Discography Year Two - Week 36

It's very rare that we've ever, completely independently, had two noted musicologists pick the same artist in the same week.  This week, however, both MK and I chose Frightened Rabbit songs, which I guess is not surprising since we woke up hearing about the band's lead singer Scott Hutchison's suicide at age 36. Truthfully, I knew precious little about the band, but, as MK referenced, and said much more eloquently than I could have, I think I was taken by the juxtaposition of the event and the words of the artist.  It's been such a wretched long year with more death than any of us needed, and I think I've reached the point where I'm impacted by the deaths of people I don't even know.

On happier note, I love the songs this week.  The selection is typically eclectic, and there's a definite energy boost since the end of the semester.  I also love the symmetry of KA's selection, because I know that album was one of GB's favorites.

Dave Wallace

The Pretenders - The Wait

I recently finished Chrissie Hynde's autobiography, which has caused me to revisit much of the Pretenders' catalogue.  They made several fantastic albums, and their first album is one of the greatest debuts ever.  I remember listening to it when it first came out (yes, I'm old) and being blown away.  It's punk, but more melodic than usual, with attitude to spare.  Every song on the album is terrific, and The Wait may be the best, as well as most representative of their sound.  With Hynde spitting out the lyrics, James Honeyman-Scott providing brillant guitar work, and the rhythm section pushing it along, it's essential rock from the '80s.

Dave Mills

With grades submitted and the end-of-semester pile gradually dwindling (for now), I have a minute and a brain cell or two to spare for the beloved discography.

This track is one that's been an earworm for me since it came out in March. Called "Moped," it's by the Richard Koch Quartett. Yes, with two t's, cuz they're German. Koch himself is actually an Austrian trumpeter, but his jazz quartet is based in Berlin. Anyway, not only is this track just fun to listen to, I also think it's perfectly named. The music buzzes along on a wave of rickety kinetic energy akin to that of a moped weaving through traffic. We're not talking about smooth Italian "Vespa" sophistication here. We're talking 1978 Honda Hobbit. With that in mind, I wish they'd made this their album cover:

Mike Kelly

Frightened Rabbit -- Floating in the Forth 

Just this everyone.  

I'll steer myself
Through drunken waves
These manic gulls
Scream it's okay
Take your life
Give it a shake
Gather up
All your loose change
I think I'll save suicide for another year.

And this:  

"Be so good to everyone you love. It's not a given. I'm so annoyed that it’s not. I didn't live by that standard and it kills me. Please, hug your loved ones"

What's so simultaneously amazing and horrifying are the extremes that take it takes to understand what life is capable of making you feel.  It's a plus.  -- MK 

Kathy Seiler

It’s been 10 weeks since I posted and for that I am sorry, but the last couple of months have also been so overwhelming that I just couldn’t manage enough to post. The past 6 weeks or so have been particularly bad, with the death of two family members, selling our house and moving to an apartment, and the loss of our beloved greyhound Popy. Add drama at work, end of the semester, and everything else that might go wrong happening (the washer decided to leak the day before we moved out and the garage door broke the day before closing), and it felt like life was not only full of sorrow but literally kicking us hard in the ribs while we were down.

Today’s song is for all of my friends (many on this blog) who were there for me/us during all of this. The song Block of Wood is from Carbon Leaf’s album Love, Loss, Hope, Repeat. That’s about the best description of the past couple of months I’ve ever seen. The version I’ve included has expanded lyrics and is performed live outside, but below are the first few stanzas from the original that made me think of all of the wonderful people in my life who never tried to take my pain away but were there so I could cry. Thank you. You have LITERALLY made all the difference in my life these past couple of months. I have more love for you all than I will ever be able to express in words.

Grab your heart
We need to leave
There's no time to cry or grieve
For the fallen family tree

Rise above the flooding plain
Crouching low to dark the flame
Generations against the grain
Up in smoke, down the drain

If the fire, if the flood
Burns the tree and thins the blood
If your tears don't want to dry
I can help you cry

Through the night
Through the night and day
I can't take your pain away
But I can help you cry

Dave Kelley

To paraphrase the great philosopher Cartman, I am so fucking pissed off I can't stand it.  I just fucking despise our administration from top to bottom and most of the Republican leadership to boot.  Might as well throw in most of the folks who approve of this shit show.  I am sure by next week, I will be back to the slow simmering boil of the last two years.  Not this week though.

"I'm waiting for the last to be first and the first to be last

In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass."

"The Ghost of Tom Joad"  Bruce Springsteen

Originally recorded acoustically, the live performances are loud and raucous.  Combining my favorite musician with arguably my favorite American novelist make me a sucker for this one.  Plus it is a really angry song which suits my current mood

This live version features the great Tom Morello joining E Street.  Playing some jaw dropping solos with his guitar with the words "Arm the homeless" written across it, Morello really puts this over the top.  Bruce contributes strong guitar work and an impassioned intro.  This one does a body good.  Take your Spinal Tap speakers up to 11 on this one.

P.S.  Fuck these fascist bastards into the ground and pour some concrete on top.

Kevin Andrews

In 1954 the long playing record, the LP, was still in its infancy. Artists were no longer restricted to a 3 ½ minute recording. The musical palate was now 22.5 minutes per side. Around this time Frank Sinatra was beginning to piece his career back together. His television show was cancelled and his record company dropped him. He was no longer the teen age heart throb. 

His wife Ava Gardner helped him land a role in in From Here to Eternity for which he won and Oscar and Golden Globe for Best Supporting Actor. With a new contract from Capitol Records he was entering his most productive musical period. 

Unfortunately, his marriage to Ava was ending and he was heart broken. She was the love of his live and he of hers though their actions didn’t reflect this since they were both serial adulterers. Several times Lana expressed her anger that women were treated differently than men in this regard. Men could have as many women as they liked but she was labeled a home wrecker or worse. Their exploits were legendary.

From this grief Frank created waht would come to be known as the first concept album, In The Wee Small Hours. This is the entire album, pick any song that you’d like. It’s beautiful and haunting, it gets the message across, he’s totally bummed out.

In episode 8 of Soundbreaking: Stories from the Cutting Edge of Recorded Music there’s a great section on this I’d highly recommend.

Phillip Seiler

As Gary has alluded to, our family has experienced a string of losses the last few weeks: two expected but still painful and one extremely sudden, random, and tragic. It has left both of us very weary and having to neglect some things that bring us joy such as music and hosting gatherings for friends. However, the exceptional kindness of our friends has helped us navigate and emerge from the other side. Bruised but not beaten. And I will say that while the book of face is a garbage platform that would harvest your most secret dreams and hopes and sell them, for pennies, to some asshole who believes bitcoins are really the future, our lives are controlled by chemtrails, and that gamergate was really about ethics in game journalism, I took some joy in the condolences from across my life: from the girl I was in a high school musical with who introduced me to Bauhaus to new friends to people I have only ever met on various message boards discussing music.

And that oddly segues into my choice for this week. I have been part of a 20+ year conversation about the music of Todd Rundgren that started on an AOL message board. It has waxed and waned as new releases have come and gone but there was a community around him that was always happy to discuss and share music. Recently, we all got a major gift as Todd and the members of his band Utopia were offered a chance to re-form and tour, something they had not done since 1992. The tour would consist of Todd, Kasim Sulton, bassist, Willie Wilcox, drummer, and Ralph Shuckett on keyboards. Roger Powell, who is the most recognized keyboardist for the band can no longer tour for medical reasons. I believe I heard that it was joint and tendon issues in his hands. Ralph was a keyboardist for the earlier, prog-rock version of the band. Sadly, he too developed medical issues and had to pull out. So with only weeks to go before opening night, the band had no keyboardist. They actually put out a call on the fan boards for anyone who might know the bands' catalog. The tour was envisioned to cover the band's entire career from their prog rock anthems to their later power pop so this was ambitious. Thankfully, Todd's son alerted him to a Gil Assayas who joined and learned all his bits in just a few short weeks. He is insanely talented and fit right in, it seems. (He records as GLASYS and well, here is bonus song for this week: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OSeYAhzWvrQ)

So last Sunday, I left my family for the night and drove to Boston to see a show I never thought I would get a chance to. It was both glorious and terrible. Todd had a cold (write some songs that don't rely on your upper range, Todd!), Kasim seemed like he might be next, the theater's seats were literally worse than sitting on broken glass and everyone there was too old to stand for the whole show. But, oh, was the music and musicianship amazing. Willie was the highlight for me as he agreed to take a hiatus from his day job composing music for gaming machines in Vegas but you would never know as he was tight and drove the show all night. Thankfully, Utopia had a long career so they had a large catalog to choose from and for two one hour sets they featured great song after song and many I thought I would never see live. I was happy for a few hours and it was good. 

  

So for this week I give you two songs I needed through this time. First, the hit they never had, Utopia's Love is The Answer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1uCaIuPg-Fk

And the band's closing anthem, Just One Victory

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aygw3Q2dM8s

Some how, some way

We need just one victory

and we're on our way

Cyndi Brandenburg

As we celebrate the end of the semester and move into post-semester/pre-summer May mode, the storms of April work deadlines yield to the promise of sunshine and May flowers.  And of course, the time and space opens up for us to fully appreciate the magnitude of Gary Scudder's playful irreverence.  Welcome to American Horror Story: May Collaborative.  There is much in the way of spooky intensity and inexplicable phenomena lurking either just below the surface or beyond our peripheral vision in the halls of Aiken.  Lucky for us, we have the ability to appreciate the beauty of it all even as we battle persistent ghosts and demons and the occasional dead bat. This week, my selection is part tongue-in-cheek nod to the series that inspired this year's theme, and part recognition of the fact that some people have real staying power.  From Season 3, Coven, Stevie Nicks, Seven Wonders.  

Gary Scudder

Frightened Rabbit, Holy

As is all too often the case, this was not my first choice for the week.  Doubtless Hutchison's suicide inspired the post, but the song itself fits in brilliantly with the start of Ramadan in a few days.  I think we're all both too forgiving and too critical of our own faiths, even if the faith is atheism.  Certainly my own religion, as with all others, has more than it's fair share of self-righteous pricks. Beginning Wednesday morning I'll be fasting for a month straight from dawn to dusk (and, as last year's popular t-shirt reminds us, "No, not even water."). Technically, I should be fasting from fajr prayer, around 3:15 in the morning, but I don't start that early.  Instead, I'll set my alarm at 4:30, get up and drink four large glasses of water, two cups of coffee, and toss down enough eggs and toast and corned beef hash and bananas by 5:00 a.m. to, inshallah, last me until 8:30 p.m. This is a half-hour earlier than last year.  At one of the Iftar dinners last year one of the other guys at the mosque, in response to me admitting that I didn't start before fajr prayer, said, something akin to, "that's OK, brother, you tried," but not in the good way, but rather in the sanctimonious fashion.  My response was, "No, brother, that's enough, that's more than enough."  By that I didn't mean that he needed to shut up, but rather that fasting fifteen and a half hour a day for a month straight was actually more than enough.  If we were on a similar latitude in the southern hemisphere right now I'd be fasting about nine hours a day, and, if I live into my seventies, I guess I'll get to play that game because Ramadan moves about a week and a half earlier every year.  We fast during Ramadan to teach ourselves patience and self-control and to remind us of the people who in the world who are involuntarily not eating. Every religion has a contest between the greater internal truth and the external side of the faith, which all too often ends up being all people, both on the inside and the outside, see of the faith. Too many people turn the road signs that are supposed to help gently direct humans to the divine (even if it's inside them) into stop signs, and judge people harshly on their rolling stops. To be fair, I'm usually in a pretty dreadful mood leading up to Ramadan and during the first week.  A couple weeks ago during our monthly potluck our new Imam started an equally new tradition of having members introduce themselves and talk about their own personal journeys, and for some unfathomable reason he started with me (probably to set a very low bar so that others will feel better about themselves).  He mainly wanted me to talk about the challenges of being a convert, and I focused on Ramadan - which, for new converts, tends to be pretty lonely time of the year. I shared my memories of the first Friday prayer during my first Ramadan and how the previous Imam started waxing philosophically about how Ramadan was the most magical time of the year, and I wanted to jump up at the time and say, "Seriously?  Do you see anybody here having fun?"  Happily, everyone in the audience thought that was quite funny. So, check back in a couple weeks and I'll hopefully have more positive songs.  At this moment I'll stick with Frightened Rabbit's Holy, which is a pretty solid dig at those who are quite full of themselves and more than willing to tell you about it (I think it also goes further afield than that).

I really need a copy of this shirt for our Champlain recognition lunch for this coming Wednesday.  Our college went from a big blowout end of the year party with unlimited eats and drinks - to a party with two drink tickets - to a noonday lunch because of the demand for a midday event (no one can remember this demand, naturally) - and they then managed to witlessly schedule it for the first day of Ramadan so that the school's Muslim employees have to attend and watch all their colleagues have lunch (although, at least not drink the two drink tickets of distant memory).

Lunch at Kidike

Even though I finished Proust several months ago I still find myself desperately far behind in posting.  It's been a dreadful, long, exhausting year, and I don't think I ever finished a semester more tired or less enthused.  Good time to jump into Ramadan, and I'm actually sincere on that front.  The month is both exhausting and invigorating.

Nevertheless, let me at least make an effort at getting some posts up, although I may be revisiting them and adding more detail later. With every trip we try new things, most of which turn out to be good ideas. On our last trip to Zanzibar in January our great friend Kombo Bakar suggested that we include a cooking class.  Truthfully, Steve and I figured this would be very low key, with the students divided up among different families to maybe go to the market and then maybe cook one dish together.  Instead, we took over Kombo's house, and it seemed that most of the folks from the village of Kidike helped us cook.  It turned out to be one of the students' favorite activities, and we'll definitely be doing it again

As any cook knows, you have to stop and taste along the way.  Grace seems a little hesitant, but she loved it.

It wasn't all just eating sweets - there was work to be done!  Here's Claire harvesting cassava. On trips like this there are always students who are front and center to try everything, and Claire was definitely one of them.

Yes, not every task was as glamorous as digging up cassava. There was chicken plucking, which was completely dominated by Shelsea.

Shelsea holding up her freshly plucked chicken, which clearly never stood a chance.

And then there were the chicken pluckers, like Steve, who fought bravely . . .

Here's a picture of Wes chopping up fish for lunch.

Steven was also front and center for most challenges.

Nothing says a great meal in Zanzibar like octopus.

The colors of Pemba.

And, finally, the students were able to sit down in Kombo's living room and tackle the delicious lunch that they had prepared.

Discography Year Two - Week 35

It's already the thirty-fifth week of the second year of our Discography, and, as the great Canadian philosopher reminds us, time fades away. By midnight tomorrow night I will have recorded my grades for another semester, and the numbers are starting to get surreal.  In the fall of 1982, as a twenty-two year old first year graduate student I gave my first lecture, fulfilling one of my duties as a TA for a professor who was out of town.  The lecture was on Sparta, a subject I knew nothing about, but I can remember the experience vividly, and only partially because I was terrified (as my friends and colleagues know, I hate public speaking - and it was a class of over a hundred students, and, well, they were my age).  I also remember it because I had this flash about half-way through where it suddenly hit me - damn, this is fun. Until that moment I was simply killing time trying to figure out what I should do with myself after graduation from college, and the University of Cincinnati had provided the best option (which you can also read as: the only option) by giving me a full-ride TA-ship. I've never been off a college campus since (truthfully, I guess you can stretch this back to the fall of 1978 when I first stepped onto the campus of Franklin College).  Anyway, I taught my first course in the summer of 1984 as I was finishing my MA, which I guess means that I'll soon be entering into my thirty-fifth year of teaching college students (which soon, soon, all too soon, if it hasn't happened already, I will have been teaching college students longer than some of my colleagues have been alive).  Damn, dude.  Anyway, I guess this is by way of saying that the end of each passing semester hits me a little harder.  As I've proposed before, in our line of work the end of December tends to mean nothing, but the beginning of May has a tremendous end of the year weight to it.  I guess each passing week of the Discography also carries a greater weight, especially since GB's passing.  Having said all that, rest assured that this won't be our last year.

Oh, and on a less somber note, the esteemed Dave Kelley has sent along his choice for a theme which, which I vouchsafe as One of Excellence.  I'm thinking that I'll release it next week, which will give us a couple weeks to reflect.

Dave Wallace

The Decemberists - Once in My Life

I think that I tend to take the Decemberists for granted, which I shouldn't do.  All of their albums have been good-to-great, with a couple of them near-classics.  They're really one of the best rock bands over the last couple of decades.   Although they're not as prolific as they use to be, every few years they put out a new album, which is always worth a listen and usually terrific.  Their recent album, I'll Be Your Girl, is no exception.  Stylistically, it's a little different from what they've done in the past, and it has a bunch of terrific songs.  For today's blog, I've selected the lead track, Once in My Life.

Kevin Andrews

This past week a few of us saw Nichole Atkins at Higher Ground. She’s a very talented veteran singer and songwriter with some unexpected influences. Her sound is kind of Brill Building meets Broadway with some Roy Orbison sprinkled on top. (Yes, the Brill Building is on Broadway. That’s not what I mean)

She reminded me of another similar artist I saw in Burlington years ago at a free Battery Park show, Tracy Bonham. This was in 2005 after the release of Blink the Brightest, her fourth release. It remains one of my favorite shows, she was great but she also opened for Glen Phillips of Big Head Todd fame. Both of them in the park with a guitar, no back up bands. 

Tracy is best known for her 1996 song Mother Mother which got a lot of Alternative Rock airplay and was nominated for a Grammy. When Mother Jones reviewed Blink they said Bonham could be Sheryl Crow’s moodier, less sociable sister. I love that. Blink is an excellent album and it’s not easy to pick a stand out track, so I’ll pick this since it recalls the theme (to me) of this blog, Something Beautiful.

While poking around the interwebs at Tracy Bonham songs, I found her latest album which has a song called, no doubt – tongue-in-cheek, One Hit Wonder. Also another song coincidentally featuring Nichole Atkins. I’d love to see them tour together.

Dave Kelley

"All of our words are written down in chalk

Out in the rain, on the sidewalk."

Buddy Miller. "Chalk"

Buddy is one of my favorite under the radar musicians.  Gary Beatrice was a big fan and turned me onto him.  Miller has released solo albums, records with his wife Julie, and played guitar for Steve Earle, Robert Plant, and Emmylou Harris.  

This has been a year that has already seen too many people I care about die.  A little melancholia and heightened sense of mortality is natural I think.  Perhaps that is what brought this song to mind.  I heartily encourage any if you not familiar with Buddy Miller to check him out.

"Water When The Well Is Dry"  Buddy Miller

I found I could not limit myself to one Buddy Miller song.  This is from my favorite album of his "Midnight and Lonesome."

Alice Neiley

It seems like this group talks about friendship a fair bit, which I so appreciate, as it's always been a huge part of my life, and too few people actually discuss or muse its particular bonds and big-love-qualities. 

All that to say, I do a lot of driving, and was thinking about friendship today while on my way home to Canada, how I'm so lucky to have wonderful friends (you all) in Vermont, as well as in Ottawa. But part of that luck, that embarrassment of riches, is the pang in my chest whenever I leave one place for the other. 

Truthfully, there's something pleasurable about such a tangible reminder of love, of why I want to be in two places at once. 

These songs reflect that pang, for both friends and home, or home with friends, or friendship that feels like home, or partners who are home and friendship -- the house with the red door, the little kids ringing our doorbell to ask if they can borrow my basketball, and daffodils sprouting up everywhere, the writing--and, of course, the teaching, and you all, so inspiring, perfect (to me, at least), and (don't take this the wrong way) ridiculous :). 

Brandi Carlile: Dying Day 

Wailin' Jennys: Driving 

Alison Krauss: Longest Highway

Gary Scudder

Neil Young, Four Strong Winds

Typically, this week's selection was not my first choice, or even my second, but, following my personal directive, it's the one I'm thinking about right now.  The other night the truly excellent Kevin Andrews, Mike Kelly and I (the truly excellent description affixes to  KA and MK) went to a really good Nicole Atkins concert at Higher Ground so rest assured you'll be hearing much more from her soon.  However, when I was writing up my post for her song Kill the Headlights I was also listening to other music, and by random chance started listening to Young's album Comes a Time.  It's not a great album (truthfully, I don't think there's a uniformly great NY album after the ditch trilogy) but it's really solid and better than I always remember, and, appropriately enough for this discussion, I tend to forget about it.  It was released in the middle of an extraordinary decade for Young featuring a lot of dark, brilliant music, so the more gentle and even sweet Comes a Time is a definite outlier. By far my favorite song on the album is Four Strong Winds, which features some lovely accompanying vocals from the late Nicolette Larson.  It may not be the ultimate Breakup Song, it may be the ultimate Inevitable Breakup Song.  What I didn't know at the time was that it's a cover (which is pretty rare in Young's long career, at least until that bizarre album he recorded in a phone booth in Jack White's studio).  The song itself was written by the Canadian songwriter Ian Tyson, which I guess further explains the very Canadian nature; apparently at times Canadians have voted it the best Canadian song (which sort of sounds like my category of Best American Band, meaning that the band had to be from America and also wrote songs about America). It first appeared in its original very folk version in the early 60s from Ian & Sylvia. It's been covered many times since, including by Bob Dylan.  And, of course, you can't find the Dylan version.  I think Dylan is much more proprietary than most artists because it's hard to find many of his songs on YouTube, which I guess I understand.  By comparison, I don't know if there's any NY songs that are not on YouTube, which either says something good or bad about him.  Johnny Cash also did a brutally brilliant cover in the years before he died (apparently Tyson's favorite cover) and it's impossible to listen to it without viewing it as a metaphor for Cash's fragile and failing tie to his own mortality. Having said all that, in the end I think the Young version will remain my favorite simply because it's so tied in with my own history.

What, again?

Yes, again.  It's official, we're headed back to Zanzibar next January, this time with twenty-two students and three faculty members.  The esteemed Steve Wehmeyer and Patricia DeRocher will be joining me in riding herd over a new crew of students, the biggest Champlain trip ever.  It's part of another year long-linked interdisciplinary course combining my COR 220 Aesthetic Expressions with Wehmeyer's Sacred and Secular, and once again we'll be making stops in Dar Es Salaam, Unguja and Pemba.  Truthfully, I wish it weren't eight months away.

A gift from the extraordinarily friendly and kind folks at Pemba.

Discography Year Two - Week 34

I've been thinking a lot about friendship lately, not that I don't normally think of friendship naturally.  As I'm wont to opine, I'm very blessed to be surrounded by an extraordinary group of friends (certainly more than I deserve or than can be explained by my few virtues).  Last night I diverted my nightly dog walk to interrupt my excellent friend Mike Kelly's evening.  In the general situation comedy of life Mike and Jamie raising the Barbarians I'm the comic relief neighbor (think of a less self-aware Kramer) who routinely drops in unannounced but always officially invited.  Mike and I sat around for a couple hours listening to Jason Isbell, discussing music, the passing of time and life, and in the process completely redesigning our fall's Concepts of the Self and Rhetoric of the Self courses (Dave Mills has either lost his mind or has some magnificent mad scheme for world domination because MK and I are cohorted in the fall semester).  Essentially, I think, we're going to use Isbell's Southeastern as our central text and teach the classes focusing on songs that express identity (expect a research-based thematic week on this theme soon).  As you know, I'm a very cautious, rules oriented person and MK, like the supportive soul he is, was encouraging me to step outside of my comfort zone (and that's the story I'm sticking to). Most importantly, however, was that it was a fun night with a great friend, and what's a better way to spend a rainy Friday night?

Dave Wallace

Elvis Presley - Mystery Train

Dave Kelley and I have been watching the recent HBO documentary on Elvis Presley, and it's well worth checking out.  A great look at the importance of Elvis and the impact of his music.  I'd forgotten how much I love his early recordings for Sun Records, which still sound amazing (at least to my ears).  Mystery Train is one of my favorites from those sessions.

Mike Kelly

Hamilton Leithauser -- The Morning Star and Alexandra

And a Portuguese girl swooned

"You're as a free as the water
But it's harder to love"

This guy has all the vocal range of Robert Plant and all of the soul of Chris Cornell without all the pretention of either.  This is an excellent series of qualities to have in a rock star. Of course, it's ironic  to proclaim a guy named "Hamilton" has the quality of not being pretentious but by Week 54 of the blog, there's room to grant each other a degree of doubt every once in awhile.  

For context, this guy and his band blew me away when I saw him at a festival in Charleston last weekend.  He had a bunch of good songs that are worth checking out, but there's a strangeness to what this would actually be classified as.  Taken together, these songs are an electrifying cross between Leonard Cohen and The National and That Dude Who Tried To Make Out With You in A Bar (not a band) who you kind of thought was hot but weren't sure about because he sang songs like this that you kind of liked but couldn't make up your mind regarding.  

Alice Neiley

Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong, They All Laughed

I’m so wiped out at the moment that I don’t have a whole lot to say (shocking, I know), BUT I do have a song, one that makes me smile every time I hear it. It’s a fun cross between “general theme” song and a “story song”, particularly amusing for people who’ve been or who are in what at first glance look like unlikely relationships or friendships — leave it to George Gershwin to get that so lyrically accurate. Did he ever get ANY story wrong? 

But leave it to the all star duo, Ella and Louie, to make magic with it. Ella’s entrance on “They all laughed at Rockefeller Center...” makes my heart rocket through my body in the most wonderful way. 

Dave Kelley

John Hiatt, Walk On

Lots of family drama this week so not much time for the blog.  I fell back on one of my favorite artists of the last 30 years and one of his best songs.

Gary Scudder

Nicole Atkins, Cool Enough

OK, something has happened to my normally monomaniacally focused music taste; essentially, it's blown up.  Yesterday I realized that the last five artists I've downloaded are: Nicole Atkins, Daughter, Lanterns on the Lake, Sturgill Simpson, Matt Mays.  Obviously, I blame all of you for this odd diversion (my previous ten downloads featured nine jazz albums and one NY release from the archives).  The other night I was waiting in the lobby of Higher Ground for the esteemed KA to get through the coat check line (and in April in Vermont coat still means winter coat, #YankeeHellhole) and I was looking at the posters for upcoming acts, one of whom is Nicole Atkins.  Truthfully, I knew nothing about her, but have since downloaded a couple of her albums.  She's originally from Neptune, New Jersey (she does an appropriately odd cover of Springsteen's Dancing In The Dark) but recently relocated to Nashville.  As I opined in an email to local folks yesterday she seems like a more retro and less weird version of Neko Case, with a hint of Amy Winehouse and a smidgen of Brandi Carlile (and with that enticing description I still couldn't get any takers for the concert). I like several of her songs, although the one I'm obsessing over this week - and thus writing about - is Cool Enough from her first album, Neptune City.  The song is really an homage to that feeling we all sometimes have, some of us more than others, to just walk away and never come back.  It starts off with the reminder that "There's a million ways to leave your past," and one of them is just to meet someone and immediately take off, trusting the Fates to look after you.  As she tells us in the song: "I don't know you very well/ But you seem cool enough/ I don't care where you're going/ Take me with you." A couple of times my son has taken off hitchhiking with about twenty bucks in his pocket, once making it as far as the west coast.  As I told him later, with the exception of me being made at him for not calling his mother and grandmother, I actually envied him the courage that I never had (I wouldn't have gone, and not because I was worried about getting hurt, but instead that someone would think it wasn't the right thing to do - thankfully, I eventually got over that).  While he was gone I always assumed that I'd get an email from him saying something like: "I've settled in [some town] in [some state] with [some girl] who is a [some profession].  She reminded me of [some actress - at this point probably Ana de Armas from Blade Runner 2049] and I fell in love with the actress, she was playing a part I could understand." At that point I would have laughed over the obscure NY reference and felt very happy for him.  Of course, at the time he was in his early twenties.  When do we lose that freedom/courage?  Or do we?  I remember passing through Istanbul a few years ago and talking to this woman in a little shop.  She was simply selling me tea, but there was this strange vibe and I had this odd but overwhelming through that if I had stayed there for a few more days we would have ended up sharing an apartment together.  A couple years after that (when I still wasn't completely free of the CW) I was checking into the Zagreb, Croatia airport at the end of a visit when I struck up a conversation with the woman behind the counter.  It started off as a conversation about how much I liked Croatia, but ended up with her telling me that I really should hang around for a few more days. I told her I needed to get back to class, but that I'd definitely be coming back soon, and then she inexplicably upgraded me to first class, which I didn't know until I got on the plane.  Eventually I was kicked out of first class, but that didn't change the general weirdness/rightness of the moment.  As is our natural wont, I've often thought what would have happened if I had just decided to stay and see where life decided I needed to go. In the end I think that there is core period of a couple decades when you can't walk away, but surrounding that are years when you don't have ties yet and then later when the ties don't really mean as much.  It's a different take on Kundera's Unbearable Lightness of Being.

 Anyway, check out the song, it's sort of a less certain and erudite version of Lucinda Williams's Side of the Road where the protagonist has taken the next logical/illogical step.  Oh, and when I stopped by Higher Ground the other day to pick up tickets for the show I talked to the woman behind the counter about Atkins.  I told her I didn't know a lot about her but that I really liked her first and last albums.  The woman told me that Atkins is really cool, although she won all of her money playing dice one night.  I may be in love.

Discography Year Two - Week 33

It's been a pretty brutal couple weeks for our dear friends and Discography veterans Kathy and Phil Seiler so they're sitting out this week and I suspect the next few.  I often cringe when someone says thoughts and prayers because in today's world it often reeks of insincerity, but in this case I know that we all sincerely pass along our best wishes to them. We're a tight knit crew here and if KS and PS need anything at all we'll be there.

On a lighter note I was thinking about our collective friendship last night when the esteemed Kevin Andrews and I went to the They Might Be Giants show here in Burlington. I made the mistake once of admitting in Kevin's presence (before I knew that TMBG is his favorite band) that I had never warmed to them.  Since that moment when they're in town a ticket with my name on it magically appears; Kevin is not the first person, and hopefully won't be the last, to try and broaden my myopic music sense.  It was a really tight and fun show, and it's hard to not like a band who so clearly still loves playing together.  The show was also one of those where you can't quite figure out the demographics.  There was a core of folks our age (read: dilapidated) but also a big crew of young folks, including one of my nineteen year old students who came bounding over to  say hi. It was a fun night, and made me even more appreciative for a tremendous circle of friends which can not be logically explained by my virtues.

Dave Wallace

Staples Singers - I'll Take You There

I'm going to a Mavis Staples concert tonight, who I've never seen before, and I'm super-excited.  She's a legend, and one of the most important voices in the history of popular music.  The Staples Singers were an incredibly influential gospel and soul group, and Mavis was their lead singer.  Plus, Bob Dylan wanted to marry her; that would have been quite a match!  She's also had a great late-career resurgence; largely thanks to Jeff Tweedy.  In honor of tonight's show, I've selected the Staples Singers' most popular song for the blog.

Kevin Andrews

For me, few things are more Exciting, Engaging and Empowering™ than a They Might Be Giants show. When this is published that will have happened last night. These things only happen about every two years so I try to get to more than one show on the tour. Next week it’s Northampton, MA with the excellent and fellow obsessive fan, Craig Pepin. 

Their latest “album”, if I haven’t mentioned it before, is excellent. It closes with the song Last Wave.  I’m guessing it’s a song that’s difficult to perform live given all of its studio trickery. According to This Might Be A Wiki (TMBW.net) it has never been performed live. In place of a performance, they’re opening their second set with a video of the demo version that is synced to a video with Aerosmith and Run DMC singing Walk This Way.

Last Wave is lyrically dark, nonsensical, and surreal (go figure). TMBW suggests that the song was written while watching the demo. If you've ever seen a literal video you’ll get the idea. Listen for the lyric “buy me some antlers” and it will make sense. Sort of.

Dave Kelley

"Slobberbone", or as Miranda referred to them, "Cock Gobbler"  are now defunct, but they made some great music back in the day.  "Placemat Blues" is one of my favorites and always reminds me of a mixture of Old 97's and Uncle Tupelo.  Turn it up!

Alice Neiley

My post today is no doubt impacted by my complete immersion in Reckless Daughter, a biography of Joni Mitchell by David Yaffe, but also by the fact that I recognize Scudder's emotional and physical exhaustion with exact accuracy within myself, and especially given how the Seilers are in the throws of more than anyone should have to handle, this year has felt pretty heavy, to say the least.

It's true, I've written about Joni already on this blog (extensively, some might say), but the only other artist I can think to turn toward at times like these is Patty Griffin, and I'm not reading her biography at the moment, so...

The song for this week, "That Song About the Midway" isn't usually talked about or listened to with the same voracity that other Joni tunes are -- perhaps because it doesn't have a chorus? Perhaps because its melody wanders a bit? Which are a few of the many things that make it special, as it turns out. At first glance/hear, it's about a woman suffering the aftershocks of romance with a mysterious, magical rogue, thus the wandering nature, the feeling lost. The changes in meter actually mirror the shifts from direct narrative to metaphor in the lyrics, but I would argue that the whole thing could be a metaphor for life, as so many of Joni's songs could be, which is why there's no chorus: that's too concrete, not enough grey area to mirror reality. 

First of all, in general, there are so many parts of a day or a year that can leave one in the throws of aftershock, I feel it's too narrow to pin it to the 'rogue', also, Joni always has more than one thing going on in a song. She's a poet. Duh.

Second of all, the fact that the tune is set on the midway, at a fairground, is as much a metaphor for that lost feeling as any, the sudden empty spaces revealed inside us by exhaustion or grief or shock, and how sometimes beauty ("You looked so grand wearing wings / Do you tape them to your shoulders just to sing") can rise from those spaces (memories, for example). 

Third of all, though I've done weekly the commute to Canada from VT for 3 years now, I've noticed geese (white and black) erupting from the fields 5 times as often since my grandmother passed away, and 5 times as many in the sky. They fill my entire field of vision sometimes. This may be because I talk to my grandmother while I'm driving, so perhaps I unintentionally glance upward a bit more. Either way, when I listened to this song on my way out of town today, there were the geese, and this was the lyric at that moment: "Can you fly / I heard you can! Can you fly / Like an eagle doin' your hunting from the sky." 

Make of it what you will, but it's a gorgeous tune you can dive into and emerge from feeling like something has been washed clean. 

Gary Scudder

Miles Davis, Joshua

Here is more proof, as if (to quote the excellent Sanford Zale) we needed more proof, that Miles Davis was the greatest American genius of the 20th century: his version of Joshua off of Seven Steps to Heaven.  Truthfully, Davis produced so many extraordinary albums that I sometimes overlook this one, which is both a pity and foolish because it is an extraordinary record.  As he so often tended to be, Davis was in a moment of transition as so many members of his previous quintet had either officially gone solo or were out on the road on their own.  On Seven Steps to Heaven he was in the process of putting together a new quintet featuring Davis on trumpet, George Coleman on tenor saxophone, Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass and Tony Williams, who was seventeen at the time, on drums. You would never know that they hadn't been playing together for years.  Every song on the album is fantastic, but my favorite, at least today, is Joshua.  Pure joy, and can't we all use more joy?