FOOGMESS

FOOGMESS is happening again! 

This is a smaller cheaper but equally as awesome alternative festival to MoogFest. There is a good mix of local and touring bands and they all sound really awesome. There's no age limit but no underage drinking (of course). There is a suggested donation of $2-5. Costumes are welcome and suggested for Monday evening. I hope everyone comes out to enjoy this great event!

ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA 

October 28, 29, 30, 31 

FRIDAY OCTOBER 28th: @ BANDWAGON (474 Haywood Road) 

8:00 PM 

-Nest Egg 

 -Aswara 

-Difference Clouds 

-Housefire 

-Merryl 

SATURDAY OCTOBER 29th: @ IZZY'S (74 N. Lexington Avenue) 

8:00 PM 

-Quiet Evenings 

-Xiphiidae 

-Sparkling Wide Pressure 

-Heat Sureens 

-Villages 

-Cumulus 

SUNDAY OCTOBER 30th: @ 22 BROAD ST. 

(DAY SHOW; 2:00 PM) 

-Giant Giants 

-Plaens 

-Brian Kincaid 

-Abe Leonard 

-Slow Loris 

MONDAY HALLOWEEN (!!!!): @ BANDWAGON (474 Haywood Road) 

9:00 PM 

-Skeleton Warrior 

-Meager Sunlight 

-White Creeps 

-By Any Means Necessary
-Virgin Pulp 

 *schedule is subject to change

Asheville: My New(ish) Post

So I have been living in Asheville, NC for a little while now, doing the whole post college graduation lifestyle thing of working in the service industry, spending lots of time outside, doing things that make me happy, and living with awesome people. This town has been a great place for all of those things to fully manifest. One really great thing about my new dwelling place is the wonderful enthusiasm for music that is so potent in the community. So many of my friends are musicians or are nearly as obsessed with this form of expression as I am.

Shows of varying sorts happen nearly every night. From small intimate house shows to experimental gallery space shows and from classical orchestral concerts to rowdy punk shows, Asheville seems to nurture and produce them all.

image source

So being in this city I am going to reignite this blog and begin posting again. There will be some posts still just about music that I feel is inspiring and worth a good thorough analysis and also some post about local events and musicians.

The next few posts will probably be dealing with the festival(s) that are happening this upcoming weekend, the popular Moog Fest and the local underground counterpart, Foog Mest. There should be a lot of great shows happening so I'll try to cover some of the most outstanding of them.


For now though I will leave you with a song by the band Hello Hugo who played a great set last night at their cd release show at Bobo Gallery.

Live Music Alert!

S H O W F R I D A Y N I G H T !

There's going to be a good show this Friday at the Earl. The bands, Times New Viking, Reptar and Red Sea will all being performing!

These are all great bands. I have only listened to Times New Viking a bit, but I like what I have heard. Both Reptar and Red Sea are friends of mine and I sincerely appreciate and respect their music. They are unique bands, definitely on different sides of the indie spectrum. It all should make for a good mix of post-rock melodic music and electronic/pop influenced tunes

Hope to see you there!

Local Highlight: An Interview with Little Tybee

Brock Scott is the vocalist, guitarist and sort of creator of the local Atlanta band, Little Tybee. He has been creating music for years, formerly under the band name, Brock Scott Quartet. Beginning in Savannah and moving up to the big city his group has kicked off and is growing and evolving with each album to be one of the more unusual and interesting sounds emanating from the bars and venues of Atlanta and the East coast.

Today I sat down with Brock, Josh Martin, and Nirvana Kelly to get a deeper understanding of these musicians perspectives on music, why and what they create, and why it is such an important and influential form of Art and media in our society and culture.

We cover topics from Gucci Mane to the ecology of music. I also prefaced the podcast with one of my favorite tracks, History, off of their latest album entitled Humorous to Bees.

Enjoy!

Interview with Little Tybee by sehowerter

Laurie Anderson: Bringing Performance Art into Popular Music

If you think that Lady Gaga is the first at creating huge and lavish performances to accompany the "music" that she creates than think again. There is a rich history of performance art expressed through and assisting music, and that history, some might say, began with one woman.

Laurie Anderson is an American experimental performance artist and musician who got her start in the 1970's and emerged into the popular music scene in the early 1980's. She is known for her unusual style of creating music, her merging of performance art and music, and her invented instruments. I remember when I first heard her album, Big Science, specifically the song, O Superman. It seemed so unique and new, even though by that point it had already been around 30 years old.

Zero and One

This song/performance from 1984 is a part of her film, Home of the Brave. The performance as a whole features collaborations with William S. Burroughs and Peter Gabriel. It is extremely experimental, even as viewed in the 21st century and this song is the sort of introduction to it. At the beginning Laurie comes out masked and in a very strange and sort of minimal outfit, playing one of her invented instruments, the Tape Bow Violin. Emanating from the instrument are very odd noises as other masked individuals appear around her. She then proceeds into a sort of lecture about the numbers zero and one. This is definitely more than a music video or an emotional experience. There is a message that Laurie is trying to get across, which in this case she is basically preaching to the audience but in other cases are more encrypted. She is an artist that is breaking the comfort boundaries of what we think of as music and inserting pretty much whatever she wants into it.

Music as Rebellion

Every once in a while you happen upon a story that reassures your faith in something. Often I need these reassurances about Art, and this is a case of one...

The artist known as, Bombino is a Tuareg guitarist from Agadez, Niger. He grew up and has lived through two Tuareg rebellions. The first, during his birth, and second, after he began playing as a professional musician. But the government in attempt to hinder the rebellion, banned guitars from the Tuareg because they were seen as a symbol of revolt. Two of Bombino's fellow musicians were executed for the act, which drew him into exile. Filmmaker, Ron Wyman, heard a cassette of Bombino while traveling through the area, decided to track him down, and helped him produce an album. Since then, a full film has been created to tell his story and Bombino has been able to return and is now revered as a musician of the rebellion, playing for thousands of people and existing as a symbol and representation of peace, equal rights, and their rich, cultural heritage.

Good Luck

Folk Punk is a genre merging the composition (and often the attitude) of punk music, with the personal, down home feelings and instrumentation of folk music. There is the sense of community embedded in folk punk music, often including multiple people singing, shanty style, and instigating everyone else around to join in on the tune.

I learned about the Bloomington, IN

based band, Good Luck, from a couple of my Floridian best friends. While living with them we would often, while hanging out at home or driving out to the beach, turn on a Good Luck song at full volume and lose ourselves, shouting along with the lyrics and jumping around. For some reason, acoustic guitars and untrained singing voices sound very nostalgic and comfortable to me even if I've never heard the song before. Maybe it's because it sounds raw or like it could have, or might have, been created around a camp fire (or in a library). In any case, it is often these simple sounding songs that contain poignant and strong messages in them. I think this one is a good example...

AESTHETICS

Gook Luck is a band somewhere between the Folk and Pop Punk genres. The music is often pretty Pop based with the repetitive and catchy structure, but the singing style and the lyrics seem more imbued with punk and folk themes. This song is off of their album Into Lake Griffy, which they released in 2008. It is the first track off the record and I think performs as a wonderful introduction into their songs and the type of messages that they are trying to put across in them.

CONTENT

As with the rest of the political songs that I have posted about, the meat of it all really lies in the lyrics. This song is no exception. The lyrics and simple, poetic and perceptive. Somewhat existential at times, they talk about the human condition. Why are we here and what are we supposed to be doing with our time? It is less political and more about relationships in general, not just romantic. We're here on Earth and we're bound to bump up against other people that often become the things that sculpt and change us the most.

Here we are in this world.

I don't know how we got here, but somehow we learned how to live here.
Now our brains are too big for our heads. They're expanding.
You can order your life through meticulous planning,
but it's a crapshoot
when things unexpectedly start to move faster.
And you try to avert a disaster.
But you can't always get what you're after.
I know you know this.

We all want to feel content,
but we need more than a place to shit and to lay a bed.
If sometimes living doesn't terrify you, if love doesn't pulverize you, then where are you at?
Where's the power in that?
Though it's been nothing but complicated
since the first time that two people dated,
and your heart makes you deathly afraid,
it's all you've got.

Is it impossible, friend?
Is it only a dream to find truth in the visions you see?
Or to believe the love that I'm waiting for is somewhere waiting for me?
Well maybe the way to get what you want
is to stop waiting for it to show up.
Have faith in the wind and the rain it will come (but only if you let it come).

Yeah, everyone feels alone.
Maybe more, maybe less, maybe this year or next or when they grow old.
But what a bogus affliction!
It's the human condition. We all want affection
and the sound of another heartbeat.

Maybe when this ends and the stars all call down for me
it'll finally make sense, or just as likely still be mystery.
I don't know where you are my friend,
I don't know if I'll ever know.
But maybe you'll be there when it's time to go.

"What Came First, the music or the misery?"

For those of you who think that music is purely intuitive and simple, think again.

There are many people throughout history that have thought of music as a science.

Music Theory is a complex subject, involving a lot of mathematics and also psychology.

"Perhaps the greatest music theorist of the nineteenth century was Hermann von Helmholtz (1831-1894), whose book On the Sensations of Tone(1885/1954) makes important reading even today. Helmholtz saw clearly that musical phenomena require explanation in terms of the processing mechanisms of the listener. He carried out important experimental work on issues such as the perception of pitch, combination tones, beats, and consonance and dissonance. He also speculated concerning the nature of high-level cognitive mechanisms underlying music perception, though he lacked the technical resources to investigate these mechanisms experimentally. Technological

advances of the end of the last century and the beginning of this one enabled scientists for the first time to investigate auditory phenomena under strictly controlled conditions. The science of psychoacoustics was thus established."

From this point forward, there have been both musicians and scientists studying "psychoacoustics" and trying to figure out the affects that certain sounds have on our brains and emotions.

One interesting question to ask when thinking about the psychology of music arises in the film High Fidelity:

Rob: What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Rob makes a good point in this film that I don't think many people often think about. Does the music that we listen to affect how we feel inside or do our emotions direct out musical taste? I personally listen to a lot of really emotional music, but do not consider myself a melodramatic individual, while some people who are much more emotional, listen almost solely to pop songs. I have also read in books such as Daniel Levitin's This Is Your Brain On Music that people have different ranges of musical perception and taste. Some people's brains are more pleased with more simple structures in music, while others prefer more complexity. It is a sort of development. When we are children we find simple sounds interesting and easy to understand, but at a certain point on the "complexity scale" it gets confusing or uninteresting. Then, when we grow up and our brains develop, the range of interest goes up also, some surpassing others.

As far as the whole chicken/egg (music/misery) dilemma, I personally think that the misery probably comes first. While we can say that a certain song or film makes us really sad or happy, for that emotion to persist there must be other variables within our environment that are also attributing to it. But maybe others have different perspectives and opinions...

Shad: Keep Shining

I first heard this song on the Georgia State Radio while driving around in Atlanta. I was immediately drawn in by the lyrics. I am not an avid listener of a lot of rap, but good, smart lyrics always really get me.

SHAD is a artist born in Kenya to Rwandan parents and raised in London, Ontario. His style has been compared to that of K-os and Common.

CONTENT

This song is upbeat and catchy. The overall tone is positive, as is the message.

The message of the song is about respecting women and creating a society where women are encouraged to respect themselves. He talks about the rap industry and how the unbalanced nature of male vs. female rappers leads to a skewed perspective. SHAD takes the initiative to point this out and address the problem. There are not many women rappers and in many areas of our culture, women are still not fully represented or respected. This song is a good example of art pointing out and placing attention on issues within society and calling for a change.

Verse 1: I roll with clever broads

With goals like Federov

Seeking better jobs

instead of running scams like

Set It Off

Some aren't the smartest

but they know what they stand for

They don't let jams disrespect 'em on the dance floor

And though they never hit

College like the Danforth

For damn sure they got each other's back like a Jansport

Girls in a league of their own like Geena Davis

Nina Simone ladies, Tina Fey chicks

Christina Applegates and Bonita Applebums

That don't mask and say, "nothing" when you ask what's wrong

That's what's up, they can laugh it up

And they don't pass the buck

Nothin's for certain, we all have to trust

Someone I used to want to find the love of my life

Now I'm tryin' to live a life of love

It's not just a husband and wife thing

It's something that Christ brings

True beauty doesn't run from the light

Keep shining

Verse 2: And I've been known to talk about women on a track or two

I talk to women, I just can't talk for women

That's for you

We need women for that

More women in rap

Even tracks like Kwali's Four Women

That's still only half the view of the world

There's no girls rappin' so we're only hearin' half the truth

What we have to lose? Too much

Half our youth aren't represented, the better halves of dudes

So we don't hear about your brain, just your brains

How you rock a fella, Stacey Dash dames

We just need your voice like an a capella

Something in the music's gotta change

A lot of things

It's funny how words like, "consciousness" and "positive music"

Can somehow start to feel hollow, it's

Become synonymous with polishing soft collagen lips

On the face of race politics

Well you can't be everything to everyone

So let me be anything to anyone

The world turns and there's clouds sometimes

But there's no such thing as a setting sun

It always keeps shining

Verse 3: My mom taught me where to keep my heart

My aunts taught me how to sing two parts

My sis taught me how to parallel park

Tried to teach me math but she's way too smart

My grandma in her 80′s is still sharp

My girl cousin's an activism at art

They taught me there's no curls too tight

No mind to bright

No skin too dark to

Keep shining

Ani Difranco

I am going to start this investigation into political music with someone who I am very familiar with and who's lyrics and songs have greatly influenced myself and my view on the world.

Ani Difranco has written thousands of songs, as well as poems, with compelling lyrics that inspire and capture her listeners and eloquently express issues and events in the world around us. She has released over 20 albums, created her own lable, Righteous Babe Records, and has the reputation of being a monumental feminist icon.

One of her most politically charged, long winded and epic songs is "Serpentine" off of the album Evolve. This is a song that has brought tears to my eyes and my heart to wrench. Yes, it is dark ("and I must admit, today my inner pessimist seems to have got the best of me..."), but I feel that the observations and critique of American culture that is expressed through it are valid and worthy of a good listening and emotional response.



AESTHETICS/STYLE

This song begins with a 2 minute long guitar interlude. Ani's style of playing guitar is not like most traditional methods. She utilizes a staccato style, which signify a detachment between notes by pauses or periods of silence. She also uses unusual and rapid fingerpicking as well as alternative tunings on her guitar. In this instrumental part, proceeding her singing, she uses these stylistic characteristics to, in a way, prepare the listener for what is to come.

The minimalist guitar part, unaccompanied by any other instruments or sounds, helps place a stronger emphasis on the lyrics of the song and creates a tension and emotional instability that helps to drive the point that those lyrics are trying to make.

CONTENT

The lyrics of this song are really the most beautiful part. Even when read as poetry, the message comes across and in nearly an equally as elegant way. Phrases such as, "the profit system follows the path of least resistance, and the path of least resistance is what makes the river crooked, makes it serpentine" re-writes ideas, such as the prevalence of critique and active participants in American society, in poetic and compelling ways.

pavlov hits me with more bad news

every time i answer the phone
so i play and i sing and i just let it ring
all day when i'm at home
a defacto choice of macro
or microcosmic melancholy
but, baby, any way you slice it
i'm thinkin i could just as soon use
the time alone

yes, the goons have gone global
and the CEOs are shredding files
and the democrans and the republicrats
are flashing their toothy smiles
and uncle tom is posing for a photo op
with the oval office clan
and uncle sam is rigging cockfights
in the promised land
and that knife you stuck in my back is still there
it pinches a little when i sigh and moan
and these days i'm thinkin i could just as soon use
the time alone

cuz all the wrong people have the power
of suggestion

and the freedom of the press is meaningless
if nobody asks a question

I mean causation by definition
is such a complex compilation
of factors that to even try to say why
is to over simplify, but that's a far cry.
Isn't it dear?
from acting like you're the only one there
unrepentantly self centered and unfair
enter all suckers scrambling for the scoop
exit mr. eye contact
who took his flirt and flew the coop
but whatever
no matter
no fishin trips
no fishin
cuz mamma's officially out of commission
and did i mention
in there
somewhere
did i mention
somewhere
in there
that i traded babe ruth?
yes, i traded the only player that was bigger than the game
and i can't even tell you why
cuz you'd think i'm insane
and that's the truth

and the music industry mafia is pimping girl power
sniping off their sharp shooter singles from their styrofoam towers
and hip hop is tied up in the back room
with a logo stuffed in its mouth
cuz the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house
but then
i'm getting away from myself

as i get closer and closer to home
and the difference between you and me baby
is i get fucked up
when i'm alone

and i must admit
today my inner pessimist
seems to have got the best of me
we start out sugared up on kool-aid and manifest destiny
and we memorize all the president's names
like little trained monkeys
and then we're spit into the world
so many spinny-eyed t.v. junkies
incapable of unravelling the military industrial mystery
preemptively pacified with history book history
and i've been around the world now
and i can see this about america
the mind control is steep here, man
the myopia is deep here

and behold
those that try to expose the reality
who really try to realize democracy
are shot with rubber bullets and gassed off the streets
while the global power brokers are kept clean and discrete
behind a wall
behind a moat
and that is all
that's all she wrote
...

SOCIAL/HISTORICAL CONTEXT

By turning these critiques of society into songs they become things that can penetrate on a more emotional level and stay with a person for longer. Songs and lyrics are things that get stuck in our heads. Musicians and poets use words not only to convey messages. They also organize them in ways that can carry those messages to a broader audience and through time.

"The Political Song"

"Music, I argue, is not simply a distraction or a pastime, but a core element of our identity as a species, an activity that paved the way for more complex behaviors such as language, large- scale cooperative undertakings, and the passing down of important information from one generation to the next." -Daniel J. Levitin

Music serves many purposes in our culture. It connects us together through expressions of emotions, information, and narrative. What a musician is inspired by or compelled to express in regards to can vary from the aesthetic experience of sounds themselves, to relationships and love, to tangible events and experiences. One type of song writing that has always intrigued me is that of a politically charged nature.

Throughout time people have been trying to figure out ways to openly express critical opinions about the world around them. Art often becomes the vehicle for these analytical and critical views to be transmitted on a more digestible level.

Artists such as Bob Dylan, Ani Difranco, Conor Oberst, John Lennon, The Clash, Immortal Technique, and many others are known for the commentary they give on society and politics. But this genre of political expression through song goes back to Beethoven and can be seen throughout many cultures around the globe. Their use of contextualization and stray from ambiguity mixed with clever and poetic lyrics makes for compelling and beautiful interpretations of the often unexplainable things going on around us.

I am going to be doing a series of blog post, investigating further into musicians that go into this political realm and try to see what types of perspectives are expressed through their songs.

We'll look through the words and melodies of artists to get an idea of both the past and the present.

When Past and Present/Dance and Song Collide.

In October of 2010 the artist Sufjan Stevens released his first full-length collection of original songs since 2005, Age of Adz, (which I just found out is pronounced "odds") This album was incredible radical to most fans of the artist; for it appeared to be a complete change of gears compared to his most popular "states" albums, Illinois and Michigan. But for followers of the artist that know his entire body of work, it was a little less unusual, and a lot more brilliant. By stripping away the narrative aspects of his music writing he created something that is "perhaps more vibrant, more primary, and more explicit than anything else he’s done before."

The album as a whole contains themes of the cosmos, love, sex, anxiety, and death and uses an incredibly wide range of "instruments". A large portion of his traditional instruments: banjo, acoustic guitar, etc. have been replaced by drum machines and analogue synthesizers. The album is most similar to his very early work, where he experimented with electronic sounds and complex compositions. These new creations are much more sophisticated and complex, taking many invested listening experiences to completely process the loops and layers. Along with his digital notes, he includes arrangements of brass, strings, woodwinds, and a choir, giving the songs even more complexity, allure, and originality.

The conclusive, final track off of the album is 25 minutes and 34 seconds long and is entitled, Impossible Soul. This song deals with love and the challenges that come with relationships. There are references to some sort of break up, but the abstract nature of the lyrics, paired with the music itself, leaves the listener with a less specific and more emotive experience.

This video is of the song Impossible Soul paired with a performance of the modern ballet Noces (meaning "wedding"), as re-created and choreographed by Angelin Preljocaj in 1988. The ballet itself has gone through multiple variations, this one being more radical and less traditional. The merging of it with this composition by Sufjan could not have been done better though. The song and the choreography seem to shift, turn, twist, and progress in unity and the visual themes perfectly reflect the narrative or conceptual themes of the lyrics. The beauty and awe lie in the experience of viewing it though. So, please enjoy.

John Cage: Chance Sounds

John Cage was a revolutionary man, an experimental "composer" and the artist that altered the world of music and the relationship between (what we call) music and our lives. Cage is known best from his 1952 composition, 4'33", a musical performance, always lasting exactly 4 min. and 33 seconds, which consists of musicians pursed in position to play the first note on their instruments, which never comes.

He was also known as a philosopher, poet, music theorist, artist, printmaker, amateur mycologist and mushroom collector. He challenged and questioned the idea of music as a form of self expression and of sounds being anything more than just that, reverberations affecting our ears and interpreted by our brains. He talked about the sounds not created with force or forethought and the beauty within "silence".

In an interview with Laurie Anderson (an artist that I will be sure to talk about later) he states; "I use chance operations instead of operating accordingly to my likes and dislikes. I use my work to change myself and I accept what the chance operations say."

Often the compositions that he created through chance operations take on a very beautiful nature. I find that the randomization of sounds creates a landscape for our ears that is unusual and maybe even uncomfortable, but compelling and thoughtful. My brain at times feels more involved in the processing of the music and at other times is able to let go of structure completely and feel almost complete bliss.

While I do not 100% agree with everything that Cage felt music should be, I see his impact on our culture and the creation process of musicians as incredibly significant. He was a true genius; taking an entire discipline and turning it on its head.

Finally I will leave you with the composition, Dream--written to accompany a Merce Cunningham dance--which I find serene and elegant, and also a closing quote for contemplation;

"There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot."

Pedro the Lion:

I have a new music love.

It was one of those situations where I found a gem buried deep in the depths of the 16000 songs in my iTunes library (well maybe I was pointed to it). That gem is Pedro the Lion.

Pedro the Lion is an indie-rock band from Seattle that was formed by the front man, David Bazan. They are known for their "emotionally charged narratives", Bazan's deep and mournful voice, and their catchy but detailed melodies. At first listen, there wasn't a great deal that jumped out to me personally to catch my attention and pull me in. When listening superficially, the music seems somewhat flat. The genius of this band lies predominantly in the lyrics.

Today I want to talk more about their track, "Penetration" off of the album, Control. This concept album contains the narrative of a business man who is having marital and general life issues, focusing on themes such as infidelity, greed, vengeance, and the fear of death.

The song Penetration, co-written with Casey Foubert, is an exceptionally interesting track off the album. Pitchfork calls it "a reasonably cathartic requiem for a dotcom layoff, with chiming, Edge-like guitars and a brash, anthemic chorus". It is a song that does a better job at that initial hook and the more and more times you give it time and really listen, the more it gives back to you.


AESTHETICS

The track begins with catchy and heavy guitar rhythms and moves straight into Bazan's simple vocals. There is something very cathartic about this song. It feels almost like we're being massaged by the repetitive melody and and the switching back and fourth between the deep drum beat and the fast, higher pitched guitar riffs.


CONTENT

The song really reveals its cleverness and finesse in the lyrics. Every line hits you with poignancy and a critical air that joins multiple observations of society to make a unified introspective statement. The line, "Because if it isn't making dollars, then it isn't making sense" ties the song together, making the statement against corporate culture and how it has penetrated the ideals and actions of our society.

Have you ever seen an idealist
With gray hairs on his head?
Or successful men who keep in touch
With unsuccessful friends?

You only think you did
I could have sworn I saw it, too
But as it turns out
It was just a clever ad for cigarettes

Because if it isn't making dollars
Then it isn't making sense
If you aren't moving units
Then you're not worth the expense
If you really want to make it
You had best remember this
If it isn't penetration
Then it isn't worth a kiss

We're so sorry, sir
But you did not quite make the cut this time
We'd appreciate it if you'd get
Your stuff all out by five

Don't take it personal
Everyone knows you did your best
If it makes it easier
You should look at things from our perspective

Because if it isn't making dollars
Then it isn't making sense
If you aren't moving units
Then you're not worth the expense
If you really want to make it
You had best remember this
If it isn't penetration
Then it isn't worth a kiss


SOCIAL/HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The music of Pedro the Lion, in general, has been related to the writings of J. D. Salinger for their creations of narratives that observe the aspects of society such as alienation, family ties, death, religion, the loss of innocence, and and corruption. Bazan seems to write lyrics in the way that aligns more with a writer of literature than catchy songs, often taking him six to eight months to complete the process. He hides and reveals meaning in metaphors, references, and the stories that he creates.

Guest Post: Michelle's Favorite Record

My Favorite Record

by Michelle Cornelison

My favorite vinyl record in my collection is The Creek Drank the Cradle by Iron
& Wine, released on Sub Pop records in 2002. I won’t go to much into the context and specifics of its release because I want to focus on its structure in the LP format.

This is my favorite record to listen to. The album art is, on the whole,
unremarkable—no fancy heavyweight double LPs with full color storybooks here, which is pretty typical of a Sub Pop vinyl release. It does have a modest insert with lyrics and a few images, one of which I actually just realized looks like a drypoint etching, which is a pretty cool side note. I call this my favorite because it is the one I listen to most often (the record that is, not the album in general). Many of us have certain albums or bands we enjoy especially during a specific season or time of day. In The Creek Drank the Cradle I have found a collection of songs that fit all seasons, all moments.

The first time I ever listened to this album in full was in the vinyl format. I know this is cheesy, but I remember the day clearly. I spent nearly the whole morning in my room painting the walls green, with the sun shining in the windows, taking breaks to flip records. I remember thinking how perfect this album was for the occasion, specifically “Rooster Moans,” the fifth track on side one.

Another thing worth noting about The Creek Drank the Cradle is the first song. First songs are so important for an entire album to be good. I don’t know about you, but I am very much an album person when it comes to listening to music. Maybe it comes from being an artist, but I really value experiencing the songs the way the artist intended. But if I find myself needing to skip over songs when listening to an album, I will certainly still listen to it, but it will most likely never become a favorite. All that chatter to say, the first song, “Lion’s Mane” is spectacular, and anyone who has listened to it must know that it is the auditory equivalent of basking in the sun with your eyes closed. It’s a great one for waking up. Records always have two first songs though (or four, etc.; one for each side). The second first song, “Southern Anthem,” is also strong.

Last songs are equally important (and again, this record has two). Maybe I am being ridiculous, but when the break between sides of a record does not feel like a natural pause it makes me uneasy. (But I shouldn’t complain; I suppose the more abrupt the changeover is the less likely I am to accidentally leave the needle dragging around the center of the record for half an hour). The last song on the first side is both heavenly and haunting. It is without question my favorite on the album, and possibly my favorite by the artist. It is definitely a falling asleep song. I encourage you to find it and listen—even as
a single track, from your computer, although it is even better with the whole album. The actual last track is a good one (“Muddy Hymnal”), but I think some of the previous songs could have better served as the finale, especially “Weary Memory.” I think it might be because “Muddy Hymnal” is such a short song, at less than three minutes.

And so ends my endorsement of this excellent release from Sub Pop, which I recommend to listeners of all ages and backgrounds (I guess except for the fourth track, which contains a certain contentious word. But every other song is lullaby-appropriate). I will conclude with the lyrics to my favorite track, “Upward Over the Mountain.” Cheers.



Mother don’t worry, I killed the last snake that lived in the creek bed.
Mother don’t worry, I’ve got some money I save for the weekend.
Mother, remember being so stern with that girl who was with me?
Mother, remember the blink of an eye when I breathed through your body?

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten.
Sons are like birds, flying upward over the mountain.

Mother I made it up from the bruise of a floor of this prison.
Mother I lost it, all of the fear of the Lord I was given.
Mother forget me now that the creek drank the cradle you sang to.
Mother forgive me, I sold your car for the shoes that I gave you.

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten.
Sons can be birds taken broken up to the mountain.

Mother don’t worry, I’ve got a coat and some friends on the corner.
Mother don’t worry, she’s got a garden we’re planting together.
Mother, remember the night that the dogs had her pups in the pantry?
Blood on the floor, the fleas on their paws, and you cried ‘til the morning.

So may the sunrise bring hope where it once was forgotten.
Sons are like birds, flying always over the mountain.

Live Trumps All

Although records are wonderful ways of listening to music (especially for a personal experience and contemplation/analysis) any sort of recording will most often be trumped by a genuine live performance.

Last night I had the pleasure to view a few local Atlanta bands play at the Drunken Unicorn. The show overall was not bad, with the Society of Ghosts opening the night and Street Violence as the final act. I was personally captivated the most by the band that performed in between the two, named Red Sea. They played a great set, coming primarily from their newest EP titled, Weird Problem..

The band consists of four members: Kyle Sherrill and Stephen Luscre, playing back and fourth harmonies on guitars; Mick Mayer, playing bass and singing vocals with Kyle; and Rick Mayer on the drums. Their sound is unlike most that I have heard coming out lately, keeping things simple while using harmony and layering to provoke interest and add complexity. Many bands that have been popping up recently are composed of as many people with as many instruments that can fit on stage (which by no means is a bad thing), which leads to a exciting and chaotic atmosphere. Staying away from this template, Red Sea seems to be much more focused, concentrating on the science and technique of music writing and working within the realm of few instruments to organize the sounds amplified and create a landscape that is not completely revealed in a single listening.

I saw Red Sea perform in the Fall at a small house show and remember being intrigued by their music then. In the last week they popped back into my head, like a memory that got temporarily buried. When I was informed that they were playing by a mutual friend, I decided to go watch them again. Before the show I listened to a few of their songs online, because I truthfully had forgotten what I had heard in the Fall.

While experiencing the live show I realized a few things about their music that did not jump out at me during that exclusively auditory preview. For example, the two guitarists have certain techniques for creating these captivating harmonies; they often play the same chords while using different strumming or picking patterns or strum the same pattern while playing different chords. Also, getting to see people sing harmonies live is more revealing than when they are recorded.

Overall, Red Sea seems to be a band that could go somewhere, taking influences from post-rock and pop-rock, with the sense of pulling grunge out of the swamp of ambiguity and giving it a little more of a backbone. I am excited to see what might come next.


*While this video is not of the best quality, I wanted to use a media that most closely would represent the live performance. But I highly recommend the procuring of these songs to be listened to with quality headphones.

LP Art: Explosions in the Sky

As records are becoming more of a collectors item and something that both the creator and buyer puts a heavy penny into, they are also being thought of as a more visual implementation of artistic expression to assist the auditory.

One band that has utilized album art in many of their records is Explosions In The Sky. I own three of their records, two of which (All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone and The Earth Is Not a Cold Dead Place) are among the most beautiful and intricate on the shelf. E.I.T.S. is a four piece, American instrumental post-rock band from Texas that uses intricate layers of guitar melodies backed by bold and often sporadic drum beats to create expressive and emotional experiences. They began in 1999 and were heavily influenced by bands such as Mogwai and Dirty Three, two other instrumental bands often placed in the post-rock genre.

One of my favorite albums to pull out and show people as an example of really great album art that could not be replicated by a CD or digital media is All Of a Sudden I Miss Everyone.

This record was released in February of 2007. The art within it was done by Esteban Rey, who is also the band's tour manager. Not only is the image that appears on the cover, alone beautiful and reminiscent of the art of Van Gogh and Manet; it is also replicated on the D side of the record itself through an etching.

The use of this extra space on records is being more and more often used for these types of etchings (and as someone who has been through an undergraduate degree in Printmaking, I find this detail to always be a wonderful surprise).

In terms of the listening experience of this record, it is definitely one of a continuous nature. Each song feels like a part of the whole and the entire record has an ebb and flow that begs not to be disrupted.

There has been speculation that the themes of the song titles and the title of the record has a direct relation to the novel Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger. The title is a short summary of the last part of the book, when the main character Holden tells the reader, "Don't ever tell anybody anything. If you do, you start missing everybody." There are also major themes in the book of isolation, fear, home, normality, and tragedy. These ideas could be alluded to in song titles such as, It's Natural To Be Afraid, What Do You Go Home To?, and So Long, Lonesome. I am not sure if this is the exact intention of the musicians, but it is an interesting idea and literary relation to ponder.

In this post I have included a digital representation of the album, but if I could I would invite you all over to hear and watch it spinning on my turntable.

*Extra Note: The band is releasing a new record Take Care, Take Care, Take Care, this month and they have gone even further with the album art included. It is another visual creation by Esteban and is tempting me to splurge of the rather high price and add it to my collection....

Vinyl Week!

In congruence with Records Store Day, which occurred nationwide this past Saturday, I will being doing a week long tribute to Vinyl.

There is a recent surge in the vinyl industry that has been taken place within the past few years. Many people attribute the rise in records to the "trend" factor that has also been attached to antique toys and vintage clothes, but there is a specific rationale behind this social instinct.

FIRST of all, there is a beauty in the technology of record players themselves.
Invented in 1877 by Thomas Edison, its earliest form of the recorded audio technology consisted of cylinder shaped tinfoil sheets that had audio recordings engraved on the outside surface and were then read and played by a mechanical "phonograph". This later developed into what we now recognize and still produce as vinyl records.

Most of us who own records find ourselves mesmerized by the way that a small wire (needle) can run its way along the canals and ridges of a record and produce the crisp and clear sounds of the musicians that we love.

Most importantly there is an intentionality behind the creation of a record, the purchasing of a record, and the listening experience.

CREATION
The term "concept album" is one that is now often thrown around in the music industry, but at one point in time concept albums were all that existed. Artists created albums as full hour or so long listening experience. The only times that songs would be isolated were for publicity purposes (giving the audience a small taste of the whole). Today this is lost in our MTV driven culture of hit singles and sound bites. Often people do not even take the time to listen to a single song all the way through, let alone an entire album.

The creation of a vinyl record forces the listener to have that all encompassing experience of the music. You put the beautiful black disc on the turntable and watch it spin.


PURCHASING
These are bulky, heavy, and weather sensitive objects that cost a bit to create and own; so people who purchase them do so for very specific reasons.

Whether it is an artist that you have loved for years or one which you compulsively decide to invest in, there is always a memory and sentiment that comes with the purchasing of a record. Like Rob does in the film High Fidelity, people can often think of the storyline of their lives by the records that they own.


LISTENING EXPERIENCE
When you put on a record it's an entire experience that you are investing time into. There is a location aspect--it can't happen while you're walking down the street or in class when you're distracting yourself from the lecture happening. When you decide to listen to a record it's because you want to really listen to the music. It is active and genuine.


In this next week I will be expanding on the topic of vinyl records by going into my own record collection and pulling out ones that I feel the experience of the music is drastically and genuinely heightened by the medium. I will be focusing in on the flow of the music within albums and also the art that is incorporated even more strongly in the contemporary production of records.

Live Music Alert

There is a show going on tonight at the Star Bar. The artists playing are ADRON, Little Tybee, and Beau Victrola. There is a $5 cover and the show begins at 9pm.

This is going to be a sort of family show, with musicians from each of the bands moving from one set to the other and performing alongside each other. All of them have been friends for a long time, which should lead to a great cohesive atmosphere.

Adron is a wonderful folk, tropical musician, gathering inspiration from many genres and creating songs that bring smiles to everyone in the crowd. Her voice is nearly flawless and she can whistle as well as any bird. Playing along side her are Josh Martin on the 8-string guitar, Colin Agnew on percussion (both of Little Tybee), and a few others. The entire show should be great so don't miss it!

Covers: Art they or aren't they?

Today we're going to be discussing the music of Cat Power and more specifically the wealth of songs that she has covered throughout her career. Cat Power, or Chan Marshall (age 39) has grown to be a fairly widely known singer/songwriter for her emotional breathy vocals, minimalist style, and simple but arousing guitar parts. She has produced nine records ranging from her first, Dear Sir, which exemplifies her grungy start, playing in Brooklyn warehouses; to her latest, Jukebox, which includes much more up-beat, polished, jazz and blues inspired songs such as "Aretha, Sing One for Me".

Though her style is one of originality--mixing the feelings of grunge and old blues or jazz--within all of the albums that Chan has made there are a large amount of songs thrown in that are not originals. In 2000 she came out with The Covers Record, in which she she recreates the songs of musicians including The Rolling Stones, Velvet Underground, Bob Dylan, Moby Grape, Smog, Nina Simone, Lou Reed and even herself.

To get more down deep into these songs and trying to figure out why or even if cover songs can be considered art, I am going to be

comparing one specific cover by Chan to the original version. Things I would like to discuss are questions such as: What happens when an artist's source for content starts somewhere outside of them? How can a musician creating covers get their audience to take them seriously? Can a cover ever be art?

AESTHETICS

The album begins with a song that we have all heard, but that Chan Marshall has rendered somewhat unrecognizable. The first track, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction", originally a Rolling Stones classic, begins with a simple, but beautiful guitar part and Chan's calm, emotive, and almost haunting voice. The first feeling and device that she seems to completely alter in the song is the pace. She has taken it down (more than) a few notches, losing the up-beat, repetitive tempo that the song originally had. While the Stones version makes you sway your hips and want to dance around the room, Marshall's cover draws you into a state of calm or contemplation.

CONTENT

In the last verse of the song she sings the lines, "When I'm riding around the globe, and I'm doing this, and I'm signing that, and I'm trying, and I'm trying". She seems to be professing the lyrics to the listener with a sensibility and passion, which is quite different from the version by the Stones. Jagger sings the lyrics with a far more blunt tone, referring more to that of protest and frustration.

Marshall's subtle but expressive singing style is a huge attribution to the emotions expressed in the lyrics. Also by including only her own acoustic guitar part in the song, the minimal style places a larger emphasis on the lyrics themselves instead of creating a greater musical landscape to get lost in.

SOCIAL/HISTORICAL CONTEXT

The Rolling Stones song, "Satisfaction" is played in restaurants and bars around the nation and is known as a quintessential song of rebellion against consumerism and the status quo. Released in 1965 it has a very specific context that it belongs to. Cat Power's covers are often from artists such as the Stones or Bob Dylan, musicians who have become idols in our popular culture, even reaching into today.

Even though she chooses these artists that are constantly covered and played, the songs she re-creates do not seems to be simply tributes to them. There is a sense that in the way that she strips down the lyrics and music of these songs, she exposes parts of them that were once more difficult to pull out.

*I of course have to admit that as an avid Cat Power listener and I fan of a lot of slower, emotive music, my writing might be somewhat swayed. Because of this fact I would really enjoy other's opinions on the topic, including the bringing up of other covers and reactions.