Sunday, December 27, 2015

The Very Good Will Just Have To Do

Unless you yourself are perfect, I suspect you’ve heard the phrase the perfect is the enemy of the good.

My variation on that would be searching for a masterpiece will distract you from a lot of excellent music.

Sometimes I just don’t appreciate the situation I’m in.  Here I am searching for great music, and end up disappointed if it’s only really good.

I’m getting older (that means “closer to death” kiddies) so I want every record to “count”, whatever that means.

Maybe that I’m humming it all day at work, that it jumps into my head and takes over randomly (not good while driving, by the way). That it makes me feel good about being alive. That it changes my life.  Don’t laugh. It’s happened.

So I aim high, get overly ambitious because I don’t stay in my comfort zone, and get disappointed, at least at first.

I end up putting too many really good records aside, only to have to them creep back up on me to convince me how good they really are.

And it happened again.

And I feel bad about it because I’m sure the Neville Brothers have been worried about how I’d react to this album. Which came out about thirty years ago.  You can rest easy now guys!




The Neville Brothers: Yellow Moon

The last time I’d gotten a record by the Neville Brothers, they were hiding amongst The Wild Thcoupitoulas, playing quintessential - earthy, tuneful rhythmic - New Orleans music.

Flash forward a decade or so, and they’re being produced by Daniel Lanois (U2 before to this, and the Dylan resurgence afterwards) I was fearing that this might go a little too atmospheric, which would not be a good fit at all.

No need to worry, though. They manage to keep things down to earth for most of the way through,

One way was to do some heavy duty cover songs,

I typically don’t like artists doing covers. It can distract you from what is unique about the artist, and it can be a cheap shortcut to actually writing your own material.

And it can be a bad idea in the very practical sense . I mean, how often do you hear a cover and say, “Hey, That’s Even better than the original!”.  And it doesn’t happen here, either. But they come close enough.

While “With God on Our Side” goes on a bit too long, they do stirring versions of “A Change is Gonna Come” and “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” (but really how do you f*ck those up?). And there’s a pretty haunting version of “The Ballad of Hollis Brown”.

It helps when the singing and playing are spot on.

And how about their originals?  Just fine! Not too generic. Topical. And well produced. "My Blood" being my favorite.

So there’s an excellent balance of elements here. Nothing brilliant, mind you, but overall the songs, playing, singing and production come together enough to let this one rise above mere genre.

When you put this one on you know you’re going to enjoy the next hour.

B+

“My Blood“

Saturday, December 26, 2015

I Shall Be Relieved!

“I like this one better”, says Mrs. Jaybee.  Sacrilegious! But I’ve already gotten ahead of myself.


It was the low point of the year. When I was huddled up inside the house because the weather was so oppressive and I was suffering from Seasonal Affective Disorder.

The Summer.

I was grudgingly enjoying the music I was listening to but nothing was hitting me over the head immediately. And by this point I was now sort of desperate to get to something that would hit me in my bones. All I wanted was something that would grab me from the very first listen. Was that so much to ask? Why can’t I ever just put a new record on and get blown away from the get go?

So I went with a band that had done exactly that back in oh, 2006, with their last decade's almost best debut album Funeral Dress.

Alas, this one is barely in the top ten of this year.



Wussy: Attica! (2014)

This is a very good record, but a disappointment in the way that a band that’s made a great album in the past can disappoint you when they only make a very good one.

Funeral Dress was an obviously great album from the very first listen. This one isn’t and as such I was very disappointed. But over time it’s showing it’s strengths, which are many. And there are even a couple of new classics. It just took time to believe they were genuine. They are.

So back to Mrs. Jaybee.

It had been a couple of months since I got Attica!. I was liking it by now and giving it another perfunctory try so that it might move from like to love.

That’s when she told me she preferred it to Funeral Dress. I mean, what the f*ck? I know we’re in this “for better or worse”, but I wasn’t counting on a musical difference of opinion of this magnitude!


So, who are these guys, anyway? Allmusic.com is no help, with barely a bio or an album write up.

But what I do know is that Chuck Cleaver came from a 90s rock band called the Ass Ponys, and Lisa Walker sprung from the head of Zeus for all I know. But she sings and writes like vintage Neil Young.

And herein may lie my problem. Funeral Dress managed to be simultaneously rough and beautiful a la the aforementioned NY. But Attica! ups the ante with the rough - the guitars are even louder than before - and it takes time for the songs to catch up.

But I have no doubt that someone who gets this record without having heard anything else by Wussy will be quite happy with it.

And with Neil Young no longer in his prime, we could do a lot worse than Wussy.

Lisa would do him proud. I hope he gets to hear her.

A-

"Home"

Sunday, December 13, 2015

You're Welcome, World!

Having done the world a favor in my last post, my noble (and Nobel) thoughts moved on to another musical genre - this time the blues.

And to my great embarrassment I realized that, until about ten years ago, most of my blues records - or rather most of the individual blues songs I owned were performed by that well known oppressed minority - white guys.

Cream, the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin (whose confusion would occasionally make them forget to credit actual songwriters, but I’m sure that was all an innocent mistake).  Christ, even Steppenwolf!

So my first foray into blues - really a half-step - was Duane Allman’s An Anthology, where actual African Americans played the blues (and soul) but - in a blow against that major problem we all face: Reverse Racism - with the white guy (admittedly that GREAT white guy) on guitar.

Eventually I’d get Robert Cray’s Strong Persuader - a record that some purists don't consider the blues anyway - in 1986,

But it wasn’t until the late nineties when I got the box-set Chess Blues that I got to delve deeper.

I went little deeper still, getting best-ofs by Allman Brothers fave Elmore James and Eric Clapton fave Buddy Guy, having more and more fun as I went.

Then, during my amazon.com boycott I noticed that Barnes and Noble had a decent $5 CD section, where I came across this two-fer:



Howlin’ Wolf: Howlin’ Wolf/Moanin’ in the Moonlight

It would be perfectly understandable to mistake this two-album single-CD set as a Best-of, but it’s not. It’s just the Wolf’s first two records for Chess recorded in 1962.

And they are just incredible.

So incredible I didn’t get kicked out the house for playing it on a beautiful Sunday morning, which is a tribute to Mrs. Jaybee’s tolerance. But then again once you hear Wolf’s voice (and harp and guitar) it might be a good idea to go to church.

How can I convey how important these records are? How about if I list some of the songs here that have been covered by others?

“Shake for Me” - John Hammond, with Duane Allman
“Red Rooster” - The Stones
“Wang Dang Doodle” - KoKo Taylor
“Spoonful” - Cream
“Goin’ Down Slow” - Duane Allman
“Back Door Man” - oh, I don’t know, but somebody
“How Many More Years” - LIttle Feat/Led Zeppelin
“Smokestack Lightnin’” - The Dead
“I Asked for Water (She Gave Me Gasoline)” - Lucinda Williams
“Forty Four” - Little Feat

And that’s just off the top of my head! These are all very good covers but rarely better than the Wolf versions. Which were all from just these two albums. You’d have to go to the Beatles to find an artist who attracted so many cover versions so fast.

Which makes these two records, in my limited and humble opinion, the two best blues albums I own, and are probably  among the greatest ever made.

One caveat: I’m annoyed that they dropped a song to fit these two albums onto a single CD. What was it with those old CDs? Did they only fit 65 minutes? What the hell!?  White people problems.

Another caveat: Dilettante that I am, I’ll move onto another genre by the time I finish typing this.

Otherwise these would be my top two albums of the year.

Howlin Wolf:  A
Moanin’ in the Moonlight: A-

“Moanin’ in the Moonlight”

Well it’s time for me to move on to redress yet more of society’s ills. What to do? What to do? Maybe I’ll try to bring more attention to overlooked artists like Miley Cyrus or Beyonce...

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Doing My Part for the Underprivileged

One day, while pondering the many iniquities of our society, it occurred to me that I didn’t have a single jazz album by a white person.

I guess I should thank the amazon.com’s $5 mp3s for helping me address this historic injustice but I’m still mad at them for being so horrible to their workforce, so f*ck them.

Anyway, while waiting for the phone call from the Nobel committee I decided I should actually play the record.


The Dave Brubeck Quartet: Time Out

I find this very precisely played music - West Coast Jazz , they called it - less than thrilling. Less than passionate. And yet, quite durable.  I’ve played it many times and haven’t tired of it yet. Weird, huh?

In theory I should hate music that’s meant to be spontaneous but is in fact very precisely composed and played, But you know there are worse things that a fusion of classical and jazz. I’m sure they’d hate me saying that but it’s the best analogy I can come up with.

So while it doesn’t have the weird brilliance of the best Monk, or the furious spiritual searching of Coltrane, I can’t find any fault with it. Plus, my version has several live cuts added, where the band lets loose a bit.

So, I’ve concluded that, with the guidance of their superiors, white people might actually have some potential in this area. Not that I’m advocating giving them a helping hand, mind you. That’ll just make them dependent upon the (musical) (welfare) state.

If they hope to overcome the many disadvantages they face, they’re just going to have to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and apply themselves.

Now pardon me while I write my acceptance speech.

B+

"Blue Rondo Ala Turk"