my brother is like "maybe one day you will get into hardcore" and honest to god i try but i gave it another shot today and the record that stuck out most to me was a polish christian record with a french horn player on it, which, like, i don't think is what he was hoping i'd get into?
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Thursday, 28 November 2019 00:00 (four years ago) link
Update: I did finally get into some hardcore. Foundation's "When The Smoke Clears" is a good record.
In the meantime... it's Christmas time! I hate Christmas music. I have a significant collection nonetheless, but it's all terrible music that's not at all in the "spirit of the season" and that nobody wants to hear.
This record is not terrible but nobody wants to hear Jimmy "Duck" Holmes (whose latest record was recommended by Ted Gioia on his 2019 longlist) singing "Christmas Alone" in December. Nobody but me.
https://jimmyduckholmes.bandcamp.com/album/christmas-alone-merry-christmas-baby-single
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Thursday, 5 December 2019 01:43 (four years ago) link
I'm just fucking exhausted, I socially transitioned this week and it has been great but I am really tired. Too tired to do anything really but write about music.
My CD of Mellotron demos came in the mail yesterday and I sort of fell into a hole from there. Next thing I knew I was watching this performance by Lisa Bella Donna.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sggSUJI4E8U
I know it's a stereotype for people like me to be into analog synths. I don't mind fitting a stereotype. Honestly I'm lucky to have gotten into the Mellotron first, because there's never been any "entry level" access to those. Under other circumstances I might have a longstanding habit of spending more than I can afford on circuit bending. Also helping: My dyspraxia - doing the craft type stuff, soldering or changing out oscillators or any of that shit, is something I've avoided because doing hardware computer stuff was stressful and difficult enough for me with my dexterity issues.
The issue with this sort of stuff is it's so easy to substitute gear for talent (looking at you, The Edge), and the result of this glut of decent-but-not-great material means that I don't spend a lot of time listening to Berlin School stuff. If I like a piece of music, I want to listen to it more than once, to really absorb myself in it, and most of this stuff, there's no reason to do that. Exceptions are some of the old Tangerine Dream and Redshift's s/t.
I ca see myself doing this with Lisa Bella Donna's stuff. Some of it at least. She's got like five albums out this year and I'm not going to listen to all of them, but she does seem more than usually talented to my ears.
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Saturday, 7 December 2019 15:48 (four years ago) link
I've been having a rough time of it so I didn't get to post any music this weekend, even though I have some I wanted to post. Youtube is also half-convinced I am a bot which complicates things somewhat. Anyway here is Angel Witch on East German television in 1981:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4I3_VtGjqs
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Tuesday, 17 December 2019 16:23 (four years ago) link
So anyway here's the thing, I got a couple things to tell you about here. Earlier this year I read a book on requiems and there was some really good stuff in there... I paid attention to an offhand mention of Ukrainian Valentin Bibik's piano variations on Dies Irae. It's up on Youtube and so is some of his other stuff... I was taken with this piece, apparently from a longer cycle, "In The White Night".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lD5u80b268I
Another thing I've gotten into over the last couple days is Curt Boettcher... I didn't know about the new comp, and listening to it got me off on a rabbit hole. I listened to this extensive career overview fan comp called "I've Got To Love Somebody...". I don't know anything more about it except that while it's not perfect there's some excellent stuff on it. I was particularly taken by this seven-song run at the end of disc 2:
Curt Boettcher - It's a Sad World (solo piano)Tommy Roe - It's Now Winter's DayThe Plastic People - This Life of MineLee Mallory - Many Are the TimesFriar Tuck - A Bit of Gray LostBobby Jameson - See DawnThe Ballroom - Baby, Please Don't Go
Whoever sequenced these did a fantastic job. It's just a completely knockout sequence of downer Boettcher.
Through that comp I also got into some records I hadn't previously heard about, the Eternity's Children LP, which just hits all the right spots for me, and the Moses Lake record. I can see how some people might find the Moses Lake record too "wacky" but to me it's amazing, Boettcher's production at its best applied to a heavier, more rock band rather than his typical sunshine pop metier. Their 15-minute adaptation of the first (I think) creation story from Genesis deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as Aphrodite's Child's "666", IMO. And that's followed up with a completely kick-ass adaptation of "The Hollow Men"...
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 00:55 (four years ago) link
ok it is still early but here is my 2019 list as of 2019-12-17, i'll probably find some more stuff after this but i have some time to kill now so. this includes reissues, archival, whatever, just whatever is in my tags.
regal & alien rain - acid affair epAndreas Söderström & Rickard Jäverling - Adelsöalgiers - voideuropa ritrovata - affect is no crimesmallpeople - afterglowr. stevie moore - afterlifevanishing twin - the age of immunologyhermann nitsch - albertina quartettptu - am i who i ammoor mother - analog fluids of solid black holesyugen blakrok - anima mysteriumcraig leon - anthology of interplanetary music vol. 2: the canonv/a - aor global sounds vol. 4death and vanilla - are you a dreamer?sudan archives - athenajohn hartford - backroads, rivers & memories: the rare and unreleased john hartfordlow leaf - baker's dozenilyas ahmed - behold killersupper reality - best of upper realityjards macale - besta feradavid bowlin - bird as prophetjute gyte - birefringencethe black heart death cult - s/tblack market drugs - brain sciencev/a - bulawayo blue yodelvilma vritra - burdcherushii & maria minerva - s/tcheer-accident - chicago xxlucas gillan's many blessings - chit-chatting with herbie田中裕梨 - city lights 2nd seasonkatarra parson - cocoa voyagethe 180 gs - the commercial albumarziv orchestra - complete recordings of a 1940s philadelphia kef bandl'orange & jeremiah jae - complicate your life with violenceshasta culta - configurationsancient pools - cosinefloating points - crushlizzo - cuz i love youjimmy "duck" holmes - cypress grovemiho hazama - dancer in nowherejacques greene - dawn chorusben monder - day after dayde lorians - s/tdisentomb - the decaying lightaldous harding - designerolli hirvonen - displacelingua nada - djinnrustin man - drift codefort romeau - dweller on the thresholdfrank harris & maria marquez - echoesMMMD - egoismoafrosideral - el olimpo de los orishasv/a - electro acholi kaboom from northern ugandaedward bogosian - everything is fake: armenian folk music in nyc in the 1940s96 back - excitable, girlron geesin - expozoomhyper john & muzeumvisitor - falling for youeric le sage - faure: nocturnespapisa - fendajack quartet - filigree: music of hannah lashronin arkestra - first meetingjaimie branch - fly or die ii: bird dogs of paradiseNorth Sea Radio Orchestra;John Greaves;Annie Barbazza - folly bololey: songs from robert wyatt's rock bottomkokoko! - fongolaocto octa - for loversblaquestone - full circlejucifer - futilityv/a - gabberdisco origins 01marie spaemann - gapustad saami - god is not a terroristliniker e os caramelows - goela abaixoliturgy - haqqskander - harakatrodan - the hat factory 93fort romeau - heaven & earthmeara o'reilly - hockets for two voicessevish - horixenshama - houmeissaMax Andrzejewski's HÜTTE - HÜTTE and guests play the music of robert wyattrrose - hymn to moistureshinichiro yokota - i know you like itemerson - if you need me, call meZdeněk Liška - ikarie xb-1toyohiko satoh - ikiill considered - ill considered 6sunwatchers - illegal movesanne leilehua lanzilotti - in manus tuasxoth - interdimensional invocationsarthur russell - iowa dreamotoboke beaver - itekoma hitslifafa - jaagofredfades & jawn rice - jacuzzi boyzraphael saadiq - jimmy leejonny dillon - s/tgianluigi trovesi - la misteriosa musica della regina loanafet.nat - le malgary gritness - the legend of cherenkov bluethe toms - life raftchristopher tignor - a light belowminami deutsch and damo suzuki - live at roadburnoranssi pazuzu - live at roadburn 2017ccr - live at woodstockzeal & ardor - live in londonking crimson - live in newcastle, december 8, 1972curt boettcher - looking for the sunlost crowns - s/tdreamcast & burymeinamink - the lost tape vol. 2white ward - love exchange failureraveena - luciddominique guiot - l'univers de la merWędrowcy~Tułacze~Zbiegi - Marynistyka suchego lądusisso - matesolittle brother - may the lord watchspellling - mazy flypatrick cowley - mechanical fantasy boxdeafkids - Metaprogramaçãothe black egg - mind control losersmonokle & al-90 - mindperfectionradiohead - minidiscs (hacked)4mat - modern closurehoussam gania - mosawi swirithe micky sound - ndege ya mabua peku peku mitaanigrandmaster masese - new african soundz singles no. 1rose elinor dougall - a new illusionkaina - next to the suntyme/tatsuya yamada - no one like you and mev/a - numerous agnomens vol. iiiv/a - nyatiti singles vollume 1Oren Ambarchi, Mark Fell, Will Guthrie & Sam Shalabi - oglon daytc4 - olathat dog. - old lptomeka reid quartet - old newangel bat dawid - the oraclehysteric - oz wave edits 83-87black moth super rainbow - panic fadesbetonkust & palmbomen ii - parallel bcall super - peach 007purple pilgrims - perfumed earthelza soares - planeta fometomb mold - planetary clairvoyanceel irreal veintiuno - poliformowiktor stribog - poradnik usmiechu ostv/a - post now: round one - chicago vs. new yorkv/a - powder in spacego: organic orchestra - ragmalakoffee - raptureocto octa - resonant bodyrick white & eiyn sof - the openingGooooose - rusted siliconfovea hex - the salt garden iiiv/a - seito: in the beginning, woman was the sunnicola cruz - sikustein urheim - simple pieces & paper cut-outspartch - sonata dementiaenvelope generator - songs i hateyosi horikawa - spacesriot ensemble - speak, be silenthiromi - spectrumcarola ortiz - spiralasun ra - the spirit of jazz cosmos arkestra at WUHY 1978behavior - spirits & embellishmentslegowelt - star simulatorshnabubula - super rite of springclipping. - there existed an addiction to bloodseba kaapstad - thinahelado negro - this is how you smilev/a - the time for peace is now: gospel music about ussankara - total liberation of the human raceben ritz - trope insurance"blue" gene tyranny & peter gordon - trust in rockjoe armon-jones - turn to clear viewŠirom - a universe that roasts blossoms for a horsebarker - utilityvagabon - s/treptaliens - valisblackwater holylight - veils of wintermach-hommy - Wap Konn Jòj!guerilla toss - what would the odd do?solange - when i get homeno moon - where do we go from here?krallice - wolfloona - x xwednesday campanella & oorutaichi - yakushima treasurejanan sawa - yemawxyz - yiyapparatus - yonder yawns the universebent knee - you know what they meancharly bliss - young enoughkaisyn holamkhanov - zhuuk baraiym katyngacucina povera - zoom長谷川白紙 - エアににkhana bierbood - strangers from the far eastpolkadot stingray - 有頂天3776 - 歳時記phillip nangle - 2 karimba 3 octavecharlie koffeen presents j dilla's donuts - 2019-02-09 chicago26 bats! - s/tv/a - 30 years of rage part 1-4nkisi - 7 directionssakanaction - 834.194collider - -><-michael robinson - spirit ladyocto octa - i wanna tell you a story about housespanky rogers - racing through timeparis strother - dream catcherdavid briggs - symphonie improvisee on three welsh themesdavila 666 - huesos viejosDerya Yıldırım & Grup Şimşek - oy oy eminenathan moody - chrysalis
my new year's resolution was to listen to less new music this year than i did last year. i think i've actually accomplished it... though i could still blow it in the next two weeks.
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Wednesday, 18 December 2019 03:22 (four years ago) link
i have a hard time finding good mod music because most of the people on the tracker communities right now hate techno! it seems like all they want out of mod files is some fucking hans zimmer fake orchestra shit. for me i feel like a lot of the more innovative stuff is buried under this sort of thing. anyway, i gave it another go and found a good post-peak one, yuki satellites by radix. this one is apparently from '99 and first circulated as a bootleg mp3... it's actually bigger in mp3 than it is in tracker format, because the guy kind of went overboard with the samples. anyway this is quality shit, i'd love to hear more tracker stuff like this and the "speedball 2" theme and "aryx".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef_i-NyMlC8
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Thursday, 19 December 2019 00:31 (four years ago) link
― walking towards the sun since 2007 (alex in mainhattan), Friday, 20 December 2019 05:53 (four years ago) link
honestly, if i could do ten i would, because that long list... it's not useful, i know it's not useful. too much information, not enough context. i know it's not useful because i see lists like that and they are of no use to me. the ten best? there isn't such a thing, i'd be throwing darts at the list at random. i can give you one record that has meant more to me than anything else, and that is resonant body by octo octa, but beyond that it's just what sort of music you feel like listening to. what i'd like to do, more than a list, is to blurb each and every one of those, give a brief encapsulation of what they're about, so someone looking to explore has more than words that mean nothing to go by. but i don't have the time, or the words, to do any of these records justice, not really. these are all records that have at some point grabbed me before words, they grabbed me, and i can't tell you why they did and the records i've heard that aren't on this list didn't, i can't tell you which of these will grab you, and if you don't have time for it you'll probably wind up skipping it entirely, i know because that's what i do with these sorts of lists when other people make them. i had 45 minutes and i wanted to practice my typing.
how about this. you pick ten and ask me about them and i'll tell you. how's that sound?
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Saturday, 21 December 2019 01:16 (four years ago) link
that is an interesting way to escape the question. i listened to octo octa and it turned out that it is not the kind of music that interests me. electronic music in general i find difficult to love. the problem always being the repetitiveness, the lack of variation especially in the realm of micro-sound. anyways i give you my album of the year. it is an album about instant gratification, a spectacular pop album, voices from the heavens, melodies that totally leave me speechless and kill me. an almost perfect piece of music. Girl by Girl Ray.
― walking towards the sun since 2007 (alex in mainhattan), Saturday, 21 December 2019 20:18 (four years ago) link
i wasn't dodging the question, i just didn't give you the answer you were looking for :)
i used to have the same reaction to electronic music - couldn't take the repetition - but as i've listened to more music i come to understand that repetition is at the heart of all music, and the only difference is what the _nature_ of the repetition is. this girl ray record, i am listening to it now, and of course it repeats, like all music repeats, and if you acclimate to it you eventually don't hear it, don't notice it, and hear the change rather than the consistency. it's funny that you say that it's in "micro-sound" that it lacks variation, because to me that's where the variation comes - these are programmed patterns, programmed to be perfect and precise in their individual effect, and it's the combinations that drift, i don't know, maybe in a sort of "in c" sense except more controlled. there's greater economy of language in a lot of the best electronic music, the difference between a poem and a novel, but to get there you have to take the repetition for what it's there for, limbic shit or whatever.
it kind of disappoints me that cis people (and a lot of trans people, for that matter) seem to not hear in "resonant body" what i do, having struggled so long with invisibility to finally hear this record that puts it all out there and affirms and celebrates who we are and it's, i don't know, apparently a fucking dog-whistle or something, people will hear it and just not have any idea what it has to do with being trans.
ah well.
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Saturday, 21 December 2019 20:49 (four years ago) link
anyway girl ray is nice but doesn't grab me especially, it strikes me as being one of those records with a terroir to it, like i'd get it more if i was english. there's some records that are like that for me, having spent a long time in the american midwest a band like my morning jacket or wilco means something to me that it probably wouldn't otherwise
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Saturday, 21 December 2019 20:51 (four years ago) link
Lots of great stuff in this thread.
a couple weeks ago i decided to listen to every band i could find named "collage". my favorite was this estonian folk/jazz combo. estonian vocal harmonies and soul jazz, what a combo!https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0zVKS6vJes― Arch Bacon (rushomancy), Friday, 10 August 2018 02:34 (one year ago)
No way, they're one of my favorite groups.'Kadriko' is even better. hyper.records in Estonia put out a 2CD comp with their entire discography, minus 2 songs, plus a bunch of unreleased stuff. It's a real gem...
― Deflatormouse, Saturday, 21 December 2019 20:58 (four years ago) link
oh thanks! is that parimad lood? will have to check it out!
― Agnes Motörhead (rushomancy), Saturday, 21 December 2019 21:05 (four years ago) link
That's the one!
― Deflatormouse, Saturday, 21 December 2019 21:12 (four years ago) link
thanks for your answer rusho. i think i didn't express myself very well concerning electronic music and repetition. what you say is absolutely true most music relies on repetition of patterns and structures, that is normal and something i do not criticize. what i mean is the nature of electronic sound which to me is like a two dimensional area compared to the three dimensional space acoustic music and natural, untreated voices represent. most electronic sounds, especially the beat patterns are always identical, for me listening to them is a torture almost as if my head was subject to a small hammer hitting the skull at exactly the same position for hundreds of times. a human drummer will never be as "perfect", there will be minimal variations in his drumming, on a micro-tone level every hit on the drum kit will sound slightly different. that is what makes music made by humans so lively and attractive for me. whereas most electronic music to my ears sounds cold and dead and boring. that's probably why i never got house and techno. there are exceptions though, for example boards of canada. the reason might br their use of analog synthesizers and that their tunes are often not very beat orientated.
― walking towards the sun since 2007 (alex in mainhattan), Monday, 23 December 2019 21:31 (four years ago) link
honestly i think i can relate to what you're saying, i did used to view electronic music that way, and over time i've just found different ways of listening. like when you listen to "peter and the wolf" david bowie introduces all the different instruments to you with their different motifs and sometimes i can sort of shift to hearing the individual performances but sometimes i get overtaken by the gestalt, the interactions, i _stop hearing_ the separate instruments, getting into that, you know, flow state.
that's the point of any repetition to me, it's learning what to ignore, what not to think about or process consciously, it's listening to "time has come today" without being driven crazy by the motherfucking cowbell (i don't think it's "humans" vs. "machines" per se). humans are surprisingly capable of acclimating to all kinds of things. i have personally found serious benefits to acclimating to electronic beats.
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Tuesday, 24 December 2019 02:32 (four years ago) link
Fuck it I'm just gonna go way too deep on this one, or try at least (this all made a lot more sense at 5 AM before I got out of bed).
I used to say that my goal was to like all music, which made people look at me like I was stupid or something, and in truth it was a lazy overgeneralization. It's more that if I care about or respect someone, I want to love what they love. (Back when I said I wanted to like all music I also wanted to care about and respect everyone, which I've kind of given up on.)
When I was really young I used to judge people based on what music they listened to, like I wasn't sure I could date someone who liked Phil Collins or whatever. Now it's the reverse - I judge music based on who loves it.
I know for a lot of people it's not necessarily like that, it's more a "you like what you like (shrug)" thing. For me, ah, I feel like it goes back to Captain Beefheart.
The first time I heard "Trout Mask Replica" I heard about what most people without a thorough grounding in bottleneck blues and free jazz hear in it - some dude yelling over a bunch of noise. I put in a lot of work to hear something else. In retrospect I don't think my motivations for that were good. It was sort of classic troll logic, some clever dudes saying "Oh you probably aren't smart enough to get it", to which the rational and appropriate response is "Oh, fuck you", but at that time I very much wanted to be a Clever Dude and felt the need to prove that I was smart enough to "get it". Also I had paid full price for that CD, fifteen dollars, and I wasn't going to let that money go to waste, and also I had like three other CDs, so it was that, or Dark Side of the Moon, or listen to the radio which played nothing but The Sign and One Of Us on a constant loop - I like The Sign but I don't need to hear it every fifteen minutes.
Eventually after listening to about it 50 times (because my time was cheap back then) I slowly pieced it together that there was, in fact, more to it than some dude yelling over a bunch of noise, and that experience - I guess that trauma, because seriously you have to be kind of a fucked up person to willingly listen to Trout Mask Replica 50 times even though you don't really like it - has colored the way I experience music ever since.
I guess that never means I'll be a true poptimist, because I listen to any pop music as if it was fucking "Trout Mask Replica", as if it's some sort of mysterious puzzle I need to solve, but I'll also, you know, listen to it, because I've moved on from trying to be a Clever Dude. Learning to enjoy Trout Mask Replica was, in large part, a process of unlearning a lot of the unwritten assumptions and beliefs I had about how music was supposed to work. To get what the band was doing I basically had to teach myself Beginner's Mind, and having stumbled my way into some approximation of that skill I do find it a useful one to practice, and I've found it applies to pretty much any kind of music.
I'm limited in a lot of ways in what I can do, in what I can feel, but after decades of work I find that I can, with effort, learn to love pretty much any damn music if I put enough work into it. Other sorts of empathy come a lot harder, but if I can love the music someone else loves, well, it's a start.
And I feel like it works the other way around, as well. That's why I have one album I really recommend from 2019 and not ten, because I feel, rightly or wrongly, that if someone can hear what I hear in "Resonant Body" that they will understand me, understand my experience as a trans woman, in a way that's impossible to communicate any other way.
OK, that's probably enough digging for now.
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Tuesday, 24 December 2019 16:13 (four years ago) link
OK, back to actual music. I don't know how I got here exactly but this Czech song is one of the most aggressively unfunky takes on "You Should Be Dancing" I could possibly imagine. It is at least fairly psychedelic, especially with the way OTT vocal echo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awkjjlVd1R0
The side bar (I am browsing in porn mode, which I do more and more these days just because Google will take anything I say and take it way out of context or completely get its keywords confused and start giving me news about transalpine Gaul or some shit) went on to recommend me something by "100 Monkeys", who I thought I recognized but it turned out I was mixing them up with 100 Flowers.
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Wednesday, 25 December 2019 22:52 (four years ago) link
ok happy new year everybody tell me your favorite songs about WIZARDS
like "good wizard meets naughty wizard"
or "northlands old and toothless wizard" by eno (not that eno)
it's a new year and i need some fucking WIZARD JAMS
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Wednesday, 1 January 2020 00:40 (four years ago) link
fuck it i can't wait any longer, here is my roughly hour-long mix of wizard jams
inside - wizzard kingsorcery - wizard's councilscanner - wizard forcealbert ayler - the wizardlone taxidermist - dribble wizardshuttah - the wizardthe aquarian age - good wizard meets naughty wizardthe sun also rises - wizard sheprondellus - magus (the wizard)jessika kenney & eyvind kang - witch and the wizardmagma - maahnt (wizard's fight vs. the devil)jake kaufman - the science wizard (explodatorium)eno - northlands old and toothless wizard
the power metal -> free jazz segue is slightly, uh, daring, but that's one of the hazards of being me
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Wednesday, 1 January 2020 01:17 (four years ago) link
no place for Emperor "i am the black wizards" nor for "We're off to see the wizard"?
― Siegbran, Wednesday, 1 January 2020 13:41 (four years ago) link
"i am the black wizards" is classic for sure but i never got much into first wave black metal, go fig. for "we're off to see the wizard" i was tempted by aunto molly urso's disco version of "over the rainbow" which goes into "we're off to see the wizard" a bit, but i decided against it
i also am enjoying j.d. emmanuel's "wizards" from '82, which is peak new age/berlin school shovelware (the berlin school as a whole is a good argument for the proposition that music should be difficult to make)
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Wednesday, 1 January 2020 20:38 (four years ago) link
OK here's what I've been up to.
1970s TV news themes. I'm a fiend for them. I know it's weird, it's detritus and the kind of people who are into this sort of stuff... like if you think I'm not right in the head, I get that.
Like, here's the thing I am backed up on this by a blog post on CityLab, which is as far as I can tell a reputable site, calling this "The World's Greatest Local TV News Theme". Right here.
https://www.citylab.com/life/2018/08/long-live-the-worlds-greatest-local-tv-news-song/568813/
It's "Move Closer To Your World", and it was written by a guy by the name of Al Ham, who is like a legend in TV news themes, like the TV news equivalent of somebody like Mike Post. Now that's not what I'm posting here today, because bear with me, his wife - his wife was a lady by the name of Mary Mayo, who is famous in certain _other_ circles for working with Dick Hyman on his "Moon Gas" LP. I'll be honest with you it took me a long time to come around to Dick Hyman beyond "boy that's an embarrassing name to have", and even when I did it was just "Moog - The Eclectic Electrics of Dick Hyman", which is the one that's sampled on Beck's "Odelay" and has that avant-garde moog cover of James Brown's "Give It Up Or Turn It Loose".
Anyway God knows this is the sort of music I need way more of in my life.
So here's the stereo version of "Moon Gas" by Dick Hyman and Mary Mayo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gvg_NSPsyVk
Enjoy.
Yesterday I did a list of some of my favorite jazz LPs from 1944-1970 and it was fun to write but I don't know there's enough interest for me to post another long list of random names.
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Monday, 6 January 2020 03:14 (four years ago) link
OK wait. So in 1976 somebody decided to get Lesley Gore back together with Quincy Jones for a comeback record, which of course means a disco record. Like, you can tell that's probably not going to turn out well, sure. But did the leadoff single have to be so, well, stalkery? "Sometimes I watch you sleep?" And then there's the cover, for which some brilliant art director took a perfectly ordinary picture of Ms. Gore and decided to go all Diamond Dogs with it. That was not a good idea! That was really not a good idea!
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Monday, 6 January 2020 04:07 (four years ago) link
Here is a random record by someone named Iya Khan called "Spaceman". It has never been sold on Discogs, but Discogs says it was released in 1985 and that Iya Khan has not released any other records. The B-side is called "Fat Girls". I have not heard the B-side.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exLX08o9Njo
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Sunday, 12 January 2020 00:44 (four years ago) link
Here's a quick one. Can't remember why I threw it together.
Pylon - Working Is No ProblemCaptain Beefheart - Hard Workin' ManRush O))) - Working Man Slow EditCharming Hostess - Won't You Keep Us Working?DEVO - Working in a Coalmine (Hardcore)Fonzi Thornton - I Work For A Living (Nile Rodgers Long Version)Mr. Airplane Man - I Work HardOtoboke Beaver - 6 Day Working Week Is A PainRex Griffin - You Gotta Go To WorkJesse Gould - Out of WorkThe Fall - Fit and Working AgainUJ3rk5 - Uj3rk5 Work For PoliceWild Man Fischer - I'm Working For The Federal Bureau of NarcoticsThe Clash - Julie's Been Working For The Drug SquadMartin King - Working for the KGB (Extended)Blue Orchids - Work
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Wednesday, 15 January 2020 02:43 (four years ago) link
threw together an hour of cowboy songs a couple days ago but don't feel like posting the playlist, it was reasonably interesting but mostly it was just "oh yeah those are the musicians kate listens to all right".
so here's a musician i don't listen to
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPHQiZ5Zzwk
"dreidel" the lead single and leadoff track from don mclean's 1972 (or '73, sources differ) s/t lp, his follow-up to his hit record "american pie". it hit #21 and then dropped like somebody quit paying payola for it. i was surprised at how much i liked this song, considering that i kind of hate "american pie". it's not the best song ever - slightly overproduced, slightly overwritten (particularly the bridge), but genuine effort was put into it and it's under four minutes long.
― revenge of the jawn (rushomancy), Saturday, 25 January 2020 19:34 (four years ago) link
Trans Playlist #2: "I've Grown So Ugly", Robert Pete Williams
("Trans Playlist #1" was "September the Ninth" by Robert Wyatt and Alfreda Benge, not identified as such at the time)
"I've Grown So Ugly", a 1961 Robert Pete Williams song I first heard as performed by Captain Beefheart on his 1967 album "Safe as Milk", cuts to the heart of my experience with dysphoria. A combination of two things, really. One the one hand, the lyric "Grown so ugly I don't even know myself" perfectly encapsulates my experience of dissociation. On the other, the howling refrain "Baby, this ain't me" carries with it the emotional weight of dysphoria, the acute feeling of wrongness that can strike at any time.
Since I go obscure on these things, here's a live video from 1970 of Robert Pete Williams that turned up when I was looking for a stream of the song.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFJNzJsYlxo
― Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 15 February 2020 17:57 (four years ago) link
I just decided to randomly google "Action by Havoc" to see what turned up and came across this free jazz group. I'm really enjoying it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dg9N1IIPKGc
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 19 February 2020 04:43 (four years ago) link
Today I got a forward of one of those industry update emails. The top story was some undoubtedly splendid fellow from some undoubtedly splendid company talking about how the "silver lining" of the coronavirus was that it had great potential for expanding their customer base. At the bottom of the email was a quote by Wassily Kandinsky:
"An empty canvas is a living wonder... far lovelier than certain pictures."
He also is quoted as saying:
"The more frightening the world becomes ... the more art becomes abstract."
Which I would paraphrase as "When shit gets real, the real gets abstract." But maybe Kandinsky said it better, in whatever language he said it in.
It had me thinking about Kandinsky and my first encounter with the name, the final long track on a compilation of New York downtown jazz from the early '90s called "Live at the Knitting Factory". I bought the CD for the Doctor Nerve and Negativland tracks but the Brandon Ross track, though I seldom listened to it, helped me understand this artist whose pictures I had never seen.
Here is a more recent track by Ross with Stomu Takeishi. It evokes the same sort of mood as I remember that song evoking.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ETTrLDKPskE
― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 27 February 2020 22:21 (four years ago) link
So I think I will just say here that my friend Sedric and I have started a blog... my hope is that by having a co-blogger it's not going to go the way of every other blog I've ever started, which is at some point I'm looking at a wall of nothing but my own words, panic, and run away. It's vaguely centered on the things we have in common - weird music, technological imperfections and "mistakes" in old media, breakdown of ludic narrative, and old Doctor Who which is sort of a nexus of all of those things.
https://weirdthingsonbetamax.blogspot.com/
― Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 14 March 2020 16:42 (four years ago) link
Added to my rss feed!
― Daniel_Rf, Thursday, 19 March 2020 10:06 (four years ago) link
cool, i went on a bit of a tear yesterday and made three long posts, of which maybe 1 1/2 were music related. i'll try to keep this thread updated as well!
― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 19 March 2020 16:16 (four years ago) link
Will check; I always look fwd to your posts on ilx! Speaking of Brandon Ross, do you know his trio Harriet Tubman? Good stuff on youtube, bandcamp, and CDs. This was my gateway:https://harriettubman.bandcamp.com/album/araminta He's also worked w Henry Threadgill, think this trio may have started as a subset of one of HT's ensembles.
― dow, Thursday, 19 March 2020 17:35 (four years ago) link
wadada leo smith guests on this? very nice!
i have barely touched ross's work, but i did find an album from '77 by "zenzile featuring marion brown". ross is on guitar, and stephen mccraven (makaya mccraven's dad) is on drums. i like this one a lot.
― Kate (rushomancy), Thursday, 19 March 2020 19:13 (four years ago) link
So the '50s classical thread introduced me to the work of Maurice Ohana... his guitar work was mentioned, specifically his 10-string pieces, which this isn't, but the performance is so captivating I felt like I needed to share.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXd1zqNznIs
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 20 March 2020 02:43 (four years ago) link
ohana was a new discovery for me too, thanks for that video (also: killer outfit on the guitarist)
did you know that the sonny rollins tune “st. thomas” is based on a caribbean nursery song his mom used to sing him as a kid ? either i never knew or forgot, found out cuz i was listening to v/a “junkaboo band key west” (folkways 1964):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Ykc5_DcNNE
― budo jeru, Friday, 20 March 2020 05:08 (four years ago) link
wow, that is really cool! i think i definitely never knew that. and yeah, i think white tie is just an amazing look and it's too bad that nobody ever wears it in practice (black tie rare enough these days!)
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 20 March 2020 13:18 (four years ago) link
more posts - the first part of a possibly-to-be-completed-much-later ramble about live grateful dead recordings, and a write-up on a video mixtape i did that i thought was super fucking long but it turns out is only 4000 words, so that's not too bad then!
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 23 March 2020 23:45 (four years ago) link
i’ve really been enjoying the blog, thanks for sharing here
― budo jeru, Tuesday, 24 March 2020 00:46 (four years ago) link
glad you've enjoyed it!
i was working on a streaming playlist of old advertisements and in the process i dug up this advertisement for amoco's "nice clean petrol", which i'd lost somewhere in the archive and been trying to find for, i don't know, maybe a year - both a fascinating piece of corporate disinformation and a damn fine song. a double threat!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MbYgpX2svI
― Kate (rushomancy), Wednesday, 25 March 2020 16:12 (four years ago) link
Been a while since I've posted here. Mostly it's a sign that I'm listening to less music. Going off on lengthy and quixotic music discovery jaunts is not on my long list of things I try to do daily to keep myself sane.
So it's been weeks and all I have for you is a Stealer's Wheel deep cut. I can't remember why I have been listening to Stealer's Wheel deep cuts. Probably some thread elsewhere on this board because that's really the only place I'm even talking about music. Hell, I didn't even know Gerry Rafferty was in Stealer's Wheel. This isn't one of his songs, though, this is one of Egan's.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xyaswsbk_OA
I was overall surprised by how much I liked the record this was on - it's not great, but there are a lot of second-tier early '70s rock bands that somehow stumble into having some really nice deep cuts. Nice chords on this, nice instrumentation - the bells bridging from the previous song which didn't grab me so much, the harp glissandos, the fairground organ.
― Kate (rushomancy), Sunday, 12 April 2020 23:19 (four years ago) link
That is quite lovely, that.
― Daniel_Rf, Monday, 13 April 2020 09:30 (four years ago) link
Persistence pays off! Found a version of "What Goes On" I dig. Flabbergasted me that I couldn't find a good take on it; the original is a decent enough Buck Owens tribute but all the cover versions I heard were just flabby and weak aside from the Sufjan Stevens one, which I just plain didn't like. Knew if I kept looking around long enough I'd dig something up. This is a roughly contemporary version from the "Beatle Country" album by the Charles River Valley Boys, a progressive bluegrass group. These folks are just legit _good_ - I wouldn't be surprised if the Dillards got their "I've Just Seen A Face" arrangement from them.
Anyway, that wraps things up. I guess there are a couple songs I sort of cheated on that I could upgrade, but as it is I'm going to declare the Beatles Covers Project "good enough".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nhhFC3Fnw4o
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 17 April 2020 00:48 (four years ago) link
rush maybe i'm projecting but the lyrics to that stealer's wheel song feel extremely pro-trans! :)
― Li'l Brexit (Tracer Hand), Friday, 17 April 2020 14:42 (four years ago) link
i never really know how much to read into lyrics! i've been wrongfooted before. there was this game last year, 16-bit-style rpg, i was really enjoying, and my feeling was that, like, every single character in the game was trans. just the vibe i got from the characters. and then the person who made the game said some really ugly transphobic shit and i had to remove the game from my library, because anybody who says shit like that it's not safe for me to make any room in my life for any of their ideas. that sort of thing is a shame when it happens. part of me hopes that they come out as trans and apologize for saying that stuff, at which point i'd happily buy the game again, but, you know... that's just wishful thinking on my part. person is probably just a super big jerk.
i was listening to the last pink fairies album, from 1973, which i guess has kind of a cult reputation on rym. and the second track is this ten minute heavy rock jam called "i wish i were a girl". and that's what it's about. i don't know what to make of stuff like that. i looked up the guy who wrote it, and he died fairly recently. and i believe in self-determination so i guess he wasn't trans. hell of a song, though.
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 17 April 2020 17:20 (four years ago) link
made a new blog post, kept digging around and looking afterwards and found this iron curtain polish hawaiian-exploitation exotica record
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=epR1K184NFc
― Kate (rushomancy), Monday, 27 April 2020 19:07 (four years ago) link
so there's a new streets of rage game out! koshiro and kawashima worked on it. much respect for the originators, but '94 was a long time ago and on first listen it doesn't quite match up to the heights of the insane soundtrack to bare nuckle iii.
here's some guy doing a cover of "happy paradise" from that soundtrack. mixing is a little wonky - the drums get in the way a little bit - but it's got good spirit and energy, and is definitely the best tribute version of it i found doing a quick search; some of the koshiro tributes out there just are not good.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ay0tDJYP4Ic
plus, this guy also has a cover of the "highway to heaven" theme song on his channel! a weirdo after my own heart.
― Kate (rushomancy), Friday, 1 May 2020 19:37 (four years ago) link
for whatever reason i'm digging through old zep boots. the people who grade or rate zep boots have different priorities than i do. they talk about what a shame it is about this tape, a recording that sounds like it was made from inside jimmy page's guitar amp
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a14EXLG1GiM
and i'm like holy fuck, this is the led zeppelin version of The Legendary Guitar Amp Tapes, this is fucking amazing
― Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, 16 May 2020 19:03 (three years ago) link