100th POST: IGGY v. POST-PUNK

We're not typically fans of the meandering, self-important post-rock stylings of indie-press faves Mogwai, but their song "Punk Rock" is clever bit of emotional manipulation. The song samples an interview Iggy Pop gave to Canadanian broadcasting legend Peter Gzowski, in which the head Stooge freaks out the norms by declaring that punk rock is, among other things, "a word used by dilettantes and heartless manipulators."



via A Time to Get

MISSISSIPPI RECORDS: CASSETTE SERIES VOL. 9 & 10

Mississippi's mix-tapes are getting more professional looking, with full-color jackets and labels on the tapes themselves.

MRC-009: Chaabi Music from Al-Maghrib



Chaabi is a type of folk music with two distinct strains, a Moroccan version and an Algerian version. The music here is from Morocco.

MRC-010: The Way Up the Hill
20 Gospel Hits of the 1970s

MISSISSIPPI RECORDS: I WOKE UP ONE MORNING IN MAY

I Woke Up One Morning in May

A follow up of sorts to Last Kind Words, this record collects country blues recorded between 1927 and 1934.

REV. LOUIS OVERSTREET: WORKING ON A BUILDING

Born in Louisiana, Rev. Louis Overstreet's particular brand of electric gospel is one of the rawest examples of a traditionally raw form. Accompanying himself on guitar and bass drum (at the same time) and backed by a choir, Overstreet's playing is pure Pentecostal fever. He made one record, recorded live for the Arhoolie label in 1962, before he died in 1980. Long-time fans of the album, we were recently alerted to this video footage, which captures the Reverend at the peak of his fire-and-brimstone evangelism.

discovery of video thanks to the Goner Board.

HARRY SMITH: EARLY ABSTRACTIONS

Native Portlander Harry Smith is best-known to those with an interest in early American music as the compiler of the indispensable Anthology of American Folk Music, originally issued in 1952 on the Folkways label. What many may not know is that Smith's interests ranged far and wide, and in 1939 he began to experiment with film.

Abstract and animated, Smith's films were designed to be accompanied by live bands, and the surreal visual effects were achieved by hand-manipulating the celluloid. Despite their never being given a legitimate release, Smith's films have garnered wide critical attention; below are examples of some of his earliest work.

MR. RHYTHM

Chicago's adopted son Andre Williams has been toiling in the margins of popular R+B for 50 years. He penned a few odd-ball hits in the 50's ("Bacon Fat," "Jail Bait") and ended up co-writing an early Stevie Wonder song ("Thank You (For Loving Me All the Way)"). His early-60's smash ("Shake A Tail-Feather"), first recorded by the Five Du-Tones, was later covered by Ike & Tina Turner. He spent the rest of the 60's and most of the 70's writing minor hits and producing better-known acts. Then he disappeared.

Addicted to drugs, Williams spent most of the 80's impoverished in Chicago, begging for change on the streets of downtown. His successful re-emergence in the mid-90's was due in large part to the pedigree of his garage/punk collaborators, notably Mick Collins, who helped assemble a band for Williams and produced a couple of his records. A new documentary, Agile Hostile Mobile: A Year With Andre Williams, has been making its way around the country, and now Pitchfork TV is streaming it free-of-charge for one week only.

The trailer:

EVERYTHING I DO IS HOT

The video below spotlights the owners of two distinct "sticker cars," a custom-car iteration on the rise in New Orleans. Relatively cheap and easy, the process involves applying customized vinyl decals to American sedans or SUVs; why food products are such a popular theme is anyone's guess.

RED FANG: PREHISTORIC DOG

Proving once and for all that not all Portland music fits neatly into the city's much ballyhooed indie/electro/twee scene, Red Fang (feat. members of Last of the Juanitas, Facedowninshit, and noise kings Trumans Water) combine heavy, sloppy punk/metal sludge with driving, slightly groovy rhythms. This video, directed by Whitey McCannaughy, shows what can be done with a shoestring budget, a sense of humor, and tons of beer.

BRING IT ON HOME TO ME

John Olson's amazing pictures of rock musicians at home with their parents. Photographed in the 70's for Life Magazine.

Grace Slick


Eric Clapton


Elton John


David Crosby


Frank Zappa


via The Daily Swarm

HEPWORTH MFG. CO.

A pair of early experiments in filmic special effects, both from 1900:

How It Feels To Be Run Over


The Explosion of a Motor Car


A curious reaction to modernity, these films seem to both indict and poke light-hearted fun at the rapid technological advancements of the turn of the 20th century. Cecil Hepworth, a pioneering British film maker, was producing as many as three films a week at his studio in south east England, often to great critical and commercial success. As far as I know, the two films above were shown mostly during touring revues, serving as gentle (if a bit macabre) warnings against the excesses of the dawning era.

RIP: LUX INTERIOR

Legendary Cramps frontman Lux Interior has died from an "existing heart condition." He was 62.

Tear it up on the other side, Lux!

BIG STATES PRESENTS...

SONNY ROLLINS - ST. THOMAS
from Saxophone Colossus

THELONIOUS MONK - EPISTROPHY
from The Complete Blue Note Recordings

ART BLAKEY & THE JAZZ MESSENGERS - A NIGHT IN TUNISIA
(with Bobby Timmons on piano) from A Night in Tunisia

BIG STATES MIX VOLUME ONE: LOVE IS STRANGE & OTHER SONGS

Each month we'll be posting four selections from each Big States contributor. Starting NOW.

JOE
----

FEELINGS - * L--
from Especially for You



Vintage Portland indie rock, ca. the tail end of the mid-90's. Featuring Ralf Youtz (original drummer for Built To Spill), who sings and plays guitar, and Tim Seiwerratch's (credited as the "microphonist") drunken, wild-eyed yelping.

PERRY & THE HARMONICS - DO THE MONKEY WITH JAMES



Chicago should-be mod classic. The singer, Ed Townsend, would later co-author Marvin Gaye's "Let's Get it On." Ca. mid-60's.

RIDICULOUS TRIO - NO FUN



Sax + tuba cover of classic Stooges burner.

NOW TIME DELEGATION - HANDLE ME WITH CARE



From Tim Kerr's punk/soul supergroup's lone record. A cover of the King Floyd classic, Lisa Kekaula's vocal adds an element of sultry desperation not found in the original.


D.
----

DIRTY PROJECTORS - TWO YOUNG SHEEPS
from the New Attitude EP



Clawing its way out from underneath peaceful, sleepy piles of afro-pop keyboard groove is David Longstreth's voice, carving into the live space with his serrated melisma: "Say yuh-aaaaaaaaaa-uhhhh!" The sheer hopelessness of replicating Longstreth's squawks (and therefore participating in the call and response) is the prime driver of the idea, and comic acknowledgement is implicit in the first real lyric. "Precious reciprocity," Longstreth howls. The live crowd's limp reactions to Longstreth's exhortations are awesome. "Say, 'say yeah,'" Longstreth eventually tells us. I am a strong proponent of performers fucking around with their audiences, and Longstreth, pop music's premiere deconstructionist at the moment, is the perfect unreliable narrator.

SCOTT WALKER - TRACK THREE
from Climate of Hunter



"My music has really always been the sound of nightmares," Scott Walker says in an interview in Stephen Kijak's new documentary on the avant-gardist crooner. "Everything is disproportionate, larger than life." So it is with "Track Three," wherein each element is jarring and fractured. Everything seems sudden, out of place—from the heavily gated snare hits to the strained harmonies, the odd, discordant guitar shredding (which gives way to synth strings leaning hard on an unforgiving diminished chord) to the piercing digital 80s production. The free-associative lyrics are horrific, a pastiche of images flashing through Walker's supremely twisted dreamscape. Ostensibly a pop song, Walker has no problem making the verses impenetrable: "Delayed in the headlong / resembled to breaking-point / I swear you never slept at night / when the growing is slow."


ARTHUR RUSSELL - YOUR MOTION SAYS
from Love is Overtaking Me



Somewhere between the sweet vulnerability of "You Can Make Me Feel Bad if You Want To" and the uninhibited disco of "Is It All Over My Face" exists a place of perfect danceable compromise; Arthur Russell finds it here.


SIC ALPS - LOVE IS STRANGE
From A Long Way Around to a Shortcut



I would be remiss not to include some Siltbreezy stuff from SF as it is currently what is happening in the city (and seemingly on the whole West coast). Thank god I live in Oakland, where I can retain a comfortable detachment from a scene that is so huge and generally obnoxious that it seems destined to either be the next Seattle-in-the-90s situation or to implode in hideous critical backlash (more likely). These garage-y lo-fi bands are seriously a dime a dozen around here right now (Thee Oh Sees, Girls, Nodzzz, the unbearable Ty Segall, etc.) but Sic Alps are the ones with the most legitimate pop chops. "Love is Strange" is a great tune.


JOSH
----

JOSEPHINE TAYLOR - DEPEND ON ME

Chicago soul songstress. She had a local hit in '66 called "What is Love" and released a number of other singles that failed to chart (like this one). The combo of the guitar sound and Taylor's timbre is alchemy.




NICK DRAKE - BLUES RUN THE GAME
from Tanworth in Arden 1967/68



There’s something really disarming in hearing a voice so familiar through the gauze and warble of a home recording. The recording betrays the time between then and now, but is also so intimate and present, as you can tell the performance took place in a bedroom, or a living room or wherever, but certainly not a studio, and probably alone. It, or he, is both closer and farther. For me, it’s hard to shake the supremacy of a recording as record of an event, particularly an event like this one.


THE STONES - GUNNER HO (not those Stones)



Last year I went through about six months of exclusively listening to boomer rock standbys-- Van Morrison, Dylan, Neil Young, etc.-- and figured it was only a matter of time before Happy Sad would be on heavy rotation and I’d be explaining how I finally got Mountain Jam. But then I got an ipod and the only thing that can really compete with the din and doldrums of my morning bus ride is a bratty punk song. This song is super catchy. Dunedin did it right.

SAMANTHA BUMGARNER - WORRIED BLUES
via archive.org



From 1924. The first recorded female country singer. I've never heard anything quite like it.




You can download all the songs here.

YESTERDUH

The other night I went to a friend's and had my first taste of the wii experience. We played American Idol. I volunteered to sing first, selecting Madonna's Holiday. I got really super nervous and sang the whole thing in falsetto. When I was finished Virtual Randy was like "Dawg, that was terrible." Even Virtual Paula was hating. My friends were like "Um, they aren't usually that harsh." In typical Idol fashion, I blame everything but myself, but mostly the limited song selection. Where's the C86?

And Virtual Randy better be careful.

Afterwards, my friend Elspeth destroyed My Heart Will Go On. PERFECT SCORE.

All this amateur singing reminded me of Yesterduh, a sound piece by the artist Brian Joseph Davis in which multiple tracks of street solicited people sing Yesterday from memory.

Yesterduh (2006)

IF YOU TASTE THE CANDY: ON GENE WEEN

I went to see Gene Ween last night with a friend of mine (a long time Ween enthusiast) who had an extra ticket. The show was sold out and we got there a little late so ended up standing by the bar in the back. The guy next to me was wearing a Mr. Skin t-shirt. A waitress kept passing us, charged with what looked like the worst task ever, having to continually push back and forth through the shoulder to shoulder crowd while balancing a tray of beer and cocktails. After she shoved past the Mr. Skin guy, I heard him tell his friend “I totally rubbed some tit.”

Being a solo acoustic performance, it was very much ‘for fans only’ but I hadn’t really anticipated the kind of fan devotion Ween inspires—or half of Ween in this case. It seemed like everyone, everyone, was singing along. At first this sort of creeped me out, as the one guy in the room who wasn’t in on the cult of Ween and then Gener played a song off Chocolate and Cheese and I got that tug of recognition and sang along. It was the one about the Mexican who’s avenging his brother but who turns out to be the killer and is framing his “amigo.” At the end, when the device is revealed, the whole crowd was belting it out with such hammy enthusiasm that I got kind of lost in the moment. And the near-religious display of audience commitment was refreshing whether I was in on it or not. But the audience response was strange considering the songs are so completely ironic. But then some how they’ve arrived at sincerity? or maybe I just don’t get it and really that ‘weird’ song about the party and tri-colored pasta is so very true but also totally hilarious but most of all cause for sing-a-long. The guy next to me during “Don’t Get 2 Close (2 My Fantasy)”: “I have no idea what the fuck this means but it’s fucking awesome.”

The show reminded me of the festivals I went to as a teenager. Going to Hog Farm and seeing all these people rallying around music and recognizing the value and wanting to participate but not really connecting, and it all seeming a little mindless, and the music isn’t even any good is it? And some guy blasting Hurricane and being like yeah I like Dylan. Did you see that Denzel movie? and ultimately feeling alienated. But I like Ween a lot more than Yonder Mountain String Band or Ben Harper or whatever Dead related group was the main ticket that year. And I don’t have a 15 year old’s insecurity or thirst for self definition (relatively anyway) So, last night I could, I guess, enjoy the show passively. I would’ve liked to have heard Sarah though.