It’s been almost a year since we’ve presented anything from our vast (and daily expanding) Ordovician Archives. Dr. Tuttledge remains in Taiwan, researching. (His collection continues to lie in storage in Manhattan.) We continue, as we can, without him.
One recent development, at least in the blogosphere, is the proliferation of teams of conversational salesmen posting advertisements in the comments sections of blogs. They are the Ordovician equivalent of traveling hucksters who might sidle up to potential customers at a bar and sell them goods and services. Except these salesmen are retarded. Though their offered products span all nine categories of Dr. Tuttledge’s classification system, they are incapable of hawking more than one item. Most frequently, they will begin conversations about poker, no matter what a blog posting is about.
A recent specimen, not having to do with poker, is most fascinating. It was submitted on March 15th as a comment on a previous posting about the New York Word Exchange.
***
IP Address: 202.134.104.237
Name: Pendostanets
Email Address: [email protected]
Comments:
Pendostanets!
***
Following the URL, one is rewarded with a “server not found” notification. Yet, the post is quite emphatic about this pendostanets thing. It is, after all, the name of the poster, his email address, his URL, and the entirety of his comment. Pendostanet’s primative means of expression recalls Arrested Development‘s Steve Holt (“Steve Holt!”).
A Google search of the word merely turns up other instances of Mr. Pendostanets posting about himself (“Pendostanets!”) on other blogs. One can only conclude that Pendostanets is no product at all, but some sort of code word for the initiated. Which we are not.
If anyone has any information as to the existence or whereabouts of this Mr. Pendostanets, please contact the Center for Anthropological Computing via the comments section of this blog.
“Fille ou Garcon (Sloop John B)” – Stone (download)
from Femmes de Paris, v. 1 (2002) (buy)
released by Wagram
(file expires March 24th.)
I don’t know much about this French version of “Sloop John B” except a.) it’s awesome and b.) it was introduced to me by wunderkammern27 correspondent Michael Slabach. Michael has just launched a blog as a homebase for his photography and his weekly podcast, The Sea of Sound. “Fille ou Garcon” is exactly the kind of eclectic and otherwise ginchy shit he’s great at turning up. A new edition — brimming with a bunch of tantilizing looking tracks, plus some old faves of mine — just went up today. I can’t wait to check it.
As for the song’s awesomeness, I guess I’m just a straight sucker for ’60s sounds. I love the sugar-coated bounce. It reminds me a little bit of Os Mutantes. But the real treat is the horn part, which is another sample waiting to happen. In the grand scheme of French pop, this is probably cookie-cutter stuff, cranked out in a quick session by some bored arrangers and on-staff musicians. Sophisticated it’s not, but man is it sunshiny.
The weekend’s proto-spring brought Polaroid blue skies, the kind that seem to rush down in greeting as you come out of the darkness of a subway station.
The moment after I took the picture, an MTA worker yelled at me. Taking pictures in the subway, after all, is illegal. You know, to prevent terrorism. It’s a stupid law. I hope the illegality of the evidence doesn’t hold back this shmuck from getting prosecuted.
“Harvest Moon” – Cassandra Wilson
from New Moon Daughter (1995)
released by Blue Note (buy)
(File expires on April 6th.)
A friend sent this to me very late at night over the weekend (thanks!), and it’s made me happy continuously since then. It’s not seasonal, forgive me, but Cassandra Wilson’s version of Neil Young’s “Harvest Moon” is the most luminescent bauble of a recording I’ve heard in recent memory. It’s long been one of my favorite Young songs, mostly because of its perfect melody, though I’ve always had to get by the semi-hokey Harvest Moon-era production.
Craig Street’s setting for Wilson transmogrifies the song from a campfire strum to a transcendent tone poem of chirping crickets (or a fine simulation), spare ambient percussion, a bowed bass, and — I think — a metallic dobro. There is a perfectly dulcet acoustic guitar lurking there, too, and mixed quite presently, at that. Given the Daniel Lanois-like weirdness of the rest of the voices, though, I didn’t notice it until giving the song a close listen. That’s a good thing, I’m pretty sure. All of these effects subliminally trace the changes, liberating the melody to drift dreamily.
What’s funny and unexpected is that, despite Young’s traditional Nashville-style backing, it’s Wilson’s avant-garde rearrangement that makes the song feel timeless and mysterious to me, like it was lifted from a 78 by a lost chanteuse who recorded four sides in an Oklahoma hotel room sometime between the World Wars. And that’s not to diss Neil Young’s version, ’cause it’s real purdy. But, this…
I vaguely remember my friend Paul playing me an Elliot Smith rendition of this tune back in college. Something to look for another day…
Last week, Owen brought over a bootleg DVD of the Talking Heads performing in their original three-piece lineup at CBGBs in December 1975. Needless to say, I was bloody well psyched. What I wasn’t expecting, and what I kind of enjoyed about it, was how bad it was. That’s not meant as an insult.
If anything, it came as a relief. It’s good to know that the Heads didn’t spring from the ground fully formed. During this performance (filmed in black and white), in what appears to be a not-very-packed CBs, the band runs down their early repertoire. David Byrne looks incredibly nervous, far from the charismatic frontman he’d become. Tina Weymouth, though not staring at her feet, doesn’t look much more assured.
The only member of the band who looks (or sounds) remotely comfortable is Chris Frantz, who holds the half-formed songs together with remarkable panache. Even “Psycho Killer,” which pre-dated the Heads’ existence, isn’t quite done. The killer bassline is there, but Byrne doesn’t have the phrasing of the “fa fa fa fa fa fa fa fa”s finished yet.
With hindsight, one can see where the music would go, how those weird guitar patterns Byrne plays are his attempt to emulate African rhythms. But for anybody wandering in off the street that night, it must’ve just sounded like noise, maybe even to other punks. Of course, there were probably Heads fans who thought everything after Jerry Harrison joined the band was too polished.
It’s taken for granted that the Heads were art students, but they really look it here, maybe unsure how they ended up playing on the Bowery. It’s all very inspiring, of course, to be able to get that much closer to the germination of the idea, to know that — after the camera stopped rolling — they unplugged their gear and transported it the few blocks back to their loft on nearby Chyristie Street. “The name of this band is Talking Heads,” Byrne says (of course) before they begin. Who?
(If anybody knows where to find this video on the cybernets — it doesn’t appear to be on YouTube yet — please comment or drop me a line.)
“I Live in the Springtime” – The Lemon Drops
anthologized on Nuggets: Original Artyfacts From the First Psychedelic Era box set (1998)
released by Rhino (buy)
(file expires on March 21st)
Proto-spring came to Brooklyn in a very real way over the weekend: those first days going out in only a tee-shirt because I can, sleeping with the bedside window open. Of course, it’s supposed get cold again in a few days, but this song — notable, I just realized after a good year or so of listens, for its complete lack of drums — will remain.
The third in an ongoing collection of functional webpages and dork tools (excluding any/all Google programs).
o BitPim — Get into your phone’s file structure and remove or add any data you need. (Having trouble? Poke around the cellphoneforums.net and you might find an answer.)
o TextPayMe — In one of our periodic life-as-sci-fi freakouts, my friends and I got to fantasticatin’ about the day one will be able to transfer money via text message. Unbeknownst to us (but apparently knownst to Rachel) the day is already here. Can’t wait to try this out.
o Encyclopedia — A mini-Wikipedia for the iPod! Hot diggity, this is like a real-life Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (Thanks, BB.)
o AbeBooks — Sure, Amazon can find you anything you’d want, but AbeBooks’ network of independent used booksellers probably can, too, and with way more character, taboot.
“Brazil” – Deadly Nightshade Family Singers
from Plain Brown Suit (2000)
self-released (no current website) (buy)
“Brazil” – Cornelius
from Point (2002)
released by Matador (buy)
(files expire on March 15th)
Ary Barroso’s “Brazil” is really one of the loveliest melodies ever written, I think. Though Barroso was Brazilian, his song hardly conjures up images of that sophisticated, chaotic Latin American country for me (probably because it was composed before the advent of bossa nova). Rather, it brings me to some cosmopolitan ’20s getaway that can only be reached by flying in a small plane represented as an advancing dotted line in a travel montage made of maps and stock footage. You know, like in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
Excluding Django Reinhardt for no particular reason, the Deadly Nightshade Family Singers and Cornelius have recorded my two favorite versions that I’ve yet heard (please post suggestions if you’ve got others). They’re wildly different. The Nightshades — a macabre chamber string outfit who put out the great Plain Brown Suit in 2000 and then fell off the face of the interwebs — turn in what I (perhaps erroneously) think of as the platonic version. It is thoughtful and romantic. Cornelius completely twists the song on his mindbending Point in 2002, doing away with the signature chromatic riff and filling the song out with electro-acoustic samples, chirping birds, howling dogs, pastoral bleeps, and sputteringly chopped vocals. Somehow, though, it retains everything that I find romantic about the Nightshades’ rendition. This is the definition of a durable song.
Yo La Tengo played their annual all-covers pledge drive for WFMU tonight.
Please comment with corrections. Thanks to Google for the help.
7 March 2006
WFMU Studios
Jersey City, NJ
Batman theme
Bertha (Grateful Dead)
City Hobgoblins (The Fall)
The Under Assistant West Coast Promotion Man (The Rolling Stones)
Instant Karma (John Lennon)
Zig-Zag Wanderer (Captain Beefheart)
Something In The Air (Thunderclap Newman)
Laugh at Me (Sonny and Cher)
Egyptian Reggae (Jonathan Richman)
Rock and Roll Love Letter (Bay City Rollers)
Starry Eyes (The Records)
You Don’t Miss Your Water (Craig David)
Girl of the North Country (Bob Dylan)
Dead Flowers (The Rolling Stones)
Blister in the Sun (Violent Femmes)
Lay Lady Lay (Bob Dylan)
Suspect Device (Stiff Little Fingers)
I Can’t Make It On Time (The Ramones)
Gut Feeling (Devo)
Holiday (The Bee Gees)
Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)
Don’t Cry No Tears (Neil Young)
I Fought the Law (Bobby Fuller Four)
(What’s So Funny ‘Bout) Peace Love and Understanding? (Nick Lowe)
Happy Birthday to Bruce Bennett
Pay to Cum (Bad Brains)
Do It Again (Steely Dan)
You Make Me Feel So Good (The Zombies)
Heart of Darkness (Pere Ubu)
Alex Chilton (The Replacements)
Jack and Diane (John Mellencamp)
California Girls (The Beach Boys)
Hello Lucille, Are You A Lesbian? (T. Valentine)
Re-Make/Re-Model (Roxy Music)
Should I Stay or Should I Go? (The Clash)
Slack Motherfucker (Superchunk)
Werewolves of London (Warren Zevon), as medley, with bits of Take Me To The River (Al Green), Life on Mars? (David Bowie), Like A Virgin (Madonna), Dr. Robert (The Beatles), Uptown Girl (Billy Joel) and others.
