New releases, birthdays, and my first best-of-2006 thought
Disc one contains the two London shows (the same 17 songs on successive nights) that were Wire’s first and second gigs as a quartet, with two cheeky covers (“Glad All Over” and “After Midnight”) and five Wire originals not found on their debut album from later that year. The songs on disc two are largely from their sophomore album; two of the three Pink Flag songs played at CBGB aren’t among the London titles. Review to follow….
More concert goodness, of older vintage. This material has been bootlegged before, and there’s actually more of it than Young chose to issue here – he supposedly omits “Cinnamon Girl” because the sound quality’s not up to his standards. Of course, with access to the original tapes, this sounds vastly better than the crappy boots I’ve got. This is Crazy Horse when Danny Whitten and Jack Nitzsche were in the band – its prime period – so don’t hesitate. For a more in-depth look at this release, read my review.
AKA Poppy Nogood and the Phantom Band, this is a forty-minute edit of a six-hour concert of improvisation mixing soprano saxophone, organ, and an early looping device dubbed the “time-lag accumulator” (which Riley affectionately referred to as the Phantom Band; Riley himself is Poppy Nogood). Modal, slowly evolving, sounding like a cross between twittering birdsong and cyclical raga, it’s a cornerstone of Minimalism and anticipated/influenced musical trends for decades to come. This isn’t just for avant-garde fans; anyone into trance music or chill-out electronica will dig this. Long either unavailable or on the poorly distributed Cortical Foundation imprint, it’s seeing new life on a Revolver-distributed label, along with a wealth of other classic Riley titles.
There is no question in my mind that this is the most deeply moving song of the year. In dealing with deaths, one after the fact and one pending, bombarded by memory and emotion and dread and so much more, the singer starts out matter-of-fact, tightly contained, but slips into an eruption of feelings, her voice cracking, as the music builds perfectly from acoustic simplicity to dense support. Though one more refrain follows it, the climax of the song is the despairing end of the last verse: “There’s no way it’s ever gonna be right ever again.” Nor is this a song that gets by on topic and empathy more than craft or quality; the lyrics are pure poetry without ever being falsely fancy. Repeated listening brings me to tears.
11/20
Duane Allman – 1946
Not just the ace guitarist/co-founder of the Allman Brothers Band and six-string sparring partner of Eric Clapton on “Layla,” Duane also lent his great taste and talent to Aretha Franklin, Boz Scaggs (his lengthy solo on “Somebody Loan Me a Dime” is a tour-de-force).
Joe Walsh – 1947
His sense of humor, most famously displayed on “Life’s Been Good to Me So Far,” has overwhelmed his many other talents in the public mind. With James Gang in the late ‘60s he refined the idea of the power trio; leading Barnstorm he made an eponymous album that’s one of the great secrets of the ‘70s (astonishingly, it’s only on CD in Japan); joining the Eagles he made them vastly better instrumentally – he’s a superb guitarist – and contributed some fine songs to their repertoire.
11/21
Dr. John (Mac Rebennac) – 1940
Moving from adept studio sideman (on not only piano, on which he’s a virtuoso, but also guitar) to flamboyant frontman and masterful songwriter, he became a national treasure.
Lonnie Jordan – 1948
This keyboardist/vocalist is co-founder of War, one of the funkiest and most socially conscious R&B bands; co-creator of such immortal songs as “Slippin’ into Darkness,” “Me and Baby Brother,” “The Cisco Kid,” “The World Is a Ghetto,” “Low Rider,” and “Why Can’t We Be Friends.”
Bjork – 1965
She’s been a star in Iceland since she was 11 (when her first album came out!), entered American consciousness in 1988 with the Sugarcubes’ debut album (one of the highlights of the year), went solo in 1993 with Debut (which was actually her third solo album – check out 1990’s jazzy Gling-Glo on One Little Indian), and has been doing the unexpected ever since in both music and fashion.
R.L. Burnside – 1926 (some sources show his birthday as 11/23)
Burnside first recorded at age 40 but remained obscure until 65. He spent most of his life in his native rural Mississippi, where he worked as a sharecropper as late as 1979, though he appeared on an Arhoolie compilation LP in 1967 and made a few other early recordings. But his appearance in the Robert Mugge/Robert Palmer 1992 documentary Deep Blues and his acclaimed 1994 Fat Possum album Too Bad Jim captivated not only blues fans but also the underground rock crowd. Burnside learned directly from Mississippi Fred McDowell, and the regional standard “Shake ‘em on Down,” associated with McDowell and a hit for Bukka White back in the 1930s, is the first track on Too Bad Jim, with Burnside’s shimmering slide guitar sound and rough, droning vocals menacing. But Burnside kept evolving, playing with an electric band of family members in area juke joints. And after his fame increased, he jammed with rock musicians and allowed some of his music to be given electronic treatments. No matter what the setting, Burnside’s music has hypnotic appeal, augmented by his instrumental skill and powerful personality.
11/22
Benjamin Britten – 1913
Contender for the crown of England’s greatest modern composer (Ralph Vaughan Williams and Edward Elgar are the main competition, with William Walton a dark-horse candidate). His War Requiem (1961), a commentary on the devastation of the World Wars, is one of the great pacifist statements; Peter Grimes and Death in Venice are among the outstanding operas of the 20th century.
Jason Ringenberg – 1958
Most country-rock doesn’t actually rock very hard, but that’s certainly not true of Jason & the (Nashville) Scorchers. Of course, that hurt them commercially – they were too rock for country radio, but too country for rock radio, especially in the 1980s. But they were too great to be ignored, and remain a cult favorite. Restless Country Soul, Fervor, and Lost and Found are powerhouse classics.
11/23
11/24
Alfred Schnittke – 1934
Born in the Soviet Union’s Volga Republic, an ethnic German enclave, Schnittke pioneered a broadly eclectic style of composing drawing on many classical styles (sometimes quoting familiar works) with occasional forays into jazz and pop. By 1972 his experimentalism had earned the disapproval of the Soviet Composers Union, but esteemed musicians who left Russia to live in the West supported his work and brought him an international reputation. His work was basically pessimistic, but its emotional impact, and the accessibility of some of the styles he drew on, seduced adventurous listeners. The contradictions in Schnittke’s style are laid out in his liner notes to the BIS recording of his Symphony No. 3: “I do not know whether or not the symphony will survive as a musical form. I very much hope that it will and I attempt to compose symphonies, although it is clear to me that logically it is pointless. The tensions of this form, which are based upon a tonal perception of space and on dynamic contrast, are paralyzed by the present material-technical point of view. Nevertheless there is hope: in art, the impossible has a chance of success whilst the certain is always deceptive and hopeless.”
11/25
