.)
*The New York Times ran an interesting story on Lenine back in August! ("American audiences might place his music midway between that of Ani DiFranco and that of Rage Against the Machine"--a weird but interesting comparison since he shares a publicist with Ani and she performed with him in Brazil a few years back)
*These podcasts (in Portuguese, but heavy on the music) are supposedly a really nice intro to recent Brazilian instrumental music!
*Brit DJ Gilles Peterson also has some free podcasts available that I bet are going to sound really great!

All things to check out in the near future. When life is calmer, and I do nothing but check out new music and share it with you nice folks.

Just can't get enough

Between podcasts, DVDs by mail, and our pseudo-TiVo setup--on top of the usual range of books, magazines, CDs, and movies--I've been suffering from some major level Information Overload lately.

So I don't know whether to weep or scream upon the discovery of 23 cover versions of "God Only Knows" at an MP3 blog called My Old Kentucky Blog. Haven't heard most of these yet, but the artists involved include some old and new faves: Bowie, Elvis Costello, Petra Haden, Joss Stone, etc. Plus the very nice Mandy Moore/Michael Stipe version from the wonderful movie Saved!--which, by coincidence, I just happened to re-hear earlier in the day on this Coverville podcast.)

There's something to be said for experiencing so many variations on the same thing--part jazz experimention, part conceptual art project. I cherish the cassette a friend made me containing at least 10-12 (often wildly different) takes on "Sweet Jane," even if I can't exactly play it for anyone else without driving him or her out of the room.

Once I've had my fill of Beach Boys tributes, perhaps I will move on to MOKB's oh-so-obsessive collections of 17 "Girl from the North Country" versions (happy belated b-day, Bobby D) and a jaw-dropping 33 covers of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah."

Life truly is too short, is it not?

Hit that perfect beat #3: The beat of the (rest of the) world

As promised, here's another installment in my list of audio clips from the "Global Hit" portion of the PRI/BBC program The World. All of these are acts or subjects I'm interested in; some segments I've heard and some I haven't. Remember, there's a lot more where these came from. Happy listening!

Animal Collective + Vashti Bunyan
"Babalu" (history of the song--pretty interesting)
Back-masking in world music
Cape Verde musicians
Cibo Matto
The Clash's London Calling anniversary reissue
Dr. John
Feist
Gilles Peterson's BBC sessions
Gogol Bordello
Juana Molina (#1)
Juana Molina (#2)
Mercedes Sosa
Mulatu Astatqe (from the Ethiopiques series)
Rapa Iti (Tahitian mass choral chanting)
State of Bengal vs Paban Das Baul
Sublime Frequencies record label
Talvin Singh
Tango (a history)
Toronto's underground music scene (as a resident of a U.S. border town, it's fun to see Canadian rock treated as "world music")
Trans-Global Underground

Of the instant

1. The next time I feel like a musical obsessive, I will recall this interview with Richard Nevins, the founder of Yazoo Records, and visualize his latest acquisition of 10,000 albums. Then I will contemplate acquiring the cool-sounding compilation he is plugging during that NPR spot.



2. I am not really one for impulse purchases on the musical front. (A Jody Watley album--the Jody Watley album, as it turns out--bought at full price a few months after its release in 1987 is the main one I tend to recall.) But when I heard a song called "All My Rivals" by a guy named Chris Brown on a recent podcast of Coverville, I had one of those drop-everything moments. (Host Brian Ibbott even describes himself as "obsessed" with the song, which, BTW, is not a cover, unlike 99% of what he plays on his eternally outstanding show.)

For the record (pardon the pun), I found the album--Now That You're Fed--via iTunes and sampled enough of the other tracks enough to know I would probably like almost all of them. (They are a bit same-y, but I used to say the same of Leonard Cohen and early R.E.M., and when the "same" is this stellar it's not a problem.) I think the hard copy is mainly distributed by NotLame.com, and if you click on that link there you can find MP3s of several representative album tracks, including "All My Rivals" (but not including some other instantly likeable ones, like "Waiting for Caroline"--a gorgeous Beach Boyish gem).

The album, which I've only heard once in its entirety so far (given that I bought it so quickly, I thought I would break another longstanding habit and write about it instantaneously, too), is terrific. It's acoustic power pop that makes beautiful use of Brown's voice: lots of multi-tracked harmonies and instrumentally spare arrangements verging on a capella. Every one of the handfull of reviews I've managed to track down tonight, like this one, includes a comparison to Elliott Smith, but I gotta say, I've never quite been bit by the E.S. bug, and I find this guy's songs way catchier. But I do hear it, along with traces of Peter Case and my perpetual guilty-pleasure faves, The Association. (This is apparently the spot where I'm supposed to drop the name of the band Jellyfish, because band member Chris Manning produced the album, but I know next to nothing of Jellyfish. If you do, I guess that will excite you.)

Chris Brown's major stumbling block to stardom, or at least cult stardom, seems to me to be his name: in my cursory check for info on him, I came across a rapper, an experimental/new music artist, and a BritPopper, among others. He also may or may not be the same Chris Brown who collaborates with Kate Fenner, a duo I've heard good stuff about.(I don't think he is.) And I am told he is also an independent filmmaker, although IMDB lists 27 Chris Browns, and while this guy is one possible candidate, something tells me that's wrong. Confusion reigns!



3. The same episode of Coverville also led me to the King's Singers a capella cover of Neil Young's "After the Gold Rush," which is just incredible. (I also have a soft spot in my heart for Dolly Parton's version, but only in the what-the-fuck sense. This one is more like holy-shit, if you like your mini-reviews laced with obscenity.) This one pretty much speaks for itself, so I'll shut up now and listen to it and Chris Brown some more.

Play one more for my radio sweetheart

Couple of recent music stories of interest from the realms of public radio:

1. This interview with Brazilian musician/actor Seu Jorge from Weekend Edition a few Saturdays back is really nice. It's a great introduction to his work, and includes a performance or two recorded in the studio. Bonus feature: Jorge's translator is the one and only Tracy Mann, publicist supreme, whom I first met nearly 10 years ago when we were both working for Ani D, but who has a whole side life working with Brazilian musicians, much to my current delight. Bonus bonus feature: links to several earlier NPR stories on Jorge that I had missed.



2. This edition of To the Best of Our Knowledge contains an interview with Bill Friskics-Warren, author of I'll Take You There: Pop Music and the Urge for Transcendence. I haven't read the book, but the discussion--about the spiritual dimension of rock and pop music--was intriguing. Some of the examples (Bono, Van Morrison, Al Green) struck me as fairly obvious, even if the second two of those happen to be among my all-time favorite musicians, in part for this very thing. Plus, it's always nice to hear "Listen to the Lion," no matter what the circumstances. What I found more interesting than the part about those Usual Suspects was the argument the author makes for the Sex Pistols, among others, as "negationists" whose refusal to believe in anything becomes a form of belief in itself. (Pardon my horrible paraphrase. Hey, I'm just a blogger.) I have a hunch the book may partake in what I'll call the Greil Marcus Syndrome--pop songs lifted out of their original context as commodities to serve the author's giant, overarching thesis--but I'm willing to give it a shot.

'Cuz I still haven't found what I'm looking for.

PS. If you're into this newfangled podcasting thang and haven't yet checked out NPR's music-related offerings (available via iTunes and on individual show sites), you really should. The offerings are immense and staggeringly diverse, and now there is no need to listen to the tedious, dreary news of our planet and its imminent demise in order to get to the good stuff. (Talk about the urge for transcendence!) Though I have to say, now that I can download gems like The World's "Global Hits" feature plus a dozen more on a daily basis, my sense of information overload just quadrupled.