From Here To Obscurity

Best of 2011 (and best of 2006 report card)

2012-01-11T17:53:00.000-05:00

As recent as two years ago, back before I entered into this state of constant tedium and tension that is defined by my lack of employment, I used to enjoy making a list of my favorite albums and other artworks at the end of the year. I also used to spend more time working on this blog because, strangely, having less free time meant that I could manage it better. Now, every post that I write here is time that I should be spending doing things that seem more valuable: looking for a job, managing the house, watching my children, planning dinner, looking for a job, contemplating the pointlessness of my existence, pitching stories to outlets that may indeed pay me for said work, staring into space, and looking for a job. But I digress.

What I'm trying to say is that even though I have become a remarkably inessential human being, I still have opinions. Why anyone would care about those is beyond me, but if you've read this far, you're probably wondering when I'm going to cut to the chase or, more likely, whether you'll have the fortitude to reach the end of this sentence before bailing. For those of you still here, this is what I'm going to do: list my favorite albums of 2011. Then I will tell you about my favorite albums of five years previous and how it chalks up to the list I posted at the time.

My Favorite Albums of 2011:

1. Fucked Up - David Comes To Life

2. PJ Harvey - Let England Shake

3. Thee Oh Sees - Castlemania

4. The Alabama Shakes - Alabama Shakes EP
5. Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost
6. Earth - Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light
7. Mastodon - The Hunter
8. Mike Watt - Hyphenated-Man
9. Kurt Vile - Smoke Ring For My Halo
10. Tom Waits - Bad As Me

Honorable Mentions (alphabetically):

Boris - Attention Please, Heavy Rocks (2011), and New Album
Sally Crewe - Transmit/Receive EP

Deerhoof - Deerhoof Vs. Evil

The Fall - Ersatz GB

The Feelies - Here Before

Jens Lekman - An Argument With Myself
J. Mascis - Several Shades Of Why
Melvins - Sugar Daddy Live

My Education - Sound Mass

Thee Oh Sees - Carrion Crawler/The Dream
Wilco - The Whole Love
Wild Flag - Wild Flag

Yuck - Yuck

----

My best albums of 2006, as reported in The High Hat.

Joanna Newsom, Ys.
Yo La Tengo, I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.
Mastodon, Blood Mountain.
Cat Power, The Greatest.
The Decemberists, The Crane Wife.
The Fiery Furnaces, Bitter Tea.
Mission of Burma, The Obliterati.
Belle & Sebastian, The Life Pursuit.
Isis & Aereogramme, In the Fishtank 14.
Boris, Pink (came out in 2005, but had wide release in 2006)
The Pipettes, We Are the Pipettes.
Bert Jansch, The Black Swan.
Destroyer, Destroyer's Rubies.
Ratatat, Classics.
M. Ward, Post-War.
Brightblack Morning Light, Brightblack Morning Light.
Six Organs of Admittance, Sun Awakens.
The Hold Steady, Boys & Girls in America.
Akron/Family, Meek Warrior.
Scott Walker, The Drift.

Here's my favorite albums of 2006 now:

1. Boris - Pink (up from #10!)

2. Fucked Up - Hidden World

3. Comets On Fire - Avatar

4. Mastodon - Blood Mountain

5. Espers - Espers II

6. Sparklehorse - Dreamt For Light Years In The Belly Of A Mountain

7. Danielson - Ships

8. Scott Walker - The Drift (up from #20!)

9. Yo La Tengo - I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass (down from #2!)

10. TV On The Radio - Return To Cookie Mountain

Honorable Mentions (alphabetically):

Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies

Bob Dylan - Modern Times

Fiery Furnaces - Bitter Tea (down from #6!)

Ghostface Killah - Fishscale

The Hold Steady - Boys & Girls In America

Isis - In The Absence Of Truth

Mission of Burma - The Obliterati (down from #7!)

Nina Nastasia - On Leaving

Joanna Newsom - Ys. (down from #1!)

Jay Reatard - Blood Visions

In short, the things I loved then are not the same albums I love now, although there's still some crossover. Many of my favorite albums of the year were ones I did not hear until later. But, man, what a good year for music!

Music Library: Only Ones, Opal, Opeth, Orchestra of St. Luke's, Ornette Coleman

2011-11-17T15:33:00.000-05:00

The Only Ones - The Only Ones (1978). Utterly phenomenal slice of power pop-punk anchored by "Another Girl, Another Planet," one of the best songs of the punk era. The Only Ones had a lot of Rolling Stones and Big Star mixed in with their punk guitars and attitude, and it is only right and natural that they influenced both The Replacements and Yo La Tengo. This is a great album by any measure.

Opal - Happy Nightmare, Baby (1987) and Early Recordings (1989). With a guitarist from Rain Parade and a bassist/vocalist from The Dream Syndicate, Opal was a Paisley Underground supergroup of sorts. When bassist Kendra Smith left during their first tour, the band recruited singer Hope Sandoval to replace her and then changed their name to Mazzy Star, which was quite popular for a while during the 90s. These tracks sound like the work of a band halfway between Rain Parade and Mazzy Star, and that's not a bad thing. I like Rain Parade and The Dream Syndicate more than these songs, but I like these quite a bit, too. I'm indifferent to Mazzy Star, though.

Opeth - Blackwater Park (2001). Prog-metal! But while I love some prog and some metal, this is all the Opeth I need. I like this album, but my heart is not truly brutal enough to listen to this often, I'm afraid.

Orchestra of St. Luke's - Bach: Four Concerti For Various Instruments (1994). This Bach cat can swing!

Ornette Coleman - Something Else!!!! (1958), Tomorrow Is The Question! (1959), The Shape Of Jazz To Come (1959), Change Of The Century (1960), This Is Our Music (1961), Free Jazz (1961), Ornette (1962), Ornette On Tenor (1962), Beauty Is A Rare Thing: The Complete Atlantic Recordings (1958-1962), At The Golden Circle In Stockholm, Vols. 1 and 2 (1965), New York Is Now (1968), The Complete Science Fiction Sessions (1971), Of Human Feelings (1982), and Sound Grammar (2006). I don't need to convince you of Ornette Coleman's brilliance, do I? In my opinion, he's one of the greatest musicians/theoreticians that jazz produced (I'd put him in the top five along with Monk, Trane, Miles, and Mingus). Under his direction, his band tore into his knotty compositions and remade jazz into something far more unpredictable and exciting. The first eight of these albums were released on Atlantic, with a variable band that always included Don Cherry on cornet or pocket trumpet. The band often had Charlie Haden on bass and Billy Higgins on drums, too. And pretty much all of these albums are utterly breathtaking, even fifty years later. The Shape Of Jazz To Come and This Is Our Music are my favorites, but only by a hair. The Beauty Is A Rare Thing collection includes some outtakes that are equal to the greatness of the albums. The Golden Circle live albums are also phenomenal, practically bursting at the seams with great ideas. New York Is Now, recorded with Coltrane's former rhythm section of Jimmy Garrison and Elvin Jones, is an interesting attempt to recast traditional "modern jazz" into something new. Science Fiction is all over the map, with Stockhausenish noise and Sun Ra-ish vocalizing and elements of funk and soul. It is my least favorite of all of these Ornette albums, but please keep in mind that it is still an incredible album. Of Human Feelings is some pure 70s-style Miles afrobeat-funk with some dips and turns that actually remind me of Captain Beefheart. I love it. Sound Grammar is a two-bass quartet album that won Coleman the Pulitzer Prize. Uncharacteristically, most of the songs are reworking of older compositions, but the music still sounds amazingly fresh and vital for the work of a 76-year-old man. Here's Ornette on SNL playing a track from Of Human Feelings after being introduced by Milton Berle, of all people.

Music Library: Om and Oneida

2011-11-14T11:55:00.000-05:00

Om - Variations On A Theme (2005), Conference Of The Birds (2006), Inerrant Rays Of Infallible Sun (Blackship Shrinebuilder) EP (split single with Current 93, 2006), OM/Six Organs Of Admittance split (2006), Pilgrimage (2007), Gebel Barkal 7" (2008), Live At Jerusalem (2008), Conference Live (2009), God Is Good (2009). After the extraordinary stoner metal band Sleep broke up in 1998, guitarist Matt Pike went on to form High On Fire while bassist Al Cisneros and drummer Chris Hakius formed Om, a two-man, all-rhythm section band that was part heavy stoner rock and part drone-oriented space rock. They are astonishing for what they can do with such minimalist power. Many of their songs are quite long, although they started to punctuate the longer songs with shorter interludes on more recent albums. Hakius left after Pilgrimage, but the new drummer Emil Amos is just as expressive. Most of these releases are quite similar, though, with every album being as much a variation on a theme as the first. I like Pilgrimage and God Is Good the most because they add in quite a bit more dynamic without losing the all-important focus on the mystical drone.

Oneida - Enemy Hogs (1999), Come On Everybody Let's Rock (2000), Anthem Of The Moon (2001), Steel Rod EP (2001), Atheists Reconsider (split EP with Liars, 2002), Each One Teach One (2002), Secret Wars (2004), The Wedding (2005), Happy New Year (2006), Nice/Splittin'? Peaches EP (2008), Preteen Weaponry (2008), Rated O (2009), Absolute II (2011). Oneida is just as experimental as Om, although all they share is a sense of drone. Oneida has a healthy interest in many other styles and sounds, including classic rock, krautrock, fingerstyle folk (strangely enough), and lots and lots of noise. The earlier albums feature songs that are more conventionally structured than the later ones. Each One Teach One, a major turning point, starts with two roughly 15-minute tracks that are both built are minimal riffs (the first, "Sheets Of Easter" is pretty much a single chord). Secret Wars, a truly great album, incorporates many of Oneida's interests into a coherent whole. The Wedding and Happy New Year are close behind, although both are more eclectic. Preteen Weaponry is pretty much an amazing, sprawling single track split into three parts. Rated O brings in some dancehall sounds from the third world, strangely enough, and spans a three-album length with not many stops between songs. Absolute II, unfortunately, is no fun at all, a four-song, mostly keyboard-dominated album that seems to be all about trying the patience of listeners as the band tosses out annoying sound after annoying sound. Sorry, I came to this party for some mind-melting eclectic psych jams, not the sounds that Kraftwork would reject as too inhumanly dull.

At The AV Club: lots of things

2011-11-13T14:36:00.001-05:00

I have been absent for a little while. Among the things I have neglected to mention here are that I am writing about three shows for the AV Club now.

Prime Suspect: A show that's neither good nor bad nor just a kid like you. Sorry for the undeserved Leon Payne/Hank Williams reference.

The Simpsons: A show that has become defiantly not good. The commenters there remind me why I used to always avoid AV Club comments like the plague.

Avatar: The Last Airbender: I've resumed season two coverage here.

Music Library: Okkervil River, Ol' Dirty Bastard, Old 97's, Olivia Tremor Control

2011-09-19T16:38:00.001-04:00

Okkervil River - Don't Fall In Love With Everyone You See (2002), Down The River Of Broken Dreams (2003), Sham Wedding/Hoax Funeral EP (with Shearwater, 2004), Black Sheep Boy (2005), The President's Dead (2006), and The Stage Names (2007). Okkervil River is a band that I like but do not love. I wish it were otherwise, especially now that they have added the ultra-talented Lauren Gurgiolo to their line-up. Actually, that is unfair, as I have heard nothing from the new album, which the one she plays on. I might love it. These albums, unfortunately, have not given me much of an incentive. I really like Down The River of Broken Dreams, which sounds like a kaleidoscope version of some amalgam of The Band and Neutral Milk Hotel. The next few albums and EPs, though, give me diminishing returns down to The Stage Names, which moves me not at all.

Ol' Dirty Bastard - Return To The 36 Chambers: The Dirty Version (1995). Yeah, this is fun.

Old 97's - Wreck Your Life (1998), Fight Songs (1999),
Satellite Rides (2001), and Blame It On Gravity (2008). Like Wreckless Eric, The Old 97's are a power pop band masquerading as a flavor of country. As a power pop band, they are pretty good if never hands-down great. As an alt-country outfit, they're a bar band. The best of these is Satellite Rides, which abandons most of the country for some pure pop hooks.

Olivia Tremor Control - Music From The Unrealized Film Script, Dusk At Cubist Castle (1996), Explanation II: Instrumental Themes And Dream Sequences (1996), Pre-Cubist Castle Demos (1996), The Opera House EP (1997), John Peel Session 3/18/97, Live At Terrastock 4/27/97, Live in Chicago 5/1/97, Live In Atlanta 11/22/97, Live At The Emmaboda Festival (1998), Black Foliage: Animation Music (1999), Live In San Francisco 4/23/99, Live in Toronto 11/5/99, tracks from Smiling Pets (1999), "European Son," and Presents: Singles And Beyond (2000). As this list might indicate, I love the hell out of The Olivia Tremor Control. Dusk At Cubist Castle was a favorite way back in 1996, when I was just starting to figure out the greatness of the Beach Boys and quite into 60s psychedelia in general. I enjoy OTC's forays into electronic weirdness, too, although too much of it at once can tip it into boredom. All of these live bootlegs are somewhere between fun and disposable, though. The OTC is best at studio-level production. If you're just looking for one or two albums, I think you will be plenty happy with Dusk At Cubist Castle and Singles And Beyond. Leave the rest for fanatics.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Episodes 2.9, 2.10, and 2.11

2011-09-14T00:43:00.001-04:00

In which I review three great episodes before our TV Club Classic Avatar coverage goes on hiatus for a few months.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Episodes 2.7 and 2.8 plus Masterpiece Mystery: Inspector Lewis

2011-09-07T01:57:00.000-04:00

In which I review "Zuko Alone," which is my favorite Avatar episode, and "The Chase," which is pretty well close.

In which I review the latest episode of Inspector Lewis.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 2.5 and 2.6

2011-08-31T01:00:00.000-04:00

In which I review the mediocre "Avatar Day" and the excellent "Blind Bandit."

Music Library: O Bando, Jim O'Rourke, Obsessed, Octopus Project, Of Montreal, Oh-OK, Ohio Express

2011-08-25T20:58:00.003-04:00

O Bando - O Bando (1969). Tropicalia from the psych-garage side. It's okay, but it's nowhere in the league of the identically named (given the translation) The Band.

Jim O'Rourke - Long Night (2008). From O'Rourke's experimental side, this is a single work split into two parts, each about an hour and 20 minutes long. While I like it, I'm not sure that I got enough out of it to justify the time I put into it.

The Obsessed - Lunar Womb (1991). Scott "Wino" Weinrich's band prior to St. Vitus was The Obsessed, based out of Maryland. When The Obsessed's original album from the early 80s was finally released in 1990, Wino left St. Vitus, pulled together a new rhythm section, and called this new band The Obsessed. This is the second Obsessed album, therefore, but it's the first with the band as it was comprised in the 90s. Anyway, it's typically great doom metal, like most everything Wino does. And the cover, one of Goya's dark period paintings, is metal as fuck all.

The Octopus Project - One Ten Hundred Thousand Million (2004). Oh, this is just great. Indie-pop from Austin with a killer electronica coloration. Fantastic stuff.

Of Montreal - The Sunlandic Twins (2005). Bowiesque indie pop. I sorta like it, but I'm not crazy about it. I generally love the Elephant 6 bands. Of Montreal, though, I don't love, Maybe someday.

Oh-OK - The Complete Recordings (recorded 1982-1984). Now this is an Athens band I love. Led by Michael Stipe's sister Lynda and Linda Hopper, Oh-OK was a fascinating band. At first, they featured Stipe on bass and vocals, Hopper on vocals, and a drummer pumping out dance beats. Later they added Matthew Sweet on guitar, and that's great, too, but I like 'em best with the more stripped-down sound.

Ohio Express - "Yummy Yummy Yummy" and "Chewy Chewy." Bubblegum music is the naked truth! Some folks don't take these songs seriously, but you can hear a whole lot of punk and post-punkish pop in them.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 2.3 and 2.4

2011-08-25T00:44:00.000-04:00

In which I cover Return to Omashu and The Swamp. In the comments, I mention my recent health problems.

Music Library: Nirvana, No Age, No Man/No Man's Band, NoMeansNo, NOMO, Norman Blake, Notwist, Nouvelle Vague, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan

2011-08-20T14:39:00.000-04:00

Nirvana - Bleach (1989), Nevermind (1991), In Utero (1993), MTV Unplugged In New York (1994). Is there a point to writing about these guys at this stage? I think everything that I could possibly say has been said ad nauseam. I will say that my favorite of these is the Unplugged album, not least because it has the Meat Puppets on it.

No Age - Weirdo Rippers (2007) and Nouns (2008). Great indie rock band. I always love these guys when I listen to them and completely forget about them later. And then I'm surprised when they come up again.

No Man/No Man's Band - Damage The Enemy (1989). Art-rock from Mission of Burma's Roger Miller in the between years. It's alright, but it ain't no Mission of Burma.

NoMeansNo - 0 + 2 = 1 (1991) and In The Fishtank 1 (1999). Solid SST-style punk rock. The Fishtank EP is one of the early ones, before they hit on the idea of bringing in two different bands to try to merge their styles.

NOMO - New Tones (2006), Ghost Rock (2008), and Invisible Cities (2009). An instrumental band with a healthy dose of afrobeat melding with jazz, tropicalia, post-rock, and avant-rock, NOMO is fascinating. Their cover choices are extraordinary, too. New Tones features, besides - it should be said - the killer originals, the most unlikely cover of Joanna Newsom's "Book Of Right-On." Invisible Cities, which does add quite a bit of tropicalia madness, includes a cover of Tom Zé's monster track, "Mã." All in all, all three of these are fantastic.

Norman Blake - Live At McCabe's (1976), Whiskey Before Breakfast (1976), Norman Blake and Tony Rice 2 (with Tony Rice, 1990). Blake, who is not the guy from Teenage Fanclub, is one of the major bluegrass guitarists alive today. He's played with pretty much everyone, including Dylan, Cash, and Steve Earle. His solo work features astonishing virtuosity presented with utter relaxation. That tension is amazing to hear. His collaboration with Tony Rice has the two greased-axle players trading licks with more notes than every other album released in 1990 combined. And it's only 30-something minutes long. If these guys didn't have such feel for their material, this would be Yngwie-style wanking, but they play with not just speed but nuance, and that means everything.

The Notwist - Neon Golden (2002). The formula of indie-rock-plus-electronica-percussion has been copied by a gazillion bands by now, but The Notwist were early adopters. These songs are excellent, and the unusual sounds they add are quite pleasing to my ears. I think Pitchfork stuck the song "One With The Freaks" on their best-of-the-00s list.

Nouvelle Vague - "Too Drunk To Fuck." French cabaret-style cover of the Dead Kennedys song. Yawn.

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan - Mustt Mustt (1990) and Bandit Queen Soundtrack (1996). Khan was one of the major practitioners of the traditional devotional music of the Sufis, Qawwali. He's an amazing singer, but even in these albums, which are somewhat Western-oriented in their production, I find that I am sadly indifferent to his charms. I can hear his talent, but it doesn't speak to me.

Music Library: Nick Lowe, Nicky Hopkins, Nico, Nina Nastasia, Nina Simone

2011-08-19T18:31:00.006-04:00

Nick Lowe - Jesus of Cool (1978), "Let's Eat," Labour of Lust (1979), Nick Lowe and Dave Edmunds Sing The Everly Brothers EP (1980), Nick The Knife (1982), Nick Lowe and His Cowboy Outfit (1984), "I Knew The Bride When She Used To Rock and Roll," Party of One (1990), The Impossible Bird (1994), Dig My Mood (1998), The Convincer (2001), Untouched Takeaway (2004), At My Age (2007), and Quiet Please: The New Best Of Nick Lowe (2009). It seems there should be a genre name for the type of songs that Nick Lowe writes, even though it's clear that, at least in the early days, he's working against multiple genre conventions. They're all somewhere between country and pop, deeply informed by the protopunk-ish pub rock of the 70s, but still hard to shoehorn in any subgenre other than just plain rock. What Lowe does is craft extraordinary songs, built around a central conceit that is generally simple and rich at the same time. As much as I like the younger, more rockin' Lowe, I really love the older, more mature songwriter that he grew into around 1990 with Party of One. That and every album after is a near-perfect collection of songs.

Nicky Hopkins - The Tin Man Was A Dreamer (1973). Hopkins was a session musician for many classic rock tracks, especially with the Stones. Considering how talented he was as a sideman, I hoped that this would be an excellent album, but unfortunately, I was a little underwhelmed in two listens. Perhaps I'll change my mind over time.

Nico - Chelsea Girl (1967) and The Marble Index (1969). She may not be much of a singer, but these chamber pop pieces are gorgeous and powerful. She wrote very little on the first and almost all of the second, but they seem of a piece. Consider how instrumental Jackson Browne was for the first album (even writing the amazing track "These Days," which is my favorite Nico song). I can't believe I'm complimenting Jackson Browne, but there you go.

Nina Nastasia - Dogs (2000), The Blackened Air (2002), Run To Ruin (2003), On Leaving (2006), You Follow Me (with Jim White, 2007), and Outlaster (2010). Nastasia is possibly my favorite underappreciated songwriters currently working. These songs tend to come across as folk revival tracks at first, but Nastasia is an odd bird of an artist. Her tracks veer off into odd tangents, chasing the emotion far beyond the bounds of traditional songcraft. With only six albums to her name, it seems unfair to say that three are my favorites, but it is true. The Blackened Air is a horror story masquerading as folk music, as if Flannery O'Connor and Shirley Jackson were collaborating on songs. You Follow Me features stunning interplay between Nastasia and Dirty Three drummer Jim White, who makes the most of Nastasia's lovely, unsettling songs. Outlaster is a heartbreaker with Nastasia's trademark near-perfect songs. Only "You're A Holy Man" stands out as a less-than-great track, and I'm even on the fence about that one. Seems appropriate that she should come up in a post that also includes Nick Lowe and Nico.

Nina Simone - Little Girl Blue (1958), Verve Jazz Masters 17 (1958-1967), Wild Is The Wind (1966), The Essential Nina Simone Vol. I (1967-1973), and The Essential Nina Simone Vol. II (1967-1971). A singer of neither pure jazz nor R&B, Simone was extraordinary for her ability to combine many different styles into something uniquely her own. Her deep, sometimes-brassy, sometimes-bassoony voice is like no other. I'm not crazy about all of the rock covers on the last two albums, neither of which seems all that essential, but there's enough pleasure to justify them, anyway.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 2.1 and 2.2 plus Gloria: In Her Own Words

2011-08-16T18:58:00.000-04:00

In which I discuss the first two episodes of season two of Avatar: The Last Airbender, which includes the hilarious "The Cave Of Two Lovers."

plus:

In which I discuss the HBO documentary on Gloria Steinem called Gloria: In Her Own Words.

Music Library: New York Dolls, Gary Newcomb Trio, Joanna Newsom, Ney Matogrosso, Nick Cave, Nick Drake

2011-08-10T14:37:00.111-04:00

New York Dolls - New York Dolls (1973) and Too Much Too Soon (1974). I doubt I have to convince any of the theoretical readers of this blog that the New York Dolls were both groundbreaking and astonishingly great. A lot of dudes put on makeup and ladies' clothing after the Dolls, but none wore them with the same crazy wit and most made music that wasn't even in the same ballpark.

The Gary Newcomb Trio - The Gary Newcomb Trio (2008). An Austin-based country-pop trio that featured a pedal steel player in the traditional guitarist's role and my pal Brandon on bass, The Gary Newcomb Trio are a fun listen. Recommended.

Joanna Newsom - Have One On Me (2010). Perhaps I'm overwhelmed, but this is the first Joanna Newsom album that really has failed to grab me. I mean, I like it, but I don't love and I don't really see it as a great leap forward. Her first had more catchy songs on it and her second seems more wildly ambitious. This one seems more like a tribute to Joni Mitchell and Fleetwood Mac than an attempt to rewrite American folk music. More isn't always more, if you know what I mean.

Ney Matogrosso - As Ilhas single (1974). Apparently this guy is a sort of Brazilian Klaus Nomi, with a stage show featuring absurdist outfits and a outlandishly high singing voice. These two tracks are rather like Brazilian chamber pop.

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - From Her To Eternity (1984), The First Born Is Dead (1985), Kicking Against The Pricks (1986), Let Love In (1994), Murder Ballads (1995), and The Boatman's Call (1997). I'm a relatively recent convert to Nick Cave. He seemed so overwrought to me when I was younger, but his music hits me right in the gut now. Fans: what should I get next? These albums are fairly remarkable for their ability to be somewhat the same over a lot of variation in style. For Her To Eternity combines avant-noise with Tom Waits-ian theatrics and some wonderfully tense dynamics. The First Born Is Dead has all of those elements, but the album deconstructs the blues. Kicking Against The Pricks is a covers album that maintains the building dread of the first two albums with even more cabaret-style theatrics. There's some five albums I don't have in the gap here, but Let Love In is an astonishingly dark and fun albums of songs about the destructive nature of love. Murder Ballads promises on its title, with death and (comical) mayhem filling each song to the brim. The Boatsman's Call, on the other hand, shed the theatrics in favor of breathtaking intimate ballads. All of these albums are fantastic, so tell me: what next, friends?

Nick Drake - Five Leaves Left (1969), Bryter Layter (1970), Pink Moon (1972), Time Of No Reply (released 1996) and Made To Love Magic (released 2004). The tragedy of Nick Drake's death is part of the story of his life, the quintessential talented young guitarist and songwriter who was too sensitive for this world. These albums support the image of oversensitivity. Five Leaves Left is almost impossibly beautiful, but it is also a chilly album with quite a bit of remove. Every song is perfect, though, with the right amount of taste in the accompaniment (Richard Thompson's guitar on "Time Has Told Me" is especially great, as are Robert Kirby's string arrangements). Bryter Layter is a mistake that amplifies the arrangements to an unfortunate level. There are good songs under all of that goop, but only a few are pleasant listens for me. Pink Moon, the last album he made while alive, is of an even more perfect and chilly and bleak beauty, like the harvest moon referenced in the title song. The two posthumous albums consist of outtakes and home recordings and are mostly not that enjoyable.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.19 & 1.20

2011-08-10T00:41:00.000-04:00

In which we reach the two-part finale of season one.

Music Library: Neville Brothers, New Establishment In Soul, New Model Army, New Order, New Pornographers, New Race, New Ruins, New Year

2011-08-09T14:35:00.082-04:00

The Neville Brothers - Yellow Moon (1989). While I like the Nevilles, in theory, I've generally thought of them more as a fun live band than something where I'd find much of interest in their studio output. But I rather like this album with its funky and heartfelt Dylan and Carter Family covers, so maybe, once again, there is a disconnect between things that I think and things that I think I think.

New Establishment In Soul - "Whip It (Pt. 1)." No idea where I picked up this single, so it must be from a mixtape that fell apart somewhere along the way in my library. Anyway, it's cooking.

New Model Army - History (The Singles 85-91). New Model Army were a British post-punk band that I was mostly unfamiliar with before acquiring this from a friend. And it's ok, but it doesn't really inspire me to seek out more. I can hear elements of the Mekons and the Jam here, but I think the Mekons and the Jam did it better.

New Order - Substance (recorded 1981-1986). I enjoy some electronica and dance tracks, but it's just not something I prefer to listen to, for the most part. While I really like Joy Division, I enjoy New Order in more limited doses. That said, "Ceremony" is a killer track, and I really like how many of these songs are named after movies that I love. But I was ready to bail on this after five or six songs, and sticking out the whole double-album experience was definitely pushing on my tolerance level.

The New Pornographers - Mass Romantic (2000), Electric Version (2003), Twin Cinema (2005), Challengers (2007), and Together (2010). After all of that mopey dance rock, I was quite ready for The New Pornographers' power pop. They're basically The Cars of indie rock, with synth-drenched hook, singalongs, and ostentatious lyrics that mix the silly with the sublime. My favorite is the second, Electric Version, but all five are excellent. Considering how emotional Dan Bejar's work with Destroyer is, it's surprising that his songs match so well with Carl Newman's little pop masterpieces. And Neko Case's vocals are welcome in any context. So, what the hey, here's a link to one of their recent videos, directed by the hilarious Tom Scharpling with pretty much everyone who is awesome appearing in it.

While I'm at it, here's a version of "The Laws Have Changed" from Letterman in 2003. No Dan Bejar, but it does have the gorgeous Neko Case tearing it up throughout.

New Race - The First and The Last (1982). A supergroup no one ever heard of, New Race combines guitarist Ron Asheton of the Stooges and drummer Dennis Thompson of MC5 with three members of the venerable Aussie punk band Radio Birdman, including guitarist Deniz Tek and singer Rob Younger (I forgot the bassist's name and am too lazy at the moment to look it up). On fire throughout.

New Ruins - "Ships." No idea where I picked this single up. It's pretty good, though.

The New Year - Newness Ends (2001), The End Is Near (2004), and The New Year (2008). Picking up where Bedhead left off, The New Year sees the Kadane brothers (on vocals/guitar and drums) adding some friends (including Josh McKay of Macha and Chris Brokaw of Come and Consonant) and making more betterer songs in their signature style of being simultaneously loud as hell without losing their appealing mopey and sleepy quality. As long as I'm sharing video clips, here's a video for "The End's Not Near" from their second album. From the looks of it, it was made at the old Austin airport near my house back in TX. My band Parks & Wildlife made pictures there, too. All of that stuff is gone now.

Music Library: Neu!, Neurosis, and Neutral Milk Hotel

2011-08-08T14:34:00.118-04:00

NEU! - NEU! (1972), NEU! '72 Live In Dusseldorf (recorded 1972), NEU! 2 (1973), NEU! 75 (1975). I'm not shouting at you. All caps is how NEU! rolls. A duo of guitarist Michael Rother and drummer Klaus Dinger, NEU! was formed with the two left Kraftwerk in 1971 to work on their own music, which influenced, let's say, everything that came after. Like the legendary Velvet Underground story, NEU!'s work never sold that well, but everyone who bought it formed a band. The opening track on NEU! demonstrates their genius, with driving, unstoppable drum rhythms (dubbed "motorik" for being, well, driving and unstoppable) combined with heavily distorted guitar parts that sustain on and on until your mind blows. The remaining tracks are no less fantastic, combining odd sounds, ambient textures, and field recordings with the aforementioned motorik drums and droney guitars (and no lyrics on most). Actually, I'm not so crazy about the last track, "Lieber Honig," with its maybe too-precious finger-style guitar and ugly-pretty hoarse vocals, but even that track has enough droney weirdness to be inching towards greatness. The live album, released in the 1980s, is just awful, with terrible sound quality barely marring the lousy, unfocused jamming. Unworthy of the NEU! name, for sure. NEU! 2 is another landmark for a completely different reason. The band ran out of cash with only half the album recorded, so they hit upon a pretty wild idea. They took their previously released single "Neuschnee/Super" and played it back at different speeds, one time even mangling it in a cassette player. Each one sounds like its own piece of music and a deconstruction of the music at the same time. I have no idea if they were aware of what Jamaican producers were doing with dub around the same time, but the idea is similar: using the studio as an instrument to manipulate the sound until it is completely ripped from its original context. Brilliant stuff, the precursor to remixes popular today. By the time of NEU! 75, Rother and Dinger were no longer communicating well with each other. This album is essentially a split between two different visions of music. Rother was playing in the ambient krautrock band Harmonia with the band Cluster, and his contributions (the first three songs, all of which were side A of the LP) are mostly ambient-leaning, keyboard-heavy, and pretty. For side B, Dinger brought in his brother and a friend to play drums, picked up a guitar, and cut some seriously angry proto-punk with vocals. Excellent stuff, even if it's not quite up to the heady heights of the first two studio albums.

Neurosis - Through Silver In Blood (1996) and Sovereign EP (2000). An incredibly creative band, Neurosis introduced a lot of psychedelic twists and turns, heavily ambient parts, and sludgy doom riffs into mainstream metal and thus influenced many of the metal bands I love today. However, I think I came to them to late, having already grown used to their innovations through their followers. I hear these as creative metal, but I'm not immersed enough in the metal scene to really have my head blown by their sound. Like it, don't love it.

Neutral Milk Hotel - Invent Yourself A Shortcake (1991), Beauty (1992), Hype City Soundtrack (1993), Everything Is EP (1994), On Avery Island (1995), In The Aeroplane Over The Sea (1998), Live At The Cat's Cradle (bootleg, 1998), Live In San Francisco (bootleg, 1998), unreleased tracks (1997-1999), and "Engine" from Oh, Merge (1999). I've told this story a bunch of times, so forgive me if you've heard it before. I picked up In The Aeroplane on my friend Phred's recommendation in 1998, but decided that I didn't like it and returned it to his record store. Over the next few years, I found some of the lyrics and snippets of the music stuck in my head. I finally decided in 2001 or so to pick up another copy and give it another listen. And I loved the hell out of it this time. As of right now, it has 36 plays in my iTunes library since I started counting in 1997. It's not much, but it was a good lesson about first impressions and the importance of giving myself time to change my mind. So, Neutral Milk Hotel. The first three of these are home-released "albums" of found noise and poorly recorded early versions that NMH leader Jeff Mangum made through the early 1990s. They are none too good, although it's clear that Mangum has some serious talent. In fact, if you've heard Everything Is, with its field recordings and good songs buried under noise, well, then, you have a glimpse of these first three sorta-albums. On Avery Island refines things a bit, with Robert Schneider's much-improved production making this a good-if-not-great album featuring some great songs ("Song Against Sex," in particular, is fantastic). And then there's In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, which combines haunting imagery influenced by The Diary of Anne Frank and Freudian imagery out the wazoo with horns blaring, acoustic guitars intentionally pushed into the red (meaning: highly distorted by the recording, not by a stompbox or amp), wild drumming, and wildly passionate singing. One of the finest albums of the 90s, if not The Finest, and that's where I lean. The bootlegs are fun, the unreleased tracks probably better left that way, and "Engine" a bittersweet elegy of what we lost when Jeff Mangum walked away from his music career. He has been playing some shows of late. I hope that he's found it within himself to make another album, but I understand wanting to leave it all on a career-high, too.

Music Library: Neko Case, Nels Cline, Neon Boys

2011-08-07T14:33:00.154-04:00

Neko Case - The Virginian (with Her Boyfriends, 1997), Furnace Room Lullaby (with Her Boyfriends, 1998), Canadian Amp EP (2001), Blacklisted (2003), "Buckets of Rain (Live)," Fox Confessor Brings The Flood (2006), and Middle Cyclone (2009). Neko Case, besides being the most adorable singer in all of singer-land, grew by leaps and bounds on every album through her third. Afterwards, she continues to tweak her formula, making marginal improvements as she goes. Furnace Room Lullaby, with its spacey noir elements, is much better than the more traditional alt-countryish The Virginian. Canadian Amp is more stripped-back and bare, less a transitional album than a breath of air. Blacklisted has a huge sound, something closer to The Band's blend of country, rock, and soul, but with a heavy noir effect that Case has described as being influenced by Angelo Badalamenti's scores to David Lynch projects and by Neil Young's Dead Man soundtrack. The cover of "Buckets of Rain" is from a SXSW show in 2005, as recorded by a pal of mine. Fox Confessor is another leap, this time into more elliptical songwriting that still evokes heavy emotion. I wasn't much taken with it when it came out, but I like it much more now. Middle Cyclone, besides having a contender for the title of greatest cover art of all time, seems more personal lyrically, but the music is definitely of a piece with that of the prior two studio albums. Personally, I never feel that I have to rush out and buy the new Neko Case release, but I will always get around to it eventually.

Nels Cline:

Chest (with the Nels Cline Trio, 1996), "In Store" (with Thurston Moore, 1996), "Self Referenced/West Germany" (with the Nels Cline Trio, 1996), and Pillow Wand (with Thurston Moore, 1997). One of the best, most technically accomplished, interesting, creative, and fun guitarists alive, Nels Cline is best known for being the guitarist for Wilco these days. However, his career goes back to the early 1980s. He was a jazzbo through most of the 80s and into the early 1990s. I was first aware of Cline as a guitarist on Mike Watt's Ball-hog or Tug-boat? album and tour. I have no idea how Watt met him, but thank the fates that he did. I actually met Cline (and Watt and Michael Preussner) on that tour. Watt moved Cline to a more central role by having him serve as the sole guitarist on his 1997 rock opera Contemplating The Engine Room. At that point, I knew I had to hear more of what Cline was doing. As it turns out, he was making great skronky jazz records and avant-noise albums with Thurston Moore. The Minutemen cover I mention here is pretty amazing, too.

Sad (with the Nels Cline Trio, 1998), Rise Pumpkin Rise (with Devin Sarno, 1998), and Interstellar Space Revisited (with Gregg Bendian, 1999). Like Chest, Sad is skronky jazz, as if Peter Brotzmann had a trio where he replaced his sax with a heavily-distorted guitar. Rise Pumpkin Rise is a collaboration with an L.A.-based avant-rock bassist, and mostly consists of atmospheric instrumentals that ebb and flow more than anything. Interstellar Space Revisited is an interesting idea. Cline and Bendian (a percussionist) are sorta covering John Coltrane's free-jazz sax-and-drums album Interstellar Space. Like any jazz guys playing their own version of a song, they play the theme and then improvise, but considering that Interstellar Space is bare-bones on themes and high on improvisation, Cline and Bendian are more-or-less doing improve in the style of Interstellar Space. Pretty cool, actually, although it would be shit in lesser hands.

The Inkling (2000), Destroy All Nels Cline (2001), and Instrumentals (with the Nels Cline Singers, 2002). Here's where things start getting phenomenal. Cline is lyrical as hell on The Inkling, which an utterly gorgeous album. Destroy All Nels Cline is amazing, a deconstruction of guitar noise and technique worthy of the great avant-noise composers of the late 20th century that also showcases considerable style, restraint, and talent. Cline has been trying to fuse post-punk adventurousness with jazz skill and minimalist compositional structure to this point, and Destroy All Nels Cline succeeds in spades. Instrumentals showcases Cline's new band The Nels Cline Singers kicking out more avant-noise punk-jazz in the vein of DANC, although I like it slightly less.

Buried On Bunker Hill (with Devin Sarno, 2004), Immolation/Immersion (with Wally Shoup and Chris Corsano, 2005), and Draw Breath (with the Nels Cline Singers, 2007). After all of this lyricism of the last three, the drones on Buried On Bunker Hill failed to move me. Immolation/Immersion is ultra-creative avant-jazz skronk with sax player Shoup and drummer Corsano. Draw Breath features more of the crazy unhinged noise-guitar of the DANC sound, along with some of the most beautifully restrained playing of Cline's career. Lovely album.

The Neon Boys - The Neon Boys EP (1973). Before Television, there was the Neon Boys, which featured Tom Verlaine on guitar, Billy Ficca on drums, and Richard Hell on bass. Hell was the primary songwriter and vocalist, and this EP contains early versions of "Love Comes In Spurts," "Don't Die," "Time," and "You Gotta Lose." Pretty awesome for fans of Television, Hell, and the whole proto-punk scene.

Music Library: Neil Young

2011-08-06T15:24:00.317-04:00

I should write "WWNYD" on all of my guitars, because I can't even touch one without thinking of what Mr. Young would do. He's one of my all-time favorite guitarists and songwriters, a guy who knows exactly how to wreak the most emotion from every note, every phrase, every line. And that's what poetry is. Also, he sings real funny, but I don't even notice it anymore. It drives my wife up the wall, though.

Neil Young (1968). Neil's first album after springing himself from Buffalo Springfield is an altogether too sensitive folky-with-strings thing. That said, it's better than 85% of albums that could be described thus and at least 50% better than it has any right to be.

Neil Young Archives Volume I (1963-1972). This is a massive box set, but I already owned much of the material on it. Skipping over the early tracks, I bought some 25 unreleased songs and versions of songs when eMusic acquired this. Among the things I picked up are an early version of "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," two different versions of "Birds," including one with Crazy Horse (!), a couple of more songs from Gold Rush with CSNY: good stuff. Nothing earthshaking, mind you, but pretty good, nonetheless.

Sugar Mountain: Live at Canterbury House 1968. A live show from the Archive series, this is NY kicking it, folky-style. There are a bunch of songs from his Buffalo Springfield tenure and first solo album, but they have more life here. Plus there's part of an early version of "Winterlong," my favorite NY song.

Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere (with Crazy Horse, 1969). Seven songs, four of which are stone classics. Two have guitar solos for days, so minimalistic at times that they seem like Neil is paying for each note, so unhinged at times that it's like Neil doesn't care how much it costs him. And what amazing songs! I sometimes forget that this wasn't his first album, because it probably should be. But it's okay that Neil made a half-hearted one first because he wouldn't want it getting around that he's invested in this or anything. I want to mention Danny Whitten's guitar parts, too. He's ostensibly a rhythm player, but his parts are so complementary that it seems he's more of a co-lead. Definitely an influence on Television.

After The Gold Rush (1970). Meant to accompany a movie that never existed, Gold Rush is a near-perfect album, combining all of Neil's love of stompbox country and edge-of-the-needle folk. The only song I could do without is his cover of Don Gibson's "Oh, Lonesome Me," which drags more than the original and yet fails to capture the pathos. I'm happy to call it a noble failure rather than a speed bump.

Live At The Fillmore East (with Crazy Horse, recorded 1970). I probably should mention that I shuffled many of the live albums by when they were recorded, not when they were released. This came out in 2006. It is the Holy Grail of Neil Young/Danny Whitten guitar interplay. It has a 12-minute version of "Down By The River" and a 16-minute version of "Cowgirl In The Sand" and nary a wasted noted between them.

Live At Massey Hall 1971. As he is the god of tasteful guitar licks, he is also a god of songwriting. Wikipedia helpfully notes that only eight of the 18 songs he played that night had appeared on albums at the time of performance. The remaining ten would pop up in different places over the next few years, mostly (well, about half) on Harvest. Excellent recording and excellent performance.

Harvest (February 1972). This was a major album for Neil, but not for me. It's a little more countrified, with a backing band Neil dubbed the Stray Gators that was pulled from Nashville session players. The songs are pretty strong, but I've always had a hard time connecting with it. Neil's trying pretty hard to please a mass audience (and that he did: it went to #1 on the US charts and is a multi-platinum seller), but I like him better when his rough edges poke through.

Journey Through The Past (November 1972). This is the soundtrack to a NY-directed movie that I've never seen. From all reports, it sounds rather incoherent, which is easily the best word to describe this album, the NY album I am least likely to reach for, ever.

Time Fades Away (1973). NY reportedly hates this album and refuses to release it on CD or as a digital download. But he is wrong. It is one of his top five best albums. It's a live album recorded with the Stray Gators on the Harvest tour, but his songwriting is more bare and angry and aching than on Harvest. See, Danny Whitten was supposed to join them on that tour, but he died of a heroin overdose instead. And these songs, most of which appear nowhere else, are brutal. So brutal that even the Stray Gators can't make them sound easy. I said I like him better when the rough edges shine through; this one is all rough edges and bloody elbows, and goddamn does it taste sweet.

On The Beach (1974). Tonight's The Night was recorded first, but this one was released nearly a year earlier. Full of great - if a bit meandering - songs and bare performances, it's a strong album only a step or two behind Time Fades Away.

Citizen Cane Junior Blues (bootleg, 1974). This is an acoustic bootleg from the On The Beach tour. I have no regrets.

Tonight's The Night (1975). Sounding like it was recorded in the dead of night in an undertaker's backroom while drunk on cheap whiskey, Tonight's The Night is the sound of being wound down, exhausted, depressed, and beaten. It's an elegy for a whole part of NY's life, but I have to admit that it's not really an album that I love. I like it. Admire it. But the mopeyness sounds a little calculated and polished, and I just can't take to it the way I want to. It's a great album, but I can't be satisfied with mere greatness.

Zuma (with Crazy Horse, 1975). I don't know that there's ever been a greater album shackled to shittier cover art than Zuma. With new guitarist Frank Sampedro stepping in on the Crazy Horse guitar duties, NY throws out a series of songs that refuses to be marred by dumb lyrics ("Don't Cry No Tears"), sexism ("Stupid Girl") or Crosby, Stills, and Nash ("Through My Sails"). "Cortez The Killer" is downright epic in scope and execution. First-rate.

Long May You Run (as the Stills-Young Band, 1976). A remarkably crappy collaboration with Stephen Stills, long the catalyst behind some of NY's questionable output, Long May You Run features a couple of okay NY songs, a few bad ones, and a whole bunch of stink from Stills, who must have had some seriously good weed to convince Neil to go along with this crap for as long as he did (legendarily, NY stepped out 8 dates into what was planned to be a long tour, leaving a pithy note about spontaneity for Stills).

Chrome Dreams (bootleg, 1976). This was intended to be a release, but NY pulled it. I'm glad. The ones that he changed on subsequent releases, he always changed for the better, and all but one of the songs turned up on later albums. It doesn't flow well, either. That said, it would have been a great second-tier NY album if he had put it out. Considering that the songs he improved ended up on the first-tier Rust Never Sleeps, I'm glad he made the gamble.

American Stars 'N Bars (1977). This one is a bit all over the map, stylistically. There's a lot of Harvest-style smoothness, but there's also "Like A Hurricane" and "Homegrown" with the full Crazy Horse stomp. It's not a favorite of mine, but it'll do.

"Winterlong" and "Campaigner" (1977). Clearly, I have no use for the greatest-hits compilation Decade, except that it includes these two nonalbum tracks, and one of them, "Winterlong," is my favorite NY song.

Comes A Time (1978). Another Harvest-style album. I have a lot of affection for it, because I can't help but love "Lotta Love."

Rust Never Sleeps and Live Rust (both with Crazy Horse, 1979). Half acoustic pastorale, half Crazy Horse putting on punk airs, Rust Never Sleeps is a perfect album. Every song is exactly what it is supposed to be, and "Powderfinger," in particular, is the Great American Song. Not a note out of place. Live Rust is an typical greatest-hits-played-faster live album, the first such of NY's career (both Time Fades Away and Rust Never Sleeps were substantially recorded live, but both feature new songs and are more like studio albums in that way). That said, Live Rust features some stunning guitar work.

Hawks & Doves and Where The Buffalo Roam Soundtrack (both 1980). Neither of these seem well-thought-out. They're both kind of all over the place. H&D has some of the more cast-off songs in any NY album to date, with some surprisingly right-wing-oriented lyrics. WTBR has NY playing the title song on a heavily distorted guitar, which seems like it should come together in a big way, but doesn't.

Re-Ac-Tor (with Crazy Horse, 1981). It has a bad rap, but Re-Ac-Tor brings the wild guitar rave-ups infused with punk energy that fueled the second half of Rust Never Sleeps. None of the songs have the strength of the Rust songs, but they have plenty of energy to burn. I'd written this one off years ago, so I was surprised by how strongly I re-act-ed to it this time.

Trans (1982). Oh, here is an album that many people just hate. Perhaps influenced by Kraftwerk, perhaps, as NY said about it later, a misguided attempt to communicate with his son who suffered from cerebral palsy, Trans is a bizarre mixture of elements that will never sit right together. I rather like it when I get around to listening to it, but mainly because it is so crazy-wrong.

Everybody's Rockin' (with the Shocking Pinks, 1983). A rockabilly album. I guess I should mention that NY changed labels right before he put out Trans. Between that and this, David Geffen sued him for not sounding like Neil Young. Interesting question: can an artist be someone other than themselves? NY countersued and Geffen lost, by the way, and scared off REM, who had been considering signing with him before the suit.

Old Ways (1985), Landing On Water (1986), Life (with Crazy Horse, 1987), and This Note's For You (with the Bluenotes, 1988). I can't even pretend that I have much to say about these albums. Old Ways is straight-up country with Waylon and Willie and the boys. S'okay. Landing On Water is godawful. Avoid at all costs. Life is turgid and dull, two words that were never applicable to a Crazy Horse record before this. This Note's For You is an R&B pastiche. It's not great, but it's not terrible, so there's that.

Eldorado EP (with the Restless) and Freedom (both 1989). A welcome return to the free world, and the rocking therein. I used to think this was a great album, but 20 years later, it now sounds like a good album given a boost by a grateful audience. The EP has slightly different versions of some of the songs from Freedom and two tracks unavailable elsewhere. Also pretty good.

Ragged Glory and The Feedback Is Back (the latter a bootleg, both with Crazy Horse, 1990). NY + Crazy Horse + loud guitars + great songs = f*!#in' great album. One of the few post-80s NY albums I can give 5 stars in my collection. The bootleg is fun, too.

Arc and Weld (both with Crazy Horse, 1991). The latter is another excellent live album with Crazy Horse. The former is a 35-minute sound collage of noise, feedback, the beginning and ends of "Like A Hurricane," and it is like nothing else.

Harvest Moon (1992). A sweet reunion with the Stray Gators for some country sugar. Another album I used to love more than I do now.

Unplugged and "All Along The Watchtower" (1993). Pretty lame greatest-hits-live thing for MTV's Unplugged series that was popular at the time. The Dylan cover is from a benefit recorded that year.

Sleeps With Angels (with Crazy Horse, 1994) and Mirror Ball (with Pearl Jam, 1995). Never connected that well with either of these albums. There's some good there, but mostly they bore me.

Dead Man Soundtrack (1996), Broken Arrow (with Crazy Horse, 1996) and Year Of The Horse (with Crazy Horse, 1997). Oh my, is the Dead Man Soundtrack great. Maybe it's not your speed, but it is definitely mine. Recorded with two overdubbed NY guitars playing against each other, wrapped around dialogue from the movie, actors reciting Blake poems, pump organs, and the sound of a car running in the background, it is an aural experience that I enjoy immensely. NY's guitar tone is remarkably pure, and his playing is extraordinary. Broken Arrow is a return to form with Crazy Horse, too. Maybe it's not quite as good as Ragged Glory, but better than most everything else from the 1990s. Year Of The Horse is another great live rave-up with Crazy Horse & NY playing their favorite songs. The Jarmusch concert movie is worth seeking out.

Silver & Gold (2000) and Are You Passionate? (2002). I disliked both of these when they came out, so they surprised me by being quite listenable this time around. The former is a Harvest-style country album, the latter a more rocking affair with members of Booker T & The MG's sitting in.

Greendale (with Crazy Horse, 2003). I didn't get this rock opera the first time around, but this time I quite enjoyed it. Frank Sampedro sat this one out, so NY is the only guitarist on the album.

Prairie Wind (2005), Living With War (2006), Living With War: In the Beginning (2006), Chrome Dreams II (2007), Fork In The Road (2009), and Le Noise (2010). Sorry, I'm ready to wrap this up and I don't have that much to say about any of these albums. Unlike the 80s albums, these are all quite listenable. Prairie Wind is another country album. Living With War and LWW: In The Beginning are basically the same album. The latter strips out much of the production of the former and is better for it. Chrome Dreams II is a Freedom-style kitchen sink album. Fork In The Road is a concept album about an electric car that NY likes. It's alright. Le Noise is more or less a NY acoustic album with one loud, distorted guitar replacing his acoustic. Quite listenable, as I say, as I pretty much expect any NY album to be at this point in his career. He's shaken off the pointlessness and he's still reaching for relevance, and god bless him for that.

Music Library: Nas, Nat King Cole, National, National Lampoon, Ned Miller, Neal Merryweather

2011-08-05T20:19:00.002-04:00

Nas - Illmatic (1994) and Al-matic (Nas/Al Green mashup, 2008). Hey, this Illmatic album is pretty good! I wonder if anyone else noticed it. The mashup is good clean fun, too.

Nat King Cole - "Nature Boy." A favorite song around my house. I thought I had a whole album of NKC tracks, but apparently, nope. Just this one.

The National - Alligator (2005), Boxer (2007), The Virginia EP (2008), and High Violet (2010). So here's the thing I figured out while listening to these albums. I really like "Fake Empire" off of Boxer. Everything else is only ok. It seems sort of excessive that I have three albums and an EP by a band with only one song that I really like, doesn't it?

National Lampoon - National Lampoon's Radio Dinner (1972). This albums sounds like the 1960s killing itself. It is satirizing the excesses of late 60s/early 70s pop culture, but I have to admit that a lot of the jokes bounced off me. Not being a boomer, I'm a little bulletproof to this.

Ned Miller - From A Jack To A King (1957). Right on the edge of country and rockabilly, Ned Miller's album is straight-up fun.

Neal Merryweather - "Escape." Rockin' glam-rock tune from the heart of the Canadian 1970s.

Music Library: N.E.R.D., N.W.A., Naast, Naná Vasconcelos, Nancy Sinatra, Napalm Death, Napoleon XIV

2011-08-04T23:02:00.000-04:00

Hey, remember when I used to update this blog with content? Ah, the good old days. In an attempt to bring back the swinging double-aughts, I'm going to attempt to start this feature again, which is especially important to me because I'm only a little over halfway done and I can't check it off my to-do list until I'm done. Which should be in 2020 or so. Onward!

N.E.R.D. - In Search Of... (2002). I gotta go with Christgau on this one. It's shallow but fun. Hip-hop with real drums and remarkably goofy lyrics.

N.W.A. - Straight Outta Compton (1989) and The N.W.A. Legacy, Vol. 1: 1988 - 1998 (1999). A historical document capturing pratfaller Ice Cube and cola spokesman Dr. Dre in the early, "angrier" part of their career. I kid. Both of these are awesome. The latter is a compilation of the young, attitude-laden African-Americans as they moved on to the next stages of their careers.

Naast - L'Antichambre (2007). C'est nouvelle vague du rock français. O.K.

Naná Vasconcelos - Africadeus (1973). Psychedelic folk-rock from Brasil. It may not blow your mind, but it may occupy it for an hour or so.

Nancy Sinatra - Boots (1966). Oh, the single is pure delight. Lee Hazlewood's production is pretty good throughout, too, but the remaining material is only so-so.

Napalm Death - From Enslavement To Oblivion (1988) and Mass Appeal Madness EP (1991). These young men are so angry!

Napoleon XIV - "They're Coming To Take Me Away, Ha-Ha." Not a bad way to follow up Napalm Death, all things considered.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.15 & 1.16 plus 1.17 and 1.18

2011-08-02T20:51:00.000-04:00

In which I discuss "The Northern Air Temple" and "The Waterbending Master"

I missed episodes 15 and 16, so here is the previous installment:

In which I discuss "Bato of the Water Tribe" and "The Deserter"

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.13 and 1.14

2011-07-14T11:43:00.003-04:00

In which I discuss "The Blue Spirit" and "The Fortuneteller."

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.11 and 1.12 plus Citizen U.S.A.

2011-07-06T22:02:00.000-04:00

In which I discuss "The Great Divide" and "The Storm."

In which I discuss Alexandra Pelosi's frustrating documentary.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.7 - 1.10

2011-06-29T00:59:00.000-04:00

I forgot to post last week's episodes: The Spirit World/Avatar Roku.

This week, I cover The Waterbending Scroll and Jet.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.5 and 1.6

2011-06-15T00:30:00.001-04:00

In which I discuss "The King Of Omashu" and "Imprisoned." (Link fixed)

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.3 and 1.4

2011-06-07T21:27:00.000-04:00

In which I recap, review, reassess, and wreak havoc.

At The AV Club: Avatar: The Last Airbender, episodes 1.1 and 1.2

2011-06-01T09:51:00.000-04:00

In which I tackle the first two episodes of a favorite children's show. I'll be posting two more every week throughout the summer.

James Brown, Byrds, Cars, Cheap Trick, Chic, Alex Chilton, Clem Snide

2011-05-28T15:03:00.000-04:00

James Brown - The Payback (1974). The Godfather of Soul's afrobeat-inspired funk masterpiece.

The Byrds - Preflyte (1964), Turn! Turn! Turn! (1965), The Ballad of Easy Rider (1969), Live At The Fillmore February 1969, (Untitled) (1970), Byrdmaniax (1971), Farther Along (1971), Live At The Royal Albert Hall 1971, The Byrds (1973). Picked up pretty much all of the Byrds albums I didn't have from a a friend. The first two are tesimony to the power of Gene Clark as a songwriter. Both live albums are freakin' excellent. Easy Rider and (Untitled) are spotty with some real high marks. Byrdmaniax is terrible. Farther Along and The Byrds are mostly terrible. The latter has some great Gene Clark tracks, though, which also appeared on some of his own albums.

The Cars - Candy-O (1979) and Complete Greatest Hits (released 2002). The second Cars album isn't quite as chock-full of hits as the first one, but it's pretty good. The Greatest Hits collection makes a strong argument that the casual fan such as myself needs something like that more than any of the other albums.

Cheap Trick - At Budokan: The Complete Concert (1978). "I want you... to want me!"

Chic - Dance Dance Dance: The Best Of Chic (1977-1982). As much as I like Chic's weird semi-robotic funk, this may be a little too much of it for me.

Alex Chilton - KUT Session 1978, Dusted In Memphis (And Elsewhere) (1980), Feudalist Tarts EP (1985), No Sex EP (1986), High Priest (1987), Black List (1989), and Loose Shoes And Tight Pussy (1999). Some fine examples of the man's post-Big Star boogie period.

Clem Snide - Hungry Bird (2009) and The Meat Of Life (2010). As with the Eef Barzelay solo albums I wrote about here a few weeks ago, these are both gorgeous albums from a masterful songwriter.

Andrew Bird, James Blackshaw, Blue Öyster Cult, Bonnie "Prince" Billy

2011-05-27T19:34:00.001-04:00

More brief catch-up reviews!

Andrew Bird - Soldier On (2007). Pretty good EP of outtakes, early takes, retakes, and B-sides.

James Blackshaw - Sunshrine (2005), Lost Prayers And Motionless Dances (2007), Waking Into Sleep - Göteborg 27.05.06 (2007), and The Cloud Of Unknowing (2007). Four excellent albums of trance-like acoustic music from the current master of trance-like acoustic music.

Blue Öyster Cult - Agents of Fortune (1976), Some Enchanted Evening (1978), and Fire Of Unknown Origin (1981). Good. Great. Okay with moments of greatness.

Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Little Lost Blues (2006) and Beware (2009). Compilation and studio album. As always, great stuff from Will Oldham.

At The AV Club: Celebrity Apprentice finale!

2011-05-23T08:45:00.000-04:00

In which I ruminate about The Donald and other important issues.

Annuals, Ayler, Azeem, Band of Susans, Barzelay, Bee Vs. Moth, Jorge Ben, Chuck Berry

2011-05-18T17:55:00.000-04:00

More catch-up albums. Remember, I'm being brief as possible with these!

Annuals - Sweet Sister EP (2010). I hadn't checked in with The Annuals since 2006's Be He Me, which I liked a lot. This EP is chock full of fun folk-based indie pop, and I definitely intend to listen to more of their music when I can.

Albert Ayler - Witches And Devils (1964), Vibrations (1964), New York Eye And Ear Control (1965), and Music Is The Healing Force Of The Universe (1969). More powerful, emotional, and haunted free jazz from the brilliant sax player.

Azeem - Show Business (2004). I had a track or two from this album before, but I've picked up the rest of the album in the meantime. And, yep, still good.

Band Of Susans - Blessing And Curse EP (1987). A lucky find! Great little EP from a fantastic band.

Eef Barzelay - Bitter Honey (2006) and Lose Big (2008). I thought that the difference between a Barzelay album and a Clem Snide album was that the former would be all acoustic, but Lose Big isn't. In fact, Lose Big sounds almost identical to a Clem Snide album. Either way, both of these are fine albums from a clever and funny songwriter.

Bee Vs. Moth - Acronyms (2010). This is the sophomore album from my favorite real fake jazz band from Austin, and it's no slump. It swings, sings, rocks, and brings in a welcome dose of jagged, noisy guitar.

Jorge Ben - Africa Brasil (1976). Funky Brazilian pop. Rod Stewart apparently stole the melody to one of these songs for "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy?".

Chuck Berry - The Great Twenty-Eight (1955-1965). Delivers exactly what it promises.

AC/DC, Acetone, Aceyalone, Aesop Rock, Afghan Whigs, Akron/Family, American Music Club, Laurie Anderson

2011-05-17T19:22:00.000-04:00

I mentioned last time that I have an unbelievable backlog of passed-over and recently added albums. In the months since I have caught up, I've raided a few friends' collections and added ordinary purchases. Plus I had a bunch that I missed the first time around through misclassification or fatigue and have subsequently listened to. Anyway, I hit most of these albums a while back, but it's taking me a little while longer to find time to work on this project these days. So these will be brief.

AC/DC - High Voltage (Australian Version) (1975), Let There Be Rock (1977), and Powerage (1978). The latter two are pretty much my favorite AC/DC albums (along with Highway To Hell). The former is ok, better than the US release of High Voltage but not quite as good as what the boys would do through the rest of the 70s.

Acetone - Acetone EP (1993), Cindy (1993), I Guess I Would EP (1995), Acetone (1997), and York Blvd. (2000). This band was just plain extraordinary. I regret that I only discovered them within the past few years when my friend gave me a copy of their 1996 album If You Only Knew. I managed to get my hands on the rest of their output during 2010, and man, do they blow me away. Psychedelic, countrified, poppy, soulful: these guys have influences from all over the map. If they had hung in longer, they would have been as popular as, well, Yo La Tengo. A favorite is "Sundown" from Cindy, which rips off the distinctive guitar riff from Isaac Hayes's "Walk On By." But all of these albums are just plain phenomenal.

Aceyalone - All Balls Don't Bounce (1995) and Magnificent City (2006). All I had when I hit Aceyalone back in 1923 was a track from Grade A. I'm glad I delved further! Bounce is pretty excellent, and Magnificent, while not quite as good, has some amazing production from RJD2, including the track that provides the theme song to Mad Men.

Aesop Rock - Day Light EP (2002) and Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives EP (2005). Good stuff. I had a few Aesop Rock albums already, but these are interesting additions.

Afghan Whigs - Gentlemen (1993). I wasn't that crazy about this album back in 1993, but it's grown on me a bit since then. I'm still unsure as to why so many people love the hell out of it, but I do intend to read the 33 1/3 book at some point.

Akron/Family - S/T II: The Cosmic Birth And Journey of Shinju TNT (2011). Newest release by one of my favorite current bands. Is psychedelic as all-get-out. Hasn't grabbed me as much as a few previous yet, but there's time.

American Music Club - Everclear (1991). Love me some Mark Eitzel and company.

Laurie Anderson - Live In New York (2002) and Homeland (2010). As a demonstration of how long it's been since I caught up, you can read my reviews of these albums in the overview of Anderson's career I wrote for Dog Canyon back in July of last year. Speedy, I am not.

At The AV Club: American Experience - "Soundtrack To A Revolution"

2011-05-10T21:23:00.000-04:00

In which I review an excellent documentary about the Civil Rights Movement that is marred only a tiny bit by a gimmicky conceit.

At the AV Club: Treme 2.3: "On Your Way Down"

2011-05-09T08:03:00.000-04:00

In which I found myself disappointed by an off episode from a generally great show.

At The AV Club: Precious Life

2011-05-06T12:58:00.000-04:00

In which I write about an Israeli documentary appearing on HBO that has some startlingly great moments.

My Morning Jacket, My Teenage Stride, Mystery Science Theater 3000, Mystick Crewe of Clearlight

2011-03-29T11:14:00.047-04:00

My Morning Jacket - The Tennessee Fire (1999), Does Xmas Fiasco Style (2000), At Dawn (2001), Chocolate And Ice EP (2001), My Morning Jacket/Songs: Ohia Split (2001), It Still Moves (2003), Z (2005), and Okonokos (2006). Here is an example of a band ruined by their own success. The first two MMJ albums, Tennessee Fire and At Dawn, are creative and adventurous alt-country. The EPs from that period are sort of lackluster, though. It Still Moves, though, heralds an interesting twist: it is as if the band has become bored with their own predictability. There's a few great songs, but the rest sound as much like filler as the EPs from 2000 and 2001. On Z, the band tried something interesting by adopting a more Flaming Lips-like psychedelic indie-rock sound, which pretty well worked for them. Okonokos is a pretty good live album, too, and that's from a guy who often hates live albums. I picked up the 2008 follow-up Evil Urges when it came out, but it is seriously awful and I got rid of it. While these guys do alt-countryish indie-rock well, they do not do Prince with anything approaching skill. I will likely not follow them any longer.

My Teenage Stride - Ears Like Golden Bats (2007) and Lesser Demons EP (2008). I downloaded Ears Like Golden Bats on a lark and was blown away. I mean, there's nothing groundbreaking here. In fact, MTS might as well be a Clean cover band. But dammit, they are a hell of a Clean cover band, and Ears Like Golden Bats was one of my favorite albums of that year. Lesser Demons is also pretty good, although not quite up to the heights of its predecessor.

Mystery Science Theater 3000 - "A Patrick Swayze Christmas." On one of the very few Xmas anthems with a fight sequence (there's one in the little-heard fourth verse of "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen," too), Joel Hodgson and the robots remind us that Road House can have ye olde yuletide spirit, too. I missed this during the Xmas song round up of 2009 somehow.

The Mystick Krewe Of Clearlight - The Mystick Krewe Of Clearlight (2000). Instrumental doom metal meets New Orleans funk. It shouldn't work as well as it does, but there's something pretty enjoyable about this album.

And this concludes the Ms! I started them last June and they just dragged on and on, mostly because of I started to feel bogged down by this project. Moving cross-country is stressful, especially since I've been more or less unemployed since leaving Texas (minus an 8-week stint rich in embarrassments that I will never, ever mention again). To be fair, I finished the Mystick Krewe Of Clearlight back in early February and have been playing catch-up since then. Before I launch into the Ns, I will be try to run through some of the untimely acquisitions I've picked up in the nine months that this blog has spent on the Ms, but only briefly.

My Bloody Valentine and My Education

2011-03-28T13:50:00.000-04:00

My Bloody Valentine - Ecstasy And Wine (1987), You Made Me Realise EP (1988), Feed Me With Your Kiss EP (1988), Isn't Anything (1988), Glider EP (1990), Tremolo EP (1991), Loveless (1991), and Loom: Live In Toronto 1992. It's hard to believe that all of this music spans only five years. Ecstasy And Wine is a fine compilation of two EPs from 1987, and it sounds like a pretty good indie rock band playing pretty good music. Strangely enough, You Made Me Realise is also only pretty good, although the title track would later become one of the major experiential moments of indie rock music. Feed Me With Your Kiss and Isn't Anything are both incremental leaps forward. Glider, however, is a enormous leap forward. MBV went from good indie rock into something that was theirs and theirs alone. None of the other shoegazer bands had this slippery mix of volume, tremolo, and out-of-phase sounds with layers and layers of guitars. Tremolo continues this, and Loveless just blows it all out of the water. The Loom bootleg is, like so many bootlegs, kind of a bust. "You Made Me Realise," in which MBV unleashes an ungodly loud sound that pushes the edges of human tolerance, must be experienced to be understood. On the bootleg, it's just white noise.

My Education - Sunrise (2010). I forgot that I reviewed this already. Quite positively.

Mushroom, Musicians of the National Dance Company of Cambodia, Muslimgauze

2011-03-27T23:11:00.001-04:00

Mushroom - Analog Hi-Fi Surprise (1999), Foxy Music (2001), Glazed Popems (2004), Joint Happening (with Eddie Gale, 2007), and Naked, Stoned and Stabbed (2010). Mushroom is a fine, fine band, mixing jazz, krautrock, electronica, post-rock, and Brit-folk into a heady instrumental stew. Analog Hi-Fi Surprise is the most krautrockish of these albums. Foxy Music has some more jazzy and jammy elements. Glazed Popems wavers between Pentangle-ish Brit-folk and lysergic freakouts. Joint Happening with Sun Ra and Cecil Taylor trumpeter Eddie Gale has an unmistakeable Miles-in-the-70s vibe. Naked sounds like Glazed Popems II up until the Byrdsy final track. The song titles are often some of the best in the business.

Musicians of the National Dance Company of Cambodia - Homrong (1993). Traditional Cambodian music is something I don't much like. Now I know this.

Muslimgauze - Salaam Alekum, Bastard (1995). Muslimgauze was the project of a British electronic artist named Bryn Jones. The music itself is exactly what it seems like: mostly Middle Eastern-influenced electronica circa mid-90s. There's a political element, too, which is mostly reflected in the song titles and outside context. I know only a little about that and can't really comment on it other than to point out that Jones was very much pro-Palestine.

Muddy Waters, Mudhoney, Mumps, Muppets

2011-03-24T18:17:00.002-04:00

Muddy Waters - The Complete Plantation Recordings (1941-42), Martin Scorcese Presents The Blues (1941-64), and Muddy Waters At Newport (1960). Everyone's favorite cuddly bluesguy, Muddy Waters was one of the first to put Delta blues together with electric guitars, and thus epitomizes what most of America thinks about when they think about the blues. The Plantation Recordings includes his first recordings from the 40s and are acoustic, sounding much like Son House and Robert Johnson. The Scorcese collection leaps from one of these Plantation songs into the electric Chicago blues that made Waters his name. The Newport album is a barnburning live set. I don't know that I want or need any more Muddy Waters, though.

Mudhoney - Superfuzz Bigmuff (1988). Outside of "Touch Me I'm Sick" the rest of this album is only ok. That single is a killer, though.

The Mumps - Fatal Charm (1995). The Mumps were a CBGBs band from the late 70s who played some excellent power pop. This collection puts together everything they did between 1974 and 1980, and it's well worth hunting down.

The Muppets - "C Is For Cookie." And that's good enough for me.

Mountain Goats, Move, Mozartean Players, Mr. T

2011-03-22T13:16:00.003-04:00

The Mountain Goats - Zopilote Machine (1994), Sweden (1995), The Coroner's Gambit (2000), All Hail West Texas (2002), Tallahassee (2002), We Shall All Be Healed (2004), The Sunset Tree (2005), Get Lonely (2006), Babylon Springs EP (2006), Heretic Pride (2008), and The Life Of The World To Come (2009). I am legally bound to begin by mentioning that John Darnielle, the main - and often, only - Mountain Goat, is one of the best lyricists working today. He has mastered the art of writing simple songs that rarely overwork their subjects and still manage to pack a gut-punch. Many of his songs are tied together by exploring common fictional subjects: a dysfunctional couple of alcoholics (shades of The Wild Palms there), a sad and violent upbringing, a misspent youth of meth abuse, an unshakable sense of alienation and loss tied to being between locations. The early albums are lo-fi to an extreme, sounding exactly like what they are: a guy recording acoustic songs on a cheap boombox. The production values pick up with All Hail West Texas, which is also Darnielle's first truly great album, and the beginning of a streak that lasted for the next five. By the time of Heretic Pride, though, I'm kind of tired of the bleakness (note: I feel differently when not listening to the Mountain Goats back-to-back), and I've never really enjoyed The Life Of The World To Come, although I suspect that its a grower whose time has not yet come for me. I feel that I could say a lot more about the Mountain Goats, but I'm not sure that I have the stamina. The Ms are dragging along (I actually finished listening to them months ago, but I'm still trying to finish the write-ups), and I'd rather move along.

The Move - "Down On The Bay." Loosie track from the band that would soon become Electric Light Orchestra. I'm mostly indifferent, though.

Mozartean Players - Schubert: Piano Trio No. 1, Opp. 99 (1992). Lovely compositional music. As with so much classical music, I feel completely unable to verbalize what I like about it and why.

Mr. T - "Mr. T's Commandment." Believe it! Apparently the youth of 1984 needed a stern-talking, no-fool-suffering tough guy with bad hair to arhythmically inform them that failing to stay in school, follow the Bible, or stay away from drugs would lead to a threatening visit from Mr. T himself. Interesting fact: Ice-T worked on this EP, although not on the song I have.

Morphine, Morton Feldman, Moto-Litas, Motörhead, Motorpsycho + Jaga Jazzist Horns, Mott the Hoople

2011-03-20T12:15:00.000-04:00

(picture borrowed from Aquarium Drunkard)

Morphine - Cure For Pain (1993) and Yes (1995). I had the good fortune to see Morphine back in the early 90s, and they were like no one I had ever seen before. You probably remember them: drums, sax (often two-at-once, a la Rahsaan Roland Kirk), and two-string slide bass played by singer Mark Sandman. Their music seemed created for film noir, with lyrics that told ugly stories of drug use, cheating, and depression, while the music growled and moaned. Great stuff, and it has held up surprisingly well, especially the hits. There's some slack on both albums, but it's forgivable.

Morton Feldman - Rothko Chapel (1977). I'm not sure who the musicians are here. The other copies of Rothko Chapel in my collection are currently filed under the musician's name with the album artist listed as the composer, but sorted by last name. This is a different version than the other two copies in my collection, and that's all I can tell you about this album. The composition, as I may have mentioned before, is the perfect soundtrack for Rothko and the Rothko Chapel in Houston.

The Moto-Litas - For The Greater Good (2001). Fun punky band from Atlanta. My old friend Erin plays bass. The song "Cheated" should have been an anthem for the Sleater-Kinney crowd.

Motörhead - Ace Of Spades (1981). Not a bad song in the bunch. Great band, great album, great batch of smart-dumb songs, and I know I should pick up more of their work. I had a few other Motorhead albums when I was a teenager, and sometimes I want to revisit them. Not enough to make the leap yet, though.

Motorpsycho + Jaga Jazzist Horns - In The Fishtank 10 (2003). I love the Fishtank series. I know that Motorpsycho is generally a throwback hard rock band and Jaga Jazzist plays post-rock. Together, they've made an arty, jazzy album that sounds nothing like either band's usual output. Very cool stuff.

Mott the Hoople - All The Young Dudes (1972) and Mott (1973). Interesting to hear how Ian Hunter came to dominate the band between these two albums. They don't sound all that different, but whereas All The Young Dudes has some tracks written by Mick Ralphs and Pete Watts, Mott is almost completely written by Hunter. Mott The Hoople is one of those bands that exemplifies what genre-free rock music in the 70s was about. They were associated with the glam rock movement - mostly because Bowie, who wrote "All The Young Dudes" was a fan - but they don't really fit into glam's hyper proto-punk style, nor were they country rock or hard rock or art rock or whatever. They were simply classic rock, beholden to many and with many beholden to them. Both of these albums are excellent.

Moondog, Moonlight Towers, Mops, Morells

2011-03-19T13:15:00.000-04:00

Moondog - Moondog On The Streets Of New York EP (1953), Moondog And His Honking Geese Playing Moondog's Music EP (1955), Moondog (1956), More Moondog (1956), Moondog (1969), Moondog 2 (1970), A New Sound Of An Old Instrument (1979). Moondog was your standard blind, self-taught composer primarily known for creating his own instruments and playing them on the streets of New York while dressed in Viking garb. You know the type. Everyone has a story about a guy like this, the type of guy who sues the most significant disc jockey of the day for stealing his moniker and wins. The street musician who is a cited source by some of the most significant composers of the late 20th century. All kidding aside, Moondog's music is incredibly powerful, an obvious influence on guys like Harry Partch, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass, while being covered in the rock world by Brit-folkers Pentangle and blues-rockers Big Brother And Holding Company. His work is gorgeous and sometimes sad, heavy on percussion and still dreamy in its own way. Most pieces are quite short and unwilling to wear their welcome. Which may be why Moondog's music is always welcome in my house. I've even included "Pastoral" from the 1970 album Moondog 2 on most every children's bedtime mix I've ever made, and that's quite a few at this point. Of these albums, I prefer the two from 1956 over the others, but that's only a slight edge, as they are all extraordinary.

Moonlight Towers - Moonlight Towers (2002) plus a handful of loose mp3s. Pretty good Austin rock band.

Mops - "Get, Got, Gotten." P-sychedelic Japanese rock from 1970. Can't tell you more than that.

Morells - Shake And Push (1982). This is a Missouri-based bar band that is more or less the same band as the Skeletons. I know that bassist Lou Whitney has produced a ton of alt-country bands. Guitarist D. Clinton Thompson has worked with near everyone who ever appeared in No Depression magazine, too, but I was first aware of him for working with Jonathan Richman on Jonathan Goes Country. This is alright stuff here, but the earlier description as bar band music is about right.

Monkees, Monks, Monks of Doom, Monty Python

2011-03-18T13:14:00.003-04:00

The Monkees - I'm A Believer: The Best of the Monkees (1966-1969) and Head (1968). While I'm happy to admit that I love the Monkees, I think the 2-disc best-of might have been a little much for me. When they're great, though, they are completely worth it. Head is a little too much on the Zappa/prankster side of art-rock for me. The Monkees deserve credit for trying something unusual, but they didn't really have the chops to pull it off.

The Monks - Five Upstart Americans (1965) and Black Monk Time (1966). It's HOP time! It's MONK time! From bassist Eddie Shaw's autobiography of the band, I learned that the anti-Beatles (as they fashioned themselves) were actually a bunch of lovable goofballs. The music is crazy-intense and utterly destructive, a precursor of punk even in the nascent days of High Rock. Five Upstart Americans contains demo versions of the songs that would appear on Black Monk Time. Black Monk Time is a motherlode of early art-garage, with highlights being "Monk Time," "Shut Up," "I Hate You," and "Complication." I think that the Fall has covered every single one of these songs. Basically influenced anyone who played loud, angry music afterwards, which includes, well, everybody. If you want to learn about the secret history of rock music, start here.

Monks Of Doom - The Cosmodemonic Telegraph Company (1989) and The Insect God (1995). This Camper Van Beethoven side-project let the non-David Lowery parts of the band get their not-so-inner freak on. Pretty good mixture of indie-type pop and psychedelic weirdness, if not up to the heights of the CVB albums.

Monty Python - The Album Of The Soundtrack Of The Trailer Of The Film Of Monty Python And The Holy Grail (1975), Contractual Obligation Album (1980), and Monty Python Sings (1989). Funny funny ha-ha stuff for the laughing and such. Only the Holy Grail album is not a compilation.

The Moles and Molly Berg + Stephen Vitiello

2011-03-16T13:14:00.000-04:00

The Moles - Untune The Sky (1990), On The Street/Rare And Weird (recorded ~1990), and Instinct (1994). Richard Davies and The Moles stand as one of the greatest underappreciated artists of the 1990s. The Moles were influenced by some of the greatest touchstones of rock music: lush psychedelic soundscapes reminiscent of the Beatles and Beach Boys, dramatic art-rock from Bowie and Love, clean jangle-rock from the Byrds, the Feelies, and REM, minimalism and economy from the Minutemen, the Fall, and the Kinks. It's not for nothing that their bandleader Richard Davies toured with the Flaming Lips circa 1996. The Moles are quite sympatico with the Lips, although I admit I like The Moles more, which is really saying something. Untune The Sky is their debut album, opening with the irresistible jangle of "Bury Me Happy" and proceeding to get weirder and more delightful with each track. The version I have includes some material that I believe was originally on an EP, including the utterly amazing "What's The New Mary Jane?," a title stolen from a then-lost Beatles track that has subsequently surfaced. The first half of On The Street/Rare And Weird remixes and resequences Untune The Sky, and the second half includes outtakes and B-sides. It is freaking excellent. But best of all is the EP-length Instinct, which was, I believe, actually a Richard Davies solo album with the Moles moniker thrust upon it by the label. Instinct is the most Bowiesque of the Moles' work, but I find it incredibly rewarding for all of its weirdness. The heart of the album is the 1-2-3 punch of "Already In Black"-"Instinct"-"Cars For King's Cross," three virtually perfect songs. Five stars and two thumbs up.

Molly Berg and Stephen Vitiello - The Gorilla Variations (2009). I don't remember where I picked up this lovely album, but it consists of multiple gorgeous ambient soundscapes. I believe it was intended as a soundtrack to a movie, but I don't know any more about this (or even if it is indeed true). Excellent wallpaper music, though, in the Satie meaning of the term.

Modern Lovers, Modest Mouse, Mojave 3, Moldy Peaches

2011-03-15T14:26:00.000-04:00

Modern Lovers - The Original Modern Lovers (1972), Live At The Longbranch And More (1972), Precise Modern Lovers Order (1972), and The Modern Lovers (1976). HEY MODERN LOVERS! Jonathan Richman's first band took the greatness of the Velvet Underground and applied Richman's uniquely positive outlook to create some truly kick-ass great songs. Everything here was recorded in 1972, I think. The Original MLs bootleg contains the aborted tracks recorded with Kim Fowley before the John Cale sessions that would later be released as The Modern Lovers. Live At The Longbranch and Precise Modern Lovers Order contain some of the same tracks, and a number of different ones, all taken from two of the same 1972 shows. The Modern Lovers, the one recorded with John Cale and released in 1976, belongs in every music collection. I have copies on vinyl, cassette, CD, and mp3. Just in case, you know.

Modest Mouse - This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About (1996) and Good News For People Who Love Bad News (2004). Interesting situation here. I wasn't too taken with Modest Mouse from my previous exposure to them, but I like the song on Rock Band 2. I mentioned this to a friend, and voila! I have two of their albums. The former is pretty great, with 90s-style Pixies-fueled indie rock anthems galore. The latter, though - which is the one with the song I like from Rock Band 2 - is overheated stadium rock, and I hate overheated stadium rock.

Mojave 3 - Ask Me Tomorrow (1996) and Excuses For Travellers (2000). Dreamy Brit-rock takes on alt-country by some of the members of the shoegaze band Slowdive. I like these albums pretty well, but they don't really stick with me.

Moldy Peaches - The Moldy Peaches (2001). Sometimes fun garage-y juvenilia, sometimes just a stupid dirty joke. Sometimes in the same song.

At The AV Club: Chuck Vs. The A-Team

2011-03-15T13:27:00.000-04:00

Today at the AV Club I fill in for Steve Heisler on Chuck.

At the AV Club today: Celebrity Apprentice and The Amazing Race

2011-03-14T14:47:00.001-04:00

In which I fill in for my estimable friend Scott Von Doviak on The Amazing Race.

And then I get down with the crazy on Celebrity Apprentice.

Celebrity Apprentice at the AV Club

2011-03-07T10:28:00.002-05:00

I have a new gig with the AV Club! This week I review Celebrity Apprentice, which is crazier than a busload of Gary Buseys this season. Actually, that's a little hyperbolic. It is exactly as crazy as a busload of Gary Buseys.

Go check it out! Share it with your friends! I'm hoping that this will get to be a regular feature.

http://goo.gl/PAtJZ

Missy Elliott, Mitch Ryder, Elizabeth Mitchell, Mo Tucker, Moaners, Model-Citizen, Modern English

2011-02-25T10:11:00.000-05:00

Missy Elliott - Supa Dupa Fly (1997). Apparently this redefined hip-hop. My grasp of hip-hop history is shaky, though. I know it's an enjoyable listen.

Mitch Ryder - "When You Were Mine." Cover of the great Prince tune by the great garage rocker.

Elizabeth Mitchell - Sunny Day (2010). I wish I liked this more. Smithsonian gave it to me as a promo. I like Mitchell. I like her music with Ida, and I like the idea of her children's music, which involves collaboration with her husband and young daughter. I love that she has Levon Helm and Jon Langford playing on this album. And my wife and kids absolutely adore this album. That should be enough.

Mo Tucker - I Spent A Week There The Other Night (1993). The former Velvet Underground drummer made a number of solo albums in the 80s and 90s. This one has each of her former band members from the original VU on different tracks, and it's a pretty decent album despite Tucker's rather amusical voice. I want to mention that Tucker retired at some point in the 90s and recently resurged in footage of a Tea Party rally in Georgia. Say it ain't so, Mo!

The Moaners - "Monkey Tongue." Pretty rockin' slide-blues track from the new band of Melissa Swingle, formerly of the pretty rockin' Trailer Bride.

Model-Citizen - "Slipped Away." Another great single by a band where I wish I had at least a whole album. Model-Citizen, which may or may not be a going concern, is (or was) led by Matt Patton, also of The Dexateens. Whereas the Dexateens built their sound on the countrier side of the Stones, Model-Citizen is made of Who and Faces. Excellent stuff.

Modern English - "I Melt With You." I keep this around just in case I am called upon to DJ a middle school dance in 1987.

Mississippi Fred McDowell and Mississippi John Hurt

2011-02-24T11:11:00.000-05:00

Mississippi Fred McDowell - I Do Not Play No Rock 'N' Roll (1969). This is apparently an atypical album for McDowell, employing electric guitars and a lot of sound that, if not for the disclaimer, one might regard as rock 'n' roll. Quite a lot of kick for a 65-year-old man, that's for sure. McDowell was known for his acoustic slide guitar technique. The electric slide guitar on display here is no slouch, but the songs make the album.

Mississippi John Hurt - Avalon Blues: The Complete 1928 Okeh Recordings (1928) and The Immortal Mississippi John Hurt (1967). Mississippi John Hurt was one of the most important fingerstyle guitarists of the 20th century. Like Elizabeth Cotten, his style involved playing a constant bass and melody voice on the guitar, although Hurt added in a number of harmony sounds as well. John Fahey could be considered his most prominent acolyte. Hurt recorded thirteen tracks for Okeh in the late 20s, present in my collection on Avalon Blues. His singles failed to sell, however, and he went back to sharecropping. In 1963, late in the period when many folk blues musicians from the 20s were being rediscovered, a guy named Tom Hoskins tracked Hurt down based on his 1928 song about his hometown, "Avalon Blues," about Avalon, MS. Hurt's resurgence was rather intense, with appearances at large folk shows, considerable touring, and three albums recorded between 1964 and his death in 1966. Probably enough to drive a legendarily sweet old sharecropper from rural Mississippi into his grave. The Immortal, the last of these, released posthumously, is an amazing showcase for Hurt's talents. The songs range from straightforward Delta blues to ragtime to old-timey bluegrass to folk songs to spirituals, all tied together with Hurt's lovely, melodic fingerstyle picking and gentle voice.

Misfits and Mission Of Burma

2011-02-23T13:11:00.000-05:00

Misfits - Collection (1978-1984), Safe For Children (1978-1983), 12 Hits From Hell (1980), Walk Among Us (1982). The horror! The horror! As with horror and sci-fi movies, punk music - especially in its infancy - brought out the scolds to decry it as nihilistic and anti-human. But while some punk, like horror and sci-fi movies, could be that, most of it was a reaction to stultifying cultural norms. The Misfits brought together the extremes of all three, and man, they were fun. Collection is a classic Misfits compilation. Safe For Children is a compilation I found on the Internet some many years ago. It has some crossover with Collection. 12 Hits From Hell was an album recorded in 1980, but the Misfits were unhappy with it and it was unreleased for many years. I'm pretty sure that the Misfits are my brother-in-law's favorite band, and he gave me this copy of 12 Hits From Hell, so thanks, Jeff! Walk Among Us is a stone-cold punk rock classic, with rough edges covering a masterful sense of songcraft that seems a parallel of George Romero's low-budget/high-concept/powerfully directed Night Of The Living Dead.

Mission Of Burma - Signals, Calls and Marches EP (1981), Vs. (1982), The Horrible Truth About Burma (1985), Peking Spring (1985), Forget (1987), ONoffON (2004), The Obliterati (2006), Innermost single (2009), and The Sound, The Speed, The Light (2009). Mission of Burma is one of my favorite bands, and one of rock's most unlikely success stories. They were a Boston-based band between 1979 and 1983, consisting of Roger Miller (not the King of the Road guy) on guitar and vocals, Clint Conley on bass and vocals, Peter Prescott on drums and vocals, and Martin Swope, an Eno-esque figure who created tape loops and sound manipulations live and in the studio. Their sound, which is integral to later indie rock, was built around Conley's melodic basslines, with Miller and Prescott alternating between noisy excess and minimalism. Their lyrics were literate in a way that practically invented the term "college rock." They made an EP and an album and then split up in the face of general indifference, the fate of most rock bands. But they had fans, man, fans who went on to be in bands like REM, Yo La Tengo, Superchunk, the Pixies, Pearl Jam, and Guided By Voices. Twenty years later, Mission of Burma got back together (with Bob Weston of Shellac and Volcano Suns replacing Swope) and started making music again that was just as vital and revelatory as their music from their first run. Very few bands have managed to do this kind of rebirth without becoming an oldies act. In fact, the only other ones I can think of are Dinosaur Jr., who were also influenced by Mission of Burma, and the Go-Betweens, who most likely were not. Signals, Calls and Marches is chock-full of rock goodness, starting with "That's When I Reach For My Revolver," Clint Conley's re-appropriation of Goering's criticism of culture. "Academy Fight Song," a single now included with most releases of the EP, is another Conley anthem. "This Is Not A Photograph" and "Max Ernst" explicitly reference high-concept art, while my favorite song, "Fame And Fortune" has Roger Miller admonishing himself for attempting to find the attributes of the title against his better judgment. Vs. starts with the two-chord "Secrets," demonstrates right off the bat how much MOB could find subtle variance in a repetitive structure, and ends with the virtually perfect "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate," a breakneck explanation of a breakup. Horrible Truth is a live album that's fun for fans without adding anything but a little more mystique to the MOB myth. Peking Spring and Forget are filled with outtakes that range from excellent (most of which are on the former) to needing-improvement. All three of their albums upon reformation are very good, although I think they've had slightly diminishing returns for me. They have a certain similarity and clarity of purpose that I believe comes with age and wisdom. There's no noticeable falling-off of quality or vitality of performance, but the songs on Sound Speed Light have never quite grabbed me as much as the ones on ONoffON or Obliterati. This may be a real slight drop in some way, but more likely, it's that I am overfamiliar with their formula. And I don't have a problem with that. As long as MOB makes albums, I'm sure I'll continue to love their albums.

Minutemen

2011-02-18T11:10:00.002-05:00

I submit to you that the Minutemen were the greatest of American punk bands. They were the Platonic ideal of a rock band: three guys having adventures, asking big questions, searching for enough scratch to do it again tomorrow, making music that drew on wildly different sources into something wholly unlike what had come before it. They traveled the same circuit and played the same shows as hardcore bands, but all their sound shared with hardcore were anger and brevity. Instead of drawing on metal and the Ramones, the Minutemen built their sound from the angular art-rock of Captain Beefheart, Wire, and The Pop Group, which meshed with their influences from their beloved Creedence Clearwater Revival and Blue Oyster Cult into short, complex songs with passion, humor, and sweet heavens, how much fun. Dennes "D." Boon on guitar and vocals. Mike Watt on thunderbroom and vocals. George Hurley all over the damn drumset. They weren't lying when they sang, "our band could be your life."

Paranoid Time EP, Georgeless EP and "9:30 May 2" from the Cracks In The Sidewalk compilation (1980). No distorted guitars here and a good sense of space, but if D. Boon had owned a Rat pedal, Paranoid Time could have been a Minor Threat album. The Georgeless EP was recorded before George Hurley joined the band, and has a guy named Frank Tonche on drums. Not the best stuff, but an auspicious beginning.

The Punch Line, Joy EP, Mabuhay Gardens October 26 1981 bootleg, "Prelude" from My First Bells compilation (all 1981), and Bean-Spill EP (1982). Their first proper album, The Punch Line is a kick in the pants. Watt's bass skills have improved immensely since Paranoid Time, and the three-piece is already apparently sharing a single brain. Only two songs top a minute; most are about 30-45 seconds long. Joy is a three-song EP with excellent rapport between the band. The Mabuhay Gardens bootleg is rather noisy. It has an early version of their epic 45-song cover of "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love" and a version of "Working Men Are Pissed," which wouldn't appear on an album for three more years. "Prelude" is a decent song. Bean-Spill has five songs in six minutes, including the killer "If Reagan Played Disco."

What Makes A Man Start Fires?, Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat, and KPFK September 3 1983 bootleg (1983). While The Punch Line was pretty good, it wasn't very funny. What Makes A Man Start Fires? kicks off with "Bob Dylan Wrote Propaganda Songs," which simultaneously honors and mocks Dylan and includes "The Anchor," a quite touching track that at 2:33 was the longest Minutemen song to date. The Minutemen followed up this amazing album with Buzz Or Howl Under The Influence Of Heat, which is among the greatest rock EPs ever recorded. In less than 16 minutes, Buzz Or Howl knocks out eight tracks that veer from among the Minutemen's best ("Cut," "I Felt Like A Gringo," and "Little Man With A Gun In His Head") to very good ("Self-Referenced," "Dream Told By Moto," "The Product") to a little silly ("Dreams Are Free, Motherfucker!," "The Toe Jam"), which provides some welcome relief from the rich tension of the rest of the EP. Altogether this EP is one of the best things of the punk era. The bootleg is pretty great, too: the Minutemen playing acoustic for a radio show. Performances are phenomenal and the sound is ok.

The Politics Of Time, Tour-Spiel EP, ...Just A Minute, Men bootleg, Live At Flynn's Ocean 71 bootleg, and "Fake Contest." (all 1984). The Politics of Time is a compilation of non-album tracks and live tracks. Even though it has the great songs "Party With Me Punker" and "Working Men Are Pissed," it can be a bit of a crapshoot. Some of the songs are only ok, and the live tracks were often recorded on someone's personal tape machine, with all the hiss that this implies. Double Nickels was the next release, but I'll deal with it in a minute. Tour-Spiel has covers of Van Halen's "Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love," Blue Oyster Cult's "The Red And The Black," CCR's "Green River," and the Meat Puppets' "Lost." ...Just A Minute, Men contains the concert these tracks were taken from. Apparently the Minutemen didn't ask permission to use his recordings before releasing Tour-Spiel, so the guy who recorded them put out released the whole concert as a bootleg. This reminds me: most of these bootlegs are available at the Corndogs.org site, which you should visit (and probably have) if you're a Minutemen fanatic. Live At Flynn's Ocean 71 was recorded three weeks earlier than ...Just A Minute, Men, and has much the same energy.

Double Nickels On The Dime (1984). Is there a better rock album than this? There is not. It is sprawling, silly, serious, wise, funny, challenging, effortless, breathless, beautiful, relentless, angry, ephemeral, epic, and I'm not backing down from any of these adjectives. It is the crowning achievement of punk rock, and it was made by three guys from an unfashionable Southern California town who were all in their mid-20s.

Three-Way Tie (For Last), Project: Mersh EP, Spin Radio August 17 1985 bootleg, Berkeley Square September 21 1985 bootleg, Safari Sam's November 15 1985 bootleg, and "I Felt Like A Gringo" and "Time" from the Radio Tokyo Tapes compilations. D. Boon died in a car accident two days before Christmas 1985. Who knows where the Minutemen might have gone if he had lived? Three-Way Tie suggests that they had more tricks up their sleeves. While not up to the standards of Double Nickels, it's a fun album with quite a few radio-friendly tracks, although it also has a high percentage of covers. Project: Mersh came out before Three-Way Tie, and features the Minutemen trying to please a hypothetical audience with longer, more conventional songs. "King Of The Hill" is a pretty decent track. The three bootlegs are all top-quality. The Radio Tokyo tracks are a remixed version of "I Felt Like A Gringo" and an acoustic cover of Richard Hell's "Time."

Ballot Result and Minuteflag EP (1986). The Minuteflag EP is a recording of the Minutemen jamming with Black Flag in 1985. 'Sokay. Ballot Result has an interesting backstory. After the events of the ...Just A Minute, Men bootleg, the Minutemen planned to hit back at bootleggers with an album to be called 3 Dudes 6 Sides 3 Studio 3 Live. They passed out ballots at shows during their late 1985 tour. After D. Boon passed, Watt and Hurley decided to collect the ballots and release the album, anyway. Many fans sent in home recordings of the band, so the quality is not always there. But the love is.

Mills Brothers, Minmae, Minor Threat, Minus Story, Minus The Bear

2011-02-17T11:12:00.000-05:00

Mills Brothers - "Cab Driver." Swingin' vocal track with a nice country-style guitar lead.

Minmae - My Quiet Life (2002), True Love (2003), and ya te vas? (2004). Tasty indie rock from Portland, OR. The standout track is True Love's "It's Easy The Way I Care," which my pal Jon Bernhardt introduced me to years ago.

Minor Threat - Complete Discography (1981-1985). Ah, to be 16 and pissed off. Barring the need for a soundtrack for articulate rage, I have no need to ever revisit this album, but I'm glad that it's in my collection. The cover to my CD is red, but the blue picture is the main one that comes up with an image search.

Minus Story - A Minus Story Compendium (2007). I'm unable to find an image of the cover for this. It's an eMusic compilation of tracks by a rather obscure indie rock band. They're an ok band, somewhat in the poppy-psychedelic-Flaming Lips-circa-1997 vein. Nothing really blows me away (unlike the Flaming Lips circa 1997), but they provide a pleasant soundtrack to a drive.

Minus The Bear - Menos el Oso (2005). Sometimes hook-filled indie rock, sometimes math rock, sometimes post-rock. While I like Minus The Bear's capacity for surprise, I'm not really all that taken with their melodies. I like the parts that surprise me, but the parts that are supposed to smooth all the shifting time signatures and jarring repetition into something easier for a large audience to digest are all a bit dull, unfortunately.

Miles Davis

2011-02-16T11:21:00.001-05:00

Yeah, like I'm going to write a comprehensive overview of Miles Davis' legacy in a blog post. The guy went through so many phases that you could write a whole book on any one of those periods (recommended: Phil Freeman's Running The Voodoo Down on Miles's electric period). So I'm going to stick to a few words about the albums I have, thanks. I do want to mention how much I like, as a non-horn player, that Miles played the trumpet, the brassiest and most declarative of popular horns. Where saxophones and sax players tend to expound in million-note expressions, being the Modernists of horn players, Miles used the trumpet for short bursts of profundity like a Zen master of jazz. Dizzy Gillespie is the only other major trumpet player I can think of, and Dizzy tended to go for longer note-flurries. But Dizzy also left a lot of room in his sound, and Miles expanded that same sense of space to incredible effect. Miles was also a genius at assembling sidemen. To most effectively play the part of cool, removed Zen master, he needed a band around him that would generate incredible heat and light, and he almost always achieved that.

Birth of the Cool (recorded 1949-1950, released 1956). A collection of early sides that Davis released that happened to create the paradigm for the original West Coast gangstas of cool jazz. Unlike most cool jazz dudes, Davis wasn't white, but like most cool jazz dudes, Davis was classically trained and he liked heroin.

Bags' Groove (recorded 1954, released 1957) and Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Giants (recorded 1954 and 1956, released 1958). These albums share tracks from a session where Miles included Thelonious Monk on piano. The problem with having two worldchanging talents in the same room is that immense talents are usually attached to immense egos, and the two men apparently did not get along well. There was a rumor that they came to blows during the session, but Miles explained later to one of his biographers that these rumors were ridiculous because Monk was a much larger man than Miles, and Miles would never fight a guy who was sure to beat his ass. The results are pretty tasty, though. On Bags' Groove, only the title track was from this session, which also included Milt "Bags" Jackson on vibraphone. On the Modern Jazz Giants, all of the tracks except, ironically, Monk's "'Round Midnight" are from that session. The rest of Bags' Groove is from an earlier session from 1954 with Sonny Rollins on sax. The other track on Modern Jazz Giants is from a 1956 session with Coltrane on sax and the Red Garland Trio rounding out what jazz historians call Miles' first great quintet. I hope the roster is enough to indicate that these albums are quite good.

Miles: The New Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1955, released 1956), 'Round About Midnight (recorded 1955 and 1956, released 1957), Cookin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1957), Relaxin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1958), Workin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1959), Steamin' With The Miles Davis Quintet (recorded 1956, rel. 1961). These are the albums by Miles's first great quintet (Miles, Coltrane on sax, Red Garland on piano, Philly Joe Jones on drums, Paul Chambers on bass). Coltrane's first albums as a bandleader are with this same group sans Miles. If you like hard bop, this is where it is at, the best example of the form. The New Miles Davis Quintet album is the weakest of these, but it's far from weak. The rest are extraordinary, although their punch has been a little dimmed by the fact that they are so well-known. Start with Relaxin', which is my favorite.

Miles And Monk At Newport (1958). This is half of an album that features Miles' 1958 band on one side and Monk's contemporary band on the other. The musicians didn't play together, and each half has been expanded and released as its own album. I don't have either, though.

Milestones (1958), Kind Of Blue (1959), and Someday My Prince Will Come (1961). If you are a fan of jazz, you probably own a copy of Kind Of Blue. If you do not, you should remedy this immediately. On these two albums, Miles was opening up a modal model for jazz that more or less revolutionized that way that musicians could improvise in music by getting rid of the extensive chord changes of hard bop. Although Coltrane left his quintet for two years after the recording of the first great quintet albums, he rejoined the band for Milestones, which features said quintet plus Cannonball Adderley on alto sax. Milestones is fantastic, but on Kind Of Blue, Miles' band rip open the songs in a completely new way. The Kind Of Blue band has Jimmy Cobb on drums instead of Philly Joe Jones and Bill Evans and Wynton Kelly alternating on piano, but otherwise is the same as on Milestones. It's one of the best examples of recorded music that there is, and that's not hyperbole. Someday My Prince Will Come is a continuation of these ideas with mostly the same band (although Hank Mobley joins Coltrane on one track and replaces Coltrane and Adderley on most of the others). It's a great album, too.

Porgy And Bess (1958) and Sketches of Spain (1960). The composer and bandleader Gil Evans contributed quite a bit to Miles' modality, although these are easily some of his most accessible albums for people who aren't fans of jazz. Sweeping orchestrated arrangements dominate both albums, and some purists argue that it isn't jazz. Get used to that idea because it will come up again and again over Miles' career.

Seven Steps To Heaven (1963) and Live In Japan 1964. These albums don't have much in common, but they're both transitional. Seven Steps features much of what would be Miles' second great quintet. Live In Japan is a bootleg from Miles's tour with the great Sam Rivers on sax, the only time they would play together. Both are killer on their own terms and a glimpse of the greatness that was about to erupt.

E.S.P. (1965), Complete Live At The Plugged Nickel 1965, Miles Smiles (1967), Sorcerer (1967), Antwerp Blues October 28 1967, and Nefertiti (1968). These are the albums by Miles' second great quintet, which featured Miles on trumpet, Wayne Shorter on sax, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, and Tony Williams on drums. It's significant that Miles' first great quintet did not play together very long, and in fact, most of their recordings were made over the course of a few days and consisted of standards and songs by other writers. The second quintet was together for a number of years and most of their work was written by members of the quintet. They were, in a real way, a band like few others in jazz, but quite close to the more democratic and committed concept of a rock band. E.S.P. is a fitting title to their first album together, because the members appeared to share a single mind and purpose. The Plugged Nickel box is a recording of two nights in December 1965 that features the quintet knocking out standards and older Miles tunes. Miles Smiles, recorded late in 1966, shows how well the rhythm section was meshing with the horn players. Like all of these, really, it's a barnburner. Antwerp Blues is a bootleg and it cooks. Sorcerer and Nefertiti are the best of these, though, with the quintet firing on all cylinders (minus the tacked-on track with singer Bob Dorough [of Schoolhouse Rock fame] from 1962 at the end of Sorcerer). These albums are perhaps the finest example of a hard bop quintet looking to break through to something new, and they left Miles with nowhere to go but outside of the realms of what people had hereto considered jazz.

Miles In The Sky (1968), Water Babies (recorded 1967-1968, released 1975), Filles de Kilimanjaro (1969), and Complete Columbia Studio Recordings, 1965-1968. This is the sound of the quintet in transition. Miles In The Sky has Hancock playing electric piano and Carter on electric bass for one track, along with George Benson's electric guitar on another. Water Babies, which wasn't released for almost a decade, has the classic second great quintet on three tracks and the In A Silent Way variation on three. It's decent material, but not as great as the studio releases of the time. Filles de Kilimanjaro has the electricified quintet on three tracks, but replaced Hancock with Chick Corea and Carter with Dave Holland on two tracks. Notable: the Wikipedia page says that Stanley Crouch says that Filles is "Miles' last great jazz album." This is because Crouch is completely wrong about anything that happens after 1968. If you should ever watch Ken Burns' Jazz miniseries, this will explain their omission or demotion of pretty much everything after hard bop. The Complete Columbia box is redundant with the albums of the second quintet, but features a few more outtakes, as well.

In A Silent Way (1969) and The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions (1969), and The Complete Bitches Brew Sessions (recorded 1969). With both cool jazz and two of the greatest quintets in hard bop under his belt, Miles begat jazz melded with psychedelic rock and post-Stockhausen compositional music. Critics of time did not know what to make of it. They call it fusion, but much of the music they called fusion thereafter lacked Miles' sensibility and restraint. In A Silent Way is an ouroboros, much like Finnegans Wake, with each of the two tracks winding back around to the same piece of music that opens them, and each seamlessly flowing into the other. It is a perfect album, and often I will say that it is my favorite album, even though there are about a dozen albums that could claim that dubious distinction. The music is both driven and introspective. Unlike almost all jazz that preceded it, it is wholly a studio invention, with producer Teo Macero editing together the tracks from different recordings. It is the shape of music to come, and its influence can be felt throughout the sphere of interesting music regardless of genre. Lineup is Miles, Wayne Shorter (sax), Tony Williams (drums), Dave Holland (upright bass), Herbie Hancock (electric piano), Chick Corea (electric piano), Joe Zawinul (organ), and John McLaughlin (guitar). The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions includes a few tracks from Filles de Kilimanjaro, a few tracks that would drop on later compilations, and the rough tracks that became In A Silent Way. Bitches Brew, recorded a few months later and released in April 1970, has an even greater cast of musicians and employs even more editing by Macero. I do not have a copy of that album, but I do have a copy of the Complete Bitches Brew Sessions, which includes all of the tracks from Bitches Brew along with alternate takes, outtakes (many of which showed up on Big Fun, released in 1974), and rough tracks edited down for the album. While considered a landmark recording, to my ears it is the inferior of both the studio album that preceded it and the one that follows, which is perhaps due to the mutable lineup including a number of musicians new to Miles' crew.

Juan-les-Pins, France July 1969, The Lost Quintet Bootlegs, Discs 7-12 (all recorded November 1969), and Live At The Fillmore, March 7, 1970: It's About That Time. Miles could not take his cast of thousands (ok, it's really about 20 or so) who played on Bitches Brew out on the road with him, so he compiled a new quintet, often called the Lost Quintet because they never recorded an album together in the studio. At least they didn't record as a five-piece, since I believe all of them play on Bitches Brew. The group is Miles, Wayne Shorter, Chick Corea, Dave Holland, and Jack DeJohnette replacing Tony Williams on drums. It's About That Time is an official release but the rest of these albums are bootlegs. And oh, sweet voodoo, are they all great. It's About That Time is a recording of Wayne Shorter's last show with the lost quintet. Some of these also feature Airto Moriera on cuica and hand percussion.

A Tribute To Jack Johnson (recorded 1970, released 1971) and The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions (recorded 1970). My other favorite Miles album is A Tribute To Jack Johnson, which is the most heavily spliced album in Miles' catalog, pulling together chunks of music from many different sessions and ideas, along with a small portion of "Shhh/Peaceful" from In A Silent Way. Where Silent Way is introspective, Jack Johnson is aggressively funky and psychedelic. The interplay between John McLaughlin and Sonny Sharrock's guitars on the section called "Willie Nelson" is the closest to atonal noise that Miles ever reached, and its ugly beauty can rip your heart out. Unlike some of the other Complete box sets, The Complete Jack Johnson box is disc after disc of rough tracks. Some of the outtakes crop up on Big Fun and Live-Evil, true. But of any of the Miles box sets, this is the one that peels back the mask and delves into the wildly creative process with abandon. Awesome, in the sense that dumbstruck awe is my primary response to this music.

Black Beauty: Miles Davis At Fillmore West (April 10, 1970), Miles Davis At Fillmore: Live At The Fillmore East (June 17-20, 1970), Isle Of Wight (August 29, 1970), The Cellar Door Sessions (December 16-19, 1970), Live-Evil (recorded 1970, rel. 1971), Live In Belgrade, November 3, 1971, and Live in Cologne, November 12, 1971. These albums show how Miles was focused on his live sound over this year-and-a-half despite some churn in his band. After Wayne Shorter left, Steve Grossman stepped in on sax, and can be heard on Black Beauty and Miles Davis At Fillmore. Gary Bartz took over on sax and Keith Jarrett joined as a second keyboardist by the time of Isle of Wight (a bootleg with one live track from the 1970 Isle Of Wight festival [one can hear this in its entirety on the new Bitches Brew Live album] plus outtakes from the Bitches Brew Sessions and the Jack Johnson Sessions and, strangely enough the later On The Corner sessions). Bartz and Jarrett were still in the band for the stellar Cellar Door Sessions, some of which popped up on Live-Evil, which was chronologically Miles's next release after Jack Johnson. Chick Corea was out of the band by this time, and Michael Henderson had replaced Dave Carter on bass. Awesomely, John McLaughlin joined the band for one of the sets, which was, I think, the only time McLaughlin played with Davis live. Live-Evil also features more Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson outtakes. By the time of the tour that the Belgrade and Cologne bootlegs were taken from, Jack DeJohnette was replaced on drums by Ndugu Leon Chancler with Charles Don Alias and James Mtume Forman replacing Moriera on percussion. The Cellar Door Sessions is the best of these, but any and all of these albums are stunners.

On The Corner (1972), The Complete On The Corner Sessions (1972-1974), Right Off: Complete Live At Paul's Mall, September 14, 1972, Live At On The Corner September 24, 1972, In Concert: Live At Philharmonic Hall (September 29, 1972). It is hard to express how incredible On The Corner is. Bringing together the groundbreaking editing work from the previous five albums with a sense of psychedelic groove taken from funk, the propulsion of krautrock, and a repetitive structure taken from Stockhausen and minimalism, On The Corner synthesizes all of these into a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts, which is the essence of Miles' genius. There are 20 musicians credited for On The Corner, including two electric sitarists and four percussionists. The Complete On The Corner Sessions box includes rough tracks for On The Corner, tracks that would later turn up on Big Fun and Get Up With It, and previously unreleased outtakes. It's almost as good as the Complete Jack Johnson box. Right Off and Live At On The Corner are bootlegs recorded shortly before the official release In Concert. All are excellent.

Big Fun (recorded 1969-1972, released 1974) and Get Up With It (recorded 1970 - 1974, rel. 1974). These are two compilations released in 1974. Big Fun reaches back to the Bitches Brew Sessions and has outtakes from Jack Johnson and On the Corner, as well. Get Up With It has four tracks recorded after On The Corner (with the great Pete Cosey on guitar) and four from prior sessions back to Jack Johnson. Both albums are phenomenal, and surprisingly coherent given their disparate recording times over a rather tumultuous period for Miles. But Get Up With It has "He Loved Him Madly," a 30-minute tribute to Duke Ellington that is basically proto-ambient music (and Brian Eno has discussed how influential it was on his own ambient music). "He Loved Him Madly" is astonishing, even in the context of Miles' consistently astonishing output of the time.

Black Satin: Tokyo June 19, 1973, Olympia July 11, 1973, Dark Magus (March 30, 1974), Another Unity: Tokyo January 22, 1975, Agharta (first set, February 1, 1975), Pangaea (second set, February 1, 1975), and Unknown Sessions bootleg (1972-1976). Four bootlegs and three live releases from the period in which Miles had the twin lead guitars of Pete Cosey and Reggie Lucas in his band. This is the heaviest funk-space-jazz-krautrock-head music ever made, and considering its relative inaccessibility, it is the great lacuna of Miles's career. The Unknown Sessions include some of the amazing recordings Miles made in the mid-70s with Cosey and Lucas. Some tracks from this period cropped up on the Complete On The Corner box, but most are still unreleased.

Music From Siesta (1987). Unfortunately, Miles released only live albums and compilations between 1972's utterly brilliant On The Corner and 1981's tepid The Man With The Horn. I'm not a fan of Miles in the 80s, where he seemed more lost than anything. Music From Siesta is not bad, though, with its deliberate references to Miles's Gil Evans period. Considering how many brilliant, game-changing, genre-shaking albums were in Miles's past, however, "not bad" is a damning assessment.

Mike Watt

2011-02-02T22:21:00.000-05:00

If you read this blog, you surely know that Watt was so key to the whole DIY post-punk movement that words like "seminal" and "essential" fail to capture how important his music is. One of the guiding figures behind The Minutemen and fIREHOSE, Watt is practically a secular saint. I may be guilty of engaging in hyperbole sometimes, but this is on the level: the guy makes amazing music, made a lot of amazing music possible, and still is one of the nicest, most down-to-earth dudes you could meet. There's not a lot of people you can say have given to the world far more than they will ever receive back, but Mike Watt is one of them, a guy whose whole life is a labor of love.

Ball-Hog or Tugboat? and BH or TB Outtakes (both 1995). Watt's first solo album is a who's-who of indie rock from the late 70s to the mid 90s. His collaborators include members of Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr, Meat Puppets, Nirvana, Screaming Trees, that dog, Beastie Boys, plus Nels Cline, Spot, Evan Dando, Frank Black, Hank Rollins, Epic Soundtracks, Flea, Dave Pirner, Bernie Worrell, and Kathleen Hanna, who delivers a scathing and hilarious monologue via answering machine about why she won't be appearing on the album, which is even funnier because a) it is on the album and b) it winds up with an insistence that Watt return her Annie soundtrack. It's an ass-whoopin' great album. The outtakes include a cover of Blue Oyster Cult's "Dominance and Submission."

Contemplating The Engine Room and Contemplating Live Bootleg (both 1997). Watt's next trick was to record an intensely personal and touching rock opera with only two collaborators, Nels Cline and Stephen Hodges. The narrative is autobiographical, comparing the life of Watt's father, a sailor, with the journeys Watt made as part of the Minutemen using a nautical theme. The latter half of the album explicitly deals with Watt's grief over losing his dad and his best friend, Minutemen guitarist D. Boon. This is a sublime album, as much a statement of purpose and philosophy as an expression of joy and sorrow. The trio mixes new melodies and riffage with elements of Minutemen songs and Cline's unique guitar freakouts, and the overall effect is, well, astounding. The bootleg is marred only by bad sound.

The Secondman's Middle Stand (2004). Watt nearly died in 2000 from an infected perineum. His third solo album is a song cycle that compares his illness and recovery to Dante's Divine Comedy with an organist replacing the traditional guitar spot. It's powerful material, but also the first Watt album that I rarely revisit, mainly because it's a little too alien to my ears and a little too intense for listening pleasure. That said, when I do hear it, I never regret it.

Random songs: "Pushcart," "The First Cuss," "Walking The Cow," "Stomp," "Bass Bit For Bryce," "For E's Cousin's Baby's Baptism," "Like A Ghost On Fire," and "Little Blue Gene." A handful of loose tracks here, including a Daniel Johnston cover and a Beefheart cover. There's a new Watt solo album due to drop next month, and I almost held this post until I could hear it, but I've been dragging my feet too long. I'm sure Watt himself wouldn't want me to hold my oh-so-important thoughts on Miles Davis back on his account.

Michelle Shocked, Michio Kurihara, Mickey Baker, Midlake, Midori, Mike Doughty

2011-01-26T09:32:00.001-05:00

Michelle Shocked - Arkansas Traveler (1992). She's not my favorite songwriter, but Shocked's collaborators on this album are some of the best musicians of the last 40 years, and her approach to the material is surprisingly light and fun. Among the people who play on this album are Pops Staples, members of The Band, Uncle Tupelo, Doc Watson, Norman Blake, and Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown.

Michio Kurihara - Sunset Notes (2005). Kurihara is a legendary Japanese psychedelic guitarist who plays in Ghost and often sits in as a fourth member of the mighty Boris. This solo album covers a wide range of styles and will please any fan of, well, psych rock.

Mickey Baker - The Wildest Guitar (1959). Mostly known for "Love Is Strange" (a song that always brings Sissy Spacek in Badlands to mind), Baker played on many of the seminal hits of the rock and roll era. On this instrumental album, he demonstrates a style that is so advanced for the time that it is practically the blueprint for the blues-less blues of the Velvet Underground and all that followed. Robert Quine usually made a point of mentioning Baker's influence. You can hear it here.

Midlake - The Trials of Van Occupanther (2006). This is a next big thing band from 2006 that unfortunately bores me to tears. They sound like Gerry Rafferty and Bread and cocaine, and I guess I can appreciate that 70's Laurel Canyon soft rock sound a little bit sometimes, but usually it's despite the production, not because of it. This album is hard to hear because it seems that the production is all that it is. I remember 70s radio; I don't want to relive it.

Midori - Tchaikovsky: Violin Concerto In D Major, Op 35: Allegro Moderato (with The Berlin Philharmonic, 1998) and Mozart: Sinfonia Concertante in E-flat major, Concert For Violin, Piano and Orchestra in D Major (with Nobuko Imai and Christoph Eschenbach, 2001). I'm way too much the dilettante to tell you anything about Midori's style or skill. She plays this lovely compositional music very well. Per my modus operandi for classical music, I will now reclassify these albums under the composer's name.

Mike Doughty - "Sunkeneyed Girl." Not being a fan of Soul Coughing, I'm not much a fan of Doughty. This song, it's okay. Off a comp from some time in the past, I believe.

Michael Hedges, Michael Hurley, Michael Jackson, Mike Nix

2011-01-25T10:21:00.000-05:00

Michael Hedges - Breakfast In The Field (1981), Aerial Boundaries (1984), and Best of Michael Hedges (2000). Hedges was an amazing stylist on the guitar, but he considered himself a composer above all. What you call him isn't important, though, because the first two of these albums are utterly amazing. He was great when he was writing music that employed elements of 20th century composition, and these albums are that. Hedges released a number of later albums before his premature death in 1997, but although he was passionate about singing on his albums, I find his vocal tracks painful. I saw the guy in concert a number of times - in fact, his cover of "I Misunderstood" in a 1992-ish show is what led my friends and me to Richard Thompson's music - but I found his originals in the more traditional folk/rock sense to be not so good. I don't know if there's an compilation that focuses on the compositional work on later albums and leaves off the singing and the goddamn flute, but that's an album I would consider a worthwhile investment.

Michael Hurley - Blueberry Wine - The 1st Songs (1965), Armchair Boogie (1971), Hi Fi Snock Uptown (1972), Have Moicy! (with Unholy Modal Rounders and Jeffrey Frederick and The Clamtones, 1976), Long Journey (1977), and Snockgrass (1980). Hurley is a delightfully loopy folk songwriter who is one of the best alive at creating timeless songs with one foot in the past and one in the present. The best of these is, of course, Have Moicy!, which is as much the work of Peter Stampfel and Jeffrey Frederick as it is of Hurley. I stuck it under Hurley's name more or less randomly. The Hurley albums are all worth a listen or thirteen and are jam-packed with catchy melodies and clever little chunks of wisdom.

Michael Jackson - "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" and "P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing)." Not much of a fan of Jackson, am I? I actually like all of Off The Wall (which I used to have on vinyl, but must have lost along the way) and listened to Thriller enough as a child to remember every single falsetto "whee-hoo!" And that's all I need.

Mike Nix - three demos. My buddy and former bandmate Mike writes good songs. He's in a band in Nashville, but I forgot their name and can't find it on his Facebook page. Dammit, Mike, what's the name of your band?

Meters, MF Doom, MGMT, Mice Parade

2011-01-23T21:52:00.002-05:00

The Meters - A Message From The Meters (recorded 1969-71). Although this may cause irreparable damage to your view of not just me but perhaps your entire relationship with music, I cannot fail to inform you that the Meters are quite funky.

MF Doom - Operation: Doomsday (1999), MF (with MF Grimm, 2000), Mmm...Food (2004), and Live From Planet X (2005). So there's Danger Doom, DOOM, King Geedorah, KMD, Madvillain, and later Viktor Vaughn, but here's MF Doom himself. Should I file these all together under any particular name (say, DOOM or MF Doom) or keep Daniel Dumile spread out through my library? I don't know, but if you have an opinion, please share it. It seems a little confusing to hit Doom at so many different stages of his career in so many different places in the library, but, then again, maybe that's by design. So these albums spread from Doom's relatively rough first solo album under this identity to an EP collaboration with MF Grimm that's fairly contemporaneous with the first album to Mmm...Food and Live From Planet X, both of which feature Doom at the height of his powers. Well, the former is significantly better than the latter.

MGMT - Oracular Spectacular (2007). Pretty good rock album that managed to fall upwards on its release into some now-embarrassing (or so I hope) hyperbolic prose from the critics on the strength of being fairly inoffensive. Unfortunately, while I find it likable enough, I can't remember anything about it some five minutes after it ends.

Mice Parade - Mice Parade (2007). Now this is more memorable. Mice Parade is a post-rock band that's been around for a while, and their output is quite varied, apparently. This album reminds me of Gastr del Sol's last album Camoufleur, which has a similar mix of folk, jazz, noise, and big rock. I suspect that Mice Parade, like Gastr del Sol, cannot be judged based on any single album.

Mermen, Merzbow, Meshuggah, Metallica

2011-01-22T12:05:00.000-05:00

The Mermen - Live At The Haunted House (1994). The best damn psychedelic surf band ever. Saw them back in 2003 or so and they rocked my world.

Merzbow - Electric Salad (1996). MMMmmmmmMMMWHRRRSKKKK-kkk-KKK-kkk. ShhhhK-IIIIIIII-iiiiwiwiwiwwwwk-IIIIII! tweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee! Grrrrrmmmmmmkkkkkkklllklklklk.

Meshuggah - Destroy Erase Improve (1995). Math thrash hardcore prog. By all rights I oughta like them more than I do, but they've never mattered to me as much as their reputation says that they would.

Metallica - Kill 'Em All (1983), Ride The Lightning (1984), Master Of Puppets (1986), ...And Justice For All (1988), and Death Magnetic (2008). Ah, the original Metallica albums, back before their music was, in the words of Skwisgaar Skwigelf, "dildos." That'll take you back to being 16, if you're my age. Death Magnetic is a supposed return to form after a lot of jerking around, but while it's the best thing they've done since they became rock stars, it's not so good, either.

Merle Haggard and Merle Travis

2011-01-21T17:07:00.000-05:00

Merle Haggard - Down Every Road (compilation, 1962-1994), Strangers (1965), Swinging Doors And The Bottle Let Me Down (1966), I'm A Lonesome Fugitive (1967), Branded Man (1967), Sing Me Back Home (1968), The Legend Of Bonnie And Clyde (1968), Mama Tried (1968), Same Train, Different Time: Merle Haggard Sings The Songs Of Jimmie Rodgers (1969), Vintage Collections Series (compiled 1996), and If I Could Only Fly (2000). I started to break these out, but then I realized that Merle in the 60s is good, no matter what. So these include the first seven studio albums plus his Jimmie Rodgers cover album plus two compilations (one long, one short, both excellent) plus a quite touching recent album, If I Could Only Fly. All worth a listen or fifty.

Merle Travis - Folk Songs Of The Hills/Back Home/Songs Of The Coal Mines (1947/1957/1963) and The Merle Travis Story: 24 Greatest Hits (released 1989). A triple release of a few of Merle Travis's early albums plus a best-of that sounds re-recorded to these ears. Still good, though.

Petardcast No. 9, No. 9, No. 9

2011-01-20T10:37:00.002-05:00

Another item of self-promotion to mention: I was the guest on Leonard Pierce's Petardcast about a month back. Leonard's a good guy and a great friend, and we chatted it up on a rather dreary day here in NC.

Here's the link to his blog and the relevant post.

Oxford American 2010 Music Issue

2011-01-19T16:33:00.001-05:00

Among the many items I have been remiss in posting is a plug for the 2010 Oxford American music issue. I have an article in this issue on Vern Gosdin and the Gosdin Brothers that's halfway to decent. But my contributions are lifted by the stellar quality of the writing throughout. Buy it!

In the meantime, here's a link to an interview with OA editor (and all-around helluva guy) Marc Smirnoff.

The Mendoza Line, Menomena, Mercury Rev

2010-12-04T14:04:00.001-05:00

Pardon my brevity. I have a lot of catch-up that I'm hoping to accomplish over the next few weeks.

The Mendoza Line - I Like You When You're Not Around (1999), We're All In This Alone (2000), Lost In Revelry (2002), If They Knew This Was The End (2003), Fortune (2004), Full Of Light And Full Of Fire (2005), and Thirty Year Low/Final Reflections Of The Legendary Malcontent (2007). Named for the lowest batting average one can have and still remain in the major leagues, the Mendoza Line featured several different songwriters who all shared an affinity for mopey and literate folk-based songwriters who tend to top the best-of lists for rock geeks. There's a certain sameness in listening to all of their albums at once like this, but it's my kind of sameness, if you follow me, and when you drill down to pay attention to the lyrics and craft in each song, there's moments of startling beauty and power. Great band, much missed around these parts. I should mention that their pedal steel guru John Troutman is a pal of mine. Hi, John!

Menomena - Wet And Rusting EP and Friend And Foe (both 2007). Excellent indie pop band. They have a follow-up, but somehow I've never made the leap. Standouts: "Wet and Rusting," "Rotten Hell," and "Evil Bee." Great videos for the latter two of these.

Mercury Rev - Deserter's Songs (1998) and Snowflake Midnight (2008). The former is lovely psychedelia. The latter I like much less.

Mel Torme, Melba Montgomery, and... MELVINS

2010-12-03T15:57:00.001-05:00

Mel Torme - "Medley: A Tribute To Fred Astaire." I don't know where I picked up this lone track from the Velvet Fog, but it's a very velvetty, foggy track.

Melba Montgomery - "Before She Changed Your Mind." George Jones's foil from the 60s, singing as lovely as ever.

Melvins:

6 Songs EP (1986), Oven 7" (1989), and With Yo' Heart, Not Yo' Hands (1990). Take a large slice of Flipper, add a healthy pinch of Black Sabbath, and throw in a more pronounced sense of humor, and that is the early Melvins. Excellent stuff.

Your Blessened/Pronoun Piece Me 7" (1990), Bullhead, and Eggnog EP (both 1991). Man, I love Bullhead. If not for all the other albums that could make the same claim, this would be my favorite Melvins album. The attached song, "Cow," cracks me up. Two minutes of heavy duty riffage followed by another two and a half of drums that keep threatening to quit, but like a joke that has to keep going on and on until it gets funny again, don't. Oh yeah, and Boris, another favorite band of mine, took their name from a song on this album.

Lysol and Night Goat/Adolescent Wet Dream 7" (1992). As Lysol is a registered trademark, this album isn't officially titled Lysol anymore. But that's what it is. Although there are covers by both Flipper and Alice Cooper here, this is the point at which Melvins seem to drop down on the doom metal side of their equation, although there's still plenty of the psychedelia and experimentalism that makes Melvins so damn interesting.

Houdini (1993) and Stoner Witch (1994). More greatness from the 90s. Some of Melvins albums are hit-or-miss, but I've been lucky. All the ones I've heard are amazingly great. I'm really only splitting them out here not because I have anything different to say about them, but because I want to post different songs from each.

The Maggot (1999). Some might call it perverse that the CD version of this album splits each track into two, even the 2-minute tracks. Those people would be correct. Here's a Fleetwood Mac cover, for your pleasure.

(A) Senile Animal (2006) and The Bride Screamed Murder (2010). Still awesome. Two drummers. So awesome. Wish I was more articulate, but everything else I have to say about the Melvins must be played on a very loud, tuned-down-a full-step-or-two guitar.

I (Heart) Mekons!

2010-12-02T16:53:00.008-05:00

I've held off on this post, even though half a year has passed since I listened to all of these. First I found the task daunting. Then I simply got out of the habit of blogging. But I'm back, and I want to talk about The Mekons. The Mekons are very special to me - one of my favorite bands, in fact - and I want to do them justice. Sadly, it's hard to find justice in this mean old world, so this is what you get.

When I wrote about The Fall (Dog Canyon link for a more complete Fall reading experience), I mentioned that I thought of The Fall and The Mekons as being quite similar. My pal Chris Estey disagreed, pointing out that they are exactly opposite in many respects. I think we're both right. The Fall is built around one person, one ego (Mark E. Smith, natch), and everyone else is completely expendable. The Mekons are a revolving collective with almost as many members over time as The Fall, but the near-utopian belief in the contributions of all members. There are a few guiding figures, to be sure: Tom Greenhalgh and Jon Langford are the longest-serving members and primary songwriters. Sally Timms has played the chanteuse since the mid-80s. Rico Bell plays the accordion and provides a fourth harmony voice during the Mekons' many choral-style sing-alongs. Might as well mention the rest of the more recent stable line-up: Steve Goulding (The Rumour) on the drums, Sarah Corina (Gang Of Four) on bass, Susie Honeyman on violin, and Lu Edmonds (The Damned) adding little to the music but enthusiasm with his oud. I first saw them on the Me tour in the late 90s. Not their best album, but man alive, their show was a revelation.

The Quality of Mercy Is Not Strnen (1979). The best of the early Mekons singles are on a compilation called Fast Product (which was the name of the label), also featuring singles from the Gang of Four, the Human League, and a few other punk bands from Leeds. But this album, the first full-length Mekons album, is no slouch. The songs have a strangely cinematic sense, even though the band could barely string together chords at the time. Langford was the drummer of the band at this point, too. My favorite track is "Dan Dare," about the comic that gave the band their name.

Devils, Rats, and Piggies: A Special Message From Godzilla (1980). Oh man, I used to hate this album. Here the Mekons went in for synth sounds in a big way. Between the primitivism and the harsh late-70s keyboards, it did nothing for me. But it's grown on me considerably over time. And that's about all I have to say about it.

It Falleth Like The Gentle Rain From Heaven: The Mekons Story (1982). This is a compilation of singles that is stronger than the first two albums put together. Some of these tracks were re-recorded elsewhere, but these versions are generally pretty good. Standouts: "Trouble Down South," Fight The Cuts," "This Sporting Life," and the sublime a capella track "The Building." Also cool: the title completes the mangled quote from the first album.

The English Dancing Master EP (1983). Only two of the four tracks, actually. These are more like the early Mekons than the genre shift that was about to occur.

Fear And Whiskey and Live 9 November 1985 (both 1985). Then the Mekons decided that the three chords and working-class outlook of country music was very similar to the three chords and working-class outlook of their politically charged punk music. Being British college kids from a tough town, their version of cowpunk was quite unlike the separately conceived ideas of American artists like the Meat Puppets, more intellectual, less fluid. But this is utterly vital music, about as important and visionary as punk gets. The songs are a great leap forward from the early Mekons music, perhaps aided by having Langford move from the drum set to the frontline with his guitar. The lyrics race through chauvinism, depression, war, darkness and doubt, and land on Leon Payne's "Lost Highway." Six stars out of five. I have to throw out some special love to "Flitcraft," for being such a wonderfully obscure reference, being - essentially - based on a story-within-a-story told by a minor character in Dashiell Hammett's The Maltese Falcon. The live bootleg is poorly recorded, but great to hear as a historical document of the Mekons grappling with their new style.

The Edge of the World, Crime And Punishment EP, and Slightly South of the Border EP (all 1986). More six star out of five material. With this album and these EPs, the Mekons introduce Sally Timms as co-lead vocalist (her song "Oblivion" can break a man), delve further in country music (Don Gibson's "Sweet Dreams" is another heartbreaker), and through in self-mythologizing ("Ugly Band"), a sea shanty, a Luke The Drifter cover, and a touch of Tejano. Crime and Punishment is excellent, with the foot stomper "Beaten and Broken," the abortion-rights screed "Chop The Child In Half", and the brilliant track "Hey! Susan," which deserves its own cultural studies text, simultaneously alluding to "Hey Jude" and retelling the story of Thomas Hardy's Jude The Obscure. Slightly South of the Border has the coalminer's lament "Coal Hole" and a cover of Gram Parsons' "$1000 Wedding."

Mekons Honky Tonkin' and New York: On The Road (both 1987). Only slightly less great than the two albums that preceded it, Mekons Honky Tonkin' is more focused on country to the exclusion of the other elements that made Edge of the World so damn much fun. Not that it isn't fun, but it suffers a little in comparison. New York is a collection of live tracks and audio collages from their 1987 tour of America.

So Good It Hurts (1988). Here the Mekons embrace shimmery guitar pop with a touch of Cajun music and calypso. Coming as it does between the halcyon cowpunk period and the fiery attack of the next period, it's doomed to never be one of my favorite of their albums. Some of the songs herein are extraordinary, though. "Ghosts Of American Astronauts" and "(Sometimes I Feel Like) Fletcher Christian" have been part of their live set for a good reason.

Mekons Rock 'N' Roll (1989) and Crap Rap/Keep On Hoppin' 7" (1990). Everything that the Mekons had ever done or heard contributed to this album. I'll just say it: this is one of the finest rock albums ever made. Drenched in feedback, power, and noise - as if rock music were some sort of ancient magic - the Mekons distilled their essence into a major fuck-you to everything that people do to control themselves and each other. The opening track "Memphis, Egypt" could be a manifesto: "Destroy your safe and happy lives before it is too late/The battles we fought were long and hard/Just not to be consumed by rock and roll." The second track, "Club Mekon," is a sex dream driven by ennui: "When I was just 17/sex no longer held a mystery/I saw it as a commodity/To be bought and sold like rock and roll." Of course, the comparison to rock and roll is about debasement of something vital. This theme culminates in the utterly amazing "Heaven And Back," which is quite often my very favorite song. I don't really understand it, but the mystery feels quite profound: the story ties political oppression with personal transcendence.

Even now, watching this video, an audience recording with bad sound, this song hits me on such a powerful level that I write this with a lump in my throat. This is the first video I've put in this post, but I think I need to go back and add more examples now. Here's "Memphis, Egypt." Rock and Roll! Reminds me of a story: my old band Trouble Down South covered this regularly for a time. We ended with it one night at Ego's in Austin and the bartender came over afterwards and asked, "Did that song have only one chord?"

Curse of the Mekons/F.U.N. '90 EP (1991). Rock, country, polemics, anger, fear, frustration, humor: it's all here. Curse of the Mekons is the lesser sister to Mekons Rock 'N Roll, but only by a hair. Less than a hair. Brilliant. The attached EP includes a lovely cover of The Band's "It Makes No Difference."

I Love Mekons and Millionaire EP (1993). This one is a concept album about love and commerce, but it is also, unfortunately, a pretty weak tea compared to the previous two albums. Not bad, by any stretch, just a little colder and less fun. The single "Millionaire" is great, though, as is "I Love Apple."

Retreat From Memphis (1994). This, I'm sad to say, is a Mekons album that I simply do not like. Allmusic recommends it as a good gateway into the Mekons, and I think they could not be more wrong. None of the songs really stand out, and the whole effort feels tired and lackluster. Maybe I'll come around someday, but in 12 years of giving it a try, nothing has ever clicked.

Mekons United and Untitled 1 and 2 EP (both 1995). Mekons United is a disc that accompanies a book of Mekons memorabilia. Both it and this EP are very much oriented towards experimental synthesizer-based music, but neither is very interesting as such. Mekons United does include the epic track "Orpheus," but the version on this album fails to reach the heights of the live version. I'm sad to say that YouTube does not have a live version of "Orpheus" available, so I strongly suggest that you, the theoretical reader, attend a Mekons show to experience this song for yourself. Important lyric to yell along with the band: "LOOSE THE MEKONS, CAME THE CHEER!"

Pussy: King Of The Pirates (with Kathy Acker, 1996). Few bands choose to create operas about bloodthirsty feminists along with one of the leading experimental novelists of their day. Which is probably why this album is such a hot mess. Well worth a listen for fans of either the Mekons or Acker, but most likely never a favorite for either.

Me (1998). Speaking of hot messes, here's where I became a Mekons fan, but in hindsight, the album is only so-so. It's a concept album about selfishness, basically, and perhaps also masturbation. Some top notch dance music, too, but there's a lot of repetition, and some of the best tracks are wordless. Here's the killer opener, "Enter The Lists," a great and hilarious example of how the Mekons can create and destroy a killer riff.

I Have Been To Heaven And Back and Where Were You? Hen's Teeth And Other Lost Fragments Of Popular Culture, Vol. 2 (both released 1999, covering 1978-1999). These are not so much collections of hits as collections of outtakes. Both have delightfully chaotic cover images snapped at live shows. The former is the better of the two, though, with more interesting and fun tracks, while the latter is more of a crutch for completists. Both, though, have their share of otherwise impossible-to-find tracks.

Journey To The End Of The Night (2000). This is a concept album about apocalypse, but it's a surprisingly gentle and sweet one. And funny, always funny with them. I was going to point out the highlights, but there's not a weak song in the bunch. My favorite, though, is "Powers and Horrors," which is a drinking song which improbably stands it own against death and oblivion.

OOOH! (Out Of Our Heads) (2002). Like many rock bands, the Mekons are interested in history and social dialectic above all else. OOOH! is preoccupied with the advent of the Age of Enlightenment, which, as you may recall, involved not just an explosion of inquiry and knowledge, but also royal beheadings and people in weird religious cults seizing power. Although this may be a misremembering, it seems that the first time I heard these songs was during the Mekons' 25th Anniversary shows in NYC. I had recently finished E.P. Thompson's The Making Of The English Working Class, and was inclined to mention it to Jon Langford when I saw him sitting at the bar after the show. But I had also recently embarrassed myself by talking about a highfalutin' work of history with Mike Watt, and I decided against it. Heard them on the radio the next day citing that book in particular as an influence on the album. Of course, the freakin' Mekons are reading works of socialist history! Stupid me. Here's "The Olde Trip To Jerusalem," the title of which is at least partially a reference to a very long-running pub in London.

Mekons 25th Anniversary Chicago/NYC (September 12-14 and 19-21, 2002). These are bootlegs of the very shows I just mentioned. For their 25th anniversary, the Mekons played three nights of shows in Chicago and again in NYC. Each night focused on one specific major period of Mekons history. They also sprinkled in some acoustic day shows and readings, and generally had a freakin' blast. As an audience participant, I can say that it was fun for me, too. I saw Bob Christgau at the show at the Mercury Lounge, too, but I was a little too intimidated to talk with him.

Punk Rock (2004). The Mekons had so much fun playing their old songs that they released this album of live and studio re-recordings of classic cuts. Sounds better than the originals in many cases! Three of their best singles from back in the 70s are collected only on the compilations from the Fast Product label that I'll have to get to only when I make it to the compilations albums. I can't find the re-recording on YouTube, so here's the original of "Where Were You?"

Natural (2007). They reportedly have another album in the can, but their label has folded so they have no way of releasing it right now. So this is the most recent Mekons album, a Journey To The End Of The Night-like effort that features a lot of acoustic guitars. Pretty great stuff, even if it has never grabbed me quite like their first tier.

Wow! I finished this post. Months in the making and yet still wholly inadequate: my gift to you.

At Dog Canyon: Animal Collective Hates Your Freedom!

2010-09-16T09:30:00.000-04:00

In which I mock the cultural commentary at Fox News and wax on about one of my favorite bands.

The Moviegoer: May - August 2010

2010-09-07T14:41:00.002-04:00

I started this post two months ago! But I didn't finish it before I moved cross-country and failed to finish anything. And I have, unfortunately, been very bad about keeping accurate records of my media consumption over the last few months. But here's what I have, following from the last installment here.

30. The Informant!: B+
31. Bad Lieutenant: Port Of Call New Orleans: B-
32. The Abyss: D
33. Recount: B+
34. Last Tango In Paris: C+
35. Hellboy II: The Golden Army: B
36. You Don't Know Jack: B+
37. Rosemary's Baby: A+
38. Moon: B+
39. Zombieland: B+
40. Observe and Report: F
41. Becket: B+
42. Knife In The Water: A
43. The Ladykillers (2004): C-
44. The Best Years Of Our Life: B
45. Ghost Town: B-
46. Putney Swope: C
47. The Dead: A
48. The Asphalt Jungle: A
49. Frost/Nixon: B
50. Greaser's Palace: B+
51. They Live By Night: B+
52. Castle In The Sky: A-
53. Humpday: A-
54. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince: B
55. The Incredible Hulk: B
56. Funny People: B
57. X Men Origins: Wolverine: D
58. Temple Grandin: B+
59. Orphan: C+
60. John Adams: B+
61. To Kill a Mockingbird: B+
62. Toy Story 3: A
63. MST3K: Secret Agent Super Dragon: B
64. Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic: B-
65. Jason and the Argonauts: B+
66. The Lavender Hill Mob: B+
67. Godzilla: King of the Monsters: B+
68. Ong-Bak: The Thai Warrior: B
69. A Town Called Panic: A
70. Louis CK: Chewed Up: A-
71. For All Mankind: A-
72. MST3K: The Beatniks: B-
73. Monkey Business: A

Books Read:

1 Dead In Attic by Chris Rose
The Hundred Days by Patrick O'Brien
Across The Great Divide: The Band And America by Barney Hoskyns
Come Along With Me by Shirley Jackson
Anathem by Neal Stephenson

Meat Purveyors + Medeski, Martin, and Wood

2010-09-07T12:28:00.000-04:00

These two are nestled in between the Meat Pups and the Mekons, so this is a short installment.

Meat Purveyors - All Relationships Are Doomed To Fail (2002), "We Kill Evil," and "Hangman." The Meat Purveyors are an Austin institution of aggressive, punk-influenced bluegrass. This album and these two live tracks (both recorded at the legendary Yard Dog SXSW free shows) all kick mighty ass.

Medeski, Martin, and Wood - Combustication (1998). Organ-dominated instrumental music pitched somewhere between the 70s groove jazz and jamband rock. Not so bad, but not enough to make me seek out more.

Meat Puppets: Under the Influence Of

2010-08-26T00:52:00.002-04:00

(picture borrowed from Mike Watt's hootpage)

I started this post several weeks ago while vacationing in Panama City Beach, FL, which was surprisingly beautiful. No angry blackened waterfowl to be seen there, although there were quite a few BP guys lurking about, waiting to take charge at the first sign of trouble. But for me, spotty web connections and general focus on other things led to never getting past the first paragraph.

Then I moved halfway across the country and anyway, suffice it to say that it's been hard to get back into the habit of writing.

But the Meat Puppets cannot be denied forever. They were one of the most creative bands of the punk era, with a sound built on Curt Kirkwood's amazingly fluid guitar work. The man's influence are all over the map, from the Grateful Dead to Neil Young to Doc Watson to Television to the Byrds to ZZ Top to the Stooges to King Crimson. To name a few. Curt wasn't much a singer, but his sometimes tuneless voice provided a blueprint for any band that sounds bored by its own brilliance (like, say, Dinosaur Jr). By focusing on Curt, I don't mean to express a diminished enthusiasm for the creativity of the original Meat Pups rhythm section, which was Curt's brother Cris on bass and Derrick Bostrom on drums. If Curt was fluid, those guys were the bedrock.

So the Meat Pups were together for many years, but they broke up in 1996 when Cris's drug addiction spiraled out of control. Curt moved to Austin and put together another band, which he later renamed the Meat Puppets for legal reasons. That band broke up in 2002 and Curt recorded a few one-off albums. Cris finally got himself clean and rejoined Curt in 2006, and although Derrick Bostrom declined to rejoin the group, they called themselves the Meat Puppets, and they were. This newest version of the Pups have put out a couple of albums, but I've ever picked them up.

Even though I haven't supported them the way I should, I saw the new Meat Pups play an hour-long afternoon show this past March during SXSW, which was an incredible, beautiful experience. Five months later, I'm still speechless. Doug Sahm's son Shandon is their drummer at the moment, and he has a certain lightness that sounds very much like Bostrom.

fIREHOSE has a song called "Under The Influence of Meat Puppets." That's how I play my guitar, anyway. Here's the long, strange trip of the original lineup.

Meat Puppets (1982). Most bands, this would have been career suicide, right out of the gate. According to Curt, the Pups dropped acid in the studio and it is fair to say that this album sounds like the work of talented people on acid. Curt's moan is particularly inarticulate. The guitarwork is clearly there, but rushed and lacking Curt's trademark precision. The version I have is the reissue, which includes the 21-minute original release, plus their 1981 EP and 13 more cuts, which are mostly the band jamming on covers in the studio. This doesn't sound like anything else in their catalogue, and qualifies as "for fans only," which may even be a stretch.

Meat Puppets II (1983). And then this is a perfect album. More than perfect. iTunes will only allow you to rate your up to five stars, but this one deserves six. Or ten. The first song, "Split Myself In Two," is an echo-laden hardcore-ish retelling of the Rumpelstiltskin story. Because why not? Things get significantly more psychedelic after this, but it's the desert-culture sort of psychedelia, full of countrified fast & clean guitar licks and head space that sounds like the sun going down over saguaro. "Magic Toy Missing," for instance, is basically a laser-fast bluegrass jam with approximately a gazillion million notes in the 20-second lead overdub. "Lost" is the greatest country song never recorded by a country artist (The Minutemen had a lovely funky take on it, though), although its appealing loopiness probably has a lot to do with that. "Plateau," one of the three songs from this album that Nirvana recorded in their acoustic MTV show, is a folk song that gets good and weird in the last 24 bars with a heavily echoed overdub. "Aurora Borealis" is another instrumental, this one overwhelmingly trippy and yet spare, sorta the essential take on desert psychedelia. More echoey head music in "We're Here," then more Zen country in "Climbing," then more goofy hardcore with "New Gods." "Oh, Me" builds intensity without ever stepping up its laconic pace and then dissipates it almost casually at the end. "Lake of Fire" is a barnburner quite unlike anything else out there. "I'm A Mindless Idiot" is an instrumental built on a pleasing guitar lick, and "The Whistling Song" has some sharp lyrics about a metaphor that takes over the song, culminating in a chorus that substitutes truly inspired whistling for words. The reissue I have tacks on a great nonalbum track, "Teenagers," which starts out with hardcore riffing that turns into a Grateful Dead-ish jam. There's a couple of more unreleased tracks, some alternate takes of the album tracks, and a decent cover of the Rolling Stones' "What To Do."

Up On The Sun (1985). At this point, there was nothing punk left about the Meat Puppets except for their label and tour partners. Oh, and their attitude, because here the Meat Pups released what was pretty much the greatest psych-rock album of all time, something that could have been the staple of any classic rock station if not for Curt's ugly-beautiful vocal delivery. I mean, punk was primarily about freedom, right? The Pups chose to make this amazing, beautiful, intricate, willfully obscure album, and they put it out on the American punk flagship label SST and played these gorgeous songs for a mid-80s punk audience that had tastes as rigid as - or more rigid than - Wynton Marsalis's on jazz. So there's hardly any distortion on this album. Curt leans on the echo and chorus and delay when he wants to get mindblowing. I don't want to get too hyperbolic, but the title song is one of the greatest achievements of humanity in the rock music age. The rest is sort of a distillation of the non-hardcore parts of Meat Pups II. There's more Zen country songs, instrumentals, whistling, psychedelic nonsense, lightning-fast bluegrass meltdowns, and the whole is a bellyful of pure greatness. The bonus tracks on the reissue are particularly nonessential, but I'm not going to argue with yet another version of "Up On The Sun" in any form.

688 Club, Atlanta, May 14, 1985. Here's a bootleg I've had for quite a few years. I was talking smack about the mid-80s punk audiences before, but here they sound like they're in hog heaven listening to Pups tear it up on their own songs and smattering of classic rock and blues covers.

Out My Way (1986). And then the Pups turned into Zed Zed Top. Actually that didn't happen yet, but they gave audiences a taste on this EP with "She's Hot" and "Good Golly Miss Molly". Also included was "Mountain Line," one of the cowpunkiest of cowpunk tunes. The reissue includes a cover of George Jones's "Burn The Honky Tonk Down," and you have to love that.

Mirage (1987). So the Pups took Curt's love of superclean and superfast repetition here and made what was partially a druggier 80s-style King Crimson album and partially a sorta cold lead-in to their bluesier next phase. I'm not knocking it, but it's pretty fussy and that squelches the fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants feel that you get from the greatest Pups albums.

Huevos (1987). OK, here they turn into ZZ Top. Heavy distortion, lots of blues, lots of riffage, and proof that the Pups could rock like hell when they wanted to. Quite the aptly named album.

Monsters (1989). Somewhere between the wild, fun aggression of Huevos and the fussy perfectionism of Mirage, Monsters has some great songs, but it sounds overplanned. At least, it sounds overplanned for the Meat Pups, which isn't to say it sounds that planned. Just less crazy than you'd expect for an album that opens with "Attacked By Monsters."

Forbidden Places (1991). This was their first major-label album, and it's actually pretty great, sort of the flip side of Monsters. The Pups have settled into a sound that's half-Mirage, half-Huevos again, but here they sound vital as hell.

Too High To Die and Backwater (1994). I think this was their best-selling album, with a push from their popular single "Backwater" and their appearance with Nirvana on the acoustic album. I sorta wish they'd gone out on this note, because Too High To Die is a pretty fun album, with elements from everywhere they'd gone beforehand and a new version of "Lake of Fire" at the end. The Backwater single has a few other tracks, most notably an acoustic version of "Up On The Sun." After this was the pretty awful 1995 album No Joke. Then, as I wrote back in the beginning of this post, break-ups, faked-up versions of the band, and now the Kirkwood brothers back together again. Listening to these albums made me want to hear the newer material, just to see how it shapes up.

At Dog Canyon: Love, Arthur Lee-Style

2010-07-16T00:53:00.000-04:00

Thoughts on Love and Arthur Lee.

Last column, which I forgot to post: Laurie Anderson Battles The Pink Robots.

Mauricio Kagel, Max Roach, Mayflies USA, MC 900 Ft Jesus, MC5, Mclusky

2010-06-29T19:21:00.000-04:00

Mauricio Kagel - Ludwig Van (1969) and Acustica (1971). The avant-garde composer made a good bit more music than I have. The first of these is the soundtrack to a film Kagel made about Herr Beethoven's music that is fascinatingly as if one of Beethoven's symphonies ran into Brion Gysin's cut-up method of literature. The latter work is also fascinating, with all sorts of found sounds clashing and clanging their way from din into music.

Max Roach - We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite (1960) and Members, Don't Git Weary (1968). The former is a pretty amazing piece of music co-written by Roach and Oscar Brown Jr. Roach has assembled an amazing band with Abbey Lincoln singing, humming, and scatting vocals. Lyrically and musically, this work is about the history of African-Americans in this country, culminating in the Civil Rights Movement that was finally starting to edge ahead at the time of its release. The latter album has Roach playing a pretty joyous version of modal post-bop jazz.

The Mayflies USA - "You and Me" and "Florida to the Radio." A couple of folky power pop tunes by a North Carolinian group.

MC 900 Ft Jesus - Hell With The Lid Off (1990), Welcome To My Dream (1991), and One Step Ahead of the Spider (1994). These were a gift that I'd shamefully never listened to prior to this. Allmusic tells me that this is early trip-hop, which sounds as good as any sort of genre label. It's clearly influenced by electronica and hip-hop as well as noir music (and fiction and movies) and William Burroughs-style mindfuckery (and that's two Burroughs references in the same group of reviews, if you're keeping track). Since my only prior exposure to them was their ubiquity in used bins during the 90s, I was surprised by how enjoyable they are.

MC5 - Kick Out The Jams (1969), Back In The USA (1970), and High Time (1971). MC5 were the original loud and grungy Detroit rockers, mentors to The Stooges, forerunners to punk, pretty much ground zero for rock that sounds loud and dumb but is really smarter than you. Kick Out The Jams is easily the best of the three, but all three are fantastic.

Mclusky - Mclusky Do Dallas (2002) and The Difference Between Me And You Is That I'm Not On Fire (2004). Ultra-clever Welsh punk rock band with catchy melodies under the traditional punk start-stop loud-quiet dynamics. Best track: "Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues." Now an ex-band, although a couple of these guys have gone on to form the similar Future Of The Left.

Matthew Friedberger, Matthew Shipp, Matthew Sweet

2010-06-28T08:07:00.001-04:00

Matthew Friedberger - Winter Women/Holy Ghost Language School (2006). Friedberger is the brother half of the Fiery Furnaces. On these albums (the plural seems unnecessary because this is really one album with two parts), Friedberger makes music that is sometimes annoying and sometimes inspired and really in bad need of an editor.

Matthew Shipp - Harmony and Abyss (2004). The Allmusic review considers this to be outside of the realm of jazz. That seems like an ok assessment on the face of it, but it also seems to be shutting a door. Shipp is interested in electronic rhythms and sounds, but he's fundamentally a jazz artist. And this is fundamentally a jazz album. A pretty interesting one.

Matthew Sweet - Girlfriend (1991), Altered Beast (1993), and Son of Altered Beast (1994). Matthew Sweet is well-named for his ability to wreak sweet pop into the heart of even his most slashing song. All of these songs slash and burn their way through beautiful melodies and exquisite harmonies with guitars provided by Robert Quine, Richard Lloyd, and Ivan Julian. Fan-freakin-tastic.

Mastodon

2010-06-27T22:03:00.000-04:00

I scheduled this post to be Mastodon only before I realized that I don't actually have that much to say about the band. I mean, yes, their subject matter is pretty wild, and their prog-metal interesting and awesome. Yes, they have a broader appeal than some metal bands. And yes, if you like music that cooks and pummels, you will probably like them. But lots of people have written about them elsewhere and none of this adds anything to the discussion. So, well, there you go.

Lifesblood EP (2001). Five-song EP with a number of audio samples that color the songs. Pretty decent material that points towards the powerhouse they were about to become.

Remission (2002). See, here's the problem. I have only so many ways to say "awesome." This album is awesome. It's awesiomatic. It's complex, heavy, clever, and amazing. Awesome. I mean, it starts with the song "Crusher Destroyer" and culminates in the song "Mother Puncher." Wow.

Leviathan (2004). Apparently, Remission wasn't awesome enough, so Mastodon had to try something so ridiculous audacious that anyone hearing about it in advance would assume that it was doomed to failure from the start. The joke, it is on this person I just made up! Because Leviathan, a concept album about Moby-Dick, is phenomenal. In retrospect, the only concept album about Moby-Dick that could possibly work is one by a complex, proggy, supremely heavy metal band.

Call Of The Mastodon EP (2006). Lifesblood plus tracks from their first release, a vinyl-only EP from 2000. Much like Lifesblood, it's more promise for the future than awesomeness itself.

Blood Mountain (2006). This one is another concept album, although the concept is a little less comprehensible to me. Something about a guy struggling to reach the top of a mountain and set a crystal skull there. Yeah. But the music is great. The problem here is the mastering, which is too hot, too overcompressed.

Crack The Skye (2009). Did I mention that the narrative in Blood Mountain is hard to figure out? Because I told you what that one is about in a sentence. This one, though, is about, well, let me just quote drummer Brann Dailor:

There is a paraplegic and the only way that he can go anywhere is if he astral travels. He goes out of his body, into outer space and a bit like Icarus, he goes too close to the sun, burning off the golden umbilical cord that is attached to his solar plexus. So he is in outer space and he is lost, he gets sucked into a wormhole, he ends up in the spirit realm and he talks to spirits telling them that he is not really dead. So they send him to the Russian cult, they use him in a divination and they find out his problem. They decide they are going to help him. They put his soul inside Rasputin's body. Rasputin goes to usurp the czar and he is murdered. The two souls fly out of Rasputin's body through the crack in the sky(e) and Rasputin is the wise man that is trying to lead the child home to his body because his parents have discovered him by now and think that he is dead. Rasputin needs to get him back into his body before it's too late. But they end up running into the Devil along the way and the Devil tries to steal their souls and bring them down…there are some obstacles along the way.

See? Easy. This is the proggiest damn thing outside of Magma. But without choral singing. And more metal.

Marlee MacLeod, Marmoset, Marnie Stern, Marty Robbins, Marvin Gaye, Marvin Pontiac, Marx Brothers, Mary Black, Masonic

2010-06-27T14:55:00.001-04:00

Marlee MacLeod - Drive Too Fast (1993), Favorite Ball & Chain (1995), and Vertigo (1997). Marlee is a friend of mine and a very cool person, so let me start by saying that I'm sorry I don't have her fourth or fifth album. I meant to pick them up for a long time, but I never did, and that's a crappy thing to do. It's my loss more than anyone's, though, because MacLeod is a hell of a great, creative songwriter and a wonderful singer. These three albums mix some Replacements-ish grit with folky alt-country soul. Her words and delivery, though, are the real selling point. She sings about movies and relationships and literature and rootlessness, and she makes you feel it. I'm sorry that she seems to be semi-retired from music and hope that this changes in the future. Because she's awesome.

Marmoset - A Marmoset Menagerie (2007). This is a collection of music by the band Marmoset that eMusic offered as a free download sometime in the past. They're a pretty good indie rock band, but I haven't pursued their music further. You can still get it for free here.

Marnie Stern - In Advance Of The Broken Arm (2007) and This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and So Is That and He Is It and She Is It and It Is It and That Is That (2008). Adding the excesses of guitar heroics to the spazzy and skronky avant-rock of your Hellas and Lightning Bolts, Stern has created a sound that is wholly her own. She more or less layers parts that many guitarists would consider a kick-ass solo through all of the different movements of her songs while singing and looping and channeling the crazy energy of her band (which is sometimes pre-recorded on an ipod). Wild, disorienting and completely unique.

Marty Robbins - The Story of My Life: The Best of Marty Robbins 1952-1965. I have Gunfighter Ballads on vinyl but sadly, have never picked it up for digital consumption. This collection gathers Robbins's singles from his high period, and they cover a lot of ground, from Hank-esque early tracks to the amazingly happy honky-tonk of "Singing The Blues" to the epoch-making "El Paso" and "Devil Woman."

Marvin Gaye - What's Going On (1971), Let's Get It On (1973), and Here, My Dear (1978). I am inadequately prepared for the task of talking about Marvin Gaye. All three of these are famous concept albums, the first one on social ills, the second on the most primal human impulse, the third on what happens to a marriage when a famous, socially conscious soul singer indulges in the most primal human impulse too often with young ladies who are not his wife and his wife decides to leave him and take the royalties to his next album. All important issues, and with Gaye's production and sultry vocals, all sound sorta sexy.

Marvin Pontiac - The Legendary Marvin Pontiac (1999). This is John Lurie's idea of a joke. Lurie is the leader of the downtownish jazz band The Lounge Lizards and an actor who's appeared in a couple of Jim Jarmusch films. Marvin Pontiac was supposedly an insane African-Jewish musician. But the music is actually pretty decent, with blues and R&B tracks that have a little life to them. So there, I guess.

The Marx Brothers - "I'm Against It." Whatever it is, I'm against it.

Mary Black - "My Youngest Son Came Home Today." Folk song with an earnest anti-war message.

Masonic - "Brand New Day." Indie-pop tune from an Austin band that I believe broke up a while back.

Mark E. Smith, Mark Eitzel, Mark Knopfler, Mark Kozelek

2010-06-27T11:55:00.000-04:00

Mark E. Smith - The Post Nearly Man (1998). If, like me, you were hoping to pick up an album of MES, the estimable leader of The Fall, rambling out his fractured poetry while found sounds and electronic beats fade in and out, well then, mister (because are there any ladies who would fit that bill?), this is your lucky day.

Mark Eitzel - 60 Watt Silver Lining (1996) and Caught in a Trap and I Can't Back Out 'Cause I Love You Too Much, Baby (1998). I only have a couple of Eitzel's solo albums, but I always have meant to pick up more. The former of these is a near-jazzy effort, perfect for the gray Sunday afternoons of the soul. The latter is a more up-and-down album, although mostly down, which fits Eitzel's general melancholia.

Mark Knopfler - "Cannibals." Not much of a fan of the Dire Straits nor this song.

Mark Kozelek - Rock 'N' Roll Singer (2000) and What's Next To The Moon (2001). I really like Kozelek's music. When he was the lead of the Red House Painters, he played slow, moody music that occasionally erupted into near-epic VU-inspired feedback. Solo, he played slow, moody, mostly acoustic music that exploited his tendencies to reinterpret other people's music into Kozelek-style songs. With Sun Kil Moon, he plays slow, moody music that sounds a lot like the Red House Painters and Kozelek solo. Fortunately, I like Kozelek's sound. These albums, his only two solo albums (there's actually a third that collects both of these along with two other tracks, but it doesn't really count) mostly feature the music of AC/DC. I mean the earlier one, an EP, has three originals and one John Denver cover along with the three AC/DC songs while the latter is a full album of AC/DC songs reconceived as slow, moody tracks. Kozelek somehow connects with Bon Scott's inner sad folkie, and it's pretty amazing.