Happy Thanksgiving, y’all. Make sure you spin some Ohbliv today. I’m sure as hell thankful for all the time I’ve spent with his music this year.
Oh yeah, and if your extended family isn’t yet on board with impeaching the president and removing him from office, dinner tonight is a great time to work through that.
Cheers!
Was just in a crowded kitchen, mashing potatoes, listening to Dori Freeman’s new album, and thinking about how great a Thanksgiving soundtrack it makes. It hit me during “Ern & Zorry’s Sneakin’ Bitin’ Dog,” a tune written by Freeman’s grandfather, Willard Gayheart — Letters Never Read is what it sounds like to be surrounded by family. Carrying forward traditions and putting your own spin on them. Enjoying the company and quirks of aunts, uncles, kids, and in-laws. Her arrangement of “Ern & Zorry’s Sneakin’ Bitin’ Dog” is as simple as it gets — just her voice — like an old recipe rendered with care. It made for a moment of calm contentment amid a chaos for which I’m very fortunate.
Whatever you’re spinning, I wish you and yours a very happy Thanksgiving.
Dori Freeman — “Ern & Zorry’s Sneakin’ Bitin’ Dog” [Spotify/iTunes]
Remember my friend Gormie? He wrote guest posts a while back about the Flight soundtrack and about listening to blues in an MRI machine. During a post-election postmortem phone call, he mentioned that he had a Turkey Trot coming up and was looking for some new running music.
I made a Spotify playlist, and while the majority of songs on there wouldn’t necessarily be described as new, it should do the trick. If you have a third helping of stuffing and gravy tonight and need to run a few extra miles tomorrow, I reckon it’ll help you along. (Especially if you like the Pitch Perfect soundtrack.)
Check out the playlist below. I hope everyone has a great Thanksgiving.
Happy Thanksgiving! I hope that, in every way, from the gravy to the pecan pie, you get to do it how they do where you’re from.
In a few hours, I’ll be heading home to Norfolk for Thanksgiving for the first time in a handful of years. Normally I’d post a YouTube video of someone lighting a driveway on fire while trying to fry a turkey, but recent events have brought the holiday’s shady origins a little too close to the front of my mind, and it just doesn’t seem funny this time around.
Instead, I’ll leave you with a song about going home that contains the following verse, which seems fitting both for the holiday and for this particular moment in history:
Gee, it’s great to be alive
Takes the skin right off my hide
To think I’ll have to give it all up someday
That’s where being truly thankful starts. Hope everyone reading this has a great Thanksgiving.
Daniel Johnston — “To Go Home” [Spotify/iTunes]
To all you parsley, sage, rosemary and thyme slingin’ epicureans, hard at work on some delicious stuffing — don’t forget, Alton Brown says to cook it OUTSIDE THE BIRD to avoid having to choose between dry meat and salmonella — I present to you Sérgio Mendes’ scrumptious version of “Scarborough Fair.”
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
Sérgio Mendes and the Brazil ’66 — “Scarborough Fair” [Spotify/iTunes]
As we all know, Common Article 2 of the Geneva Conventions bars businesses from assaulting customers with Christmas music before Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, countless malls and restaurants ignore this directive, opening the door for the year’s most profitable holiday to encroach upon the year’s tastiest. (This encroachment isn’t quite as irksome as Walmart starting their in-store Black Friday sales earlier and earlier on Thursday, which strikes me as pure evil, but it sucks nonetheless.)
So you can rest assured that, to liberally paraphrase one of my favorite songs from Fiona Apple’s Extraordinary Machine album, “This is not about Christmas.” However, this post is about music featured in a movie that’s coming out on Christmas (sorry, once you start adding emphasis with italics, it’s hard to stop).
Tryptophantastic Week: Day 2 — Moon Hooch
(click here for Day 1 — Yellow Ostrich)
For Day 2 of Tryptophantastic Week, I’d like to flip Day 1 on its head. Remember how I talked about how special it is when you find a singer whose voice can double as an instrument? Well the opposite can be just as remarkable, as Moon Hooch exemplifies so resoundingly. The same fine folks who hosted my wife and I for the first night of our recent stay in New York City saw this big-apple-based trio open for former Soul Coughing singer Mike Doughty, and as our friends described their experience over some tasty desserts on Thanksgiving night, it was clear that they’d seen something singular and refreshing. They spoke of this unusual band that was comprised of two saxophones, drums, aaaaaand that’s it. So what can you do with a pair of saxes and some drums, not to mention a fantastic band name? A quick listen to Moon Hooch’s 13-track album proves that you can do a shit ton (which Urban Dictionary defines as “2000 assloads” or “The imperial equivalent to a metric buttload”) with just those 3 instruments when they’re in the right hands (or mouths, as the case may be). The first thing that jumped out as I listened was how they sounded like they were reading the imaginary sheet music to an extremely fun and energetic techno album. Songs build and release tension much like a house DJ might, taking a small sandbox, instrumentation-wise, and turning it into a crazy sandbox dance party. The second thing that stood out as I explored The Moon Hooch Album was a gradual realization that the two woodwinds were having a very animated, very fluid conversation with one another. And they’re not just chewing the cud about instrument cases and spit and stuff (I’m guessing that’s what woodwinds chat about over their tasty Thanksgiving desserts). Using voices that range from light and playful to Sam Elliott, speaking in staccato syllables, the two saxophones really engage one another, alternating between argument and agreement, putting ideas together, pulling them apart, all the while feeding off the furious energy generated by drums that are constantly shoveling more and more coals onto an ever-growing fire. I encourage you to join the — ahem [adjusts tie] — heated conversation by listening below to their song “#9,” which can be found and purchased on The Moon Hooch Album here.
Moon Hooch — “#9“
Tryptophantastic Week: Day 1 — Yellow Ostrich
I’ve had an incredible time sorting through the music I heard about from friends and family over the Thanksgiving break, and since I haven’t done a themed week in a while, I’d like to spend the next few days exploring some of the winners. Call it “Tryptophantastic Week.” The first of these winners, Yellow Ostrich, originally came to my attention courtesy of the fact that they’d been touring as one of the openers for Ra Ra Riot. Some of my Pennsylvania-based in-laws are planning on catching the tour’s rescheduled stop in Harrisburg tomorrow, so over the weekend I introduced them to the music of the other opener, the amazing Delicate Steve (“In-laws, meet Wondervisions; Wondervisions, in-laws”) and then spent some time introducing myself to Yellow Ostrich. As it turns out, it looks like YO won’t be playing in H-burg — the venue’s website says they are, the band’s site says they’re no longer with the tour. But for my folks’ sake, I sincerely hope I’m wrong, because Yellow Ostrich has something special going on that strikes me as a hallmark of seriously good musicianship. On occasion, you’ll come across a singer whose voice has an instrumental quality, where words seem to melt away and vocals fuse with the accompanying music in the same way that any single piece of a well-oiled orchestra blends in with its compatriots to create a cohesive musical expression. It’s extremely rare (Thom Yorke of Radiohead and Jónsi Birgisson of Sigur Rós are two canonized practitioners), but Yellow Ostrich exhibits that same quality, and their song “Mary” takes this idea to another level. “Mary” is a gorgeous song that starts out with carefully layered vocals that build until they they sound almost exactly like an accordion that’s expanding and contracting. I can’t tell you how much I love that real voices, which are created by breath escaping human lungs and traveling over vocal chords, are being used to mimic an instrument that, itself, mimics the production of the human voice. The resulting effect forms a conceptual loop that’s cooler than I can possibly describe, so listen for yourself below and click here to buy Yellow Ostrich’s album, The Mistress.
Yellow Ostrich — “Mary“
You Hear That 