Merry go, merry go, merry-go-round

Just watched Derailroaded, a 2005 documentary about Larry "Wild Man" Fischer. I'd never heard of the movie until the Sundance Channel aired it a few months ago, though I was vaguely familiar with Fischer, mainly from his association with Frank Zappa (a musician I have never really seen the appeal of, no matter how much I feel I should) back in the late 1960s. As the film reveals, they had a pretty major falling out the night Larry threw a bottle that landed very near the head of young Moon Unit Zappa, which almost ended the life of the future "Valley Girl" singer.

All the movers and shakers of the "outsider music" scene make appearances, with the curatorial/sane perspective provided by Irwin Chusid, Dr. Demento, Barnes & Barnes (I had completely forgotten that my childhood surrogate Billy Mumy was half of the "Fish Heads" duo), Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo, and Weird Al Yankovic, while there are also brief glimpses of Daniel Johnston and Wesley Willis. (No word from the Legendary Stardust Cowboy.)

There's no way to resist comparing the film and its subject to The Devil and Daniel Johnston, which I wrote about here. Both depict men suffering with mental illness and obsessed with pop music who are embraced--some would say exploited--by "real" hipster musicians who help them release albums and send them on a bumpy road to cult stardom before their charm wears off and they become extremely difficult to deal with. Both men veer from moments of club-circuit notoriety to periods of near-total breakdown. You're never quite sure whether to laugh at or cry over what you see onscreen (well, sometimes it's easy to know), and you're forced to think about the huge gulf between observing these eccentric people from afar and actually having them in your life, calling you several times through the night every day for seven weeks until you have to change your phone number. There's even a Brian Wilson-inspired moment in each film; in Derailroaded, it's Fischer's awkward, moving cover of "In My Room," a song whose dark subtext he clearly understands. By coincidence--or one of Larry's wild conspiracies--both films came out in 2005, so it's hard to say one is ripping off the other. They're more like variations on the same theme.

I feel uncomfortable ranking them, but I must say that Devil strikes me as the stronger film, just as there seems to be more depth to Johnston's music and visual art than Fischer's. (On the other hand, the latter's "Merry-go-round" song is pretty damn catchy.) Both are worth your time, if you're interested in issues of creativity and mental illness, or in the music industry's ability to make a spectacle out of pretty much anything, no matter how tempting it might be to look away.

The Rainbow Connection

Try to forget, whydoncha, that it has been a mere 10 months since my last post here. Believe it or not, I've been trying all spring and summer to find some appropriate occasion to relaunch this blog, reasoning that once I start this thing up again, it will be that much easier to return to it, and while there have been plenty of possibilities--concerts, album purchases, holidays, going-out-of-business sales, and so on--none of them have managed to stick. So I'm choosing The Day After the Release of the Latest Radiohead Album. Sure, a lesser blogger might adopt something as pedestrian as the actual release date, and plenty of 'em did, but you expect more from me by now, and I accept the challenge. Now that everyone else has moved on to something else, I am here to weigh in on this whole crazy phenomenon:

1. First and foremost, I really like the album, based on two and three-quarters listens. I like it a lot.
2. I would be excited about a new Radiohead album even if it were just coming out as a plain old CD in the plain old way. When Hail to the Thief came out, I was right there at my favorite store at midnight, a 45-year-old in a sea of 20somethings.
3. Even so, this whole pay-what-you-want approach is just pretty damn brilliant. I love the questions it raises about art and commerce, for starters. A performance group I am part of strives to provoke similar discussions when we charge "your hourly wage" for our shows--but then we are reaching about 30 people a night, not several million. This is one case where the bigger the canvas, the more interesting the artwork.
4. A friend of mine who is not a Radiohead fan but does know a thing or two about the music industry views the pay-what-you-want experiment as purely a marketing gimmick that has nothing to do with art. I beg to differ: it may well be a publicity stunt (and an effective one at that), but it also works as a conceptual art piece, and is wholly of a piece with the band's M.O., not only in terms of business (I am reminded of the time they toured with their own big-top tent as a portable venue rather than deal with traditional arenas), but also the thematic content of their music (lotsa lyrics about the fate of the individual in a soulless corporatized environment; recurring juxtaposition of samples and electronic beats/noises with Thom Yorke's achingly human voice).
5. Another friend and I found it amusing that neither of us knew the titles of any of the songs yet, so we had to say things like, "I like track 4 a lot" and "Yeah, tracks 1 and 2 are so bombastic that track 3 really comes as a change of pace."
6. Lots of folks who don't really follow music have been hearing about this album via tech podcasts, business publications, news stories, and the like. I've been wondering what the hell they're going to make of such weird noise when they seek it out.
7. To all those netnerds who downloaded the album for free, then bitched about the low bitrate: this is how you say thanks when somebody gives you a present?
8. Then there's the snarkier-than-thou attitude that sneers at the whole idea of everybody listening to the album and then posting "insta-reviews" to their blogs, but I kinda like that part. As a guy with zero interest in Harry Potter, I've been missing out on the chance to experience the same pop culture artifact at the exact same time as everybody else. (I've always been intrigued by stories about the day that Sgt. Pepper came out and was played on a whole bunch of radio stations around the world in its entirety.) And I'm digging the notion that everybody--professional critics, self-appointed critics, megafans, casual listeners--was on a level playing field on Day One.
9. Fun bonus feature: Check out this handy track-by-track collection of videos documenting concert performances of the new songs.
10. Did I mention I like the album a lot?

OK, now that I've broken my silence, I'll do my best to get back into the virtual swing of things. Plenty to say, in due time, about what I've been up to when I haven't been up to blogging here, what I'm listening to, and all that jazz. For now, digging that album.

Radio radio

I've been a huge fan of Pandora for close to two years now; actually my obession with it tends to wax and wane, but it's always there when I want it. If you've never checked it out yourself, give it a try--practically guaranteed to change your music-listening life--and if you're already hooked, you might want to investigate this list of 15 ways to get more out of Pandora. (Mac alert: many of these are PC-only, but the comments section of the post contains plenty of Mac-friendly variations.)

I found this item from LifeHacker, a long-established site I just recently discovered. I thik of it as a kind of "Hints from Heloise" for the tech generation. Today, for instance, there's a tip on wrapping headphones so they don't get tangled (although many commenters seem to prefer this method). Here's a quick link to LifeHacker's music-related tips.

Back to Pandora for a sec: as a soft-rock afficonado, one of my favorite stations out of 14 I've created is a salute to quiet pop mostly from the mid60s through the mid70s, but with a few more recent choices (since Pandora is built not around chronology or genre but the actual sound of a song). It's anchored to two bands: the Association and the Free Design. I call it ...

... Free Association.

While the Association and I go way back to my childhood (when my older sister somehow convinced me that "Windy" was about an owl), the Free Design (those current hipster darlings who emerged from Western New York in the late 60s) is much newer to me, and the station is a great way of working through their fairly large discography one song at a time.

In addition to the two namesake groups, this one plays songs by artists I already knew I liked (Badfinger, Wings, Andy Kim, Art Garfunkel and his sometime pal Paul, the Zombies, the Carpenters, Spanky & Our Gang, Todd Rundgren, Jim Croce, the Beach Boys, America, Steely Dan, and even the Velvet Undergound and Brian Eno) plus some I know but kinda cringe about (the New Christy Minstrels, Pure Prairie League, Showaddywaddy, the Anita Kerr Singers). But the real thrill is the growing list of acts I've never heard of till now. Some are solo performers old and new (Bob Dileo, Richard Swift, Pat Shannon, Sandy Salisbury, Jf Robitaille, Samantha Juste, Stan Rogers) and some are recent bands I've heard a teensy bit about (Ollabelle, Maritime). And then there's a steady stream of groups whose very names evoke a long-gone era I can't get enough of(Friends, Jon & Robin, Owl & the Pussycat, the Ivy League, Titus Groan, the Millenium, the Roosters, the Brokedown, Lady & Bird, Scene, Fancey, the Castaways, Gandalf). It's like a trip down somebody else's memory lane, and I dig it, man.

Another year over, and a new one just begun

1. If the blog as a whole looks kinda naked right now (depending on when you're seeing this), that's because I decided tonight was the night to do something I've been putting off for months, namely switching to the new version of Blogger, which apparently entails, among other things, losing certain features you've spent years developing (like my list of a hundred or so music-related links) and spending hours creating new ones (like tags for all posts past and future).

2. Speaking of losing your work, it's kind of a late Christmas miracle that I'm not screaming and hurling objects through the air at this very minute, because I just spent the last, oh, 2 hours composing a lengthy post divulging the winners of the 2006 Ehmke(e) Awards--another task I've put off for the last month--only to have my browser crash before I could save a draft, thus wiping out the whole thing. I guess I'm either in a state of shock or too tired to care at the moment.

Perhaps this was an omen, and the world is truly not meant to know what some guy in Tonawanda, NY thought was the Song of the Year.

Oh well. It'll have to wait for another night now. instead, I'll wish you all a happy new year, and try to forget the staggering waste of time I've just experienced on the last night before a truly overpacked January kicks into high gear. (Oh, sure, I could resolve to turn over a new leaf and post here on a regular basis, but we both know me better than that by now, don't we?)

"James Brown is Dead"

I"m sure every aging raver in the land did a double take when they heard that phrase for real on Christmas Day. I know I did, and I'm only good for the "aging" part of that particular job description.

Confession: I am actually writing this entry on New Year's Day, a full week after the sad news, and backdating it so it appears that I was a little more on the ball. But no matter when I finally got around to eulogizing the great man, I never could have composed anything as eloquent as the following blog posts:

*At the B Side, this very personal history of Brown's career, and
*this first-person account of the scene around the Apollo Theater this past weekend (both of which include, for the time being, MP3s of JB B-sides).
*The Fresh Air tribute to Brown, including interviews with the Godfather himself, the co-author of his autobiography, Maceo Parker, and Bootsy Collins.

I could swear there were more online tributes I've come across that I wanted to link to, but I'm having trouble remembering what and where they were now. That's what I get for not posting sooner.

Meanwhile, my personal tribute has taken the form of listening not so much to the classic funk stuff (or even to his wild Christmas album, which I kept meaning to pull out this past week, as I usually do every year), but to the 2-disc Roots of a Revolution compilation of earlier stuff. The party line on this material is that he hasn't quite found his unique voice yet, but I have no complaints whatsoever listening to him try and find it through r&b, countryish stuff, novelty songs, you name it. The track that stood out for me on this go-round was a silly/slang-y one called "That Dood It" that is pure fun. Not funk, just fun--and that's enough for me.

Happy Xmas (War is Over)

Ho, ho, ho, everybody. I am still immersed in way too many projects to count, which cumulatively cut down on my blogging time, but here's a holiday entry to note a few seasonal matters before the season itself melts away like Frosty:

1. From the pages of Entertainment Weekly, here's an interesting chronicle of the song "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas". I've always been struck by the melancholy tone of this ditty, which is significantly more pronounced in its debut appearance in the film Meet Me in St. Louis. The article points out that the earliest version of the lyrics were even more of a downer (opening line: "Have yourself a merry little Christmas / It may be your last ...") until Judy Garland insisted that lyricist Hugh Martin lighten it up a little. Then Frank Sinatra had to come along and make the thing all happy happy joy joy.

2. For the last few years I've had a great time checking the MP3 blogs listed in that column over there on the right for holiday songs. Didn't get around to it this year till last night, but I found all kinds of stuff at Copy, Right? and Keep the Coffee Coming, plus a trippy extended "X-Mas Mix 2006" at Lemon-Red. Catch them all before they evaporate.

3. Finally, I have Beaucoup Kevin to thank for tipping me off to this sublime (and slightly melancholy) Pet Shop Boys appearance on some sort of Elton John holiday special from the year 2000:



Merry [holiday of choice], one and all!

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.