Compact music commentary about artifacts new and old: I enthuse, I don't accuse, but I do refuse–to review anything lukewarm or colder!
Author: philovereem
Music monomaniac, retired English teacher, resident of Columbia, Missouri, former correspondent for ANOREXIC TEENAGE SEX GODS, READY TO SNAP, HITLIST, SUGARBUZZ, THE WAYBACK MACHINE, ROCK THERAPY, and THE FIRST CHURCH OF HOLY ROCK AND ROLL, co-lead singer of the non-legendary Wayne Coomers and the Original Sins of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
My wife Nicole and I have a long-running routine when we find ourselves sitting rapt in the midst of musical mastery.
Say we’re listening to The Stooges’ Funhouse. Characteristically, we will sit silent as the waves of thick riff-heat rifle through us and Ig’s hell-fired hollers wash around and over us, then one of us will break the silence by saying:
“I dunno–if these guys weren’t such sensitive pussies they’d be really good.”
Or Howlin’ Wolf:
“Honestly! I don’t know why they make a big deal about Wolf. His singing is so laid-back, and I need some intensity when I listen to the blues.”
Or The Ramones:
“This shit needs some synths or some strings or something. It sounds like demos, plus it drags.”
I love how the routine emerges unprompted–as it did again yesterday. We had just endured some absolutely horrid music at a local Chinese restaurant: either we were hearing some godforsaken album or a satellite radio station programmed by Satan, but the dreck was super high-school-choir-y a capella, the final song being a medley of hit movie themes for which some twisted asshole had written lyrics which summarized said movies! When we got home, I knew we needed to cleanse our minds and ears in a special way (no, DeBarge would have been the exact wrong thing), so I queued up Jimmy “Mr. 5 x 5” Rushing’s wonderful The Jazz Odyssey of James Rushing, Esq, a neat concept album that “tours” the locales–outside of Kansas City–where the great jazz singer made a major dent: New Orleans, Chicago, and New York. Rushing is backed on the record by a crack Buck Clayton-led band (his entire output while on Columbia is worth your time, especially a long-time house favorite, Rushing Lullabies), and is his usual irrepressible, high-spirited self. At the time of the recording, Rushing was already almost 40 years into his career, and sounds like he’s making his first record!
Nicole: “I wish we had a CD of that a capella movie tribute stuff. This Jimmy Rushing is so…uninspired.”
Me: “Yes. It lacks…buoyancy.”
Hey, click the track at the top, as well as the hyperlink for Rushing Lullabies, and you be the judge.
Short-shrift Division:
Jimmy Smith: Bashin’–The Unpredictable Jimmy Smith (Arrangements by Oliver Nelson)–“Bombastic” might not seem to be a good arrangement idea for a Smith session, but it actually works. A neat tension.
Shirley Scott: Queen of the Organ–She was, and here Stanley Turrentine weaves some serious blues sax in and out of her lines.
I bet every Wanda Jackson fan can remember where they were when they first heard her.
My good friend Bryan Stuart and I were riding up U.S. 67 after midnight, sometime in the mid-Eighties, on the way to his home in Jacksonville from Little Rock. Of course, we had the radio on–Arkansas when it’s late at night, you know. We’d just witnessed a classic show–Gatemouth Brown, with Webb Wilder and the Beatnecks–and we were in very high spirits. Suddenly, a feral voice ripped a hole in our post-concert meditation:
Some people like to rock
Some people like to roll
But movin’ and groovin’s
Gonna satisfy my soul!
I was like, “Fuck!”; I like to avoid degrading the language, but that is what I was like. At that point in my life, I was still foolishly believing I knew what I needed to know about rock and roll history (bulletin: I still don’t). Before it’d started, the song was over–ahhh, rockabilly–and like thunder claps after lightning cuts the skies, our minds were cuffed in the ensuing silence.
“Who the hell was that?”
I didn’t know, and I don’t think Bryan did. Oddly, I was sure the singer was black*, though today she doesn’t sound at all that way to me–as if one can always tell. Eventually, some way, the Queen of Rockabilly, the Wildcat of Maud (Oklahoma), Ms. Wanda Jackson, was revealed to me, and she’s been a fixture on my turntables ever since. Singing on the radio before Elvis did, forced by the Opry to cover her shoulders (she never went back), writing songs in class instead of doing homework, deliberately aiming to bring a Marilyn Monroe-influenced sexual shock to the early rock and roll stage, she is a true heroine–she did all that before she’d turned 19.@
This all comes to mind because I’m engrossed in her excellent new autobiography Every Night is Saturday Night. It’s charming, spunky, and revelatory–and you forget it’s a still-active octogenarian telling you the story, one of the last titans still standing.
*Oddly, Wanda is described on her Wikipedia page as belonging to the genre of “black country rock.” But I get that. And by the way, did you know that the Jackson classic “Fujiyama Mama” was a cover version?
@Nicole and I were lucky enough to see Wanda play here in Columbia in 1998, in the old parking lot of Shakespeare’s Pizza, with Robbie Fulks opening. She was very high energy–and she was 60 then!
Short-shrift Division:
SZA: CTRL–As I told my students last week, it is great time to be alive if you’re an r&b fan. This young lady can really write–in some ways, it’s one of the most confessional r&b recordings ever–and she has an ear for settings that is white acute. A St. Louis, Missouri, product.
The Lester Young Trio–1944. Prez in amazing form (check the stunning “I’ve Found a New Baby”!), and Nat King Cole’s very fleet and fluent pianistics provide a bracing contrast to Young’s laconic lines.
One of the great jazz documents of the Civil Rights Movement is Max Roach’s We Insist! Freedom Now Suite, featuring Roach’s powerful drumming, lyrics by the great Oscar Brown, Jr., a surprising and scintillating appearance by grand ol’ man Coleman Hawkins, and the defiant vocals of Roach’s then-wife, Abbey Lincoln. Recorded in 1960, it’s an essential listening experience for observers of Black History Month (personally, I make it a year-long occasion).
Less well-known is Lincoln’s Straight Ahead, a kind of sequel to We Insist! released in 1961, with Roach back in the drummer’s chair, and blazing support from the dynamic duo of Booker Little on trumpet and Eric Dolphy on his magic reeds. Also, Hawkins is again present, and jazz fans will recognize that the names Mal Waldron, Art Davis, and Julian Priester further ensure a very high performance level. Straight Ahead is less explicit than its predecessor; also, its tone is more celebratory, with adaptation of pieces by Harlem Renaissance stalwarts Paul Lawrence Dunbar and Langston Hughes shining brightly. Lincoln also sings the heck out of “Blue Monk,” for which she provides lyrics. However, the record ends on an appropriately steely note, with Lincoln’s own “Restribution.” All in all, it might be my favorite record by a singer who merits a reintroduction to the listening public.
Short-shrift Division:
Carnival continued at the Overeem abode with the Young Tuxedo Brass Band’s Jazz Begins, recorded on the streets of New Orleans by Atlantic Records in 1959. Kudos to my friend Paul Howe for putting it in my ear-line!
Traditional New Orleans jazz (not otherwise known as Dixieland or ragtime) experienced a major if short-lived comeback, with local legends who’d been playing around town on a regular basis for years suddenly finding themselves recording for Atlantic. These records are hard to find these days, but they are warm and very wonderful. My favorite series is Riverside’s Living Legends of New Orleans Jazz, which featured trombonist Jim Robinson, legendary pianist Earl Hines (a Pennsylvania ringer), clarinetist and saxophonist Louis Cottrell, multi-instrumentalist Peter Bocage, and (my favorites, and also recorded by Atlantic) the husband-wife cornet-piano/vocal team of De De and Billie Pierce. The couple, who passed away in New Orleans within a year of each other in 1973 and 1974, are underrated in the general annals of American music and aren’t exactly the first names the gen-pop think of when New Orleans comes to mind. However, they made much dynamite, intimately raucous music together, with Billie’s lusty blues vocals and saloon-tinted tonk piano the spark riding down the fuse. Sometimes I think she’s major.
Try the full album (above) and, since it’s Carnival Time, seek out Les Blank’s Always for Pleasure, where you can glimpse the pair at work, though not in this clip.
Jazz has produced few spousal tributes as delicate, as deep, or as powerful as vibraphonist Walt Dickerson’s To My Queen, recorded on September 21, 1962, in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey–Rudy Van Gelder behind the glass, of course.
Dickerson’s playing is concentrated and clear, conjuring a warm state of love that is varied, and constant. The 17-and-a-half minute title piece (above) gives the music a compositional framework that will stick to your ear’s (and mind’s) ribs, but allows plenty improvisational space–which with this unit is crucial. Besides Dickerson, the great Andrew Hill is on piano, and the young Andrew Cyrille (just before participating in a very different session with Cecil Taylor) and George Tucker, on drums and bass respectively, nearly steal the show from the leader. Keep your head inclined toward the speakers during the quieter passages, and you’ll be rewarded by Cyrille’s magically startling transitions out of them, and Tucker’s telepathic conversations with the leader during them. Keep this record in mind for Valentine’s Day.
Short-shrift Division:
In case you haven’t got the message already and are in search of albums that, end-to-end, won’t let you down, please trust me on these, each of which I have test-driven several times for y’all:
Nona Hendryx & Gary Lucas: The World of Captain Beefheart–You may not think you need to hear Hendryx singing Beefheart but you do: she transforms them. She’s playing his music so all the girls will come meet the monster tonight. And believe it or not, along with Lucas’ knife-point slide scraping aural graffiti onto the songs, you’ll get some stellar r&b/soul/doo-wop-styles ballads. You knew Van Vliet wrote those, right?*
Princess Nokia: 1992–Why rob yourself of the inspiring experience of listening to this young woman of color defiantly stepping to our current national ugliness–which she really never explicitly acknowledges–and backing it up several steps? After two listens, you’ll be chanting along with her, whether she’s repping for the streets of New York, vaunting her unconventional physique, abjuring recipes as she takes to the kitchen, coming right back at ’em after missing a layup, or pointedly taking her place with her fellow brujas.**
Everyone worth his salt has a private pantheon of classics that can only be fully appreciated “performed” on air guitar into his bedroom mirror. Maybe you didn’t need a mirror; I did–I was building myself, sometimes confronting myself. Maybe you lip-synched; I sang myself hoarse. I’m sure we can tell from a long, hard, cold-eyed look at our BMAG Top 10 more about ourselves than we’d really like to know, but I’m gonna roll out mine and cogitate.
1) Manfred Mann: “Pretty Flamingo” (see above)–I related to the yearning in Paul Jones’ singing, the hopelessness of the lyric (in the face of pulchritude), and the slashing, ultra-miked rhythm guitar…perfect for the mirror!
2) Cher: “Half-Breed”–As the result of atrocities committed by my sixth-grade teacher, I had a sensitivity to social justice as a young man. And I had a crush on Cher. In the mirror, I always felt like I was singing to her, not with her. Plus: that husky voice, which has some edge on it here, was perfect for a dude like me.
3) Richard Hell & The Voidoids: “Love Comes in Spurts”–Why couldn’t Hell and Quine be one person, and I be that person? It’s fascinating to observe what the mirror does. This comes out of the gate like Little Richard, and though I now know the facts, it still cuts like an axe.
4) Gary Stewart: “Single Again”–Really, any Stewart classic. Oh, to be able to sell a song this undeniably. What a great actor, or was he?
5) The Ramones: “Questioningly”–Again, a great rhythm guitar song is a great air guitar song for the mirror. Also, it’s great FUN to try to match all of Joey’s wonderful nuances; this is truly a great singer’s greatest singing performance. “Looked at huh cluss / Fahssed huh into view.”
6) Howard Tate: “Get It While You Can”–I wanna be black…let’s see. Mr. Tate was always a top-shelf mask, and the lyric always suited my philosophical disposition.
7) Joe Tex: “Hold What You Got”–Along the same lines, but a guy can get lost in an arrangement and a singing performance of such delicacy. You have to pay close attention to hang in with Jimmy Johnson’s guitar; you can’t forget the bell chimes on “1-2-3”; you have to nail Joe’s sublime falsetto flight. Mirror difficulty level a 10.
8) Richard and Linda Thompson: “When I Get to The Border”–There’s that rhythm guitar again (plus some other impressive stringed instruments). And a fine, fine outlook–for those days when you want to resign from the human race. Or lift a pint or two (I often had when I stepped to the broom handle).
9) Hüsker Dü: “Eight Miles High”–Face it, you didn’t know The Byrds’ words anyway (likely, neither did Mould); just look forward, as we often do, to screaming bloody murder. And dreaming of playing guitar this way.
10) Lou Reed: “Turn to Me”–Perhaps it’s strange that a Reed fan as serious as I am would choose this one to simulate, but, note: the rhythm guitar (I’ve always thought I could play it, maybe that’s it), the humor, the lyrics…and the warmth. Oh yes: the bass playing!
What are your Top 10 songs for yelling and strumming into the mirror?
Today at Stephens College, where I teach freshman comp with a pop music focus, I executed one of those rare lessons that works on every level you hope it will. Feel free to steal and/or adapt it!
My students’ next essay assignment is to focus in on a music-related topic they’re interested in, then choose the appropriate expository mode for exploring it. On Tuesday, we reviewed some of the expository modes I’m encouraging them to try (comparison/contrast, problem-solution, description, definition, cause-effect, classification), but I sensed some anxiety and disconnect. As of last night, partially due to being hella busy this week, I still didn’t have a solution for that condition, so I just slept on it, then woke up with this (funny how that happens to teachers):
In class, we are going to listen to (and watch) four excellent singers–Billie Holiday, Anita O’ Day, Jamilia Woods, and Dolly Parton–in action.
As you listen and watch, you are going to think about the following expository modes of analysis and writing, and jot down corresponding observations you make in your notebook or on your device:
Description (external) – What does the singer sound like and how does she present herself?
Definition (internal) – Who or what does the singer seem to be?
Classification – How would you classify the singer, according to official and unofficial terms of classification?
Cause –> Effect – In listening closely to the singer, what effects do you feel as a result of her performance? What specific aspects of the performance cause those effects?
Comparison/Contrast – How are these singers similar? How do they differ?
By Sunday night, transfer your findings in coherent, expanded, and more specific form to the associated discussion board, and be prepared to respond meaningfully to one fellow students’ post.
We began with the above clip from “The Sound of Jazz”–the famous last hot flame from the doomed Billie Holiday. I prompted them by reviewing the above modes, then played the track for them. Afterwards, just for modelling’s sake, I asked students to share some of their observations:
Description: “soulful,” “relaxed,” “rhythmic.”
Definition: “A woman who knows pain.” “She has experienced a lot.” “She is a singer who connects with her band and the audience.”
Classification: “Blues singer.” “No! Jazz singer!”
Cause–>Effect: “She was glowing!” –> It mesmerized me.” “She was getting in tune, effortlessly…”–> “It left me in awe.”
I could not have responded more accurately myself. From the evidence, my idea seemed to be working. I’ll know for sure when I see the discussion board posts and the essay rough drafts.
The other tracks I played them (I need little reason to show the first to every class I teach, regardless of subject).
I realize that many of the choices below are actually releases from 2017, but they are fresh enough and so hard to have gotten one’s hands on that I’m-a have to count them. Happy hunting, and enjoy the above playlist of highlight tracks (excluding the Dawkins album, as no video was available.
Nona Hendryx and Gary Lucas: The World of Captain Beefheart
‘Twas a busy day tutoring students, observing student teachers, and socializing with friends, but I did slip in some tunage. I was in Nicole’s car, for which I’ve prepared not one but TWO eight-gig mp3 players (I’m a sick man). Her old standby is packed with New Orleans and Memphis music, plus the purt-near complete recordings of Dead Moon and Pierced Arrows; the other I rotate new acquisitions in and out of to try to keep her up to date, and it happened to be plugged into the system yesterday. I rather casually whipped through the playlists and landed first on a neat compilation of recordings made for the Celluloid label. The highlights:
Lightnin’ Rod’s (really, Last Poet Jalal Nuriddin’s) jive tribute to the wiles of Miss “Doriella du Fontaine.” His rap is strong, but there’s somebody baaaaad compin’ and fillin’ on guitar…
A classic team-up of two individualists who’ve had sone questionable moments lately but were apocalyptically on-point on “World Destruction,” under the guise of Time Zone. Afrika Bambaataa: “Who wants to be a president or a king?” John Lydon: “Me!”
A stone jam by Material, featuring honorary Rolling Stone Bernard Fowler on vocals and another baaaad man riffin’ on guitar. Funny how all three of these recordings mask a legend or two!
I also squeezed in this terrific recent release from Analog Africa, with sharp guitar, great percussion and powerful vocals–one of my favorite records of 2017.
I achieved my goal: to write about what I listened to every day in January, and thereby get my writing in better shape. I hope that, at times, I’ve been interesting, pleasurable, and–especially–useful to read. I’m going to shoot for keeping it up until December 31.
As I reported earlier in this space, I teach a freshman composition / pop music class at Stephens College, and I’d assigned my students the task of not only highlighting every record they’d heard in this year’s Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll (so I could inventory their listening experiences and tailor my instruction to them), but also choosing an album or two they hadn’t heard, listening to it in full, then posting a reaction / assessment of it. This assignment has ended up being one of the best I’ve ever given. We’ve been taking about it avidly ever since they began working on it, and they took their explorations seriously. So seriously, in fact, that they began assigning me homework! One of my sharpest and most consistently surprising students chose to test-drive Power Trip’s Nightmare Logic, loved it, and insisted in her commentary that I check it out myself. I am not much of a metal fan, I’ll admit, but, especially on the above song, they have a punk power that pulled me in–and, hey, I could understand the lyrics (hmmm–a sign I am getting old)! I wrote the student about my reaction, and made a commitment to keep following the group; her typical interests are Latin music, EDM, and old school rhythm and blues!
Another student, who’d earlier this semester laughed at me because I had not heard of Cardi B, recommended not that I listen to something I’d asked her to explore from the list, but that I listen to something she’d picked out on her own: in this case, some “early” Cardi B, my objective being “hearing” the difference between her explosive current work and where she started. Specifically, she asked me to listen to (and watch, since I’d made a big deal about Cardi’s videos) “Foreva.” Actually, I had to admit that, while she hadn’t come into her own, really, that she started off a pretty effective MC. Here’s what I turned in, via email, on time:
Cardi B: “Foreva”
I hate to see women at each other’s throats, but they have to pay for that kind of back-stabbing! (Her teeth look fine!) All in all, her flow’s pretty good, but, you’re right, the lyrics are kind of standard. However, the chorus and music are pretty catchy, and I like the video. I swear, that woman looks different in every single video–facially different! My grade: A-
The student also asked that, since I frequently belabor students with my current passions (lately, Princess Nokia, Amodou and Mariam, P-Funk), I be “forced” to deal with one of hers: the Chicago MC Lil’ Durk. Again, she assigned me a specific song:
Don’t get the impression I was interested in any apple-polishing:
Lil’ Durk & Tee Grizzley: “What Yo City Like?”
Now, see, this reminds me why I didn’t get all enthusiastic about Durk: he rushes too much, and I don’t hear that much character in his delivery. The song’s subject matter is sad, but that’s how it is, and I like reports from the front. The detail is pretty good, but it could be more specific. Tee Grizzley didn’t make much of an impression on me, either.(actually they sound a little too alike to be teaming up). My grade: B
We all had a blast–I got some smart and entertaining feedback on my reaction, and, most important, the students seemed very excited about future explorations and exchanges. It must certainly seem a no-brainer, but these kind of exchanges are among the most effective tricks in the teaching book. I was happy to realize I hadn’t forgotten them, though, honestly, their application wasn’t pre-planned. Spontaneity has its place in the classroom, too, and not one in the darkest cobwebbed corner.
While we’re on the subject of teaching, during my time as a high school British literature teacher, I used to teach mini-lessons under the heading “Brit Lit Songwriter Series,” during which we’d explore the stylistic and thematic traits of some of the U.K. and Irish greats: Richard Thompson, Ray Davies, Shane MacGowan, Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell, Van Morrison, Strummer-Jones, and even Lemmy! The sneaky purpose of such units was to loosen students up for literary analysis; they tended not to realize they were doing what I wanted them to when music is involved. To my great regret, I never got to fashion one of these side-trips around the great Ian Dury.
Yesterday, in The Lab, I listened to a recent Dury acquisition. Have you ever had the realization you’ve relied to heavily on a particular artist’s greatest hits or best-of package, to the neglect of great album tracks? It became clear that I’d done so with Dury, as I was repeatedly delighted by tracks from New Boots ‘n’ Panties, the CD in question, that I’d never heard before:
(A great Father’s Day track!)
(A guaranteed public school smash!)
(A quite timely skewering of a misogynist!)
(A riotous character study!)
Talk about some opportunities for analysis, thematic investigation, and literary term application (by the way, a dollop of naughtiness always helps, and, in such cases as these when they actually arose in class, I always kept in mind the old Raymond Chandler idea about Shakespeare, and I’m paraphrasing and tweaking out a gendered noun: “Without vulgarity, there is no complete human.”):
Good evening, I’m from Essex In case you couldn’t tell My given name is Dickie I come from Billericay And I’m doing very well
Had a love affair with Nina In the back of my cortina A seasoned-up hyena Could not have been more obscener She took me to the cleaners And other misdemeanours But I got right up between her Rum and her Ribena
Well, you ask Joyce and Vicky If candy-floss is sticky I’m not a blinking thicky I’m Billericay Dickie And I’m doing very well
I bought a lot of Brandy When I was courting Sandy Took eight to make her randy And all I had was shandy Another thing with Sandy What often came in handy Was passing her a mandy She didn’t half go bandy
So, you ask Joyce and Vicky If I ever took the mickey I’m not a flipping thicky I’m Billericay Dickie And I’m doing very well
I’d rendez-vous with Janet Quite near the Isle of Thanet She looked more like a gannet She wasn’t half a prannet Her mother tried to ban it Her father helped me plan it And when I captured Janet She bruised her pomegranate
Oh, you ask Joyce and Vicky If I ever shaped up tricky I’m not a blooming thicky I’m Billericay Dickie And I’m doing very well
You should never hold a candle If you don’t know where it’s been The jackpot is in the handle On a normal fruit machine
So, you ask Joyce and Vicky Who’s their favourite brickie I’m not a common thicky I’m Billericay Dickie And I’m doing very well
I know a lovely old toe-rag Obliging and noblesse Kindly, charming shag from Shoeburyness My given name is Dickie I come from Billericay I thought you’d never guess
So, you ask Joyce and Vicky A pair of squeaky chickies I’m not a flaming thicky I’m Billericay Dicky And I’m doing very well
Oh golly, oh gosh Come and lie on the couch With a nice bit of posh From Burnham-on-Crouch My given name is Dickie I come from Billericay And I ain’t a slouch
So, you ask Joyce and Vicky About Billericay Dickie I ain’t an effing thicky You ask Joyce and Vicky I’m doing very well
Living To Listen 