Jesse Jarnow's Frank and Earthy Blog

"Take Me" - Karen Dalton (download) (buy)
from In My Own Time (1971)

"Take Me" - Jerry Garcia and David Grisman (download) (buy)
from Been All Around This World (2004)

(files expire May 19th)

I'm a sucker for songs that send the singer to some specific utopia, like "Big Rock Candy Mountain," or Roy Orbison's "Blue Bayou," or Patsy Cline's "You Belong To Me," or any of the Mountain Goats' "Going to..." numbers. George Jones and Leon Payne's "Take Me" is a neat variation, a catalogue of desolation -- an impossibly dark room, Siberia in winter -- twisted into sunshine. But it is mostly imagined sunshine, the singer in a state somewhere closer to the darkened room than the springtime California promised in the final verse.

The desolation is clearly present in Jones' original with Tammy Wynette, but that's probably more reflex than anything. Jerry Garcia and Karen Dalton amplify it to the song's front. Garcia's junk-decayed voice cracks as it needs to, his delivery all resignation, though David Grisman's mandolin is perhaps a little too airy for the proceedings (at least until his solo). One-time Village folkie Dalton, meanwhile, is perfect, her own junk-cracked voice unbearably hopeful over a quietly lush combo, like a feminine Ray Charles.

Posted by Jesse at 1:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Roll With the Flow" - Michael Nesmith (download) (buy)
from And the Hits Just Keep On Comin' (1972)

(file expires May 14th)

It's hippie-country heartache week here in the wunderkammern, and former Monkee Mike Nesmith's And the Hits Just Keep on Comin' is a remarkable, hook-filled beaut.

Country tunes don't often speak, word for word, to the specifics of one's particular heartbreak. But even narratives that are the 180-degree opposite of the use they're serving can still stand-in just fine. Break-up songs sung from the perspective of the one leaving, like Nesmith's "Roll With the Flow" can be of use to the broken. (In this case, perhaps through contrarian, pissed-off empowerment.) It is almost as if the sound of country -- here stripped close to absolute simplest: acoustic guitar, pedal steel, and voice -- acts like a welcoming arm. Warmed in its embrace, country veritably promises that even if this singer doesn't address your problem with this song, it will most assuredly come around sooner than later. That faith hums warmly through the genre, like the anticipatory minutes after one has fed money into a crowded bar's jukebox but before the sound in his head has made itself manifest in a room full of strangers.

Posted by Jesse at 1:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Honey in the Rock" - Blind Mamie Forehand (download) (buy)
from Goodbye Babylon (1927/2003)

(file expires May 8th)

Burkhard Bilger's recent New Yorker piece, "The Last Verse," is excellent -- the type of typically sprawling think-piece/profile that could end up in a future Da Capo Best Music Writing edition. But it also bummed me out. "Is there still any folk music out there?" the subhead asked. It's an endlessly fascinating question, but -- if you limit "folk" to its literal definition -- the answer becomes equally limited.

For his own recordings, Rosenbaum laid down only a few ground rules. The musicians could come from anywhere and play almost anything: fiddles, guitars, washboards, or spoons; harmonicas, Jew's harps, or accordions. (In one recording, a broomstick kept time; in another, a pick-axe.) But the songs had to be traditional, the music learned from relatives or local musicians. He wanted folksingers, as he puts it, not just singers of folk songs.

And, thus, another story about dudes driving the South around looking for old performers and older records. But folk music is more alive than that, pulsing from car stereos and ringtones in the centuries-old rhythms at the core of reggaeton, or in the magpie strategies of the bootleg/mash-up world. Even if hip-hop is the very definition of mass culture -- see, for example, the ridiculous Jay-Z/Soulja Boy feud being played through the NBA -- it still requires an intricate constellation of references to understand it, many of which can only be passed person to person. While there's plenty that comes through media, there's still plenty of slang that can trace back decades, if not more.

The answer to Bilger's question is unquestionably, "yes." A truly oral culture is no longer possible, but we have something else -- a world where text is so plentiful it becomes both meaningless and ephemeral. How does one collect it?

Posted by Jesse at 2:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Air" - Greg Davis (download) (buy)
from Curling Pond Woods (2003)

(file expires May 5th)

Greg Davis's cover of the Incredible String Band's "Air" has me from the first keyboard tone, which simultaneously seems like it should be some kind of thrift store organ, but is too warm and rich to be so. Soon enough, though, come harmonies and a strum that lands somewhere between Western swing and uke-driven exotica. The verses are mostly mood -- way more so than the original version -- something more forceful than the wordless mmmming and just enough to gently nudge the tune along. But they're beautiful, too. After a fairly New Agey beginning ("breathing, all creatures are") it drops down to ominous folk mystery: "you kissed my blood, and the blood kissed me." "Air" is a sunset in unfamiliar colors.

Posted by Jesse at 2:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Agnes B Musique" - Sonic Youth (download) (buy)
from SYR7: J'Accuse Ted Hughes (2008)

(file expires April 30th)

One testament to the productivity of Sonic Youth is the insane and amazing bootleg site Kill Yr Idols, which posts at least one album/cassette/7-inch by Sonic Youth or its members pretty much every day. Totally illegal, fersure, but an exception should be made for the nobility of the cause. ("Downloading keeps the links alive: please link this site on blogs, forums," they proudly proclaim.) The territories keep growing. The newest ephemera, an entry in the venerable and psychedelic SYR series, and released on vinyl only earlier this week, isn't up yet, but it surely will be soon.

In some ways, both jams on SYR7 -- "J'Accuse Ted Hughes" (from All Tomorrow's Parties in April 2001) (2000, according to KYI) and "Agnes B Musique" (from the band's Murray Street studio in 2001) -- could be drawn from almost anywhere in the musicians' vast collective/solo/side-project output. In theory. In practice, it's the Jim O'Rourke-era lineup, demonstrating why they're Sonic Youth. On "Agnes B Musique," Steve Shelley hangs quietly behind an improv begins genially, the sheets of glittering noise coming later, drones within pulses within drones. Good with the lights off and the headphones on.

Posted by Jesse at 1:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Small Shape" - Akron/Family (download)
recorded live at Tonic, NYC, 15 July 2005
from Yeti #5

"They Will Appear, Behold" - Akron/Family (download)
recorded live at KVRX, Austin, TX, 12 March 2008

Two new Akron/Family tracks. The first, "Small Shape," comes from a live set at Tonic in July 2005, and was recently included on the disc accompanying Yeti #5. From the bottomless catalogue of the band's two-guitar era, it begins with a lush double-strum, a xylophone doubling the bassline as Seth Olinsky's vocal begins. The structure is slow, if such a thing could be said of a structure, its movement beginning when the xylophone changes allegiance and begins to double a vibrating guitar as harmonies pile up and, eventually, Dana Janssen begins a marital beat. (Can't wait 'til the issue gets to the top of the reading queue. It looks amazing, and the rest of the disc definitely is: Sublime Frequencies outtakes, excerpts from Jeff Mangum's record collection, deep cuts from editor Mike McGonigal, etc.)

The second, "They Will Appear, Behold," is more recent, from a South by Southwest radio session by (I'm pretty sure) just the core trio. With Afro-pop inspired guitar, and an equally slow-structured pulse, it even sounds a little like The Slip at first. Though the lyrics are a bit, shall we say, crunchy (even before they tap Sioux holy man Black Elk for the title refrain), they are hardly didactic, and unfurl over a patient, potent melody/chant.

Posted by Jesse at 2:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Here No More" - The Breeders (download) (buy)
from Mountain Battles (2008)

(file expires April 25th)

I'm going to say it anyway, because it's right under our noses and it might get missed: Kim and Kelley Deal's harmonies are what make the Breeders so lovely, even in 2008. There are (possibly apocryphal?) stories about the twins singing country duets for truckers in their native Dayton that I remember reading in Circus circa Last Splash. Until bootlegs surface, "Here No More," from the new Mountain Battles, will suffice. The melody is decent, really just serving as a vehicle for their sweetly decaying singsongs to make something nice between them, pleasing genetic harmonics in full effect. Hardly radical, but it doesn't need to be.

Posted by Jesse at 1:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Thinking For Now" - Mark David & the Nightly Lights feat. Don Helms (download)

(file expires April 18th)

That Mark David's "Thinking For Now" is an uncommonly decent contemporary country tune -- vintage without sounding overtly nostalgic, with a great bridge -- is kind of beside the point, though its escape of nostalgia is remarkable, given the ghost that powers it. More than anything, Hank Williams' lonesomeness found emotional form in the swelling steel guitar of Don Helms who -- holy Moses -- is still alive and recording in 2008, playing his original 1949 double neck Gibson Console Grand with Mark David and company, an Ohio concern. Helms' voice is as clean and pure now as 60 years ago, cutting through its surroundings with a dignified mourn. More than any lost Hank tracks or flown-in ProTools duets (or even trios) between three generations of singing Williams, these are the true adventures of Hank Williams' still blue, still lonesome heart in the 21st century.

Posted by Jesse at 1:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"All the Way Around and Back" - Charles Ives (download) (buy)
conducted by Leonard Bernstein

A Charles Ives piece from 1908 structurally mimics an archaic baseball rule from the composer's childhood, via Timothy Johnson's Baseball and the Music of Charles Ives: A Proving Ground:

The additive process aptly represents the gradual process of the runner. If the initial Db that begins each measure symbolizes first base, then each added note tracks the runner's progress toward third. The skipped additions (moving directly from five to seven and from seven to eleven notes) seem to depict the runner's increased speed as he builds up momentum heading for third. Finally, the complete pattern is repeated once more, running as fast as he can, before the whole process is reversed beginning with an extra two measures of the final undecatuplet, as the runner returns to first base in the same way that he traveled in the first place -- rapidly at first, then easing up as the base is reached.

At first glance the symbolism of the baserunner, speeding up as he rounds the bases and then slowing down as he returns, seems to be lost in this palindromic reversal, since a runner presumably might easily trot back to first base after a foul ball. However, the rule that determined how quickly one must return to the base after a foul ball changed over the years. The rules of 1883 state that "a baserunner who fails to return to his base at a run following a foul ball is liable to be put out by being touched by the ball while off his base."

(Thx, Jakebrah. Definitely need to read this.)

Posted by Jesse at 2:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Mountains of the Moon" - The Grateful Dead (download)
from Aoxomoxoa original mix (1969)

High on the list of Dead tunes likely to convert freak-folkers is Aoxomoxoa's "Mountains of the Moon." With Tom Constanten's swirling harpsichord and Robert Hunter's oblique, mythical lyrics, it's a bauble that didn't sustain in the Dead's repertoire, whose most tender songs required (for better or worse) a certain machismo to survive the 'heads. While "Mountains" served as a perfect prelude to at least 11 "Dark Stars" in 1969, its modal (1) melody couldn't even last long enough for the band's abundant acoustic sets the following year. Drag.

I love how Hunter's lyrics get down with the folk mythos -- Tom Banjo, Electra, etc. -- but also find a moment of psychedelic focus, the hallucinations parting for a brief second like ascending angels: "hey, the city in the rain."

It is perhaps the aforementioned angels who hummm and ooooh behind the original 1969 version on Aoxomoxoa, removed by Jerry Garcia himself in a 1971 remix. On first listen, I wished there were more of them, but I think they're in just the right proportion to last the duration of the track's four minutes without grating. Like the Blood on the Tracks demo acetate, the Aoxomoxoa mix comes bundled with the vinyl warmth of its source. (Big ups to SeaOfSound for the music.)

(1) I think.

Posted by Jesse at 1:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Side A" - Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, and Jim O'Rourke (download)
from Melbourne Direct (2004)

(file expires March 31st)

Not quite part of the SYR series, and not quite even Sonic Youth (Kim Gordon is missing), the Melbourne Direct double-LP credited to Thurston Moore, Lee Ranaldo, Steve Shelley, and Jim O'Rourke contains some of the most straight-up Dark Starry jams in the Sonics' catalogue. Four to be exact, each exactly one album side -- not coincidental given that the Sonic dudes cut direct to vinyl. Shelley lays out for most of Side A (or is drumming the supreme sublime), and everybody else is deep beneath the Diamond Sea from the first note.

Posted by Jesse at 12:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Osorezan" (excerpt) - Geinoh Yamashirogumi (download)
from Osorezan/Do No Kenbai (1976)

(file expires March 29th)

Searching for Jim O'Rourke's Osorezan (soon to be "re"-released by Drag City, even though it was only issued in 2006 and only in Japan), I came across Osorezan by Geinoh Yamashirogumi. Labeled "1970s Japanese psych" or something, and translated as "ghost mountain," I naturally stole it. The band, according to Wikipedia, "[consisted] of hundreds of people from all walks of life: journalists, doctors, engineers, students, businessmen," which is tantalizing, but completely confusing. Likewise, the page's description of the band's "faithful re-creations of folk music from around the world" bears little or no resemblance to the music itself. At least as I hear it.

I downloaded it as two complete album sides, so I'm not sure where the song breaks are supposed to go, but these seven-and-a-half minutes slice out easily: a bassline, a building guitar solo, and chanting. The choir in the first minute portends something, and it's not the fairly run-of-the-mill soloing that follows. Clearly, there is something lurking. As such, I like the way all the other elements slide back in, including -- eventually -- that choir. It's these last two minute of chaos (give or take the cutsey/jambandy bassline) that are the payoff: a musical place unworldly just as much on its own terms as it is for the fact that it's '70s Japanese psych.

Posted by Jesse at 1:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"A Sign of the Times" - Petula Clark (download) (buy)
b/w "Time For Love" (1966)

(file expires March 3rd)

Like the Beverly Hills Teens theme, Petula Clark's "A Sign of the Times" is a random melody that got stuck in my head as an adolescent, and waited like a latent dopamine trigger for literally decades until I remembered the song and downloaded it. My introduction to it was a cheesy Banner Day montage in the same Amazin' Era Mets video that yielded Dick McCormick's "79 Men on Third," and which was also my first exposure to "Changes" by David Bowie, whose chorus illustrated several dramatic trades in Mets' history (like the Midnight Massacre that sent Tom Seaver to the Reds in 1977). Somebody could sample the big horn fanfare, but unlike the Chi-Lites' "Are You My Woman (Tell Me So)," which yielded "Crazy In Love," I don't spend the whole song waiting for the part to return. It serves its function, introducing the "Sesame Street"-like progression and getting to Clark's sweet, lovely vocal. I'm totally in love with the "maybe my lucky star" chorus, which wasn't included in the video, and could be the basis for a perfectly serviceable tune itself.

Posted by Jesse at 1:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"Eighth of January" - The Kentucky Colonels with Scott Stoneman (download) (buy)

(file expires February 27th)

Thanks to Rev for turning me onto this recording of Scott Stoneman and the Kentucky Colonels performing "Eighth of January" at the Ash Grove in Los Angeles in 1965. In the audience that night was Jerry Garcia.

I get my improvisational approach from Scotty Stoneman, the fiddle player. [He's] the guy who first set me on fire -- where I just stood there and I don't remember breathing. He was just an incredible fiddler. He was a total alcoholic wreck by the time I heard him, in his early thirties, playing with the Kentucky Colonels... They did a medium-tempo fiddle tune like 'Eighth of January' and it's going along, and pretty soon Scotty starts taking these longer and longer phrases -- ten bars, fourteen bars, seventeen bars -- and the guys in the band are just watching him! They're barely playing -- going ding, ding, ding -- while he's burning. The place was transfixed. They played this tune for like twenty minutes, which is unheard of in bluegrass. I'd never heard anything like it. I asked him later, 'How do you do that?' and he said, 'Man, I just play lonesome.' (Garcia, c. 1985, via Blair Jackson's Garcia: An American Life)

By the time the music made it to tape -- which is to say, in reality -- it was five and a third minutes, proving Garcia's memory to be about as blown as any Deadhead's. He's not wrong either, though. (See also "Cleo's Back" for the further secret history of the Grateful Dead.)

Posted by Jesse at 12:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"OBAMAREGGAETON" - Amigos De Obama (download)

(file expires January 25th)

For fear of jinxing anything, I resisted the urge to post this on Super Tuesday Eve, but I like the implications of this Obama reggaetón tune. For starters, credited to the organization Amigos De Obama, it's instantly historical novelty, sung to the absolute rhythm of its time. More, it highlights another, less devious, musical aspect of the Illinois Senator: his name.

Last week, Mom wondered if Obama would be the first President whose name ended in a vowel. He wouldn't be (see: Fillmore, Monroe, Pierce, Coolidge), but her point about Presidential homogeneity is well taken. There certainly haven't been any men of Kenyan descent in the Oval Office, and consequently none whose names roll from the tongue quite like Obama's. Hence, the genuinely new music. (Yeah, it came out last June, but who's counting? See translation.)

And, while we're on the topic: There's something reassuring but also a bit cognitively dissonant about a silk-screened Obama "The Time is Now" poster in the front window of a tarot card reader.

Posted by Jesse at 1:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Albuquerque" - Neil Young (download) (buy)
from Tonight's The Night (1975)

Well, here I am.

Posted by Jesse at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"79 Men on Third for the Mets" - Dick McCormack (download)
from An Amazin' Era video

(file expires February 17th)

The baseball stories are increasing with the imminent reporting of pitchers and catchers to spring training this week. Today brings us a Times profile in which we discover that third baseman David Wright actually refers to himself as "D-Wright." Uh, right on?

Relatedly, I spent some late night hours over the weekend revisiting An Amazin' Era, the delightfully cheesy Mets retrospective produced just before the 1986 season. Included therein is the above song, "79 Men on Third for the Mets," folksinger Dick McCormack's novelty tribute to the nearly 80 players who'd covered the corner for the Mets between 1962 and 1985. (Though the video doesn't include the '86 season, McCormack manages to fit in the newly acquired Tim Teufel, who played one game at third later that year.) It's super toe tappin'.

Anybody got info on this Dick McCormack dude? The infranet reveals the existence of a "We Didn't Start the Fire"-style number he wrote summing up the 1987 season, though it looks like some lawyers nastygrammed it. Oh, bother.

Posted by Jesse at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"Diamond Day" - Vashti Bunyan (download) (buy)
from Just Another Diamond Day (1970)

"Spit on a Stranger" - Pavement (download) (buy)
from Terror Twilight (1999)

Vashti Bunyan, at least pre-rediscovery, seems exactly the type of obscurantist reference point tailor made for Stephen Malkmus. Whether or not he had her 1970 single "Diamond Day" anywhere near his bedheaded skull when he wrote "Spit on a Stranger," the lead cut from 1999's Terror Twilight, I've got no idea. Either way, given the autumn-burnt originality of "Stranger," it's not to accuse the Pavement leader of anything, except maybe getting a melody stuck in his head, and repurposing it for contemporary circulation.

Posted by Jesse at 1:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Coloris" - Cornelius (download)
from Coloris OST (unreleased) (2006)

"Mixed Bizness (Cornelius remix)" - Beck (download)
from Mixed Bizness EP (2000)

"Music (Japanese version)" - Petra Haden (download) (buy)
from Gum EP (2008)

(files expire January 28th)

Super-dooper-like-whoa psyched for the Cornelius gig at Webster Hall next Saturday. And you should be, too. As such, here's some arcana from the shibuya-kei bitmaster.

First up is part of his contribution to the soundtrack to the Gameboy Advance game Coloris (thanks to Dessgeega for the YouTube vid). I'd love to hear more of this stuff! I like the idea of writing loops and algorithms and standalone pieces of music for video games as a formal challenge to create music that is economical, simple, and satisfying.

Cornelius's take on Beck's "Mixed Bizness" is probably my single favorite remix of all time, let alone in the deep catalogues of both Hansen and Oyamada. If there were ever any doubts about one being the Oriental/Occidental counterpart to the other, the mind-blowing singularity of this cut should blow them like so many oblique paper creatures.

My major problem was last year's Sensuous was its seeming abandonment of the acoustic side of the electro-acoustic equation. On the new Gum EP, vocal acrobat Petra Haden's take on "Music," Sensuous's penultimate cut, re-humanizes the hyper-organized bleeps. (Also included is Haden's English language version of the same.)

Posted by Jesse at 1:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Four Freshmen Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down" - No Kids (download) (pre-order)

from Come Into My House (Tomlab) (2008)

(file expires January 24th)

File No Kids' "Four Freshmen Locked Out as the Sun Goes Down" with Grizzly Bear and Asobi Seksu's recent Phil Spector tributes, Dr. Dog's "California," and any number of other indie odes to pre-Beatles pop. It almost doesn't matter what the Vancouver trio are singing about. In fact, I'm not even sure if I know myself, other than vague hints of a break-up, framed in the sonic guise of Brian Wilson's vocal heroes. The title and the arrangement -- both novelties on Come Into My House -- are all they need to sell me on the song, which powers through on sheer vibe, the type of thing I'm happy to listen to just for the sound of it until it means something more.

Posted by Jesse at 12:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Kim Smoltz" - Ween (download)
from The Mollusk demos (thanks, Ween.com)

(file expires January 24th)

I love this Mollusk outtake before Gener even starts to sing, the endlessly airy keyboard melody that's warm 'n' synthy all at once. When the vocals come in, the genre is implicit immediately: the wizened rock tune filled with maximum meaningless cliché. "Take it easy, walk with a light step, baby," Gener sings. But without breaking voice, the song turns weird. "Walk amongst the life forms in your day," is one piece of advice. "Swim around 'til the fish float out of the socket in your skull," is another. While it might sound like parody, by blowing the song into the psychedelic nether-regions, Ween imbue the clichés with their original power: they've been through the weirdness, come out the other side, and now have something to offer. "Marinate a good piece of beef, understand the mind of belief" reminds me of the Americana of "Roses Are Free."

Posted by Jesse at 1:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Texas" - Jeffrey Lewis with Jack Lewis and Anders Griffin (download) (buy)
from It's the One's Who've Cracked That the Light Shines Through (2003)

"The Murder Mystery" (Velvet Underground) - Jeffrey and Jack Lewis (download)
recorded 2002 July 31 Peel Session

"Don't Be Upset" - Jeffrey and Jack Lewis (download) (buy)
from City and Eastern Songs (2005)

(files expire January 18th)

Besides the press release for the forthcoming Mountain Goats album, which he illustrated, I have never seen any of Jeffrey Lewis's comics. Nonetheless, they seem such a vivid way to understand his music. On "Texas," speech balloon call-and-response ("How's the pizza?" "Fucking awful!") spirals methodically into imagistic madness, ala the Velvet Underground's "Murder Mystery" (covered by Lewis on a Peel session in 2002), or a one-sheet comic in an alt-weekly. Elsewhere, it comes through in alternatingly hilarious and narcissistic autobiography -- at it's best, both simultaneously, as on "Don't Be Upset" -- where Lewis appears, like a self-illustrated post-hippie narrator, ala Kim Deitch's Alias the Cat. Or maybe it's just the power of suggestion. Just knowing that Lewis is a visual artist almost makes one forget the anti-folk cuteness that marbles his urban chronicles. Whatever it is, it's a voice, and one that's been absurdly prolific over the past few years, with a lot to discover. (And don't neglect his legit cartoon classic, "Williamsburg Will Oldham Horror.")

Posted by Jesse at 2:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Box of Rain" - The Grateful Dead (download) (buy)
from American Beauty (1970)

The Lorimer/Metropolitan station connects the L train to the G train, or Williamsburg to Park Slope. It is, needless to say, a Brooklynite hub. After discovering Grateful Dead graffiti there last year, I had another late night Dead encounter, this time with a drunk hipster.

At around 2 in the morning, over Thanksgiving weekend, he wandered onto the Brooklyn-bound side, carrying a mostly empty bottle of wine, and singing at the top of his lungs. His bellows slapped off the tile, making the lyrics that much more indistinguishable as he sang along with his iPod. I slipped off my headphones, curious to hear what he was singing: "Box of Rain." Needless to say, I started singing along.

Dude had owned American Beauty in high school but was recently inspired to dust it off thanks to the concluding episode of Paul Feig and Judd Apatow's Freaks and Geeks, in which Lindsay Weir discovers the Dead and skips out on a summertime academic summit to head off on Dead tour.

The reclamation continues.

Posted by Jesse at 1:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

The Yo La Tengo Hanukkah mixes: part 1 and part 2.

Part 1: Georgia, Ira, James, Todd-O-Phonic Todd Abramson
Part 2: Yoshitomi Nara, Matmos, Eye, David Cross

If you enjoy the mixes, please consider donating to the charities for which they were intended. (See original setlists for more info.)

Happy holidays y'all. Check back in soon for my own holiday megamix.

Posted by Jesse at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Mr. Tambourine Man" - Bob Dylan (download)
recorded 30 July 1999, Jones Beach Amphitheater, Wantagh, NY (download whole show)

(file expires December 24th)

(And... reentry complete.) A friend of mine once negatively characterized Bob Dylan's live vocals as "UPdownUPdownUPdown." And not inaccurately. But, Dylan's too ornery to alternate so blandly (except when he is). It's like Mike Gordon said -- speaking of criticisms that the Grateful Dead just ran up and down scales together -- you have to know when to go down and when to go up. Given Dylan's gnarled voice -- part affected, part acquired -- even the up/downs sometimes get blurred, which is why I'm so frabjously psyched about this summer '99 soundboard, in which Dylan cuts through completely.

In Chronicles, Dylan spins a probably bullshit yarn to describe his improvised vocal melodies, taught to him by Lonnie Johnson, involving "an odd- instead of an even-numbered system" and "a highly controlled system of playing [that] relates to the notes of a scale, how they combine numerically, how they form melodies out of triplets and are axiomatic to the rhythm and the chord changes." Which is where the UPdownUPdown comes from. And the fastSLOWfastSLOW, and all the layered combinations.

At its best, though, it all congeals into melody, as it did during shows I saw in 1999 and 2000, when Dylan's Larry Campbell-dominated band blew both Paul Simon and Phil Lesh's genial revues off the summer shed stages. This "Mr. Tambourine Man" resists singalongs and stumbles, almost surprised at itself, around a new melody, with all the revelation that entails. Dylan never quite sings it directly -- which is sort of the point, like an improvisation unresolved -- but still delivers appropriate drama. This is what I love about live Dylan. It can be elusive, and I'm glad I finally have a solid example I can point to. If you don't like it, well, there it is.

So, who's got the awesome Never Ending Tour soundboards? Sendspace that shit up. (Thx to Ace Cowboy for digging this one up.)

Posted by Jesse at 2:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

"I Wanna Be Your Partner" - Bob Dylan (download)
from Dimestore Medicine bootleg, c. 1966

"Fourth Time Around" - Yo La Tengo (download) (buy)
from I'm Not There OST

(files expire December 21st)

(Re-entry continues...) Yo La Tengo's two Bob Dylan covers on the soundtrack to Todd Haynes' I'm Not There -- "I Wanna Be Your Lover" and "Fourth Time Around" -- constitute a tiny sub-category in Dylan's work: response songs to the Beatles. The former lifts its chorus from Lennon/McCartney so-cast-off-they-let-Ringo-sing "I Wanna Be Your Man" (supplanting Dylan's earlier draft, the proto-PC "I Wanna Be Your Partner"). "Fourth Time Around," meanwhile, is Dylan's rewrite of "Norwegian Wood," with a similar plot (cheekily oblique conversation about an affair) set to a similar melody in a similar mood. Dylan's version is way more sly, of course, with its wry put-downs ("your words are not clear, you better spit out your gum") and the snotty/Britty crutch/crotch double entendre at its end ("I didn't ask for your crutch, now don't ask for mine"). Intentional choice on YLT's part to mirror Haynes' meta-textual orgy? Only the nose knows for sure. The nose being Ringo.

Posted by Jesse at 2:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"I'll Keep It With Mine" - Yo La Tengo (download)
recorded 30 December 2005, Maxwell's, Hoboken, NJ

(file expires December 20th)

Sleep. Soon. In the meantime, to aid in the ever-so-gradual reentry, the Georgia-sung "I'll Keep It With Mine" from the stunning sleeper show the night before New Year's, 2005. Purdy Nico arrangement (superior to Dylan's clunkier demo, oddly), aided by Rolling Thunder/sessionman stringdude David Mansfield. Sleep. Now. But first, maybe headphones. (Thx to Neil & Brandon for the tunes.)

Posted by Jesse at 1:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Walcott" - Vampire Weekend (download)
from Blue CD-R

(file expires December 10th)

Gak, there are so many reasons why I wanna hate Vampire Weekend. Despite my love for Graceland and Remain in Light, the idea of nostalgia for '80s world-pop sung seems kinda repellant, let alone revived by a buncha Ivy Leaguers singing about being Ivy Leaguers. Plus, they seem a perfect embodiment of the indie archipelago's shift towards what once would've been considered totally goddamn bland/lite. There are times when Vampire Weekend might as well be the Gin Blossoms. Geeze, fuck me in the beard.

At first, "Walcott" was a perfect summary of all that. I mean, how entitled do you have to be to sing about being bored at Cape Cod?

But it's such a winning hook -- "outta Cape Cod, outta Cape Cod tonight" -- that it becomes the sonic equivalent of a recklessly charming preppy, all windswept hair and big smile and kinda creepily Aryan. Really, though, bling is in, and there's a certain cross-cultural egalitarianism in the concept. For that, Vampire Weekend communicate it in a different way than their hip-hop equivalents. For them, instead of strife and drugs and violence and struggle, it's about safety and warmth. Fuzzy, even. Certainly, the channeling of the '80s -- childhood for the band's presumed 20something listeners -- doesn't hurt. All that comes part and parcel with the songs, though, which linger, linger, linger.

Posted by Jesse at 1:40 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

"Julia" - The Beatles (sped up & slowed back down by Editor B) (download)
"Tomorrow Never Knows" - The Beatles (sped up & slowed back down by Lee R.) (download)

(files expire October 26th)

So, Steve McLaughlin compressed the entire Beatles' catalogue into a single, one-hour mp3. Cute. But then some other dudes, Editor B and one "Lee R" (hmm), took out chunks and reconstituted them back to normal speed. The result is one of the most literally psychedelic remixes ever, a technological approximation of the tricks the acid-enhanced ear plays when listening to even the most familiar music. It's gorgeous, like watching an image gradually decompose on a xerox machine. Or, more accurately, a xerox of a xerox of a xerox, or even the granular decay of Alvin Lucier's "I Am Sitting In A Room" or David Wilson's "Stasis." Thing is, though, while it's a pretty academic experiment, there are Beatles melodies' in the middle, rising out of the noise, already complete in most listeners' minds.

The breaks in the middle of "Tomorrow Never Knows" are fantastic, the famous backwards guitar almost indistinguishable from John Lennon himself. On "Julia," Lennon's voice practically pixilates, but it is no less evocative of the subject's seashell eyes and windy smile, though the beach might now be the silvery landscape glimpsed in William Gibson's Neuromancer:

The city, if it was a city, was low and gray. At times it was obscured by banks of mist that came rolling in over the lapping surf. At one point he decided that it wasn't a city at all, but some single building, perhaps a ruin; he had no way of judging its distance. The sand was the shade of tarnished silver that hadn't gone entirely black. The beach was made of sand, the beach was very long, the sand was damp, the bottoms of his jeans were wet from the sand... He held himself and rocked, singing a song without words or tune.

(Thx, Boomy, for pointing out FMU's post.)

Posted by Jesse at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

"Get You Down" - Super Monster (download) (buy)
from Super Monster EP (2007)

(file expires October 24th)

Said it before, but I was reminded tonight during the Industrial Park Records CMJ showcase at the Tank: steal global, buy local.

That is: download/appropriate/pilfer whatever music you need by any means necessary, so long as you support local musicians when you can by going to their gigs, buying their tour CDs, a tee-shirt, or whatever. The locality, a slippery term in this age, is whatever neighborhood/karass/clique/scene you choose to define.

Posted by Jesse at 2:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Popcorn Superhet Receiver" - Jonny Greenwood (download)

"Smear" - Jonny Greenwood (download) (buy)
from The Jerwood Series, v. 2 (2006)

"Arpeggi" - Jonny Greenwood and Thom Yorke (download)
recorded 27 March 2005, Ether Festival, London

Skip through Jonny Greenwood's "Popcorn Superhet Receiver" at random -- dropping the cursor here or there -- and it could be an orchestra, it could be an electro-acoustic collage. Perhaps it's the anything-goes approach of Bodysong, perhaps it's the lonely Ondes Martenots of "Smear," perhaps it's the fact that he's a member of frickin' Radiohead, but "Popcorn" seems like it could disintegrate to fuzz and bleeps and chiming Rhodes at any moment. Really, though, it's just an orchestra, even if it blurs into sonic mirages.

The fact that Greenwood sustains it for 10 minutes before the ambient chords swell to Hitchcock thriller trills and explode into another world is impressive enough. Meanwhile, "Smear" -- taken from a compilation of new music performed the London Sinfonietta -- is a more unpredictable, though lacks the dramatic scope of "Popcorn," which will receive its US premiere in January as part of the Wordless Music Series.

Are they right and proper formal compositions? Are they just a rock musician dabbling in archaic tropes? Are they boring string excursions? Do they matter except as a research prelude to (say) this version of Radiohead's forthcoming "Arpeggi"? No answers here, of course. And though I'm excited to hear "Popcorn" performed live, I probably won't listen to it as much as "Arpeggi" or In Rainbows.

Posted by Jesse at 1:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"I Ain't Got No Home" (download) (buy)
"Dear Mrs. Roosevelt" (download) (buy)
"The Grand Coulee Dam" (download) (buy)

As Dylan obscurities go, his one-off 1968 Woody Guthrie tribute gig with the Band (billed as the Crackers) at Carnegie Hall is pretty fantastic. There's no reason for its rarity, given the fact that it is on an official release from a major label. Though it's the Band behind him, not the amazing Nashville session cats who populated the then-new John Wesley Harding, the sound still recalls a stately and tantalizing outgrowth of that just-released album, coupled with all the grace found during the long, lazy sessions in the Big Pink basement, concluded a few months earlier. "Dear Mrs. Roosevelt," especially, sounds drawn from the same landscape as the Biblical parables of JWH. The amphetamine urgency of the thin, wild mercury period is mellowed, not yet shot through with the anti-hope reflected through his mirrored sunglasses that marked his next tour, still six years away. (Thanks to Dr. Mooney for posting.)

Posted by Jesse at 1:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Summer Turns To High" - R.E.M. (download) (buy)
from Reveal (2001)
released by Warner Brothers

"Summer Turns To High" has lingered on a few summer playlists, and I've been meaning to post about it for a while. The season being what it is, though, I figure I better hop to it.

In his most excellent contribution regarding Stereolab's Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements to the recent Marooned anthology, Douglas Wolk made a sadly unattributed reference to an academic study that somehow proved that one hears the most meaningful music of his life at the age of 22-and-a-half. While that makes perfect sense for a discovery of Neutral Milk Hotel (as occurred roughly that month for me), it probably also goes a long way in explaining my undying attraction to R.E.M.'s generally reviled Reveal (which I've posted about before).

So many of the song's sins are circumstantial, like the sterile folktronica washes, which seems a totally understandable type of cutting edge to adopt for guys of R.E.M.'s age and could just as easily be reimagined with a Glenn Kotche-like narrative drumbeat (hinted at, for example, beneath the line "hopes and dragonflies"). Beyond that, it's R.E.M.: Michael Stipe's obtuse transformations, and -- especially -- that twangy Peter Buck guitar fill at the end of the chorus. What makes it compelling is that there is a song in there, like a shape in the shifting heat. What makes it divisive is how arbitrary the production is. It could be set in front any of those backdrops. It's beautiful, but -- for that -- feels spineless, musically speaking, only able to be appreciated properly by a 22-and-a-half year old wanting an R.E.M. album of his own.

"Summer Turns To High" hung around in morningtime with me for a good chunk of late summer, and was quite useful, nestled between the Beach Boys and John Fahey. I love the way the drums come in, the baroque arrangement under the verses, the subliminal high percussion part that comes in. And, in the fall, it will linger, too, as if it'd absorbed extra warmth to last as the fall arrives.

Posted by Jesse at 1:12 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"End of an Era" - Yo La Tengo (download)
from Old Joy OST (2006)
unreleased

(file expires September 23rd)

I'm not sure what the proper name of this tune is, but it's one of a few extended Yo La Tengo instrumentals in Kelly Reichardt's Old Joy. The voice at the top is Bonnie Prince Palace himself, Will Oldham, playing the role of Kurt with perfectly burnt detachment. With little overt drama, just submerged tensions rippling the surface, the picture plays like a short story -- no surprise, given that it was based on one by Jonathan Raymond. Like this YLT's contributions to the score, Old Joy is an extended mood piece, the whole reflected patiently in each of its parts. Absolutely worth seeing.

Posted by Jesse at 12:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Sometimes A Pony Gets Depressed" - Silver Jews (download) (buy)
from Tanglewood Numbers (2005)
released by Drag City

(file expires August 21st)

"That guy's a better songwriter than Bob Dylan," my friend, an aggressive and renowned contrarian, once said of the Silver Jews' David Berman. "I bet you didn't know that, did you?"

"No," I admitted. "I didn't." And, even having been informed, I'm still not sure if I do. Nonetheless, it's something to consider. The argument is not to take anything away from Dylan, or -- for that matter -- to even say that Berman is the g