“Comin’ Correct” (live) – RANA (download here)
from Subject To Change (2003)
released by Rockslide
“Buy, Sell or Break” – RANA (download here)
from What It Is (2004)
released by RANA/Bone Saw Records
(files expire on May 22nd)
RANA played long and late and raucous at the Knitting Factory on Saturday. Three-quarters of the way through the set, back to back, they jammed their great lost/unrecorded double-A-side 7-inch: Comin’ Correct (Metzger) b/w Buy, Sell or Break (Durant). I’m not sure how the world would be different had it ever been released, let alone recorded, but these two songs live together in my mind. Here are the two songs, in marginally less than Platonic form.
Okay, so the name wunderkammern-twenty-seven-dot-com doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, I admit it. Neither does Jesse-Jarnow-dot-com, but at least it’s (sorta) easier to remember. In an act of rare common sense, I finally bought the domain over the weekend and set it to forward over here. Y’know, in case that makes life easier for you or anything…
o YouTube has the original, 1994 short film of Wes Anderson’s Bottle Rocket. I’m looking forward to watching this one. (Yepyep, Kottke.)
o A list of various “open content” projects currently occurring in Brazil, including details about Gilberto Gil and John Perry Barlow’s Canto Livre program, which aims to digitize Brazilian culture, assign Creative Commons licenses, and distribute via peer-to-peer networks. See also the Estudio Livre program, a series of public, government-funded recording studios run on open source software.
o The second episode of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour is available for free via the same route as the first. (username: press1, password: xmr0ck5!) It is a great pleasure to come back from a night out and be able to fire up the freshy Bobmix. (Big ups, Expecting Rain.)
Apropos of absolutely nothing, a quote from Struggles and Triumphs, the 1869 autobiography of P.T. Barnum. Here, Barnum describes the burning of his second American Museum, where mermaid bones were displayed side by side with genuine artifacts:
The cold was so intense that the water froze almost as soon as it left the house of the fire engines; and when at last everything was destroyed, except the front granite wall of the Museum building, that and the ladder, signs, and lamp-posts in front, were covered in a gorgeous framework of transparent ice, which made it altogether one of the most picturesque scenes imaginable. Thousands of persons congregated daily in that locality in order to get a view of the magnificent ruins. By moonlight, the ice-coated ruins were still more sublime, and for many days and nights the old Museum was ‘the observed of all observers,’ and photographs were taken by several artists.
“Ragtime Nightingale” – David Boeddinghaus (download here)
from Crumb soundtrack (1995)
released by Rykodisc (buy)
(file expires on May 17th)
Even without an inch of vinyl crackle, ragtime pioneer Joseph Lamb’s “Ragtime Nightingale” sounds mysterious and old. One gets the sense, though, that the song has exactly the same emotional impact as it did when it was first composed; that it is not simply the nostalgia of listening to ragtime in the early 21st century, but an objective emotional effect of the music. It’s just beautiful. The genre’s signature rhythmic force gives shape to the melody, which is so closely entwined that it is almost elusive, a shadow turning within a shadow.
“Down in the Valley” – Pete Seeger (download here)
from American Favorite Ballads, v. 1 (1957)
released by Smithsonian Folkways (buy)
(file expires on May 12th)
Pete Seeger was my first hero, plain and simple. My parents played me a lot of his records when I was very young, most especially his American Favorite Ballads series. I have distinct memories of their tinted, block-printed covers on the big, mysterious record sleeves. He was probably the first professional musician I saw perform. I got to interview Pete two months back, and it was one of the most deeply satisfying experiences I’ve ever had. It’s been nice to see him get some attention lately, with Bruce Springsteen’s Seeger Sessions disc, and the subsequent New Yorker profile of Pete. Seeger’s music is lily white. When, on the elegiac “Down in the Valley,” he sings, “write me a letter, send it by mail, send it in care of Birmingham jail,” one wonders what the hell somebody so mild-mannered could possibly be jailed for. Seeger was jailed, though, for refusing to name names before Joseph McCarthy’s House un-American Activities Committee.
I didn’t know any of that when I was a kid, though, nor did I even question Pete’s authority about being jail. It seemed so obviously a song, a play of some kind. There is no authenticity to Pete Seeger’s performances of American folk ballads, at least in the sense that — owing to his ridiculously button-down voice, his earnest presentation — Seeger is so obviously presenting songs. That, Seeger implicitly says, is what one should be listening to anyway. There is a backwards transcendence to Pete’s version of “Down in the Valley.” It’s as corny as it comes, but there’s no mistaking the beautiful, lingering melody at the center. Seeger is not interpreting the song, he is simply singing it. And, while he may have political reasons for doing so, he’s still doing so, and that’s something still rare and wonderful.
Before the game, the announcer announced that it was Asian Night. As such, there would be a performance of “traditional Korean music and dance.” Nothing more specific, just “traditional.” From the visiting dugout paraded a troupe of dancers and hand percussionists. A man played long, piercing drones on a horn. Processed through the tinny scoreboard P.A., the horn cut through the stadium din with stunning clarity.
When the dancers were done, men began banging on a massive drum set up by the Mets’ dugout. Again, no explanation, just booms. At first, they didn’t come through the speakers, and we could only hear the drums, muffled and indistinct, like distant fireworks. When they were piped through the P.A., there was an unbelievable echo, almost literally the dimensions that Jamaica’s early dub astronauts were trying to create. And again, the crowd — or those paying attention, anyway — were totally boggled. The speakers were cut off quickly.
If I was a kid there, I think I’d have to be totally intrigued, especially by the mysterious, ricocheting horn. It would’ve been like discovering music through the crackle of library-loaned vinyl, or from the erratic signal of the college radio station a few towns over. There was no scholarship to the presentation, and it was awesome (if maybe accidentally so, at least for that). “Let’s have a big Shea Stadium hand,” the announcer announced. Some people clapped politely, and the buoyant pre-recorded organ played again. .
“Three Woman Blues” – The Wowz (download here)
from Go Figure EP (2006) self-(un)released
(file expires on May 10th.)
On “Three Woman Blues,” The Wowz set their hootenannic anti-folk over a beat that recalls Brazilian baile-funk (especially the recurring two-note electro-whistle melody). The verses are pure amphetamine-era Dylan (“Jet Pilot,” specifically), but the dropped chorus is all Wowz: “I wouldn’t be a misogynist, if my heart didn’t hurt as bad as this.” The ragged harmonies are ace, as are their musical equivalent in the sloppy/ecstatic lightning-shot guitar break that leads to the middle-eight. My favorite line, sung good ‘n’ dry, is there: “She moves in a stupid way / and she’s, like, obsessed with putting things away.” Not ready to be manic yourself? Well, dig the upswings vicariously through the Wowz.
