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Getting ready to head off to the land of the ignoble Frog next week, so innocuous blogging till then.
In the meantime, from our department of ME ME ME!!! department, here's a shot of the Boys Don't Lie mafia -- the proprietress of this here blog, Moira McCormick and ME ME ME!!! -- at Tuesday's book reading in darkest Hepsterland (actually The West bar in Williamsburg.)
And it's finally happened; the deluxe reissue edition of Floor Your Love, featuring ME ME ME!!! on bass, has finally been released. Here's the revised front and back covers. I still haven't seen the new inside art, by the way, and it's driving me crazy.
In any event, you can, and should, order the darn thing over at the website of ZERO HOUR RECORDS in Australia. Have I mentioned that Zero Hour is the world's greatest record label?
So I was reading a profile in last week's Sunday New York Times magazine of Nicolas Jaar, a young techno-dance music auteur who apparently today's kids think is just the bees knees, when the following passage sort of jumped out and bit me on the nose.
When Nicolas Jaar was 17, he e-mailed a piece of electronic music, which he made on his laptop, to a record label in Brooklyn. He’d heard an interview with the owner of the label, Wolf + Lamb, who was going on about house music and “elasticity.” Jaar felt he knew exactly what the guy was talking about. Wolf + Lamb agreed to put out Jaar’s first E.P. and invited him to perform at a somewhat sketchy space called the Marcy Hotel in Williamsburg. At the time, Jaar was a senior at the Lycée Français on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
So on the evening before the last day of school, he went to his family’s apartment in SoHo, changed out of his school uniform, took the subway to Brooklyn and played a set that ran strongly against the grain of the techno of the time. Back then, Jaar says, everything D.J.’s were playing was 128 beats per minute. The stuff he was doing was almost half that speed, with improvised piano haunting the tracks. And it really resonated with the crowd at the Marcy, which happened to be quite high. “Everybody was on ketamine,” Jaar recalls. “They all kept coming up to me and telling me how amazing my music was.”
You know, that techno-dance stuff is not my cup of tea, but I have no doubt its as valid as any other genre, and I had every intention of checking the kid's stuff out when I started reading the piece.
That said, I've come to the conclusion I really don't need to listen any music that sounds particularly good when you're on horse tranquilizers.
After a super-fun reading last night, I woke this morning to find that Terrence Flamm at Broken-Hearted Toy had posted his 2-part review of Boys Don't Lie.
It’s a safe bet that most Shoes fans are pretty much familiar with how the Zion, Illinois-based band overcame the inept policies of their major label and became legendary pop stars who started and ended up with their own record company. Boys Don’t Lie: A History Of Shoes, written by Mary E. Donnelly with Moira McCormick, fleshes out that story via extensive research and interviews with the band members, music biz insiders, and people from the media. ............ Anyone unfamiliar with the story of Shoes would probably assume while reading Donnelly’s account of the band working with producer Richard Dashut of Fleetwood Mac fame in Los Angeles, that a major commercial breakthrough was imminent. But Tongue Twister proved to be more heartbreaking for Shoes than its predecessor. Once again, Elecktra’s decisions, particularly refusing to bankroll rock videos for songs fromTongue Twister even though MTV was urgently requesting them, seemed hard to fathom. ........... Boys Don’t Lie: A History Of Shoes is bound to please not only Shoes fans but also anyone with an interest in what Joni Mitchell once called, “the star maker machinery behind the popular song.”
Thanks, Terry!
[Editor's Note: This, obviously, has absolutely nothing to do with the mission statement of this blog, for which I beg your indulgence. However, it IS about a subject I've wanted to write about somewhere at some time for ages, but it wasn't until I actually heard some of the music for the first time -- last week -- that I felt the time was right. Also, for reasons I needn't get into, it pisses off a certain Sparky. I thank you. -- S.S.]
PIETRO RAIMONDI (1786-1853)
I got interested in this guy 40 years ago, at the Magazine Formerly Known as STEREO REVIEW, when I chanced across his entry while browsing the office copy of Grove's. Alas, I had never heard any of his music -- none of which as far as I can determine has ever been commercially recorded -- until last week, when I discovered an 11 minute excerpt from one of his oratorios apparently recorded live, somewhere, by who knows who...
...and assuming it is, actually, what it's attributed to be, I must say it has a certain Gothic austerity and atmosphere that I find compelling, although obviously it's too brief an excerpt to really make an informed judgement on the guy's oeuvre.
However, it really doesn't matter whether Raimondi's stuff is major or merely contrapuntal wallpaper, because he attempted something so wonderfully grand and/or meshugenah he deserves respect no matter what. That aforementioned oratorio was the second of a cycle of three, which were designed to be played sequentially, in three nights, and than SIMULTANEOUSLY ON THE FOURTH. This was actually done in 1852 (apparently the only time) and the audience reaction on the fourth night was apparently tumultuous , with the composer -- who conducted -- fainting dead away from excitement.
This is a folie a une all but unprecedented in the history of Western art; the only thing I can think of to compare to, for its sheer outsized audacity and scale, is D.W. Griffith attempting to create a film fugue with Intolerance.
And if I was a rich person, I would stage performances of the Raimondi oratorios with the best musicians money could buy, and record the whole thing in Dolby 5.1. for both CD and video.
My god, can you imagine what a glorious noise this would be...
UPDATE: Turns out that second Oratorio is available on a 2009 CD that I've just ordered over at Amazon HERE. I'm dying of curiosity.
We had a run the other day in Boston, and we expect things to be pretty tight: an hour or so of reading (commencing at about 7pm), maybe a half an hour Q&A, and then selling & signing (we have plenty of books with us).
It's the Metropolitan exit off the BQE! It's where the L & G intersect! It's where you want to be!
From 1997, please enjoy Jason Falkner, a gentlemen whose work I have somehow managed to miss heretofore, with a jaw-droppingly great power pop version of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now."
I am informed that this is from an Australian b-side, and that it differs from the version on Falkner's 2001 Everyone Says It's On album. Whatever its provenance, however, it's just a brilliant performance -- the way each verse builds in intensity over the previous one, and those harmonies. Wow. You can hear "Both Sides Now," at last, as nature intended -- as a classic pop/rock song, finally stripped of any vestige of kitsch hippie sentimentality or artsy-fartsiness. (Yes, I'm looking at you, Judy Collins. And I like Judy Collins, but still).
In any case, our good pal Sal Nunziato from BURNING WOOD passed this along to me last week, and I am forever in his debt. Sal says it's pretty much his favorite cover version of anything ever; I won't go quite that far, but it's certainly now my favorite Joni Mitchell cover of all time (the previous champ in that regard, BTW, was a tie between The Byrds' "For Free" and Nazareth's "This Flight Tonight.")
I and my co-author Moira McCormick, will be reading Boys Don't Lie: A History of Shoes at the seminal rock club Middle East in Cambridge tomorrow (October 13) at 3pm in the Corner. (We've obviously been naughty; dunce caps optional.)
- - - - - Your Humble Narrator
The exotically lovely Moira McCormick - - - - -
We'll be reading a little, answering your questions, and signing copies of our book. There's some sort of sporting event in the evening, I am given to understand, but we'll get you out in plenty of time for the big game.
Come hang out with the gang for a relaxing Sunday afternoon!
Saw Rodriguez at Radio City Music Hall last night and was not disappointed. The guy is a little frail at 71, but he has charisma to burn -- he ambled on stage wearing a long black leather coat, shades and a top hat, looking for all the world like a sort of zen version of Slash crossed with Cousin Itt...
...and he's a terrific interpretive singer to boot; high points of the show, for me anyway, were absolutely gorgeous covers of "Fever," "I Only Have Eyes for You"(!) and "Love Me or Leave Me"(!!).
However, unlike his performance on Letterman earlier this year...
...his stage band sucked on ice. Really. Not enough to sink the show, but close.
In any event, the songs from his two albums were still riveting, and Rodriguez himself -- which you already know if you've seen Searching for Sugarman -- is a very funny guy, in a wryly ironic way; at one point he told us that he "wanted to be treated like an ordinary legend."
I should also add that during the aforementioned covers, it finally dawned on me who the guy most reminds me of.
It is, of course...
...the incomparable Chris Montez. Their voices aren't all that similar, but the phrasing is.
From Albany, NY, please enjoy power pop weisenheimers The Charlie Watts Riots' fabulous new video for their fabulous new song "Bottom."
From their fabulous new album A Break in the Weather. Which can -- and most definitely should -- be downloaded over at Amazon HERE
Seriously, when I first heard their name I practically plotzed. What a pleasure that their music lives up to it. I mean, to paraphrase what Jack Nicholson famously said of Bob Dylan -- these guys are a riot.
I should also add that I think you'll detect a salutary Cheap Trick influence on the band, both musically and sartorially. I'm also rather tickled by the homage to the Palmer Girls toward the end of the clip.
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