...in other words, time to air some more rare recordings from the days of youth. (It's Sunday, which means I didn't hit the post button then.)
I think this here, "Kudzu", is one of the first times I played with Aaron Kenner with "tape" rolling. It's an early song, he wrote it in college I think. I always had a weakness for Dm bluegrass type songs. On the later occasions that we played this live -- such as at Coupe de Ville's, a notorious University of Virginia watering hole for 20-21-year-olds -- with marginally fewer bad notes and better singing, "Kudzu" was a treble assault. For some reason, I liked to add overdrive if not distortion to the organ sound.
Also, I just wanted to point out that Aaron wrote the songs that we played -- if there's a "-Rikken" as the songwriting credit, it probably means I suggested a hook, wrote a third verse or collaborated slightly on a refrain. In any case, there was always a tightness there, we would just start playing a new song and it felt like well-broken leather.
Sunday, May 17, 2009
Monday, May 11, 2009
POP GEOLOGY: Driving Dixie Down
(using Spotify to delve into a cross-section of rock)
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", or as real southerners Black Crowes have it, "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down", is a curious song. It's clearly written from a Confederate point of view, invokes the term Yankee with a great deal of scorn, doesn't mention slavery. Joan Baez, being a civil rights veteran, would never fly the stars 'n' bars, I don't think, yet she'll do a jaunty version as an encore, as will Charlie Daniels, who's an old right-wing warhorse. At least two black performers have sung that Virgil Caine is their name. Clearly there is some sort of quality here beyond good songwriting or literary distance that makes it so transcendent. Maybe it's the fact that four Canadians signed off on songwriter Levon Helm's sentiments.
1. Joan Baez -- As always, the vibrato is on every note (God, that gets annoying), but the emotional context isn't. Sounds like a obligatory novelty number.
2. Black Crowes -- Now we're talking -- not just southerners but brothers, just like in the song. Nearly as seminal as the original Band version. Can't get much better than this. A slow smoldering pressure-cooker of a version, well-phrased Hammond solo.
3. John Denver -- Folkie-earnest. Not bad, certainly not wimpy. He gets worked up nearly into a frenzy about his Richmond-issued banknotes being no good, which is kinda cool. "Summer", not "winter of 1965"? Odd change, but I guess they were hungry then, too. Sounds like he has a chip on his shoulder about the Union.
4. Johnny Cash -- A well-known version. Nice instrumental flourishes here and there, but do they serve the song? It's the night they sang at the Grand Ole Opry here, not a night of razing and pillaging.
5. Sophie B. Hawkins -- Neat stuff -- experimental, funny, surprising -- no guitars, just great double-tracked piano tone, with the bells really ringin'.
6. Charlie Daniels Band -- Hard to argue with these Southerners, too, but perhaps a little too perfunctory and if it's "Virgil" singing, he should sing the whole song instead of trading off verses. This isn't "The Weight", boys.
7. Merl Saunders -- sounds like a largely instrumental rehearsal outtake. A late 30-something Jerry Garcia pops in after some Persian to sing the only verse ("back with my wife in Tennessee") then fades back into the mix. Shimmering Hammond from Merl ever-present.
8. Solomon Burke -- The disconnect between a soul pioneer (clad in African garb on the cover of the 1970s era album) lamenting how Stoneman's cavalry keeps tearing up the tracks ("again and again, y'all") takes some getting used to in this danceable uptempo version.
"The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down", or as real southerners Black Crowes have it, "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down", is a curious song. It's clearly written from a Confederate point of view, invokes the term Yankee with a great deal of scorn, doesn't mention slavery. Joan Baez, being a civil rights veteran, would never fly the stars 'n' bars, I don't think, yet she'll do a jaunty version as an encore, as will Charlie Daniels, who's an old right-wing warhorse. At least two black performers have sung that Virgil Caine is their name. Clearly there is some sort of quality here beyond good songwriting or literary distance that makes it so transcendent. Maybe it's the fact that four Canadians signed off on songwriter Levon Helm's sentiments.
1. Joan Baez -- As always, the vibrato is on every note (God, that gets annoying), but the emotional context isn't. Sounds like a obligatory novelty number.
2. Black Crowes -- Now we're talking -- not just southerners but brothers, just like in the song. Nearly as seminal as the original Band version. Can't get much better than this. A slow smoldering pressure-cooker of a version, well-phrased Hammond solo.
3. John Denver -- Folkie-earnest. Not bad, certainly not wimpy. He gets worked up nearly into a frenzy about his Richmond-issued banknotes being no good, which is kinda cool. "Summer", not "winter of 1965"? Odd change, but I guess they were hungry then, too. Sounds like he has a chip on his shoulder about the Union.
4. Johnny Cash -- A well-known version. Nice instrumental flourishes here and there, but do they serve the song? It's the night they sang at the Grand Ole Opry here, not a night of razing and pillaging.
5. Sophie B. Hawkins -- Neat stuff -- experimental, funny, surprising -- no guitars, just great double-tracked piano tone, with the bells really ringin'.
6. Charlie Daniels Band -- Hard to argue with these Southerners, too, but perhaps a little too perfunctory and if it's "Virgil" singing, he should sing the whole song instead of trading off verses. This isn't "The Weight", boys.
7. Merl Saunders -- sounds like a largely instrumental rehearsal outtake. A late 30-something Jerry Garcia pops in after some Persian to sing the only verse ("back with my wife in Tennessee") then fades back into the mix. Shimmering Hammond from Merl ever-present.
8. Solomon Burke -- The disconnect between a soul pioneer (clad in African garb on the cover of the 1970s era album) lamenting how Stoneman's cavalry keeps tearing up the tracks ("again and again, y'all") takes some getting used to in this danceable uptempo version.
Tuesday, April 21, 2009
Free reproductions
"Spaceship to Saturn".
My 3-year-old son did these. I know, I know, parents make too much of these things. But I'm impressed with the composition. That antipodean red expanse. And those little brush-dabs... Oriental brushwork, or art deco wall paper.
Saturday, April 18, 2009
Piracy and Prometheus
Imagine there's a Somalian-Swedish IT joint venture that indexes pirate treasure. "We only provide a ship tracking and treasure mapping service. If we didn't do this, booty would be retrieved some other way," shrugs the founder, then lapsing out of CEO-speak mode briefly to add: "Screw the man, yo!" and high-five-ing his co-founder.
Clearly the existence of such a service provider would be unacceptable to most people and this leads me to believe that the Swedish court made the right call from a technical standpoint when it convicted the Pirate Bay founders of whatever it convicted them of, even though the court apparently, judging from the facts, lacks any power to order them to cease and desist, even on contempt charges.
Yes, it's technically the right call, if we're talking pirates (and aren't we all, these days): it even satisfies the maritime piracy test -- maritime law also defines as piracy any act that abets or intentionally facilitates piracy.
Arr!
But of course it's not really piracy. That's just a word. Daniel Defoe's, I think, but still, only a word.
Over the years, we agreed collectively that piracy on the seas involves one or more of these three: violence, detention, depredation.
With file transfer, violence and hostage-taking are not usually involved -- unless you are listening to MP3s at Phil Spector's house. And then you are considered crewmates.
Possibly the third one is involved: depredation. A contract is waylaid. Goods are intercepted and never delivered. But really, though?
I think not. I take the bloody-minded view that the record companies are dopes. The record company bought goods from the artist -- let's think of the goods as a volatile solid that the company had a good process for canning. Unfortunately something happened (global warming? AC failure due to the amps in the studio blowing a fuse?) -- after the goods were delivered and the contract performed -- and the goods sublimed into a gas. It escaped. Now people are becoming mass consumers of the goods without packaging because they no longer find its packaging an attractive sales argument. Well, duh: the packaging is no longer necessary. The goods are literally everywhere. A technology even exists to pick up and collect stray molecules of gas into torrents that are distilled and precipitated into the end-user's receptacle.
It's not a perfect metaphor, but neither is trying to treat ideas as matter in the first place, or trying to bend property law to somehow satisfactorily cover all the bases.
With regard to the shift that caused 100 years of recordings to suddenly sublime into a gas, I see something Promethean in it. The reality of what has just happened renders any discussion of restitution irrelevant.
Clearly digital file transfer is something that's very much out of the bag, and the record companies are trying futilely to put it back in. It is as if they are going around the campfires trying to levy taxes on use of flint. It's all rather stupid.
In the gods' situation, the only thing left to do was to punish the mortal upstart very harshly. Only a year in jail? I would say the Pirate Bay is lucky. Even if they were offering a service in Somalia, it might have been their entrails.
Clearly the existence of such a service provider would be unacceptable to most people and this leads me to believe that the Swedish court made the right call from a technical standpoint when it convicted the Pirate Bay founders of whatever it convicted them of, even though the court apparently, judging from the facts, lacks any power to order them to cease and desist, even on contempt charges.
Yes, it's technically the right call, if we're talking pirates (and aren't we all, these days): it even satisfies the maritime piracy test -- maritime law also defines as piracy any act that abets or intentionally facilitates piracy.
Arr!
But of course it's not really piracy. That's just a word. Daniel Defoe's, I think, but still, only a word.
Over the years, we agreed collectively that piracy on the seas involves one or more of these three: violence, detention, depredation.
With file transfer, violence and hostage-taking are not usually involved -- unless you are listening to MP3s at Phil Spector's house. And then you are considered crewmates.
Possibly the third one is involved: depredation. A contract is waylaid. Goods are intercepted and never delivered. But really, though?
I think not. I take the bloody-minded view that the record companies are dopes. The record company bought goods from the artist -- let's think of the goods as a volatile solid that the company had a good process for canning. Unfortunately something happened (global warming? AC failure due to the amps in the studio blowing a fuse?) -- after the goods were delivered and the contract performed -- and the goods sublimed into a gas. It escaped. Now people are becoming mass consumers of the goods without packaging because they no longer find its packaging an attractive sales argument. Well, duh: the packaging is no longer necessary. The goods are literally everywhere. A technology even exists to pick up and collect stray molecules of gas into torrents that are distilled and precipitated into the end-user's receptacle.
It's not a perfect metaphor, but neither is trying to treat ideas as matter in the first place, or trying to bend property law to somehow satisfactorily cover all the bases.
With regard to the shift that caused 100 years of recordings to suddenly sublime into a gas, I see something Promethean in it. The reality of what has just happened renders any discussion of restitution irrelevant.
Clearly digital file transfer is something that's very much out of the bag, and the record companies are trying futilely to put it back in. It is as if they are going around the campfires trying to levy taxes on use of flint. It's all rather stupid.
In the gods' situation, the only thing left to do was to punish the mortal upstart very harshly. Only a year in jail? I would say the Pirate Bay is lucky. Even if they were offering a service in Somalia, it might have been their entrails.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
The case of the Boyle lass
I'm sorry, but stories like Susan Boyle's make me squirm.
I don't think the event was staged, but that is the taste it leaves: a fabricated morality lesson in the error of our ways.
I am far from perfect, but I can say this: I don't have any preconceived notions about homely-looking people who have the temerity to sing in public. I imagine she sings everyday -- in church in a massed choir, perhaps while boiling haggis. Good. I think everybody should sing -- while walking down the street, while driving. I like doing it in Estonia, even though you probably need a permit.
Guess what I do have a major problem with: vulgar, sneering, passive entertainment with a gladiator's ring mentality, stuff where contestants are "eliminated" and people with some minor problem with their harmonic overtones or intonation become household names.
I don't know how these nasty shows came about in the first place. I always view these things as coming out of some warped part of California -- cooked up in some creepy mansion, part decaying Xanadu, part Phil Spector's castle.
Whatever.
To the producers of such shows, I would say this: lecture away on how you're too quick to judge and intoxicated with your own wit (yeah, Cowell, I'm looking at you), but don't try to transfer your cynicism to me.
Me, I don't care for the format of the Idol shows anyway. I'd be far more interested in hearing someone play an original song at an open mic, and then joining them on stage for jamming. The more people on stage, the better, I always thought.
Nothing wrong with a diva belting out a cover, of course (or Bob Weir in short shorts doing "Looks Like Rain", for all you Dead fans touring again). In Susan Boyle's case, the Les Mis material was a perfect match for her life story and experience. That's why it is pleasing to me.
Does it matter that she had a good musical performance in the established sense?
And what if she had opened her mouth and her voice was terrible? What would happen then? That is the real question. Or what if she had started out good, but her voice had broken in the bridge section?
It's as if the lesson is actually, there is salvation, but only if you have an amazing Musical(TM) talent, too. Otherwise we will still mock you mercilessly on TV.
I don't think the event was staged, but that is the taste it leaves: a fabricated morality lesson in the error of our ways.
I am far from perfect, but I can say this: I don't have any preconceived notions about homely-looking people who have the temerity to sing in public. I imagine she sings everyday -- in church in a massed choir, perhaps while boiling haggis. Good. I think everybody should sing -- while walking down the street, while driving. I like doing it in Estonia, even though you probably need a permit.
Guess what I do have a major problem with: vulgar, sneering, passive entertainment with a gladiator's ring mentality, stuff where contestants are "eliminated" and people with some minor problem with their harmonic overtones or intonation become household names.
I don't know how these nasty shows came about in the first place. I always view these things as coming out of some warped part of California -- cooked up in some creepy mansion, part decaying Xanadu, part Phil Spector's castle.
Whatever.
To the producers of such shows, I would say this: lecture away on how you're too quick to judge and intoxicated with your own wit (yeah, Cowell, I'm looking at you), but don't try to transfer your cynicism to me.
Me, I don't care for the format of the Idol shows anyway. I'd be far more interested in hearing someone play an original song at an open mic, and then joining them on stage for jamming. The more people on stage, the better, I always thought.
Nothing wrong with a diva belting out a cover, of course (or Bob Weir in short shorts doing "Looks Like Rain", for all you Dead fans touring again). In Susan Boyle's case, the Les Mis material was a perfect match for her life story and experience. That's why it is pleasing to me.
Does it matter that she had a good musical performance in the established sense?
And what if she had opened her mouth and her voice was terrible? What would happen then? That is the real question. Or what if she had started out good, but her voice had broken in the bridge section?
It's as if the lesson is actually, there is salvation, but only if you have an amazing Musical(TM) talent, too. Otherwise we will still mock you mercilessly on TV.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Getting fast and loose with an ancient narrative
I fasted yesterday. Not to save money (though this is a good reason to fast) and not for religious reasons, either -- at least not of the doctrinal kind. In a way, I guess, I was following an Orthodox practice, but I had arrived at it through consideration of various other religions. The closest analogy to my actual motive was the Passover tradition of burning chametz -- metabolically, within my body.
Fasting was more difficult than I remembered. The hunger pangs never really went away. You see, I'm used to eating huge Scandinavian breakfasts at home on a daily basis: cereal, eggs, nut butters on toast, fish, even beans. The other meals are of decreasing importance -- in line with ancient Chinese edicts. (You could say that I have a globalized philosophy.) Anyway, my body never forgave me for skipping breakfast.
I had figured that, in between schlepping the kids around and doing Easter crafts, in what I felt would be a clear, enlightened, foodless state, I would record another one of my old songs, one called "The Ballad of Jesus Christ, Union Leader".
As it turned out, this idea was a miscalculation, as any sort of physical activity was ruled out by low blood sugar. So no MP3 was produced, just some reflection and textual analysis, which I suppose is fitting for the day.
It's a Guthrie-like song, right down to the labour theme and the very basic, unartistic guitar accompaniment. It's a good-hearted song that comes from the humanist, historical view of Jesus (as opposed to, I guess, the magical view of Jesus).
It starts with a typical ballad set-up that makes no bones about being a song about organized labour amid conditions of decaying social fabric:
The times were dark and desolate
and the wicked highwaymen did ride
And power and greed and corruption flourished on each and every side
When Jesus grew into a man and put the pedals of the union steel to ride
and said "Boys, can your foolish pride!"
Chronological verses then follow, starting with a cheeky Nativity scene
He was born down there in Bethlehem, a Pennsylvania steel mill town
No one knew who the father was, Mary wasn't known to get around
The room was small and bare looked like one mouth to feed
till Jesus popped right out and said, "I'm the bread you need!".
which is pretty bad, of course. Would I get fatwa'd from Colorado Springs or Lynchburg for something like this? Of course it's clearly pro- in content... I happen to think some medieval Christian fraternity would approve. Perhaps they made up ditties like this as well. Isn't there a place in religion for Chaucerian bawdiness? After all, it doesn't bad-mouth or cast aspersions.
Nor does:
It wasn't long before the Lord above began to talk to him
Though people said that h(H)e was only talking to h(H)imself.
In short, I was happy (in an egotistical way) with the song. But there were problems. People not familiar with the Guthrie style might think the song is in fact celebrating trade unions, which I think tend to be thuggish in real life. What really gave me pause was the refrain, which starts with the line "Jesus Christ was a ragged (something)" -- humanist, unionist, socialist. Obviously this is heading in the direction of the C-word -- "Jesus Christ was a communist" -- and that's hard to explain in the Baltics. I could explain what I mean -- that most of all, communism doesn't work in large communities, and Soviet ideology was a cover for Russian nationalist expansion, but still... -- but it would take a page. I could bowdlerize it to "Jesus was a communalist", but it wouldn't be the same.
The refrain:
Jesus Christ was a ragged socialist
He unionized the hearts of men with grace and with love
And he roamed the land with a ragged band of twelve brave Mensheviks
until he vanished up into the sky above.
Mensheviks? Again, here I don't know my history well enough. Obviously the third line is going for a kind of heroic comic-book adventure feel -- Paladin! -- but Mensheviks? As opposed to the Bolsheviks, it sounds like they have a minority, underdog appeal. But do I really know? Plus, some people might think it's a Yiddish: a boychik grows up to be a menshevik.
I reflected that it's hard to find leftists of any stripe from modern times, no one good enough to compare the apostles to.
I was happier with the alternating refrain:
Jesus Christ was a ragged socialist
He always gave according to his own abilities
Wherever he did went, he tried to teach the people self-empowerment
But there were few who saw the forest for the trees.
This was spot-on, pure parable of the sower.
In the end, I canned my foolish pride. A flawed song, somewhat entertaining, but unlikely to create much good in the world if it was, say, released as a single. And that really is the point, I think.
As for the fast, I broke it Ramadan-style, having an English-Nordic breakfast feast after the sun went down. (It's tough to keep my sources straight in these times of globalization, let alone the time of day. Pray for me, and I promise to pray for you.)
Fasting was more difficult than I remembered. The hunger pangs never really went away. You see, I'm used to eating huge Scandinavian breakfasts at home on a daily basis: cereal, eggs, nut butters on toast, fish, even beans. The other meals are of decreasing importance -- in line with ancient Chinese edicts. (You could say that I have a globalized philosophy.) Anyway, my body never forgave me for skipping breakfast.
I had figured that, in between schlepping the kids around and doing Easter crafts, in what I felt would be a clear, enlightened, foodless state, I would record another one of my old songs, one called "The Ballad of Jesus Christ, Union Leader".
As it turned out, this idea was a miscalculation, as any sort of physical activity was ruled out by low blood sugar. So no MP3 was produced, just some reflection and textual analysis, which I suppose is fitting for the day.
It's a Guthrie-like song, right down to the labour theme and the very basic, unartistic guitar accompaniment. It's a good-hearted song that comes from the humanist, historical view of Jesus (as opposed to, I guess, the magical view of Jesus).
It starts with a typical ballad set-up that makes no bones about being a song about organized labour amid conditions of decaying social fabric:
The times were dark and desolate
and the wicked highwaymen did ride
And power and greed and corruption flourished on each and every side
When Jesus grew into a man and put the pedals of the union steel to ride
and said "Boys, can your foolish pride!"
Chronological verses then follow, starting with a cheeky Nativity scene
He was born down there in Bethlehem, a Pennsylvania steel mill town
No one knew who the father was, Mary wasn't known to get around
The room was small and bare looked like one mouth to feed
till Jesus popped right out and said, "I'm the bread you need!".
which is pretty bad, of course. Would I get fatwa'd from Colorado Springs or Lynchburg for something like this? Of course it's clearly pro- in content... I happen to think some medieval Christian fraternity would approve. Perhaps they made up ditties like this as well. Isn't there a place in religion for Chaucerian bawdiness? After all, it doesn't bad-mouth or cast aspersions.
Nor does:
It wasn't long before the Lord above began to talk to him
Though people said that h(H)e was only talking to h(H)imself.
In short, I was happy (in an egotistical way) with the song. But there were problems. People not familiar with the Guthrie style might think the song is in fact celebrating trade unions, which I think tend to be thuggish in real life. What really gave me pause was the refrain, which starts with the line "Jesus Christ was a ragged (something)" -- humanist, unionist, socialist. Obviously this is heading in the direction of the C-word -- "Jesus Christ was a communist" -- and that's hard to explain in the Baltics. I could explain what I mean -- that most of all, communism doesn't work in large communities, and Soviet ideology was a cover for Russian nationalist expansion, but still... -- but it would take a page. I could bowdlerize it to "Jesus was a communalist", but it wouldn't be the same.
The refrain:
Jesus Christ was a ragged socialist
He unionized the hearts of men with grace and with love
And he roamed the land with a ragged band of twelve brave Mensheviks
until he vanished up into the sky above.
Mensheviks? Again, here I don't know my history well enough. Obviously the third line is going for a kind of heroic comic-book adventure feel -- Paladin! -- but Mensheviks? As opposed to the Bolsheviks, it sounds like they have a minority, underdog appeal. But do I really know? Plus, some people might think it's a Yiddish: a boychik grows up to be a menshevik.
I reflected that it's hard to find leftists of any stripe from modern times, no one good enough to compare the apostles to.
I was happier with the alternating refrain:
Jesus Christ was a ragged socialist
He always gave according to his own abilities
Wherever he did went, he tried to teach the people self-empowerment
But there were few who saw the forest for the trees.
This was spot-on, pure parable of the sower.
In the end, I canned my foolish pride. A flawed song, somewhat entertaining, but unlikely to create much good in the world if it was, say, released as a single. And that really is the point, I think.
As for the fast, I broke it Ramadan-style, having an English-Nordic breakfast feast after the sun went down. (It's tough to keep my sources straight in these times of globalization, let alone the time of day. Pray for me, and I promise to pray for you.)
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
Kid-friendly place
Here is the link to the new website of a good little place in central Tallinn to stop by, if you have children and need to find a rainy-day activity. The environment is better than the anonymity and high-volume use of, say, a shopping centre play area.
Yes, this organization happens to rent our old place, but they are worth it.
I myself get a monthly massage there and sometimes stop in for a cup of coffee. I was disappointed with an Italian cooking class, but that is because I am a foodie snob and also because I burn about 4000 calories a day and need my grub fast.
Yes, this organization happens to rent our old place, but they are worth it.
I myself get a monthly massage there and sometimes stop in for a cup of coffee. I was disappointed with an Italian cooking class, but that is because I am a foodie snob and also because I burn about 4000 calories a day and need my grub fast.
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