Nothing new here from Todd, but it's great to see in print the views of a well-known recording artist.

From an interview in the Boston Globe:

Q: Where do you stand on file-sharing, free downloading, and artist's rights? A: These issues get smashed together because of the [Recording Industry Association of America's] facetious representation they're also on the side of the artists. Labels have never done anything for artists they weren't forced to do. They had to be forced to start paying royalties. What we need is cable TV for music, where you can download all the music you want for $20 a month. ...and a little later in the interview: Q: Is The music industry as we know it doomed? A: It's time for the labels to go, in the sense the way they've done business is based on a commodified model, and they've got no experience in a service model - which is what the Internet is. Only someone like J.Lo needs the labels, because she can't go out and build an audience from scratch with the quality of her singing. The future for real musicians is, was, and always will be performing.

That's it, I've gotta go drag my Todd Rundgren records out tonight.

after spending several more days on the coast of maine i've come to the conclusion that: a) the coast of maine is way more interesting then southern, central new hampshire and b) new york and mass. drivers are fricken' idiots.

A friend of mine (a car aficionado, racer and mechanic) loaned me this. If you've ever been interested in how SUV's came into existence...and how they became so popular, then this might be of interest. The safety issues are well known (rollover risk, damage to other vehicles, etc). What I thought was particularly interesting were all of the politics that tilted the landscape in favor of larger vehicles (and the auto industry in general). Just plain bizarre.

All that being said, there were definitely a few problems. The author sort of implies that somehow Americans have been tricked into their love of these vehicles, which I just can't agree with. While there are some safety issues that people are generally unaware of (for instance, people seem to think that four wheel drive vehicles have greater stopping power) I just don't think drivers have been duped. The other (minor) problem is the book's length. At over four hundred pages the editor needed to be a little more involved....themes and facts tended to get reiterated way too much.

Me, I like my tiny little car just fine.

I was driving home yesterday and heard about 15 seconds of what I was sure was Elvis Costello's "(What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love And Understanding?"....but it was instrumental...with the melody being done with pedal steel guitars. Dang...and of course nobody said who it was.

So I did a little digging this morning and I think it's on Joe Goldmark's Strong Like Bull but Sensitive Like Squirrel.

I have got to own this. I mean, aside from the cool EC cover, there's a song called "Okra Dokey". Oh ya!

Princesses Nubiennes - Les Nubians

Soothing hip-hip with heavy r&b influences....mostly sung in French with the creamiest of voices. They also mix in a lot of real instruments for a more organic sound....a little like Sade (there is a cool cover of "Tabou") or maybe Erykah Badu.

There's something mesmerizing about listening to music sung in an unrecognizable language (ok, my ancient high school French allows me to understand every 10th word or so).

The first time I listened to this CD I flashed back to the time I was in the hospital and tried to watch a Boston Bruins game on some channel out of Montreal:

...blah blah blah blah! blah...blah blah Ray Bourque blah blah...

It's pretty well known that if you compare the CD version of a recording to its LP counterpart that the LP will almost always "win". This is especially true for acoustic music (such as jazz and folk).

It's also well known that almost nobody gives a crap about this phenomenon.

Being the vinyl nerd that I am...ever since I got my hands on both the CD and vinyl versions of the remixes of Madonna's Hollywood and Morcheeba's What's Your Name I've been dying to put them head to head.

Most of the CD/LP tests I've done have been with jazz records. In the rock and pop area the most notable battles in my living room have been with Steely Dan's Aja and, most recently, Dark Side Of The Moon (in which the vinyl reissue lays waste to both the remastered CD and an older Mobile Fidelity gold disc). The differences that tend to stand out the most are: 1. bass focus - how tight is the bass and how low does it go and 2. instrument timbre - are all those little details that give an instrument its character given room to breathe...to make you "see" the instrument? For all of the recordings that I have compared the biggest difference has been with the latter category. Vocals have a lot more detail..and a lot more 'air' in them. Cymbals are also an area to check out : the 'wetness' of a stick's attack on a ride cymbal...the slow decay of a crash, with its many overtones. Last night I wondered what area (if any) would be the standout with this kind of (obviously more electronic) music.

Usually when I make these comparisons it's with a piece of music that I've lived with for a while. This time around that wasn't possible as the only song I've heard with any regularity is the radio edit of "Hollywood", which doesn't even appear in the vinyl remixes. Oh well, I think, it'll be an adventure. So after several listening sessions I picked the most interestings cuts from each set: for Madonna that turned out to be "The Micronauts Remix". For Morcheeba: "Rap Mix (featuring Big Daddy Kane)".

With both songs the LP easily showed improvement in the bass....definitely a little deeper and more focused. Timbre? The vocals on LP were the big winner. The remixes have a lot of 'vocal bits' flying in from all directions...and the analog versions were much crisper. I was actually a little surprised at this because the vocals really have to contend with a lot of digital effects (blurpy synth noises, etc) - which I thought might be toned down coming off the LP. What instead happened was that the vocals, being crisper and a little more forward, stood out above a pretty much unchanged background. Kinda cool.

Ok, all that being said...does this really matter? Most folks made the complete switch over to CD a long time ago (and let's not even get into the mp3 discussion right now). Also, the LP remixes are obviously intended for clubs where 'good' sound isn't an issue anyway. So I don't know if it matters. It sure does make a person realize that there's something missing from the 'perfect' sound of a CD.

Does anybody care?

(PS. If you find a copy of the vinyl Madonna remixes you're treated to the bonus 'Oakenfold 12" Dub')

driving to work this morning i passed a car with the vanity plate "WORDFRK".

it bugs me that i can't talk to the guy. i didn't know anyone cared about words anymore...thought we all went underground.

Can you imagine Bono singing in a Mudvayne cover band?

Ok, maybe that's stretching it just a little. But there are definitely some U2-ish elements to Bert McCracken's vocals. On the other hand, this guy can scream!! Cripes, he keeps this up and someday his uvula is gonna fly out of his mouth and paste itself to some poor front-row forehead.

But that's where the Mudvayne thing ends. This CD contains a pile of previously unreleased and live material (plus a bonus DVD). I'd never head of these guys before and was a little worried, after hearing the first scream, that they were headed for the "loud but boring sorta-metal" pile. Nope. I really like "A Box Full Of Sharp Objects": a cool guitar riff, plenty of dissonance and that throat-ripping scream. The rest of the songs are a lot more diverse in style than you would expect. Heck, there was even a piano instrumental.

What are kids calling this stuff anyway? Punk? Emo-core? I guess it doesn't matter. It is kinda fun though.

(...another in an occasional series of reviews of "music you can't dance to without hurting yourself")

Jazz? Dunno... Improvised music? Definitely. There's no melody here, so don't go lookin' for one. On the other hand, it's not like random notes are being struck (though I'm sure this stuff can sound that way at first).

So, you're asking....what's the deal? (Oh, maybe you're not asking that...maybe melody is important to you. It's what a song wraps itself around...if that's you then, well, you've been warned).

I think of Joe Morris as the Cecil Tayler of guitar. Maybe a little Ornett's in there too. What you will hear is a unique style of play. Not a lot of chords, a clean tone, tons of single-note runs, and a logic that takes a while to reveal itself. Probably the most 'normal' jazz adjective that applies here is angular. Very angular. Joe has a way of stating a very short theme (as short as a couple of notes), 'commenting' on it, and then extending (and sometimes morphing) that theme a little more. This pattern repeats itself in an expanding sonic collage.

The funny thing is that the music isn't nearly as chaotic as that. For some reason Morris' recordings (especially here on this solo acoustic guitar set) remind me of staring at a waterfall (phew! is that new-agey enough for ya?!)....while there's a certain flow or direction to the music there are also many unpredictable elements. It's that sorta-randomness that makes it so interesting.

Solo instruments not your thing? Morris has recorded in many other groupings (usually on electric guitar) including duos (check out the great Soul Search with violinist Mat Maneri), trios and quartets.

If you're looking for a little mind-expanding instrumental music then you just might want to check Joe Morris out.

Just don't try to dance to it.

Sovereign EP - Neurosis

Foul mood.

Foul Music.

Few things are more annoying than the 'tip of the tongue' experience. This happens to me all too frequently, usually in the context of a lame attempt to describe a band to somebody...but the danged name just won't dislodge itself from my brain:

"You know..that band with the singer who used to be in that that sorta-blues band that had that song that ...uh...arghh!!!"

With Eisley it's different. Every time I've listened to them I've heard similarities to other bands...at least I think I do...'cause I just can't quite put my finger on who they sound like.

Today two names finally pop into my head: Radiohead and Letters To Cleo (never thought I'd see those two names in the same sentence). Ah...did I feel better after figuring that out!

This doesn't mean that Eisley' sound is merely a cross between those two groups...but the combination of the guitar crunch of Chauntelle & Sherri DuPree with the vocals of Sherri & Stacy DuPree makes me think of Letters To Cleo's "Here and Now". The Radiohead factor comes in with the use of melody. Just check out the cool 'bent' vocals during the opener "I Wasn't Prepared". Another example: "Over The Mountains", where all instruments except a single keyboard drop away during the bridge to hilight a stark and twisty vocal line. Nice. Come to think of it, I hear a little Bjork in there too.

Ok, so what's with all these DuPree's? There's also Weston DuPree on drums. That makes four of 'em. Add "best friend" Jon Wilson on bass and you've got one promising band.

Cripes, they're all so young (the oldest being 20)...I hope they stick around to put out some more material. Coldplay was smart enough to have them open some dates this summer so hopefully that'll get them some more recognition.

Maybe a few years from now I'll be able to call them "Eisley" instead of "...you know...that group with the brother and three sisters who sorta sound like that other group who had that song that...uh...arghhh!!!!"

A friend of mine accuses me of posting only postive reviews. He's got a point.

Sort of..

I'm just trying to let people know what I like...and I've never really had much use for reviews that go on and on in an attempt to cleverly show how much they hate something.

So this same friend loans me Oh Me Oh My... by Devendra Banhart.

Uh oh, here comes my first 'negative' review.

This cd gives new meaning to lo-fi. I mean, the plinky guitar is kinda cool, nothin' special. But this guy's voice is just...uhm....icky. It sounds like Nick Drake, Syd Barrett,Tiny Tim and king of loner-weird Jandek all rolled into one emotionless package. Monochrome. Dead.

Maybe I'm just too old for this. I get no emotion out of it at all.

Is it just me? (Yep...probably)

i know they're not good for you....full of yucky pig parts and such...but a hot dog, after spending two hours in the hot sun playing golf (ok, hitting the stupid ball into the woods, followed by much potty mouth), is a devine thing.

The Raven - Lou Reed

Picked this up last night....and don't quite know what to make of it. Dang, it's got an enormous cast of musicians and actors. The music's all over the place as well: from dark electronic washes to loungy jazz (sung by Steve Muscemi!) to rock & roll raveups (which I don't think work all that well).

The readings are pretty cool...I'm not a Poe authority and haven't read any other reviews so I kinda wonder what Poe fans think.

Worth the price of admission: the juxtaposition of Laurie Anderson's creamy voice alongside Reed's wobbly croak.

Back in the 70's, there were a handful of records you just couldn't get away from. They were everywhere: on the radio, in your car's 8-track player, on your best friend's stereo.

This was a good thing if you liked the particular record. If not, well, you were kinda screwed...and god forbid your girlfriend/boyfriend had something on your "hate list"...bad scene there. Heck, I spent the better part of one year putting up with my girlfriend's Shaun Cassidy album. Why? (C'mon, you know why!)

So here are the records I remember being important to us. There's no order...and I'm sure I left several out. It would be interesting to see if today's kids have similar groups of recordings.

Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin IV

Sure, "Stairway To Heaven" was the song (ok, overplayed as well). "Black Dog" and "Rock and Roll" also got tons of airplay. The rest of the record I really didn't care for...I probably didn't think it rocked hard enough or something. On second thought, I bet it was just too subtle for me...all those acoustic guitars and mysterious ramblings.

Pink Floyd - Dark Side Of The Moon

OK, so this one is actually full of subtlety...but I liked it. Dark Side is a lot weirder than Led Zeppelin IV too. I've read a ton of stuff about the 30th anniversary reissue (and gawd does the 180gram vinyl pressing sound gorgeous): about how it's the perfect rock album. I dunno...I still don't think that "Money" belongs on it.

Eric Clapton - Slow Hand

Everyone had this for "Cocaine" and "Laydown Sally". Me Too. There was something cool about it in a 70's burnout kind of way.

Meat Loaf - Bat Out Of Hell

Man, oh man, did I ever hate "Paradise By The Dashboard Light". "You Took The Words Right Out Of My Mouth"....icky. I bet I had a danged funny look on my face when I found out that Meat Loaf was the guy singing on my Ted Nugent record. Ironically, I went to one of his VH1-Storytellers shows a couple of years ago and kinda liked it.

Cheap Trick - Live at Budokan

Silly multi-necked guitars, an accountant for a drummer...plus a sense of humor and a way with a hook. I'm pretty sure that some of the damage done to my hearing came from listening to "Surrender" cranked to obscene levels.

V/A - Saturday Night Fever

This I did not "get". Sometimes (if the music gods were against me..and my girlfriend wanted to torture me) I would get to hear this back-to-back with that Shaun Cassidy record. It's too bad that the Bee Gee's are linked so strongly to this album 'cause they really did put out quite a few great pop tunes before the disco era.

Billy Joel - The Stranger

It had ballads that I didn't know what to do with ("Just The Way You Are"), songs that sorta rocked ("Movin' Out") and sentiments that I was just too immature to deal with ("Everybody Has A Dream"). But it also had "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" - I ended up knowing a lot of Brenda & Eddie's.

Boston - Boston

Symphonies of guitars. Nothing else sounded like this. At the time it seemed almost revolutionary. Plus..."no synthesizers"....so cool (why we thought that was cool....I have no fricken' idea).

The Who - Who's Next

Just recently I pulled out my original Decca LP of Tommy...the one my sister gave me (or the one I swiped from her...can't remember). It was the only Who record I owned when I first heard "Won't Get Fooled Again". It was late at night and the book I was reading fell to the floor as I sat up in bed and waited for the DJ to give me the particulars. I went straight for that Tommy record...dang, no "Won't Get Fooled Again". I bought it the next day. Now this might be the perfect rock record.

(...another in an occasional series of reviews of "music you can't dance to without hurting yourself"...see Jim Black, Glen Branca and Mirakle)

Now here's a recording that's hard to label. Is it trip-hoppy bossa nova? Brazilian electroni-skronk?

Apparently, I had been listening to Arto Lindsay for years...it's just that I didn't know it. Here's a partial list of artists he's appeared with:

The Lounge Lizards The Golden Palominos John Jorn Laurie Anderson David Byrne Bill Frisell

Lindsay sits right alongside fellow downtown New Yorker Marc Ribot in my noisy guitar hall of fame (check out Ribot's Rootless Cosmopolitains for more tangled guitarage).

Prize fits in nicely with Lindsay's bossa-related releases (the others that I own include Subtle Body, Noon Chill and Mundo Civilizado). While the use of electronics isn't quite as heavy as on the remix cd Hyper Civilizado, they are used to good effect and manage to seem organically integrated. The subtle horn lines, hand percussion and the soft, nearly whispered, vocals (in both Portugese and English) make for a pretty unique listen. And if you pay attention, you can even hear a little of his patented detuned guitar blast.

So it's looking like Arto's move to Ani DiFranco's Righteous Babe label is paying off.

Oh, what I wouldn't give to hear a Ani/Arto duets cd.....mmmmm

so...clinton lies about sex with an intern and gets impeached.

gw bush lies about obtaining uranium from africa and the response from the right is "we were wrong...let's move on".

A nice, sprightly walking bassline In-the-pocket jazz drumming (you know: "ching, ching-a ching....") Play the head, play some solos, play the head

You won't find any of that stuff on Jim Black's Alasnoaxis. What you will find is Hilmar Jensson on electric guitar, Chris Speed on tenor sax and clarinet and Skuli Sverisson on electric bass...all supported, pushed and prodded by the (barely) controlled chaos of Jim Black on drums.

Describing music like this is tough because the tunes can go from pensive near-ballads to full-on skronk. Take "Ambacharm". It begins with all three melodic instruments stating a slow theme in unison with the drums setting (almost implying) the pulse. The instensity builds very slowly... in a Lounge Lizards kind of way. Then comes "Garden Frequency", which is constructed around a single guitar chord: feeding back and then being restruck. After a couple of iterations Black's almost tribal drums kick in and so does the rest of the "tune". Next up is "Poet Staggered" with Chris Speed's squeeky intro giving way to the fury of the full band, again with Black's clattering percussion.

Kind Of Blue this is not.

Check Alaxnoaxis out if you're tired of major label jazz "product" and are looking for something that makes you think.

The perfect gift for the Kenny G lover in your life.

Michael Savage has been fired by MSNBC for making anti-gay remarks.

Gee, I'm so surprised. I don't know whether to snicker, cry, or brace myself for the upcoming wave of "it's political correctness" whining that is sure to come from the right.

Let's get this out of the way right now...I don't know jack about Disturbed except that:

they're playing Ozzfest this summer there are no guitar solos on the song "Liberate" they're fricken' loud

Not a lot to go on. I'm listening to the "Liberate" promo cd single (which lists Ozzfest dates on the back).

This is where I begin to feel old and start complaining about how today's metal just isn't the same as when I was a kid. I'm event tempted to visit with the "it all sounds the same" gambit.

But here's the thing...is that being fair? Is it valid (useful, maybe?) criticism to say that I don't like something just because it's not like my old favorites? Maybe none of that even matters. Heck, the whole "not like it used to be" angle is kinda worn out in the entire world of arts criticism.

...and these guys are make a living grinding out this stuff (their last album, The Sickness sold a boatload of copies). So why would it matter if some old fart (who grew up on 70's metal) can't deal with the new (nu?) thing?

I don't know.

What I do know is that I like the song "Liberate". The rhythm section is scary tight and the guitar is crushing. I've heard plenty of stuff like this live (Mudvayne being the most recent) and it is fun in a cathartic sorta way. But if I had to listen to seventy minutes of it?....I dunno, it kind of lacks in the dynamics department. Sorry, but the slow/quiet-to-loud-as-hell transitions just can't take the place of guitar solos.

So what I'm getting at is..well, I guess bands like Disturbed make me wonder what the future of metal is going to look like.

Is this it?

I spent Saturday night under the stars at the impossibly beautiful West Kortright Centre listening to Nathan and the Zydeco Cha Cha's.

This is one smokin' band! While I can hear a lot of the influence of Clifton Chenier there's also some funk and rock&roll in there too.

They had those granola chick wraparound skirts a' flyin'!

Pet Sounds - The Beach Boys

I'm starting a little 4-day vacation tomorrow. The Beach Boys just make me think of leisurely summer days (ok....and girls in bikinis).

I got into an argument a while back about the issue of talent and the use of DJ's in hip-hop. Oddly enought, the argument (ok, let's face it...it was closer to a shouting match) took place on (jazz guitarist) Pat Metheny's web forum.

So the issue boiled down to something like "is scratching a 'valid' musical form". As you would expect, the opinions were polarized in the extreme: with very lucid ethnomusical arguments on the positive side to statements such as "they're just too lazy to learn real instruments" on the negative. This, like a lot of 'discussion' forums, devolved into lots of name-calling and insult-slinging. It was pretty weak. And I've got to say that the jazz snobs (and I've been in that club!) pretty much made fools of themselves. After a while we weren't even talking about record scratching. It was more like a referendum on whether rap is 'real' music. There was a lot of ignorance to be had for free, that's for sure.

There was one point that the "anti-rappers" made that did have some validity...and that was that they were turned off by all the negativity that they associate with rap. I can kinda see what they meant. Of course, they were talking about what they had seen on MTV..as if that's the entire universe of hip-hop. So if 100% of your exposure to this is guys with gold chains flashing handfulls of cash, violence and scantily-clad women...well, I can see how you might form those closed and negative opinions.

Me, I'm not offended by that stuff. I just think it's kinda boring. I like a little substance to go along with the beats. That would be: Public Enemy, A Tribe Called Quest, The Roots, Arrested Development....you get the idea.

So what does any of this have to do with Jaheim? Still Ghetto is really more of an R&B/soul record than anything else. It's got a lof the positive kind of messages that I wish the rap-haters had been exposed to. Not only are there some fun & slinky beats, there's some sensuality ("Put That Woman First"), relationships (especially "Beauty And A Thug", a duet with Mary J. Blige) and even a song about Jaheim's Mom ("Everywhere I Am"). Like a lot of people, Jaheim used music to escape from the street. You can still hear where he came from, but he's taken advantage of that experience.

And then there's Jaheim's voice. I've seen influences mentioned such as Marvin Gaye and Sam Cooke. I can hear that...but also maybe a little Al Green. I mean, the guy didn't win the talent contests at the Apollo by accident.

So maybe I'll go back into the fray and suggest Jaheim. Maybe a little positive soul with a hip-hop foundation can help turn the tide (ok, I'm not bettin' on it but what the hey.....)