“Here No More” – The Breeders (download) (buy)
from Mountain Battles (2008)
(file expires April 25th)
I’m going to say it anyway, because it’s right under our noses and it might get missed: Kim and Kelley Deal’s harmonies are what make the Breeders so lovely, even in 2008. There are (possibly apocryphal?) stories about the twins singing country duets for truckers in their native Dayton that I remember reading in Circus circa Last Splash. Until bootlegs surface, “Here No More,” from the new Mountain Battles, will suffice. The melody is decent, really just serving as a vehicle for their sweetly decaying singsongs to make something nice between them, pleasing genetic harmonics in full effect. Hardly radical, but it doesn’t need to be.
The twelfth in an ongoing collection of functional webpages and–dork- like tools (excluding any/all Google programs)
o The new and old bins at WFMU, complete with notes from music director Brian Turner and other DJs.
o More online mixing at muxtape.
o Melodyne promises “direct note access” polyphonic sampling. I suspect technology like this might be similar to alchemy or divining rods, but I’m sure it’ll work for some people.
o Notable digital archives from newspapers and magazines, for free and for pay.
o Omnisio allows the user to make YouTube playlists which join together multi-part movies.
o Scribd is a free OCR scanning service.
o Sorry, a break with the self-imposed ban on Google tools ’cause it’s too cool: GoogleEarth now layers current New York Times headlines over its maps, so one can read the news geospatially.
Episode 42: Springtime in Bourgwick
Listen here.
1. “Tower Records Ad” – John Lennon (from WFMU Radio Archival Oddities compilation)
2. “The Children of Rock and Roll” – Ron Lennon (from Rutland Weekend Television)
3. “Frow Show Theme” – MVB
4. “Fallen Snow” – Au Revoir Simone (from Fallen Snow)
5. “Air” – Greg Davis (from Curling Pond Woods)
6. “They Will Appear, Behold” – Akron/Family (recorded March 2008, KVRX)
7. “Theme From Ulcerative Colitis” – Yukio Yung (from Valborgunmassoæfton)
8. “As Tears Roll By” – Daniel Lanois (from Shine)
9. “Richmond” – The Faces (from Long Player)
10. “Life Goes Off” – Jim O’Rourke (recorded 16 September 2002, Aoyoma Cay)
11. “A Certain Guy” – Mary Weiss (from I Hate CDs: Norton Records 45 RPM Singles Collection)
12. “Spooks” – Radiohead (recorded May 2006, Copenhagen)
13. “Asozan” – Yamataka Eye (from Re… Remix?)
14. “Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky, no. 5” – Pelt (from Empty Bell Ringing in the Sky)
15. “Mountains of the Moon” – The Grateful Dead (from Aoxomoxoa, original 1969 mix)
16. “Here No More” – The Breeders (from Mountain Battles)
o A massive archive of Sonic Youth bootlegs and side projects.
o Garfield minus Garfield.
o Brian Dettmar’s gorgeous book autopsies.
o Product vs. Reality comparisons.
o Philosopher John Rawls on baseball.
Busted, down on Classon Street. Quite possibly the end of an era.
I saw lots of other people with cameras. Anybody got any better pix? Or, y’know, information? (Some more info emerging in the BV comment section. Anything concrete would be appreciated.)
The NYPD hauling away the fun:
Le sigh.
“Thinking For Now” – Mark David & the Nightly Lights feat. Don Helms (download)
(file expires April 18th)
That Mark David‘s “Thinking For Now” is an uncommonly decent contemporary country tune — vintage without sounding overtly nostalgic, with a great bridge — is kind of beside the point, though its escape of nostalgia is remarkable, given the ghost that powers it. More than anything, Hank Williams’ lonesomeness found emotional form in the swelling steel guitar of Don Helms who — holy Moses — is still alive and recording in 2008, playing his original 1949 double neck Gibson Console Grand with Mark David and company, an Ohio concern. Helms’ voice is as clean and pure now as 60 years ago, cutting through its surroundings with a dignified mourn. More than any lost Hank tracks or flown-in ProTools duets (or even trios) between three generations of singing Williams, these are the true adventures of Hank Williams’ still blue, still lonesome heart in the 21st century.
These mostly fall on the latter side of the above equation. Definitely need to make some time soon to catch up on my links.
o Two pieces about what Murakami is up to.
o Cory Doctorow on multitasking and disruption.
o Recent semi-interview (circa, uh, last week) with Eye and Yoshimi from the Boredoms all about the new Super Roots disc. (Big ups, Whiney!)
o GQ begins to untangle JB’s wreckage.
o Alan Bishop on his Sun City Girls brother, the late Charles Gocher.
“All the Way Around and Back” – Charles Ives (download) (buy)
conducted by Leonard Bernstein
A Charles Ives piece from 1908 structurally mimics an archaic baseball rule from the composer’s childhood, via Timothy Johnson’s Baseball and the Music of Charles Ives: A Proving Ground:
The additive process aptly represents the gradual process of the runner. If the initial Db that begins each measure symbolizes first base, then each added note tracks the runner’s progress toward third. The skipped additions (moving directly from five to seven and from seven to eleven notes) seem to depict the runner’s increased speed as he builds up momentum heading for third. Finally, the complete pattern is repeated once more, running as fast as he can, before the whole process is reversed beginning with an extra two measures of the final undecatuplet, as the runner returns to first base in the same way that he traveled in the first place — rapidly at first, then easing up as the base is reached.
At first glance the symbolism of the baserunner, speeding up as he rounds the bases and then slowing down as he returns, seems to be lost in this palindromic reversal, since a runner presumably might easily trot back to first base after a foul ball. However, the rule that determined how quickly one must return to the base after a foul ball changed over the years. The rules of 1883 state that “a baserunner who fails to return to his base at a run following a foul ball is liable to be put out by being touched by the ball while off his base.”
(Thx, Jakebrah. Definitely need to read this.)
“Mountains of the Moon” – The Grateful Dead (download)
from Aoxomoxoa original mix (1969)
High on the list of Dead tunes likely to convert freak-folkers is Aoxomoxoa‘s “Mountains of the Moon.” With Tom Constanten’s swirling harpsichord and Robert Hunter’s oblique, mythical lyrics, it’s a bauble that didn’t sustain in the Dead’s repertoire, whose most tender songs required (for better or worse) a certain machismo to survive the ‘heads. While “Mountains” served as a perfect prelude to at least 11 “Dark Stars” in 1969, its modal (1) melody couldn’t even last long enough for the band’s abundant acoustic sets the following year. Drag.
I love how Hunter’s lyrics get down with the folk mythos — Tom Banjo, Electra, etc. — but also find a moment of psychedelic focus, the hallucinations parting for a brief second like ascending angels: “hey, the city in the rain.”
It is perhaps the aforementioned angels who hummm and ooooh behind the original 1969 version on Aoxomoxoa, removed by Jerry Garcia himself in a 1971 remix. On first listen, I wished there were more of them, but I think they’re in just the right proportion to last the duration of the track’s four minutes without grating. Like the Blood on the Tracks demo acetate, the Aoxomoxoa mix comes bundled with the vinyl warmth of its source. (Big ups to SeaOfSound for the music.)
(1) I think.
A very small bit of food for thought, via Eric Alterman’s New Yorker piece “Out of Print,” about the state of the American newspaper industry:
The news cultures of many European nations long ago embraced the notion of competing narratives for different political communities, with individual newspapers reflecting the views of each faction. It may not be entirely coincidental that these nations enjoy a level of political engagement that dwarfs that of the United States.
