India Song

So out I go again, and like Columbus before me, I think I find India. Not west of the Atlantic, mind you, but in the Amazon. Dot com, that is, at $5 a shot.

Ravi Shankar - Three Ragas (1956)

And after all, don’t we owe it to George? George sure owes it to Ravi.

Typically, when you add a little dab of third world music to your pop song, it inspires interest in your listeners to try out said TWM. Oftentimes, though, they come running back, realizing it was the pop music they liked all along. And that little dab of TWM was all they really needed.

But here, if anything, Ravi’s music sounds quite familiar. And even though it was released a decade before Sgt. Pepper,  I keep expecting George to pop in and break into We were talking…. from “Within or Without You”. I mean that as a compliment, because this is not at all hard to hear right away. 

Not for all occasions, obviously, but not so exotic as you might imagine. Which I guess means that pop music and classical Indian music worked better together than anyone could have reasonably expected. I even hear blues in some of the bent notes. I kid you not.

These three long pieces run nearly an hour, so this is good for early morning when no one else is up yet. And in that way, it's far more familiar and welcoming than The Knife, whose music is designed to get you alone so that it can give you the creeps.  A-

When to Play It: When you’re studying

When Not to Play It: Spring Break

"Raga Jog"

What Could Be Simpler?

Again trying to make up for my pathetic year-behindness (ie, rarely getting music from the current year), and patting myself on the back for my explorations of different genres, I quit while I’m ahead and come running back to some simple rock n roll.

And it's hard for it to get any simpler than this:

Parquet Courts - Light Up Gold (2013)

Most of the songs begin with the simplest of guitar riffs which is then wrapped up snugly with a perfectly complementary bass line and beat. The yelping is right out of early Meat Puppets.

My copy also includes their EP Tally All the Things That You Broke, and I’ve been too lazy to figure out where one ends and the other begins because it’s all of a piece. (Okay, the EP starts with "You've Got Me Wondering Now"). 

Rough and powerful, it’s the complete opposite of the Dandy Warhols - nothing smooth or commercial about it. They keep things moving, changing tempo just enough to keep you from getting bored. And I’m not! Not in the least.  You’re up to track 10 before even you know what hit you. A

When to Play it: After you’ve had your coffee.

When to Not Play It: When you’re around any adult whose respect you crave.

And By the Way, How’s the Year Going So Far, Jaybee You Ask?

Something like this:

1. Light Up Gold/Tally All the Things You Broke - Parquet Courts (2013)

2. Thirteen Tales of Urban Bohemia - The Dandy Warhols (2000)

3. Same Trailer, Different Park - Kacey Musgroves (2013)

4. Shaking the Habitual - The Knife (2013)

5. The Mis-education of… Lauryn Hill (1998)

P.S.

I feel I need to explain. 

In case anyone, God forbid, acts on a recommendation of mine.

I can understand why any upstanding citizen of similar age would question the quality of the Parquet Courts’ music, and why I'd choose it over the other records I've heard this year.  

Well, there are two reasons:

First, simple rock n’ roll will always be one of my favorite genres.

Second, the PCs pursue their admittedly limited goals as relentlessly and with a single-mindedness worthy of the early Ramones. And they unquestionably reach those goals.

Perhaps the Dandy Warhols are more ambitious. Lauryn Hill certainly is. But the first are more polished than I'd like and a bit too obvious about what they steal. And poor Lauryn - as talented as she is - just isn't as much fun to be around.

After all, when someone starts a song off with:

I was hanging round Ridgewood, Queens,

I was flipping through magazines,

I was so,

Drunk and starving

.… as they do on the slightly mis-named “Stoned and Starving”, well it just brings me back, although not to Ridgewood. (But then again, who knows?)

And there’s really no defending the first guitar solo here, except to note that, after all, they are drunk, etc...

I guess the point, is that mood trumps notes. Although the guitar duel at the end of this live version shows that some folks get drunker than others.  

And it’s really just as simple as that.

Right In the Back!

So, for once, country didn’t disappoint me. Emboldened, I took another chance.

Or to put it another way, a 2-CD set of well regarded but quite edgy music I nearly bought for $20 on last year’s record store day, suddenly became available as an mp3 on amazon for $5. I can get pretty adventurous at that price! Yeah, that’s me (in the corner). Livin in the fast lane…

The Knife - Shaking the Habitual (2013)

The Knife are a brother sister duo from Sweden, and I can just see you now imagining a young blonde couple smiling in their white turtleneck sweaters while perched atop a snowbank. A Swedish Donnie and Marie, if you will.

Or, at worst, two earnest young people with black turtlenecks, right out of an Ingmar Bergman movie (black and white, of course), looking off into a cold, desolate landscape, reading poetry and contemplating suicide.

You should be so lucky.  These two - who look almost as weird as their music sounds - make Daft Punk look like the Beverly Hillbillies.

See?

And...

Frankly, I find the second one scarier.

I hate to sound so damned ignorant about their appearance, but I wanted to prepare you for the music.

Guaranteed to elicit a reaction of what the f*ck from your friends and neighbors, this is unabashedly weird music. Mixing trance/ambient/dance/electronica with wails, shouts and, well I just don’t know, it’s more “foreign” than any third world record I’ve ever gotten (although not the weirdest. Thank you Pere Ubu and Captain Beefheart!).

It’s also long - 100 minutes worth of music - in that let’s get really lost kind of way, with a 19 minute trance number plopped down right in the middle of it, just in case you were having too good a time. It's a beat-y equivalent of Sonic Youth’s A Thousand Leaves. In other words, something strange with big wide open spaces and sudden jarring changes.

The first time I heard this Mrs. Jaybee and I were stuck in the house on a cold Saturday in January. We would have been looking out onto the desolate landscape but we had chores. So I put this on and it fit our mood perfectly.  

Which gave me high hopes that I would come to love this. And I may still. But the vocals remind me too much of Ruth Buzzi. It's hard to contemplate suicide when you're giggling. 

But it’s just so freaking DAUNTING that I keep coming back to it.

This is very apt for those times when you're feeling disconnected from the outside world. As an experiment I tried it again in the Spring when I was in the backyard potting some plants. I guess I wanted to annoy the neighbors and scare their children. But by then I had gotten used to it. It was no longer weird enough.

In any case, it’s pretty enjoyable if you’re up for a 100 minute trip to god knows where, but maybe not striking enough to really impress (or scar) you.  B+

When to play it: January 15th

When to not play it: At the beach.

"Without You My Life Would Be Boring"