I started listening to Nico a few years before I got into the Velvet Underground. In fact, my initial interest in the Velvet Underground was entirely inspired by Nico's Chelsea Girl. I checked them out and liked it, but I never really got into it. Then my friend Jeff played me some of Lou Reed's solo stuff. Again, I spent some time with the Velvet Underground and again I was impressed but never captivated. I recently got into Owen's cover of "Femme Fatale" and this pushed me to check out Nico's album with the Velvet Underground (or is it the other way around) and at least I can finally say I get it.

"Femme Fatale" should probably only be played in smokey coffee houses in front of a strung out crowd, but it captures a time and place that I only wish I saw. There's a really clear psychedelic rock influence in the music (see: tambourine and boring drumming), but Nico never sounds like she's part of the band. As she does in many of her recordings, she sounds troubled and dour. I think that sort of emotion works wonderfully in this contexts and gives the song a bit more gravitas than it would normally have - I mean, she's singing fairly ridiculous lyrics and she pulls it off.

I wonder if I'll ever really learn to love the Velvet Underground.

Hey, so this is the 100th post on this blog, which is kind of cool and hopefully a testament to something other than my insufferable nerdy-ness and compulsion to discuss music. It's a milestone, however small, and I'm really glad we hit it.

I started writing this blog during my first year of law school when I began to miss the large role music had played in my life. My bass sat untouched in the corner of my office and listening to music was something I crammed in during study breaks. At some point I realized that forcing music into the background was making me unhappy and I decided to concentrate on it in the only way my schedule would allow: writing about it during my spare moments. I was still very excited about what I was discovering and, at the very least, writing a blog would give me a chance to share my appreciation with anyone who cared. It proved to be a great escape during long nights in the library and pushed me, however slightly, to analyze how I experience music and what attracts me to certain styles and sounds. I think we can learn a lot about someone by analyzing their taste in art and music is certainly no exception.

I named the blog after a line ("I spent seventeen nights in the city") from the Blood Brothers' "The Face in the Embryo," an edgy, progressive hardcore song off their first full length, recorded when they were still teenagers. I think the phrasing creates this image of an exciting metropolis, one that you only visit and where the length of your stay is measured in nights. I've always found dense metropolises exciting and vibrant and I think it was this excitement, unpredictability, and energy that I especially missed during my fist year of law school when I was alternatively stranded in my apartment, the law school, or neighborhoods in walking distance. It seemed like a good name and, hey, it's obtuse enough to sound sort-of cool, if things like that are still cool. I don't really know.

Anyway, thanks to everyone for reading. I really appreciate it.

The Blood Brothers - "The Face in the Embryo"

Whoa, this song is amazing. The RZA really put together some good material here. The bass bangs like a guy just out of prison and the piano has this inherently menacing discord that keeps you uneasy, but makes you want more. The singer flat-out sounds like Billie Holliday.



The RZA has been one of my favorite hop-hop producers for a long time. This song shows exactly why.

The Measure [SA] wouldn't even be on my radar if it weren't for Late Night Wallflower, so I should probably again mention how much I enjoy reading that blog. Anyway, the Measure [SA] will help you meet your quota of female fronted punk rock that isn't Riot Grrl or low-fi garage rock. "Me vs. the Marlboro Man" is a determined and pointed stand against someone's self-destructive instincts that takes the time to express affection for the subject of the song's disappointment and anger. The snare roll and the light guitar tone prevent this one from really developing into the typical punk rock assault and instead give it a more dynamic and, consequentially, a more interesting feel.

The Measure [SA] - "Me vs. The Marlboro Man"

The AV Club interviewed Slug from Atmosphere a while back. He spent a good amount of the interview lamenting over the time his past alcoholism and drug use took from him; how he could have been more productive and maybe less of a dick. That might be the case, but I wonder if Atmosphere would have been as successful with cool, sober hands behind the wheel. The group traffics in the kind of bitter, over-partied lyrics that everyone can relate to, but few could produce. I don't mean to downplay the breadth of the their catalogue or their very notable and noteworthy maturation, but this is a group that released pissed off voicemail messages from women formerly involved with Slug as an entire track on one of their full length albums. That is not something you'd see from most other hip-hop acts.

"Shoes" is off their album Seven's Travels and it does a great job of capturing everything that makes Atmosphere great and everything that occasionally makes me shudder. Oh yeah, and it has a sick beat.

If you are at all interested in learning some more about jazz, I can't recommend NPR's Jazz Profiles enough. You won't learn a great deal about jazz theory, but there's an overwhelming amount of information about dozens of great musicians.

I saw Deerhoof on Friday at The Metro. They were out of control good. I can't think of a better rock show. The band was having a great time and that great time spread through the crowd. I love their records, but their live shows take it to another level. Their complex arrangements and wild changes remain, but suddenly you realize just how funky they are. Greg Saunier is a madman on drums, but he demonstrates how light a touch he can have, though even when he's barely touching a symbol and only playing once every couple of beats he looks like he's on the verge of spiraling out of control. The band as a whole has taken the Talking Heads Stop Making Sense era choreography, stripped it of any kind of precision and decided to have a great deal of fun. If these folks come anywhere within hundred miles of you, you need to find a way to see them.

This is from the current tour.


This one is from last year and they are missing a guitarist, but it's from The Metro and that place rules.

This is exactly what I need in life. I like Owen and am just generally a big Mike Kinsella fan. His music is obviously quite sad and at times a bit mopey, but I think he uses that aesthetic really well and has always pushed himself through his guitar playing and song writing. This video is just really refreshing.

McCoy Tyner is my favorite jazz pianist and in many ways will always be the player who means the most to me. I first heard him in a store in Philadelphia in January of my second year at New College. I can't remember what track it was. All I remember is hearing a some one beating the crap out of the piano and feeling like I was hearing jazz for the first time. At this point I had spent lots of time with Armstrong, Ellington, and Calloway. I even owned a copy of A Love Supreme, so I know I'd heard Tyner. But somehow this was different. I asked the clerk what he was playing and found it was The Real McCoy. I snatched it up immediately (along with a copy of Roach's M'Boom, which turned me onto Roach and Monk).

I'm not sure I can add much to the volumes written on Tyner's playing. He uses the entire keyboard and is absolutely fearless about being up front. He plays bi-tonalities that manage to keep you uneasy but never lost. A master of the semi-tone, he fits more notes in a bar than most and yet things never feel crowded. My love for him tripled when my thesis adviser played a recording Tyner made with Grappelli. An unlikely combination, it's the most delightful record I've ever heard. Tyner is Tyner and Grappelli is Grappelli, but they make space for each other come together in ways that make me smile every time (the record is called One On One and I can't recommend it enough).

Over the weekend I picked up Tyner's newest disc: McCoy Tyner, Guitars. I was especially excited because the disc featured my favorite guitar player, Marc Ribot, on a bunch of tracks. Unlike One on One, there's a full band playing on most tracks, but it's all about the pairings. Ribot, Scofield, Fleck, Trucks, and Frisell. Everyone brings something unique. There are standards (a bunch Tyner helped make famous with Coltrane), abstract improvisations with Ribot, and Tyner and others' originals. The disc also comes with with a dvd of three or four hours of video of the sessions. I haven't checked it out yet, but I'm excited to see these guys play together. Pick it up if you see it around.

My sister gets all the credit for telling me about Machine Go Boom and even more credit for giving them some human depth with her article in Venus Magazine. Since writing this is distracting me from attacking my reading for tomorrow, she gets bonus credit, redeemable when she recommends something especially awful or offensive.

"Elmer's Glue" is an uptempo pop song with a punk-y edge and a power-pop synth. The youthful, earnest lyrics play it straight and make it the most endearing and engaging minute and forty five seconds of your hour if not your day (this probably does not apply to you if you own a young house pet).

Machine Go Boom - "Elmer's Glue"

The Silencers were Tim Armstrong's side project that, as far as I know, only recorded one song. It's an impressive piece of uptempo traditional ska that was buried deep in one of those Give 'Em The Boot comps, which were, by the way, the only reason anyone at something like Warped Tour gave a damn about The Business. Tim's ragged vocals play off the ghostly organ to give the song a dark tinge that always manages to duck out of the way of the hook. The band sounds loose and relaxed at times, making those few measures where they do lock in all the more powerful. Appropriately enough, the lyrics are squarely centered around the kind of next-level debauchery and anti-governmental sentiment that sounds all the more intimidating when mentioned in passing. It's just a really well done song, but I guess it should be if it's the only thing the Silencers ever released.

I should also say that those Give 'Em The Boot comps were pretty great sometimes. They are the only reason I ever got into the Distillers and, specifically, the only reason I ever heard "L.A. Girl." What a good song by an often ridiculous band.

I posted this on my other blog earlier in the year. This is even better because the intro names all the players. I can't get enough of it.

Byron Hurt is a filmmaker/activist who focuses on black masculinity. I'd like to direct your attention to his film Hip Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes. Hurt examines depictions of masculinity in hip hop culture and it's affects on black men and women in America. It's a fine bit of film making and it asks lots of interesting questions through a mix of interviews with hip hop stars, academics, activists, and everyday folk on the street.

It's no secret that I have a longstanding interest in black culture in America and that I'm a big hip hop fan. I have the same conflicted feelings that Hurt has about the art form. I'm in awe of Biggy, but I mostly can't listen to this records anymore. Hurt takes these conflicting emotions and runs with them. He is fearless when it comes to challenging both supporters of hip hop and the artists themselves. The film has lots of great moments, but a standout is an interview with Jadakiss. Hurt asks why Jadikis is so violent in his songs. Jadakiss thinks about the question and then looks at Hurt asks, "Do you watch movies? What kind of movies do you watch?" These moments happen throughout the film. The intellectuals put things into a broad perspective, but the real insights come largely from folks like Jadakiss and the freestylers Hurt talks to on the street who demonstrate that they are just as adept at "conscious rap" as they are at "thug rap" but they know only the later sells.

What I found most striking was that the issue of homosexuality and homo eroticism is by far the most controversial subject in hip hop. Hurt addresses homosexuality head on with rappers, but doesn't get very far. At one point Busta Rhymes walks out of the room, not out of anger, but out of sheer discomfort and unwillingness to engage in the conversation. Homo eroticism occupies a smaller segment of the film and is only addressed by intellectuals.

I have only a few complaints about Hurt's film. Getting to causes bookend the film, with a look at the impact of white culture getting very little air time. I'm interested in examining the interaction between blacks and whites in the hip hop world (and Puerto Ricans, who are not the focus of the film but are clearly becoming an important part of contemporary hip hop). The few whites who do make appearances (with the exception of a white gender discrimination activist) are easy targets for claims of bigotry and naivette (while the portrait of black fans is much more nuanced). But that complaint is minor. Hurt doesn't make any claims about white fans, he mostly ignores them. That's not the film he wanted to make.

The film only scratches the surface when it comes to discussing masculinity as an American problem as opposed to an African American problem. The film is more focused as a result, but it begs the question as to whether hip hop is a cause or a symptom. I fear that many people who watch the film will come away thinking only about hip hop/black masculinity rather than masculinity in general, and I wonder if that doesn't hurt more than it helps. It's easy to look at the problem blame it on hip hop or black culture, when the scariest part is that its roots run much deeper.

Check out the film if you're at all interested in hip hop. If you're not interested in hip hop, check it out anyway. The questions it raises are deep and uncomfortable and revealing.

You can watch the whole thing on the Internet:

I almost always keep my iPod on random play these days; I like to be surprised. Recently my little silver friend served up an excellent choice: "Hang Wire" from the Pixies' 1991 album Bossanova. Beyond the obvious reason that "Hang Wire" is only one letter away from being "Hang Fire" - a Stones' song from Tatto You - I felt that there were some interesting similirities and decided to write a post about them. (that accounts for the first 2/3 of the title of this post - the last "hang fire" is more of stretch).

Interestingly, I discovered that "Hang Wire" was actually inspired by "Hang Fire." Franck Black explained in an interview that he liked the Stones' song, but would need to alter the name for his own song; the lyrics followed from the choice of "wire" rather than "fire" ("Wind is whistling on the barbs") . The music is something else; a great example of the Pixies at their best - compact, intense (almost violent), and in perfect control.

Franck explained that the idea behind the lyrics was of a farm where fences were being put up. This is nothing like what we hear, though. "Wind is whistling on the barbs / You're head's a hammer" seems clearly a nod to surrealist imagery. My favorite line, however, is "If there were a fire / Can we scratch beneath this?" - sung with a desperate, thundering intensity. Nevermind that "can" should be "could" - that's for fancy-pants non-rocksinger types. Franck Black knows that "can" sounds better, and we don't care. Anyway, here is a video of a live performance of the song:

Now, for "Hang Fire." I have always loved this song; I think it exemplifies Mick Jagger's uncanny ability to step into someone else's shoes and write a song from that person's perspective. It's still fucking Mick Jagger (who will probably annoy the hell out of you in the next clip, especially when he kisses the poster of himself) but who else writes songs about that begin with "In the sweet old country where I come from / Nobody ever works / Yeah nothing gets done"? I don't know what country he is talking about or who this person is, but I want to go there and I want to hang out with this guy - who later shouts joyfully "have ten thousand dollars gonna have some fun / Put it all on at a hundred to one / Hang fire, hang fire."

The final question is: What the hell does "hang fire" mean? Online dictionaries I've consulted state that the expression means "to delay" and derives (like the phrase "flash in the pan") from the way old guns worked, when you had to pour your gunpowder in behind the lead ball. Apparently if the gunpowder was at all wet it would smolder rather than ignite, causing the shot to be delayed or simply burning itself out without firing. Somehow this worked its way into the English language and probably experienced its apex in Henry James' novels, where he used the phrase with a maddening frequency in his dialogs. E.g., in the Ambassadors, "Well, that was enough, Strether had felt while his answer hung fire. He had felt at the same time, however, that nothing could less become him than that it should hang fire too long." Good god!

Still, I can't say enough about the euphonious and delicate texture of James' prose - exhausting as it can be at times, I am a huge fan. I simply find it interesting to trace out this odd genealogy - from muzzle-loaders, to novels, and then on to the Stones and the Pixies.

Finally, an antidote to Mick Jagger's awful performance in the "Hang Fire" video. Here is Mick Jagger again, testing for a role in Warner Herzog's Fitzcarraldo, followed by the actual scene, which is played by the godlike actor Klaus Kinski. I think the clip speaks for itself:

D-Styles is my favorite scratch DJ. His skills in pure scratching can compete with just about anyone on the planet. I'm sure he could put a few recent World DMC winners to shame.

That said, he also accomplishes what most other scratch DJs either don't or can't: he uses his turntables, mixer, and records to chop samples in a live context and create new songs.

The above video shows him doing some of my favorite material of his. He's basically starting by drumming, that is, taking a drum sample on a record and creating an entirely new beat by scratching it. He has a sampler attached to a foot switch that loops the new drumbeat that he just created. He then scratches records with melodic jazz samples and cuts the samples up to create new melodies. At one point in this video, he actually layers a few melodies on top of each other using the sampler.

What you're seeing here is D-Styles doing live in a few minutes what many producers need to spend hours in front of a computer or hardware sampler to accomplish. He's truly taking scratching from the wikki-wikki sound (that, honestly, most people are tired of) to a new level of melodic sophistication.

Has anyone seen this Youtube video of Springsteen playing "I'm On Fire" in a street in Copenhagen? I assume it's legit (it certainly sounds that way) but I have no real proof. There are a series of videos of him playing different songs, but since "I'm On Fire" is probably one of the best rock songs ever written, I decided to post this one. It certainly lends itself to being played alone on an acoustic guitar.

There is a lot I could and should say about 88 Fingers Louie. First and foremost, they were one of the most important gateway bands that brought me into hardcore and, perhaps more importantly, hardcore shows. In retrospect, they were perhaps one of the last melodic hardcore bands that really allowed their rough edges to show. Hardcore, and melodic hardcore in particular, can be so precise, clean, and coordinated. It's fantastic in it's own respect, but there's something very, well, raw about bands like Gorilla Biscuits that a band like Comeback Kid cannot replicate.

I had a video of 88 Fingers Louie playing at the Fireside Bowl that I grabbed from The Clubhouse, a fantastic record store in Chicago that carried an amazing amount of punk and hardcore considering the size of their overall music selection. They regularly sold bootlegged VHS tapes of local shows and it was always a big find to buy one of a favorite group. I have no clue how many times I watched that show, but portions of the tape were becoming unwatchable from overuse by the time it was retired. The first song to go was "Outright Lies." It's a simple and painfully honest hardcore song and, for a genre that often gets bogged down in macho posturing, "Outright Lies" is like a breath of fresh air.

88 Fingers Louie - "Outright Lies"

The German idealist philosopher J.G. Fichte wrote somewhere that nothing of value would ever wholly disappear, that we would all eventually find what would most inspire us. He probably would have felt his views confirmed if he had lived to hear the Nuggets compilations, but I can't help but think a huge amount of great music has simply fallen through the cracks -- especially before our current era of near ubiquitous ownership of basic recording equipment. Still, even with your own recording gear, getting your ideas etched in the vinyl (or bytes) with anything near the richness you hear in your head is very difficult. My own musical projects have borne this out.

Good thing that Of Montreal -- well, Kevin Barnes -- came along to inspire us, recording Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer? on (I think) less than $10,000 worth of equipment and all by himself. Hissing Fauna was probably the first blow-your-mind-great album to be recorded like this. "Suffer for Fashion" is the anthem, opening the album...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBYGjC_hJ9A

But perhaps it's been done before. I hear that "Street Fighting Man" was recorded on a 2-track at Keith Richard's apartment with Charlie Watts playing a toy drum set he'd found at a pawn shop (each of the smaller drums fit inside the bass drum, which served as a convenient carrying case).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ibjtq3LSm4Q

So, it pays to play, to play with weird instruments and sounds, and to play seriously with them. I think that much of the best music coming out today involves this sort of extremely creative sound-forging. The palette of sounds is basically infinite now that samplers and synthesizers have become so sophisticated. The norm of having a producer who is not really a member of the creative unit having the last say on the sound of a record or a track may be going by the wayside -- but on the other hand this may only apply to the more emphatically original artists working today...

Labels: diy, of montreal, producers, production

Hi Everyone,

Josh originally asked me to post a blog about this Skream track "Oskillatah" off his EP "Skreamizm Vol. 4" from January, 2008.  But I've been obsessing over this dubstep EP called "Soundboy's Nuts Get Ground Up Proper E.P." by Shackleton. This is a release off of Shackleton's own label, Skull Disco, and one of the few releases on that label that is exclusively his material.

First , my sympathies to whomever Soundboy is. That sounds grotesquely painful, and I wish you a speedy recovery.

Track listing:
Blood On My Hands
Naked
Hypno Angel

This EP's major strength is its hypnotic, bongo-based drumbeats. These tribal/African-sounding beats are surrounded by vocal samples, both spoken and sung. Like most dubstep, there are also strong sub-bass tones that add significant texture to the music.

These drumbeats accomplish something that differs from most dubstep. They represent the full tempo of the song. The majority of the time, dubsteps drumbeats will be half the tempo of the songs. The producer will rely on the melody to communicate the full tempo, usually around 140 bpm. On this record, the speed of the drumbeats is necessary because the melodies seem to be second priority for the listener's ears, although they compliment the drums quite well.

My favorite track is Hypno Angel. This song features vocal samples which I imagine to be either Indian or Middle Eastern in origin, but I honestly have no idea. They go well with the strong drumbeat, adding an ethereal quality to a song that is made otherwise intense by a strong, dark bass line.

I can't stop listening to Menomena's "Muscle'n Flo" and it's starting to become an issue.

"Muscle'n Flo" has a strong but lazy groove, the kind that only flirts with the idea of filling in before retreating to a bridge for contrast. It's more than a little refreshing that the band found a rhythm and didn't drive it into the ground with a thousand permutations and layers of thick, intricate guitar work. A band less self-aware, or perhaps just cockier, would have destroyed that delicate bounce and I think it speaks to Menomena's talent, or perhaps indie-rock erudition, that they employed it for a limited purpose.

I'm also a little too amused by a line like "it's dark out, it's time I pick up my hustle." Deadpan deliveries of pop culture vernacular are pretty much amazing, if for no other reason than it suggests that the speaker is aware of how fleeting and ridiculous these phrases sound. To throw a phrase like that into a song that is, presumably, sung from the perspective of an apathetic and college educated member of the middle class is pretty much amazing. The dude isn't hustling for shit and thrown amidst lyrics about stumbling to the mirror and emotional strain, it sounds appropriately out of place.

Oh, right, and the slide on the church organ during the bridge is somehow the single greatest thing I've heard in a really long time.

Menomena - "Muscle'n Flo"

I finally picked up the Vampire Weekend the other day. I've heard them in bars, at shows, on Beki's computer, and in cars. It's a fine record and I'm sure I'll make time to listen to it between bouts of listening to the TV On the Radio catalog and Bad Brains' I Against I.



So what makes Vampire Weekend so great? It's hard to argue against the singing. The vaguely African/Caribbean/Brazilian/Ska/ sound is pleasant, a less offensive version of what the Unicorns/Islands have done so well. The earnest songs from the pov of a trust-fund twenty-something works to great effect. I was in a friend's car a few months ago and had a chance to look through the liner notes (I have the emusic version, so know liner notes for me). I stopped on a photo of a lone topsider on a colored background (I have in my mind a pleasant pastel). I turned to my friend and said, "This tells you what this albums sounds like more than listening to it." Vampire Weekend has captured a moment in hip twenty-something culture. They are literate, funny, talented kids who have distilled the prepster aesthetic to it's essence and packaged it as music and a touring band. They'll probably never make another great record, but they made this one, and it captures the ironic, creative moment of Williamsburg and cool part of Manhattan perfectly.

This leads to questions about why so many young, hyped bands only have one great record in them. Do they put everything in there and they don't have any good ideas left? I don't think so. I think many of the albums that you'll find toward the top of a Pitchfork year-end list aren't great works of art, they're great representations of a moment in a certain culture. I don't mean to diminish these works. They are often very good and worthy of our praise and dollars, but I think it's unfair to expect Clap Your Hands Say Yeah to capture a moment in time more than once. The members of Interpol did blow their wad on Turn On the Bright Lights, they are just limited, but what they could do was exactly what was happening in 2002.






So it's likely Vampire Weekend won't be able to win on their next album. Either they continue to sing about college campuses and clam bakes but that moment has passed or they try and capture the community again but no one will care what they have to say or they'll try harder to make a great work but won't have the talent. Or maybe they do have the talent and they'll surprise us all. But give them a break if they don't, it's hard to distill your culture twice, just ask Girl Talk.

Colossal's Pat Ford can't really sing. I qualify the statement because I think musically, Colossal is astounding and does a great job of weaving in a strong jazz influence in their grad-school-y indie rock. Further, the standout drumming of Rob Kellenberger (of Slapstick fame... kind of) always assumes the foreground when I hear them, which is great, but it's an area Ford can't really take command of. His limitations may be exaggerated by the company he keeps. Surrounded by such highly skilled musicians, Ford's vocals sound like the last selected player in a pick-up game of basketball. But, standing on the court without an auto-tuner, harmonizing vocals, or any other mediating effects, he displays vulnerability in showcasing the limitations of his natural skill. I think it speaks of confidence and a total commitment to his lyrics - he wrote them and he's singing them. I also think it's a great move by the band because, frankly, clean and well produced vocals often lack character and get boring quickly.

Colossal could never blow-up like their band-mates' other projects (The Smoking Popes, The Lawrence Arms). There was never a big, catchy hook within shouting distance of their songs and their instrumentation, while beautiful and well written, was not exactly hummable. Colossal may have been relegated to the ranks of college radio and small venues from the start. Oh well. Welcome The Problems is a brilliant album and sometimes great music doesn't fall out of the radio onto your lap or take command of a massive concert hall. Maybe Colossal was so great because they knew their limitations, accepted them, and decided to play anyway.

Colossal - "Hot Probs"