Frank & Earthy blog
Yo La Tengo at Rififi
Invite Them Up with Eugene Mirman and Bobby Tisdale
26 February 2008
no Georgia, Todd Barry on drums
Come On Up (The Young Rascals) (download)
Mr. Tough
Big Day Coming (fast)
Bobby’s Girl (Lesley Gore) (download)
o I’m so completely bummed I missed the virtual recreation of the Columbian Exposition’s White City last week in Chicago. Perhaps next time. (Thx, Fangs McVegan.)
o The New Yorker on the ambiguous moral complexity of carbon footprints. Only a page or two in so far, but brilliant.
o Daniel Chamberlain’s Arthur essay, Uncle Skullfucker’s Band. (Good recommendo, El Shmo.)
o A meaty Oxford American piece on late Weavers singer Lee Hays. (Courtesy digaman.)
o I’m sad that the Coen brothers’ longtime imaginary editor, Roderick Jaynes, didn’t win a Best Editing Oscar last night.
o One of Dont Look Back‘s Mr. Joneses speaks out.
o A new Velvet Underground song!
“A Sign of the Times” – Petula Clark (download) (buy)
b/w “Time For Love” (1966)
(file expires March 3rd)
Like the Beverly Hills Teens theme, Petula Clark’s “A Sign of the Times” is a random melody that got stuck in my head as an adolescent, and waited like a latent dopamine trigger for literally decades until I remembered the song and downloaded it. My introduction to it was a cheesy Banner Day montage in the same Amazin’ Era Mets video that yielded Dick McCormick’s “79 Men on Third,” and which was also my first exposure to “Changes” by David Bowie, whose chorus illustrated several dramatic trades in Mets’ history (like the Midnight Massacre that sent Tom Seaver to the Reds in 1977). Somebody could sample the big horn fanfare, but unlike the Chi-Lites’ “Are You My Woman (Tell Me So),” which yielded “Crazy In Love,” I don’t spend the whole song waiting for the part to return. It serves its function, introducing the “Sesame Street”-like progression and getting to Clark’s sweet, lovely vocal. I’m totally in love with the “maybe my lucky star” chorus, which wasn’t included in the video, and could be the basis for a perfectly serviceable tune itself.
“Summerteeth” – Wilco (download)
“Spiders (Kidsmoke)” – Wilco (download)
recorded 19 February 2008, Riviera Theater, Chicago, IL
(files expire March 1st)
It was a pleasure to arrive home the past two nights to discover Wilco webcasting from Chicago. Their five-night stand at the Riviera, during which they attempted to play every song from their primary albums, seems to mark a new phase for the band. By forcing that many songs back into the repertoire, many of which were probably dropped initially for some practical reason, some quite necessarily were a bit looser than others, like “Summerteeth.” Where Wilco’s sets at least once played at stateliness, there is now a Dead-like comfort, especially taking into account the two-set format of the shows. It works both ways, though, and the nooks have never been more detailed, like the 10-minute Neu-groove of “Spiders (Kidsmoke),” in which the band pushes decidedly out from Glenn Kotche’s elastic/metronomic krautrock.
“Eighth of January” – The Kentucky Colonels with Scott Stoneman (download) (buy)
(file expires February 27th)
Thanks to Rev for turning me onto this recording of Scott Stoneman and the Kentucky Colonels performing “Eighth of January” at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles in 1965. In the audience that night was Jerry Garcia.
I get my improvisational approach from Scotty Stoneman, the fiddle player. [He’s] the guy who first set me on fire — where I just stood there and I don’t remember breathing. He was just an incredible fiddler. He was a total alcoholic wreck by the time I heard him, in his early thirties, playing with the Kentucky Colonels… They did a medium-tempo fiddle tune like ‘Eighth of January’ and it’s going along, and pretty soon Scotty starts taking these longer and longer phrases — ten bars, fourteen bars, seventeen bars — and the guys in the band are just watching him! They’re barely playing — going ding, ding, ding — while he’s burning. The place was transfixed. They played this tune for like twenty minutes, which is unheard of in bluegrass. I’d never heard anything like it. I asked him later, ‘How do you do that?’ and he said, ‘Man, I just play lonesome.’ (Garcia, c. 1985, via Blair Jackson’s Garcia: An American Life)
By the time the music made it to tape — which is to say, in reality — it was five and a third minutes, proving Garcia’s memory to be about as blown as any Deadhead’s. He’s not wrong either, though. (See also “Cleo’s Back” for the further secret history of the Grateful Dead.)
Episode 38: Uh, What’s the Opposite of Joe-mentum?
Listen here.
1. “Boss Intro” – Capcom Sound Team (from Megaman II OST)
2. “A Sign of the Times” – Petula Clark
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Obamareggaeton” – Amigos de Obama
5. “Nowhere Man” – The Beatles (recorded 7/1966 Budokan, Tokyo)
6. “Supernatual Superserious” – R.E.M. (from Accelerate)
7. “I Got the Drop On You” – Mike Doughty (from Golden Delicious)
8. “Political Science” – Randy Newman (from Sail Away)
9. “Dawn Mist” – Eugene Wright and His Dukes of Swing (from Sun Ra: Early Recordings)
10. “Eighth of January” – The Kentucky Colonels with Scotty Stoneman (from Live in L.A.)
11. “The Real Morning Party” – Marco Benevento (from Invisible Baby)
12. “Miami Ice” – Icy Demons (from Miami Ice)
13. “Ganon’s Castle Under Ground” – Koji Kondo (from Zelda: Ocarina of Time OST)
14. excerpt from “Osorezan” – Geioh Yamashuriogumi (from Osorezan/Do No Kenbai)
15. “Whispering Hope” – Daniel Johnston with Yo La Tengo (recorded 1990/04/02 WFMU)
16. “Brazil” – Geoff Muldaur (from Brazil OST)
BLIP FESTIVAL: REFORMAT THE PLANET trailer from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.
“OBAMAREGGAETON” – Amigos De Obama (download)
(file expires January 25th)
For fear of jinxing anything, I resisted the urge to post this on Super Tuesday Eve, but I like the implications of this Obama reggaetón tune. For starters, credited to the organization Amigos De Obama, it’s instantly historical novelty, sung to the absolute rhythm of its time. More, it highlights another, less devious, musical aspect of the Illinois Senator: his name.
Last week, Mom wondered if Obama would be the first President whose name ended in a vowel. He wouldn’t be (see: Fillmore, Monroe, Pierce, Coolidge), but her point about Presidential homogeneity is well taken. There certainly haven’t been any men of Kenyan descent in the Oval Office, and consequently none whose names roll from the tongue quite like Obama’s. Hence, the genuinely new music. (Yeah, it came out last June, but who’s counting? See translation.)
And, while we’re on the topic: There’s something reassuring but also a bit cognitively dissonant about a silk-screened Obama “The Time is Now” poster in the front window of a tarot card reader.
“Albuquerque” – Neil Young (download) (buy)
from Tonight’s The Night (1975)
Well, here I am.
If there was ever any doubt that baseball is an oral culture, peep this letter written by legendary manger Casey Stengel to sportswriter Ira Berkow in the ’70s, when Casey was in his 80s. Quoted in Robert Creamer’s superb Stengel, it was a bit of a shock to me to realize that Casey — a raconteurish encyclopedia cataloguing a lifetime of players, plays and stories — was barely literate.
Dear Ira: Your conversation’s; and the fact you were the working writer were inthused with the Ideas was great but frankly do not care for the great amount of work for myself. Sorry but am not interested. Have to many proposition’s otherwise for the coming season. Fact cannot disclose my Future affair’s. Good luck. Casey Stengel, N.Y. Mets & Hall of Famer.
Man, my spell-check loves Casey. Didn’t write in the passive voice, though!
