Good lord, does John Vanderslice know how to Kickstart.
There’s just a day left in the Kickstarter campaign Vanderslice launched in mid-February to finance his new album, Dagger Beach, and even though he’s already received roughly 410% of the funds he was hoping to raise, I can’t resist telling you about the “very sweet, special, awesome” rewards you can get your hands on if you contribute in the next 24 hours.
I was more than a little sad when reports of Dave Brubeck’s death started to surface yesterday afternoon. It’s weird, mourning the death of someone you never met and likely never would, but Brubeck’s music was very important to my parents when they first started dating, and it was especially important to my father, who himself died a few years ago.
When my vinyl habit started gaining steam a few years back, I set a few ground rules that were designed to keep things from spinning out of control, wallet-wise. “Just old stuff” was the first one. I told myself I’d stick to records released in vinyl’s heyday, and I tried for a while, but that notion was doomed from the start. As financially convenient as living in the past — a past I wasn’t even alive to see and hear for myself — would be, it doesn’t make sense. Too many amazing new songs are pressed to vinyl each year, and depriving my turntable of the chance to spin them is just plain cruel. (Nobody puts Pioneer PL-510A in the corner, OK?) Once the floodgates opened, I had to come up with new new-vinyl-buying rules, one of which comes into play when thinking about Pretty & Nice’s new Us You All We EP.
If you’ve been reading this here blog for a while, you may have seen me mention my friend, the musical sherpa, Clay. Well last August, Clay gave me one of the best birthday presents I’ve gotten in my entire life: a generous starter collection of 45’s, cradled by a 7-inch Peaches record crate. This is a short video of my reaction upon being given this gift. There was tons of great stuff in there — everything from Queen to Radiohead and back again — and in the nine months since, I’ve had lots of fun exploring and expanding this collection (probably too much fun on the expansion front, but WHATEVER). So for Clay’s birthday, I’ve done the only reasonable thing — I’ve assembled a tactical playlist from my seed set of 7-inch records entitled “H-A-P-P-Y B-I-R-T-H-D-A-Y” (you’ll see why), accompanied by a quick, solo game of Adjective Battleship for each one. Let’s do dis!
When I wrote this past weekend about Black Girls’ new album Hell Dragon, I mentioned that one of my favorite parts of seeing live music is expecting the unexpected. Even if you’ve seen a band before, you never know what you’ll find at their next show. Coincidentally, when I was finishing dinner before heading over to the Hell Dragon release party at the Camel, I was blindsided by a totally unexpected musical surprise, but it was a piece of recorded music — one that I’d heard a zillion times, for that matter — that did the blindsiding. To be painfully honest, I first heard Bettye LaVette’s “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces” by accident. I needed to listen to “Pick Up the Pieces” by Average White Band (don’t ask) and absentmindedly let Spotify play through the song title search results. Quick side note — Spotify searches make for the strangest playlists you’ll ever hear. When “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces” came on, I heard LaVette’s deep, expressive and soulful voice placed against a sweet, southern backdrop of twangy pedal steel and lazy drums, piano and bass, and I fell for the juxtaposition right away. It was a powerful moment of discovery, one I got to relive when I finally found a used copy of The Scene of the Crime, the album on which “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces” appears, at Deep Groove Records on Saturday. At dinner a few hours later, I shared news of my vinyl find with Robbie, a friend whose brain is a musical encyclopedia, and that’s when he blindsided me. “Oh yeah, The Scene of the Crime. You know her band on that album is Drive-By Truckers?” Bam. In that moment, a wormhole opened up and two treasured parts of my musical universe were suddenly and permanently connected. I couldn’t believe it, nor could I wait to give the whole album another listen, this time with the knowledge of who was providing that sweet, southern backdrop. Listen to the song below to see what I mean and click here to buy The Scene of the Crime. Who knows what surprises await when you do!
Bettye LaVette — “Somebody Pick Up My Pieces“
Biggie said it, and time and time again we see how right he was: “The more money you make, the more problems you get.” Take Canadian rapper/singer/serial blog muse Drake, for example. The man has “Trust Issues,” an emotional hangup that would seem to fall squarely within the subset of problems about which Biggie waxed philosophical. It’s a shame, because trust is the foundation of any healthy relationship, and even famous people deserve love. And while I don’t have millions of dollars and can’t exactly relate to Drake’s worries that bitches are going to slip something in his drinks, trust does figure prominently when I’m thinking about how to dole out my dozens of dollars when I’m at the record store, as I was this past Saturday.
Jason Isbell is one of my favorite musicians to follow on Twitter, in part because he has a fantastic philosophy about musical guilty pleasures. He summed this doctrine up perfectly on October 1 of this year, in a tweet that read, “There should be no guilty pleasures. Feel guilty about not enjoying things. Enjoy everything you can.” Those 102 characters made me so happy (as did some similar comments he made in an interview with Hear Ya), because they encapsulated my long held conviction that music is entirely what you make of it — you can dwell all you want on a band’s faults or a record’s weaknesses, but it’s way more fun to celebrate the aspects of that band or record that bring you joy. One reason this is true is that music, in many ways, is a personal experience. Sure, concerts can double as social events, and making music is extremely interactive, but the way we react to the songs we hear through our headphones is as personal as it gets. Sounds travel down our uniquely shaped ear canals, hit our one-of-a-kind ear drums and make their way up to our beautifully peculiar brains, and no two reactions are ever the same, so why apply a collective construct like shame to such a wonderfully solipsistic phenomenon? This idea jumped to the front of my mind when I was flipping through singles at Plan 9 and found a 7-inch single that was released to promote PCU, my favorite “Oh man, I can’t wait to get to college, it’s gonna be so awesome!” movies of my adolescence. My inner 14-year-old was beyond thrilled. I have such fond memories of, and strong mental associations with, the two featured tracks — Mudhoney’s cover of Elvis Costello’s “Pump It Up” and George Clinton and Parliament Funkadelic’s recording of “Stomp” — that I honestly couldn’t believe what I was seeing. It was as if I had stumbled across the glowing contents of the Pulp Fiction briefcase in that record bin (And it was just $3!). For a moment, I felt silly for my enthusiasm, but just as quickly, I realized I had found a glowing (literally — the vinyl is red!) testament to the fact that value is in the eye, or ear, of the listener, and that even though a record may only fetch a few bucks on ebay, it can still feel like a totally priceless artifact. If you’re as crazy about PCU as I am, you can bid on your own copy of the single here, and listen below to “Pump It Up” and “Stomp.” And don’t forget, no classes before 11, and beer is your best friend, so drink a lot of it. Now, can you blow me where the pampers is?
Mudhoney — “Pump It Up” (Elvis Costello cover)
George Clinton – “Stomp“
Vinyl Acquisition Alert… The Artists: Band of Horses/Cee Lo Green. The Album: Georgia. The Store: Plan 9. The Price: $6.99.
Did everyone catch the recent Weezer/Foster the People cover swap? The exchange began on August 4, when Rivers Cuomo armed himself with a lyric sheet and led the rest of Weezer in a cover of Foster the People’s hit song, “Pumped Up Kicks.” Foster the People reciprocated just a week later by performing Weezer’s classic “Say It Ain’t So.” The whole thing oozes postmodernism — the awareness of what another band is doing 2,718 miles away, the printed-out lyrics, the replication of something that was just created… but you know what else it oozes? Goodwill. Mutual respect. I love it. It’s that same positive energy that made me so eager to get my hands on the split 7” record that finds Band of Horses and Cee Lo Green performing a similar cover swap, and I finally found my copy on Saturday at Plan 9. It makes me really happy to see musicians reveling in one another’s creativity and success, especially when they’re so stylistically different and willing to leave their comfort zones. Band of Horses, who are known for a more brooding brand of rock, enlist the University of Georgia marching band in a wonderfully boisterous rendition of Cee Lo’s “Georgia,” and Cee Lo lends his characteristically soaring voice to an uncharacteristically electro-poppy cover of “No One’s Gonna Love You.” The result is a heart-warming artifact of artistic generosity, and I hope you’ll take a moment to check both tunes out below. You can buy Band of Horses’ cover of “Georgia” here and Cee Lo’s cover of “No One’s Gonna Love You” on his album Lady Killer here.
Band of Horses — “Georgia”
Cee Lo Green — “No One’s Gonna Love You”
The Artists: No BS! Brass Band and Black Girls. The Album: No BS! Brass Band VS Black Girls. The Store: The Interweb. The Price: $6.
I have my friends Josh and Caitlin to thank for No BS! Brass Band. They’d seen No BS! perform a number of times, and it was clear when they talked about the group that something special was going on. Seeing that type of enthusiasm in friends is always a sign of good things to come, and when I finally got to see No BS! at the Camel this past winter, I had an incredible time. Their sound is big and inviting, and in between their powerful and intricately arranged original songs, they covered “Thriller” and “Take On Me,” both of which were ridiculously fun. Every time I’ve seen them since, I’ve felt that same sense of fun, so I was bummed that I couldn’t make it to either night of the two-part Balliceaux release party for the new split 7″ record they just released with fellow Richmond band Black Girls. When I found out about this limited-pressing record, entitled No BS! Brass Band VS Black Girls, I got really excited and bought a copy off the label’s website, thinking they might run out quickly, MAYBE EVEN DURING THE RELEASE PARTY (I do the same thing with movies I’m jazzed up about — I always think they’re going to be totally crowded, so I rush through the popcorn buying process to make sure I get connecting seats). My copy came in the mail this weekend, and I’d never heard Black Girls’ music, but their song “Broadway” gave an outstanding first impression, sounding sophisticated and full — the word “jaunty” also comes to mind, but do people really use that word? — with No BS! providing backup firepower. On the other side, No BS! contributes a fantastic new version of “Ain’t Even Gonna Call Ya,” one of my favorites to see live. Check out a live version of the song below, and if you’re vinyl-inclined, order your copy of the split 7” here.
Life Cycle Week, Stage 3: Wilco
(Check out Stage 1: Lianne La Havas here and Stage 2: Vampire Weekend here)
Is happiness a bad thing for music? Everyone knows the cliché of the prodigious musician who just isn’t as good after getting clean, and that some of rock & roll’s most venerated talents died young as a result of a mix of drugs and depression. So does that mean that successful, veteran rockers should pack up their Telecasters and bust out the shuffleboard? That seemed to be the sentiment when Death Cab for Cutie recently released Codes and Keys, a record that many people dismissed for not being melancholy enough. But I don’t buy it. Maybe it’s because I tend to get emotionally attached after following someone’s career, but I like when musicians seem happy, and that’s one of the reasons I’m digging Wilco’s cover of the Nick Lowe song, “I Love My Label.” Some context: Wilco just founded their own record label, dBpm Records, which is notable in part because Wilco’s dispute with Reprise Records over the label’s refusal to release the band’s breakthrough album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, made them poster children for sticking to one’s creative guns in the face of corporate pressure. That was 2001, and ten years later, it’s wonderful to hear the band relish their success as they begin this new chapter of their career with dBpm’s first release, a 7” single of new song “I Might,” with the delightfully ironic “I Love My Label” B-side. My copy came in the mail on Saturday, and I fell for both songs right away. “I Might” sounds like a band having fun — fun fuzzy bass, fun driving snare, fun everything; and “I Love My Label” is the cherry on top of an exciting moment in the band’s career. Founding dBpm Records means that no one can tell Wilco their music isn’t good enough to be released (except Jeff Tweedy). Check out both songs below, and if you’re a vinyl person, click here to buy the 7” single.
“I Love My Label”
“I Might”
You Hear That 