Crouch, Coleman & tradition

Excellent post on the Pi Recordings blog by one Rafiq on the problems and limitations of the teachings of Stanley Crouch and his followers, especially as it regards the problem of the "jazz tradition", as Crouch would have it, using Coleman as an example.

Music of the Week 23/09

• The Fully Celebrated: Drunk on the Blod of the Holy Ones (AUM Fidelity)
• Steve Lehman Octet: "Echoes" (Travail, Transformation, and Flow, Pi Recordings)
• Dinosaur Jr.: "Over It" (Farm, JagJaguwar)
• Pixie Lott: "Boys & Girls"
• Dolly Rockers: "Gold Digger"
  

Koko Taylor, R.I.P.

More @ Idolator.

Steve Lehman Octet - Threadgillian stuff

In what looks to be a decent year for large ensemble jazz records - Darcy James Argue's Secret Society and Hypnotic Jazz Ensemble, to name but two - the preview from Steve Lehman Octet's new record posted by Destinatio: Out! the other day sounds especially promising. The track, "Echoes", does the trick of sounding at once very contemporary and modern, especially in the way the horns and bass riff and in Tyshawn Sorey's hip-hop influenced drumming, while at the same time echoing (right!) the works of past masters. I have to agree with Ben Ratlif in hearing a similarity with Henry Threadgill's music in the ways the riffs and beats are orchestrated. Steve Lehman himself has a wail that is reminiscent of the great Eric Dolphy both because of his gruff tone and in how his solo leaps out and swirl around the rest of the music. I'm very much looking forward to hearing more of this record.

Travail, Transformation and Flow is released by Pi Recordings and is available from, among others, Jazz Loft and amazon.com (see below).

I mentioned that the talented Tyshawn Sorey plays on the record. In this Q&A he reveals himself as a man with diverse (and almost impeccable) tastes. Beefheart, Nirvana, Braxton and Prince. Gotta love it.

eMusic is growing

As reported in the NY Times yesterday, eMusic have struck a deal with Sony Music and will soon be able to offer (older) Sony records and songs as a part of the download site's ever growing catalogue. Very good news indeed, what with eMusic being my preferred place for legal downloads (I still prefer physical records, but eMusic's cheap enough to both download an mp3-version and buy the CD/LP if I feel it's good enough). They have good writers working for them too.

Now, if they only could do something about their frustrating search engine: a search for, say, William Parker gives you a dozen or so hits, including separate entries for William Parker Quartet and Trio, instead of one main entry with sub-entries. Maybe I should offer my services...

Music of the Week 22/09

A retro-filled Music of the Week this time:

• Maxwell: "Pretty Wings" (Columbia)
• Allen Toussaint: "Singing the Blues" (Bright Mississippi, Nonesuch)
  
• Archie Shepp: Kwnaza (Impulse, 1974)
• Cecil Payne: Zodiac (Strata East, 1973)
• Various - The Complete '1981' Box Set mp3s from Musicophilia
  

Music of the Weeks 20+21/09

• Pixie Lott: "Mama Do" (Mercury)
• New Boyz: "You're a Jerk"
• Lily Allen: "Not Fair" (Capitol)
• Staff Benda Bilili: Tres Tres Fort (Crammed Disc)
• Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam)

Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor, and background

Forgot to mention an interesting interview with the author Colson Whitehead in a New York Times Book Review podcast (podcast link here) from a few weeks back. Whitehead, whose new book Sag Harbor is out now, talks with Sam Tanenhaus about background ("black boys with beach houses") which links to my arguments on afro punk and "indie" in the sense that personal backgoround is more complex than black and white (note his comment on "authentic black experience"). A quite obvious point, really, but nonetheless one which seems to escape some critics of "indie".

Sonic debacle

K-punk has a go at Sonic Youth and their followers, but misses the point the way I see it.

The prime argument seems to be that SY are faux alternatives to the (a) mainstream, when in reality they are squarly within the mainstream albeit another part of it. K-punk's claim is that the thought that SY represent an alternative is the "fundamentl (rockist) fantasy". Now, while I'm sure some kids (yes, kids) harbor the idea (illusion) that SY are an alternative to a mainstream they feel left out of or don't want to be apart of, K-punk's assertion is in and of itself rockist (post-Adorno) in that he claims to know why people like SY.

Whether or not SY are an alternative to the mainstream or operate within the mainstream is beside the point. I'd argue that noone really sounds quite like SY, and at the same time that SY don't really sound like anybody else. So, yes, they are an alterative. Whether within or outside the mainstream doesn't really matter.

Claiming that SY have been "making the same record for over twenty years" kind of proves that point; the records sound like SY records, nothing else. As a great band once sang: "Mr. narrator/this is Bob Dylan to me". His Bob-ness was himself part of the mainstream while at the same time nobody really sounded like him.

Still, what should be discussed is the music, and this is where I feel K-punk's biggest mistake lies. He doesn't mention it at all, apart from staking the claim that SY have made the same record over and over. That's a populist claim, a claim that doesn't say why this is so, but one that will resonate in the ears of the naysayers and irritate those who disagree.

I find it quite easy to hear a difference between Sister and Rather Ripped. The first is more abrasive, the second smoother. But what it boils down to the songs, the tunes. Both records have good tunes in buckets, and while they sound somewhat different, the classic SY elements are there; Moore's chiming guitar sound, Shelley's pounding and staccato-like drumming, Ranaldo's longer tones, and Gordon's growl, wheter voice or bass. That K-punk can't tell the difference I suspect is down to his hang-up on the mainstream/not mainstream divide. That he doesn't like them I won't hold against him, I'd just wish he'd argument on the basis of the music instead.

Good post by Matt Ingram (welcome back!) on the same issue.

The printed word

In a move to counter the decline of printed music writing *, tomorrow will see the release of a fanzine-inspired magazine simply named FAN (wordplay, indeed), to which I'm a contributing writer. My first conrtribution concerns Arfican-American punk and "indie" rock, in some ways a commentary to the argument that modern rock has become the domain of white middle class boys/men. It's true, admittedly, but then again most areas in culture, popular and not, are dominated by white middle class boys/men. I attempt to argue that that's no reason to forget the contributions to punk rock from people with different backgrounds, and that using background as a sort of meassure of quality is problematic, to put it mildly. Anyway, here's the cover of the above-mentioned magazine.



* Since the question's been put to me; yes of course that line was intended to be a bit tounge in cheek.

Miranda Lambert's "Dead Flowers"

The new Miranda Lambert single was released last week (and today world wide), at least digitally (iTunes link). Not sure what to make of this yet. It's certainly no "Famous In a Small Town" or "Guilty In Here". The consensus, though, seems to be that using "dead flowers" as a metaphor for a relationship passed it's prime is beneath a songwriter of Lambert's talent. Agreed.

Music of the Weeks 18+19/09

• Sonic Youth: The Eternal (Matador)
• Wussy: Wussy (Shake It)
• DJ Paul: Scale-A-Ton (Scale-A-Ton/Hypnotize Minds)
  
• Pretty Reckless: "I Really Fucking Love You" (single, unsigned/Uniersal?)
• Gallows: "Black Eyes" (Grey Britain, Warner Bros.)

Singles Jukebox

One of my favorite features of Stylus Magazine, an online music and pop culture zine that closed down just over two years ago, was the Stylus Singles Jukebox. I discovered last week that the feature has been relaunched as a separate website/blog, which you can find here (or by clicking the pic). Many of the "old" contributers are frequently in the panel, including Matos and Frank Kogan.

EMP wrap-ups

More thoughts on the EMP Pop Conf '09 from the interweb.

• Robert Christgau
• Oliver Wang
• Carl Wilson part 1 + part 2
  

Plus, Matos has posted his paper here.

Music of April/09

I keep effing up the weekly updates, so I'm starting a-fresh as of now. Probably won't help, but here we go:

• So So Glos: Tourism/Terrorism (Green Owl) (Yeah, still digging this)
• UGK: UGK 4 Life (Jive)
  
• Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band: Outer South (Merge)
• Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest (Warp)
• Revolutionary Ensemble: Beyond the Boundry of Time (Muteable Music)
• The Baseball Project: Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (Yep Roc)
• Japandroids: "Young Hearts Spark Fire" (Unfamiliar Records)
• Peaches: "Talk to Me" (Beggars)
• Sonic Youth: "Sacred Trixter" (Matador)
• Girls Can't Catch: "Keep Your Head Up" (?)
  

Charles Mingus birthday broadcast

All day today at WKCR. Highly recommended.

Shiver me timbers, or piracy and record sales

The validity of the recent BI study that claimed pirates buy more music is being questioned by Maura @ Idolator and cohort Eric Harvey, and rightly so. The soon to close Dotshop, a connoisseur's internet shop of sorts, may well be in the right when they claim that they are victims of illegal filesharing.

Thing is, though, I have in fact bought more music because of the availability of free music on the internet, from the simple cause and effect that more music has been more easily available for me to hear before I buy the damn thing. Now while I do not claim to be a typical consumer, whose to say I'm only one in a million? Furthermore, most music fans I know prefer the physical LP or CD to mp3/FLAC/what have you, but this is a banana skin on par with the Nixon "qoute"; I don't know many people and other people may not give a toss or two about what format they listen to, much less how they obtain it. Those people do in fact hurt sales.

Thankfully, the likes of Spotify and their increasing libraries of music may make illegal filesharing for the sake of "getting a taste" increasingly redundant. They are the listening posts of the future, me thinks.

First reports from EMP Pop '09

Ned Raggett steps up to the plate (1+2+3+4). Haven't read anything myself yet, but thought I'd post a link here anyway.

EMP Pop '09 - who's blogging?

The EMP Pop Conference kicks off this Thursday, and I know KEXP 90.3 will blog about the goings-on, but if anyone else are doing any form of writing or updates on the thing, I'd appreciate it if you let me know. Btw, Twitter won't cut it, but if there's nothing else...

Coleman to curate Meltdown '09

Got an e-mail from a friend that alerted me to this. Hmmm, London in June. Why not?
More from FACT magazine.