Josh Williams was performing the song “Mordecai” at a Bluegrass festival this past May 5th when he had a little visitor. Check it, around 1:30, and watch to the end.
Gorgeous.
Category: music
Two Tune Tuesday: Einsturzende Neubauten
Posted by – January 24, 2012
Rachel calls it my clink-bang-whizz-brr music. (Tom Waits, amongst others, is in the same category.)
It still makes me happy, and they were amazingly cool live. They were the only band I ever played that my mother asked me to turn off, and I vaguely remember her calling it something like “Nazi death music.” I love this description at Trouser Press:
Part deadly earnest post-musical composers, part boys- with-toys goofballs whipping up a ruckus for the pure joy of making noise, Berlin’s Einstürzende Neubauten (Collapsing New Buildings) have built a distinctive, challenging and extremely imaginative sonic career out of implements generally intended for other utilitarian purposes: power drills, humming power lines, water towers, air-conditioning ducts, plate steel, glass, boulders and various large metal objects beaten with sledgehammers, pipes, wrenches and axes. Even traditional tools receive similarly brutal mistreatment — Blixa Bargeld’s pained vocals and guitar are often blurred to the point of abstraction. While Einstürzende Neubauten occasionally veers into song form with intriguing, even attractive, results, the group’s output more typically resembles a bunch of highly amplified (or, in some cases, barely audible) industrial sound-effects records being played at each other with little concern for anything but the raising of blood pressure and artistic hackles. Good shit.
Ah, Blixa: check out the creepiest version of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” ever recorded. (He was one of Nick Cave’s Bad Seeds too, by the way.)
Ringtone.
Posted by – January 23, 2012
or there’s always this option.
As someone who goes to see a great deal of music these days – go figure, but it turns out I love chamber music – I tend to leave my phone somewhere in the entrance / antechamber to the actual performance hall. It would make sense if people could check their phones before walking into an event.
Two Tune Tuesday: White Rabbits
Posted by – January 10, 2012
Two drummers, goddammit, rhythms right out of Funboy 3′s best stuff, piano that sounds like it came off Rufus Wainwright’s first CD, and thumpy, sexy basslines. Honestly, they’re like an answer to a question I’ve been asking for 20 years.
Now they just have to add some local live dates, and I will start 2012 off exactly right.
10th Anniversary: Poses
Posted by – December 30, 2011
Rufus Wainwright’s Poses
Take, for example, the deceptively buoyant “California.” Although Wainwright’s songwriting ability has been compared to that of Joni Mitchell, this song is decidedly the opposite, in spirit, to her song of the same title. The Sunshine State, in Wainwright’s view, is hardly “home” but a freon-fueled mess hall of vapid, self-conscious poseurs (sure). There’s hardly a more damning conclusion than “Life is the longest death in California,” but what a deliciously delivered pronouncement it is: Wainwright’s specialty is the beautiful pain behind the bruise. The song’s gift lies less in its misery than in the insidious glee of its tune. If New York brings out the brooding sweep of Wainwright’s voice and lyricism, then California shellacs his melancholy and shoves it out with a bright fuck-you.
I once heard Poses described as the perfect modern penthouse apartment – especially as compared to Wainwright’s debut
There is one note in “Greek Song” that to this day can make me weep when I hear it, even out of the blue: the perfect melancholy tone, a cri de coeur but beautiful. Just listen to it, the first “all” in the refrain.
If any generous soul out there would like to buy me his House of Rufus box set
Tonight in Brooklyn
Posted by – December 21, 2011
Tonight we’re going to see The Schmekels at Southpaw here in Brooklyn for an evening of “Hanuka Rock”. The Schmekels are “100% Trans Jews” and although what they play isn’t really klezmer, they certainly seem to have a sense of humor — “schmekel” means “small penis” in Yiddish.
So if you’re around & this is your kind of thing, feel free to say hi if you see us there.
“100% Trans Jews”
Posted by – November 27, 2011
The band’s name is Schmekel and they play klezmer-core punk. Oh yes. If they’re playing any gigs while I’m in NYC I will be at one.
The music itself merges traditional klezmer scales and rhythms with the aggressive energy of early gay punk bands like Pansy Division.
If the musical satirist Tom Lehrer were to write a hard-core anthem about sex reassignment surgery, with a driving guitar lick, a “Hava Nagila” breakdown and a keyboard line lifted from Super Mario Brothers, it might approximate the Schmekel sound.
Schmekel means “little penis” in Yiddish. And people wonder why I like hanging out with trans guys.
Two Tune Tuesday: Claytons
Posted by – November 8, 2011
I got to see John Clayton & his son Gerald Clayton perform this past weekend at Lawrence, and although there’s precious little of him on Playlist, there is this video, which gives you a little idea.
I know, I’m being corrupted, & my punk rock credibility is going to fly out the window any day now. Still, this shit’s GOOD. I’ve always wanted to know more jazz, since my dad was a fan, & it’s good to be in a place where being entirely ignorant doesn’t make you feel silly. Ah, educational atmospheres!
Two Tune Friday: Elliott Smith, still missed
Posted by – October 21, 2011
It’s been 8 years to the day since Elliott Smith died, so a special musical offering. I love his stuff, and wish he’d hung around to create more of this gorgeous music.
I wish I had seen him live, too.
Two Tune Tuesday: OK GO
Posted by – October 18, 2011
They’re otherwise famous for the video of “A Million Ways” but I had their “I Want You So Bad I Can’t Breathe” come up on Pandora the other day, and so went hunting for it, which is when I discovered their lovely cover of “Antmusic” — which is a song I never expected to like a cover of, so props to them.
so bad i can’t think straight /
so bad all my bones shake /
so bad i can’t breathe.
Happy Friday!
Posted by – October 14, 2011
Anyone else remember Human Sexual Response or this song “Cool Jerk”? Nifty video I’d never seen before, too:
(You may remember their song “Jackie Onassis” instead.)
Have a lovely weekend. If you can, do try to make it to an Occupy Your Local City: Saturday the 15th should be a remarkable day all over the country. (I’ll be in Madison.)
Caputo’s “Monsters”
Posted by – September 26, 2011
Keith Mina Caputo of Life of Agony is transitioning, and she just released this difficult, amazing song. It may be triggery for just hard to watch for some, as a few people on our message boards have pointed out.
Compelling, I think.
Two Tune Tuesday: Photographs (from the 80s)
Posted by – September 13, 2011
How can you not love a band that came up with “another Kodak whore, winking” and “see the red light rinsing another shutter slut wincing”? I know, I know, slut-shaming is bad, but I still love the sound of those lyrics. The song is more critical of the objectification of women in fashion than anything else.
& The AFOS song is kind of lovely in an awful, precious New Wave sort of way, no?
Two Tune Tuesday: Terry Hall
Posted by – August 23, 2011
Terry Hall’s best known as one of the voices of the ska band The Specials (although many will know “Ghost Town” only), but 80s types will know him equally well as the emo-before-emo voice of The Fun Boy 3.
(There was the brief stop with The Colourfield, too, most of which is horribly dated, except maybe this song because it was snagging sounds from another era already.) There’s something about the quality of his voice that still knocks me out.
Nine Years? What?
Posted by – August 21, 2011
Today would have been Joe Strummer’s 59th birthday. Somehow, it’s been nine years since he left the stage.
Two Tune Tuesday: Foster the People
Posted by – August 2, 2011
I kept noticing “Pumped Up Kicks” because the guy’s voice reminded me of Ray Davies’ and that’s just not a bad thing.
Trippy and sweet electronica, what isn’t often my thing, but sometimes it hits when there’s some kind of nice noise & a pretty voice.
