The old made new…and M83

I’ve got a couple of “best reissues” blurbs up in PopMatters’ year-end extravaganza: Roy Harper’s Stormcock at #18 and Big Dipper at #4 . (Best new records went up yesterday….I forget who won, but it wasn’t Fleet Foxes at least. They came in second.)

Also a live review of that M83/School of Seven Bells show

I went in to Turn It Up yesterday and tried to order The Bug’s London Zoo, but the guy says it’s only available as a vinyl import and very, very pricey. Sigh.

Petra Haden in her own (non) words

I have a little feature interview with Petra Haden up at Blurt today. She’s pretty cool…half of the Petra Haden and Miss Murgatroid duo I reviewed a couple of weeks ago, friend of Mike Watt, collaborator with Yuka Honda and daughter of the bass god Charlie Haden…

Here’s a bit:

In her latest, Hearts and Daggers, a collaboration with Miss Murgatroid (aka Alicia J. Rose), Petra Haden loops baroque swaths of vocal sounds around the twining drones of violin and accordion. There's melody, emotion, depth and complexity there...but almost no words.

"Anytime I write a word, I hate it," Haden admitted in a recent phone interview, adding that she has only recently, in collaboration with Yuka Hondo called If By Yes, begun to experiment with lyrics. Still, she is not using words in the conventional way, to tell a story, to get a point across. "When I say a word, it's just something that I think fits. I'm not even thinking of a theme. I'm just, the note that I'm singing, in my head, sounds like the word 'silhouette.' And that word ‘silhouette' sounds like the note."

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Here she is covering the Beach Boys’ “God Only Knows”


Embedding is disabled on this video of “I Can See for Miles” but you can watch it at YouTube by going here:

Fuck yeah…other people’s lists

So I’m at the tea shop charging up my laptop, and idly rifling through the WFMU blog, and I find Brian Turner’s year-end list, which includes a band named Wounded Lion, and god-damn, he’s right, it’s awesome.

Here is a video of “Pony People”


Also on his list Mayyors, awesome hard-assed punk. (There is a wholly objectionable, nasty, gory video of “White Jeep” on YouTube, with better sound quality, but I just can’t put it on my blog page.)



I’m gonna check out the rest when I have more time, maybe tomorrow.

Still no power

...and the newspaper is saying it will take a week to ten days in some spots. Hope we're not one of those spots.

Five worst things about no power:
5. No email, except at the library
4. No hot food
3. No light
2. No heat (it's going down to 5 below tonight...we do have a wood stove, fortunately)
1. No water, so you can't flush the toilet

But think of all the oil we're saving this week.

Had a shower today at the YMCA today and feel positively giddy about it.

Iced in, powered down

We had a pretty ferocious ice storm last night. All night long you could hear the trees breaking in great cracking shudders, a hail of ice and then a thud...when we got up this morning, there were branches as thick as my thigh lying less than a foot from the house. We were very lucky that nothing fell on the roof. Anyway, we are out of power for at least the next few days. The wires have huge trees leaning on them and the power crews are overwhelmed. Unfortunately, the well pump and the furnace both require a certain amount of power so that means no heat and no water, as well as no lights (and no computers). Not a very good time.

I'm at the Brattleboro public library typing this, where the lights are on and the wireless works. I haven't had a shower in a day, but otherwise, things seem pretty normal here.

Anyway, if you find yourself with a little time to kill, I would recommend heading over to Dusted for a couple of really excellent year end's -- Cole Goins, who used to be program director for WXYC in Chapel Hill and Ben Donnelly. Especially Ben's because he's got a mix up and it's pretty damned great: the bug, benga, cheap time, dirtbombs, etc. etc. Go get it.

Recent purchases…Marc Ribot and Blues Control

Bill and I snuck off to Northampton last Sunday, where the local used CD store has LOTs more interesting records (or at least a bunch that I haven’t rifled through 1000 times). I ended up buying Marc Ribot and Ceramic Dog’s Party Intellectuals, an excellent, rough-edged and noisy take on Ribot’s jazz-Latin-no wave art…there’s even a Doors cover that I kind of like (“Break On Through”, god even the title makes me shudder, but the cover is pretty good). The best song, though, is called “Todo El Mundo Es Kitsch”.

Here’s Ribot and Ceramic Dog


I also picked up the ST Blues Control album, which earned grudging respect from the sales guy. (He mentioned that he’d seen them when they were still Water Spouts. We commiserated about the death of the Flywheel, where all the experimental bands used to stop by until the owner sold the building.) I’ve been playing the record in the car, and it is definitely not a car record, but I am starting to love it a little bit anyway…very distorted, mesmerizing, dirge-y stuff, with occasional bouts of extreme clarity.

Here they are playing a show in Philadelphia

Freaky stuff from Brother JT

Anyone who wants to know exactly how out-there rootsy garage and soul can get should check out the new vinyl-only album by Brother JT, Jelly Roll Gospel, reviewed yesterday at Blurt.

Brother JT
Jelly Roll Gospel
Drag City

How many guys could credibly play Terrastock and Little Stephen's Garage? Not many besides John Terlesky, AKA Brother JT. Here, on Jelly Roll Gospel, the visionary of Allentown straddles two, often separated worlds: garage rock and psychedelia. In a kind of "stone soup" approach to music making, Brother JT loads up the pot with every kind of roots music imaginable - blues, rock, R&B, soul, and reggae - then pulses it into a strange, mild-altering brew. His band, this time bassist Art DiFuria (of the Photon Band) and drummer Jamie Knerr (from Psyclone Rangers), are right there with him, pushing the limits of 1960s-influenced rock and soul. Classic rock tropes, a woozy 1960s organ, a sweltering Jimi-esque wah-wah guitar, a triumphant Sly and the whole damned Family Stone chorus are bent into fantastic new shapes. JT's music is familiar and deeply freaky at exactly the same time.

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Our brother at work:

Hey, this is kinda cool…he’s playing with Bardo Pond!