How Little We Know: Hoagy Carmichael

 Posted by
Feb 012010
 

Ain’t that the truth!

I don’t know much about Olde Tyme Musik, you know, all that pre-rock, not-even-blues-or-otherwise-proto rock stuff that some Townspeople, such as Hrrundivbakshi, hank fan, and cdm, dig. For years I didn’t want to get near that stuff. Very, very slowly I’ve accepted that it can be very good, even great. Ella Fitzgerald continues to be the Olde Tyme Musik figure I enjoy most. I like how precise and direct she is. Rosemary Clooney is cool too. Of the guys, I get a kick out of Tony Bennett and Dean Martin, but half of the pleasure is from laughing at them. They’re loveably goofy, like some of my Italian-American uncles. I’ve noticed that Nat King Cole is easy for me to dig when he’s fronting his small combo. On the other hand, I can usually leave the legendary Frank Sinatra. As I’ve stated before, he sounds like a dick.

Last night I watched To Have and Have Not for maybe the 10th time. It’s one of my favorite Olde Tyme Films. I really identify with Bogie’s character…Nah, I wish! There’s so much that I love about this film, and each time I watch it one of the things I love more and want to know more about is Hoagy Carmichael, who appears as the bandleader in the club in which most of the story is set. I can only do justice in expressing how I feel about him in my circa 1973, 5th grader terms:
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Last Man Standing: Helpful Songs

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Feb 012010
 

To help give a final push to Townsman Hrrundivbakshi‘s efforts at providing aid to Haiti, I thought it might be helpful to conduct a Last Man Standing challenge on Helpful Songs. The songs should contain the word “help” in the title or a word synonymous with help (eg, “aid”). As is often the case, who knows how far this challenge can go. I can only think of four songs that would fit the bill off the top of my head, including this one:
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No Irony, No Snark, Just an Appeal to Donate to the Haiti Disaster

 Posted by
Feb 012010
 

Fellow Townspeople:

I won’t take up valuable RTH time to tell you how much Haiti needs your help. What I will tell you is that I and my recording studio have been working with some amazing, talented, generous musicians and other folks to put on a benefit show in Washington, DC on Feb. 2. If you’re in town, please join us — 100% of your $15 admission will go to Voice Of Haiti, a charity founded by a couple of DC-area film-makers who run an incredibly tight non-profit ship.

If you can’t make the show — there are still ways you can help. One: head out to Voice Of Haiti right now to make an online donation. Two: wait until after the show, then donate at Indie Music for Haiti, a site we’re building to host high-quality video files from the event for folks who couldn’t make it. Beyond that, here are some details:

The basics:
Feb. 2, DC9, 1940 9th St. NW, Washington DC
Doors open at 8:30
Show starts at 9:00
$15

Lineup:

  • Tommy T (of Gogol Bordello) and the Abyssinia Roots Collective, in their debut public performance, delivering the Ethiopian jazz/dub goods
  • Sitali — one of DC’s best-kept musical secrets, featuring Sitali Khumalo, a featured performer with the Thievery Corporation
  • DC’s premier old-school ska orchestra, Eastern Standard Time
  • DC’s fave retro-mod, garage-soul groovers, The Ambitions, featuring Caz Gardiner
  • Spoonboy, the lead singer for the amazing Max Levine Ensemble, doing his agit-prop, solo Billy Bragg thing

…and here are a few details about Voice Of Haiti, for those of you who are healthily skeptical about charities with which you are unfamiliar: according to the IRS, Voice Of Haiti can honestly claim that 90% of all money raised actually goes to work “in country” — and they’ve been working through local volunteers there for many years. God bless the charities that are rushing to the scene to help in the country’s hour of need, but VOH has been there for years, focused on projects related to long-term agricultural/economic sustainability, trying to give Haitians a good reason *not* to live in the squalor of Port-au-prince.

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For Those Who Really Like Tom Waits OR Captain Beefheart BUT Are Lukewarm About the Other…

 Posted by
Jan 312010
 


The title of this thread is more specific than it needs to be, but in an All-Star Jam comment on the current SHOWDOWN poll (ie, SHOWDOWN: Tom Waits or Captain Beefheart?), Townsman geo began to get at some of the issues I’m hoping we can explore:

I voted Captain Beefheart in the current poll, but I also really like Waits. Despite their apparent surface similarities, big, deep hollering voices and a tendency toward the aggressively harsh sound, they really come from different places. Waits is much more of a traditionalist. He brings a junkyard’s worth of musical detritus to what is, at heart, a traditional approach to songcraft. Beefheart, at his best, almost completely obliterates the most basic conventions of the electric blues based music that he started out in.

I’ve been revisiting Tom Waits recently, through his new live album, Glitter and Doom. The song selection is pretty good, the band sounds great, the recording is nice and live sounding… There’s a lot to like about this as a live album, including a second CD entitled Tom’s Tales, which I’ve yet to spend time with and which I suspect may be the best part of the concert. However, I can’t help but thinking that, compared with Captain Beefheart, an artist I love and an artist who must have been influential in Waits’ early-80s refashioning of his musical arrangements along “junkyard” lines, I am lukewarm on Waits.

For me, as geo notes, Waits is still a traditionalist at heart. I find his vocal style and all the junkyard trimmings to be a little distracting. “You don’t have to work junkyard,” I want to tell him.
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Metal Machine Music: As It Was Meant to Sound

 Posted by
Jan 302010
 

Lou Reed is reissuing the Metal Machine Music album, remastered and in a variety of formats.

The Amine B Ring

The Amine B Ring

Details are available at Lou’s website.

I hadn’t remembered that it was originally quadrophonic, and the quad mix will be available. There will even be a Blu-ray version. I’m fine with the CD version I have.

Pitchfork is also reporting that there will be a European tour where he will be accompanied by a couple of fellow traveling noiseniks. One of them, Ulrich Krieger, was the man behind the rerecording of the piece done mostly with acoustic instruments and excerpted here, with the master sitting in:

I will report back if I hear of North American dates, because this is one you wouldn’t want to miss.

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My “Dream Band” Played Last Night On the TEE VEE

 Posted by
Jan 292010
 


Elvis Costello & Bruce Springsteen together with just about the best band I could ever put together (Nils Lofgren, Steve Nieve, Roy Bittan, Davey Faragher, and Pete Thomas).

Seriously, this would be my dream band right here. (Or at least my dream back-up band.)

99% of the time this kind of thing is a train wreck, but EC and Bruce have bands that actually know their place as back-up musicians.

Having the balls to play a Sam & Dave song at The Apollo to boot!

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Imagine a Sober Keith Richards

 Posted by
Jan 282010
 

I’m sure you’ve heard this story by now: Keef has been sober for the last 4 months. Can you handle this, Stones fans and general fans of vicariously living through any “Bad Boy?”

I say, from all accounts the guy has partied enough for a few lifetimes. If he decides to stick with this, he’s got nothing to lose. Imagine how much work it takes for him to get a buzz after all these years of saturation?

What really should be at issue is what this means for Keef’s creativity. Can there be a Rolling Stones led by a sober Keith Richards? Do The X-Pensive Winos become Ex-Pensive? Will passing around a bottle of root beer suffice while gathered around a mic, doing backing vocals with Mick and a couple of backing singers? Will Keef remember that it takes two hands to play guitar?

Free your mind, Townspeople, and share with us your thoughts on a world with a sober Keef. Thanks.

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