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...

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"

Music To Do the Bills To

So far that street fair used record bin was turning out to be a big disappointment.  So I turned to my third choice, expecting the least.


Massive Attack: Blue Lines

Ah, the sound of 1990s Brits getting high and playing slow. Quiet storm, kind of, only on drugs with hip hop added in. (I can totally relate to all this!) Well, good luck to them.

Every heard of trip hop? It more or less starts here.

It’s not the best trip hop I’ve ever heard. That’s Tricky. So I was all set to dismiss this one based on my first listen, but these (no longer) young men won me over. They’re more fun, more funky and less arty than Portishead. And when they’re not fun, their misery is well earned. They’re also more tuneful than Burial. And not as scary as Tricky. Tricky can be very scary.

It’s ironic that music that’s most likely meant to be heard at night while in a trance in a dance club sounds better to me in the morning. Especially on a crappy day when I’m not in a good mood, like when I’m doing the bills. I’m sure they’d be appalled.

At first I thought there was no song here as good as “Protection” from their second record. But I take that back now. “Hymn of the Big Wheel” here is just as good. And despite it’s downer lyrics, the music is quite hopeful.

So these (no longer) young Brits with whom I have almost nothing in common made that time spent in the used-CD bin worthwhile.

B+

“Hymn of the Big Wheel”

X: You Are Here

There’s no telling what you’ll find in a used-CD rack at a street fair. It’s a great time to pick up those records that you’ve always been meaning to get but didn’t want to spend the bucks.

Sometimes you get disappointed with an overrated British band. And sometimes you get disappointed by a good American one.

So is the lesson to skip those street fairs? If so, I haven’t learned it yet.




X: Los Angeles

X reminded me of a punk version of Jefferson Airplane. At least the singing made them seem so. The John Doe/Exene Cervenka harmonies sound a hell of a lot like the Paul Kantner/Grace Slick ones. Except it’s John Doe singing the melodies and Exene adding the punk edge.

And that, of course, is where the similarities end.

They also have a tight, tight, tight guitar player Billy Zoom. (Jorma’s great, but Billy punches things home in a very powerful and concise manner. How about that? The punk guitar player is the sharper one, and the older guy a bit sloppier) And the well named drummer DJ Bonebreak keeping things moving real fast.

This debut album came out to great acclaim in 1980. I missed it at the time, but then did catch up with X with their next record, Wild Gift (also included on this single CD! So by definition it's a bargain.) which might be the greatest punk album ever.

But album one does suffer in comparison.  It’s not a bad record. It’s just that everything here sounds like a run up to Wild Gift.

And what the hell is the organ doing there, anyway? Ah, but I already know why. X hails from Los Angeles, which is also where the Doors were from. And guess who’s playing organ here? Yep, Ray Manzarek.

Now, I think it’s great that Ray appreciated X enough to want to produce them, and that X respected him right back enough to have him play on the record. (They also do a punk version of “Soul Kitchen”.) But it’s a nice gesture that adds nothing to the music. It takes the edge off, and turns what would have been a fine punk album into pretty good hard rock one.

Wild Gift, again, does it better. They keep Ray in the control booth this time, only referring to the Doors, rather obliquely, at the end of the last song: “...waiting for the son, for any son to come”, bringing the whole record to a perfect ending.

But there are good songs here. And who knows how I’d feel about it if I heard it first? Those that did prefer it to Wild Gift.

It just goes to show it all depends where you start. And where is that?  Right where you are.  And where is that?

X - You Are Here

B+

By the way, Wild Gift is an A, verging on an A+.

“The World’s a Mess, It’s in My Kiss”

So Normal, It's Weird

The musical year hadn’t been going so well. Oh, I’d been getting plenty of good, weird music but not so much good fun music. Good music that is both weird and fun at the same time seemed out of the question.

But I wasn’t even shooting for that. After Carrie and Lowell (good but definitely not fun) and Shutter Island (pretty much anti-fun) I just wanted a to have a good time. And I started to get a bit desperate about it.

I’m not exactly sure what drove me to go back to a couple of weirdos who got together to make some definitely-not-weird pop music.

While I’ve loved the Velvet Underground for a long time, I only checked out John Cale solo set a couple of years ago and found him to be a very talented if not brilliant.

I’ve been a fan of Eno’s for quite a while, too, but doubted that I’d find a lot of differences among his many, many, (many) ambient albums. And while often brilliant, you won’t play him during a party.

But together, who knows what they’d come up with?



John Cale and Brian Eno: Wrong Away Up

No ambient here. And after producing a few U2 records, Eno probably decided it was time to try his hand at pop music again. Hey, he thought, if they can do it, why can’t I?

So the rock and roll band isn’t that much of a surprise, but the singing sure is. The best you could usually hope for from Eno was a soft murmur, and Cale - a loud scream. But right off the bat, Eno projects on “Lay My Love” and several others, too.

And while Cale does hide behind a couple of quiet tunes here, he more than makes up for it by belting out “Been There, Done That”.  And he’s clearly having a good time. As anyone would be after having worked on a project with Lou Reed, which he had done shortly before this.

Another surprise is how tuneful the songs are. You usually get a lot of atmosphere from Eno and psychosis from Cale, but here it’s all about hummable tunes.

And after a whole bunch of fast bouncy songs, they have the wisdom to end on a quiet note.

So I finally get my fun. But it took a bit of time to sink in because I found the utter normality of it all to be kind of, well, weird.

So I ended up stumbling upon my holy grail of music - weird and fun together!

A-

“Lay My Love”

Smithstory Lesson

Back in May, Mrs. Jaybee and I caught a Smiths/Morrissey cover band at the Bell House and had such a nice time I decided it was time to finally break down and get a Smiths record.

Oh, we already had a couple of compilations that I later found out were not considered representative of the band’s best music.  

So which record would I get? How about the one that topped the 2013 NME 500 Greatest Albums of All Time poll? Seriously. They beat out the Beatles! (fill in your own favorite artist there if you like, but you’d be wrong. It's the Beatles.) Hilarious.

Those Brits are really weird sometimes, and it’s for such differences that we fought for our independence. Well, that’s how I remember it. Yes, I was there.


The Smiths: The Queen is Dead

And it’s okay. Kind of uneven, actually.

The Smiths were a tight - if a bit fussy - little band. With the bass and drums more than adequate, and  Johnny Marr’s guitar sterling all the way through, they stand or fall on how well Morrissey fits his words/voice/melodies into this scheme.

And, well, some tunes are better than others. Once I get past the songs I already know from the compilations, there’s only one or two others that even remotely compare to them. And Morrissey is more annoying than interesting.

So my supposedly lame compilations seemed to have pulled all the good songs from this supposed masterpiece. Maybe I should just stick with them.

So in the wars with the Brits, we kicked ass in 1776, happily surrendered in 1964, and somehow beat them in the 1980s when they managed to produce even worse music that we did.

Now that’s saying something.

B

“The Boy With the Thorn in His Side”

Having an Awful Time, Wish You Were Here

Just when I think I’ve driven Mrs. Jaybee to distraction with all the weird sounds I drag in from outside, she goes and out-weirds me.


Shutter Island: Music from the Motion Picture

Turns out Shutter Island is one of her favorite movies (that’s an entire post by itself, but never mind) and she particularly loved the closing theme.

Almost a sister record to Ocean of Sound in its ability to unnerve with unexpected sounds, it’s ultimately sadder (what a surprise!) and prettier (ditto, but without the sarcasm).

It even shares a cut with that record, which I’ve now listened to at least 30 times and still don’t quite hear, but that’s Eno for you). But whereas that record left you feeling weirded out but vaguely thrilled about the sounds our world can create, here the general tone is of dread about the worst this world can do to you.

So this record is Not Fun. Not at all.

It’s a put-it-on-and-go-read-or-something record. Otherwise, don’t blame me that you end up digging out the razor blades.

It starts with an ten minute piece called “Fog Tropes”, which makes sense if you’ve seen the movie. It’s the sound of a ship entering a harbor through the fog, somehow created through the use of several wind and brass instruments playing at a very low register. It’s perfect for the film, providing the right amount of foreboding, and manages to be an interesting piece of music, too.

There are several other modern classical pieces whose selection for this soundtrack seems based on their ability to unnerve you and provoke anxiety. They subtly vary the overall mood from fearful, resigned, desolate, and occasionally sublime.

Also mixed in are period hits from Johnny Ray, Kay Starr and Lonnie Johnson that keeps things from getting too cerebral. But don’t be fooled. They only intensify the mood.

The peak may be the beautiful “On the Nature of Daylight”, which is sad enough by itself, but when, at the end, it's combined with Dinah Washington’s “This Bitter Earth” with all the hope removed from it - the effect is devastating.

So if you’re the kind of person, like me, who is willing to dedicate a couple of precious hours on something that will ultimately make you feel awful (what? doesn’t everyone do that?), skip the TV for one night and listen up.

You’ll be sorry, but glad, you did.

A-

“This Bitter Earth/On the Nature of Daylight”