Fred Waring, MC Loma e as Gêmeas Lacração

Jun. 3rd, 2023 10:30 am
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I squibbed a couple of these for the People's Pop Polls.

Fred Waring's Pennsylvanians "Love For Sale" (poll link):

You read about the primordial depths; well, Waring's "Love For Sale" is the primordial surface, as the woodwinds skip along like every Saturday morning cartoon from my childhood. Song has the lilt and cheerful sadness that Cole Porter liked to insert into everything.


MC Loma e as Gêmeas Lacração "Quero Em Dobro" (poll link):

"Quero Em Dobro" is my nom, blissful and horny and funny, the guys in the video wiggling almost as much as the women. MC Loma is one of the great popularizers of Brega Funk – "brega" translates as cheap or cheesy or tacky, glorying in its inexpensive electronics from the countryside. Rural beats and urban content.


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I Wish I Could Fly In The Sky (Seo Taiji and Boys, BTS)

May. 30th, 2023 01:27 pm
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They're speaking multiple voices, Seo Taiji and Boys speaking for the kids, and speaking for Seo Taiji and Boys; Seo Taiji and Boys speaking for the parents, and speaking for Seo Taiji and Boys. This is what the runaways are feeling, this is what the runaways are saying about the world and it's what we're feeling and saying about the world. This is the parents' plea, this is our (ST/Boys) plea to the kids, this is what we/I'm seeing (in the world). Simultaneously trying to protest society, speak to society, speak for society (hoping to offer the kids hope).

Seo Taiji and Boys "Come Back Home" MV (1995)

Tom Ewing was looking for 21st century covering the 20th for his People's Pop Polls, and I nominated BTS's cover of Seo Taiji and Boys' "Come Back Home."

At the start, the BTS version sounds even more spectral than the original, as if the sound really is the ghost of the past. The BTS electronics are more fragmented, with ominous foghorns scraping away deep in the mix. Gets the song's menace and tension even if BTS's vocals don't have the percussive whip-crack of the original's, of Seo Taiji's voice cracking like knuckles yet still finding its way to a flow. In general, the musical pressure BTS put on themselves makes the song knottier. Feels very courageous, what BTS are doing with their voices. That for me is the message, the reaching back to something that twists them tight, more than the words – but there are some lyrical modifications that I'm not happy about, that if I'm reading them correctly (big IF) sidestep Seo Taiji's wisdom in favor of BTS's own Korean work ethic (see below), BTS falling into a trap. And Seo Taiji's wisdom wasn't altogether satisfying in the first place.

South Korea 1995, just eight years after the dictatorship was overthrown, Seo Taiji being social discontent personified, but he doesn't have the insane and terrified and desperate optimism of Bob Dylan, "Like A Rolling Stone," without a home, USA 1965, Dylan thinking that you can actually overthrow yourself and make that – your own overthrow – your precondition to finding genuine connection with others. Dylan is wildly ambitious, not materially but emotionally, socially. Yet at the same time, "Like A Rolling Stone" is the very clear-eyed story of someone discovering just how desperately reliant s/he is on other human beings. Anyway, Dylan emphatically was not inviting anyone to come back home, or telling them to go back home or to return to the self they'd overthrown. He wasn't worrying a social problem, he was plumping for liberation, and solidarity. Whereas Seo Taiji's words are less a parable and more... limiting? realistic?

But in 1995 Seo Taiji's sound is the song's most potent message, and the message of the sound is extreme – and promising and risky, what Seo Taiji was getting out of American sounds, New Jack Swing, Run-DMC, Cypress Hill, opening the door to a sonic adventure, a sound as inviting and perilous – calling to the unknown – as Dylan's electric guitar once had been.

Seo Taiji and Boys "Come Back Home" live* (1995)

When in the Seo Taiji and Boys version YG says (speaking for himself and for/to the potentially returning runaways), "Because we are still young and our future is good enough," the understanding is that this is compromised, accepting of limitations (versus "I wish I could fly in the sky" in the previous verse which could do double duty as both a desire for greatness and beauty, on the one hand, and a suicide threat on the other).

At least, that's my understanding.

Pretty sure it's YG who's intoning "Come Back Home" (in the live lipsynch both he and Lee Juno mouth it), but there's not a role division, one rapper speaking for the kids and another for the parents; they're all interchanging from all sides. For instance, YG starts a verse "My rage toward this society is getting greater and greater" and Seo Taiji continues the thought, "Finally, it turned into disgust" (another translation goes "The anger that blamed this society finally became hate"). Lee Juno has the verse that's most specific about the kid in the family conflict, but on the phrase "And parents take charge, no love for me" all three join "no love for me."

Seo Taiji and Boys "Come Back Home" lyrics English translation:
https://genius.com/Seotaiji-and-boys-come-back-home-lyrics

Seo Taiji and Boys tell the teen runaways that there's still hope, that they're still young and that some future, however imperfect, is better than no future. The trouble is – I shouldn't say "trouble," because it benefits the song, and without this trouble the song would be a cheat – that the no-future lyrics are more eloquent than the reconciliation lyrics. But note that the genius.com commentary includes an interpretation that speculates that ST/Boys speaking the phrase "come back home" in English – and saying it in English on behalf of parents – is a way for the parents to signal to their runaway kids that they're willing to adapt to the kids' new lingo. I don't know if this interpretation is right, but it's poignant.

There's the disconcerting fact, the way Seo Taiji sounds – to me, but not just me, lots of the Internet hears this too, B-Real's vocals, the snaking synth – like the scary snide provocative Cypress Hill of "How I Could Just Kill A Man." A real promise/menace of those runaway streets.

Can't say how the words in Korean signify in Korea, the life and meanings they take on. Still, "I realized now that you loved me," even when it's true, hardly feels adequate in relation to what people run from – violence, addiction, incest, boredom, hunger – or run to, excitement, sex, boyfriend, girlfriend, more addiction.

BTS leave out the verse of the family troubles, and the anger that turns to hate. And they add self-pressure to the lyrics that misses the point, I think (BTS inflicting the sort of pressure on themselves that the Seo Taiji teenagers of 22 years earlier had been trying to get out from under).

BTS "Come Back Home" (2017)

BTS "Come Back Home" lyrics English translation:
https://popgasa.com/2017/07/05/bts-come-back-home

To the honor of my family, my mother
To fill the stomachs of my family
I'll keep working hard

That sounds like BTS talking about BTS, but how does that speak to a runaway? Seems to me it represents the sort of aspirational pressure that Seo Taiji understood the runaways to be running away from in the first place.

Unless I'm the one missing the point (I say hopefully), and the verse is meant to indicate pressures that the kids were under that set them running away. The verse comes mid-song, the part in the Seo Taiji and Boys original where the song switches to reconciliation. But maybe that's not the words' role in this version. One translation has, as the verse's second line, "to make my family get stuffed til their stomachs explode," which could be seen as sarcastic. (I think this is my wishful thinking.)

Wish I had my LiveJournal crew from the early '10s to help me, where they were constantly advising me and helping me on my understanding of K-pop. I haven't spent much time reading BTS lyrics translations to get a sense what BTS would be saying. I was fading from K-pop as BTS were rising. —The verse is by RM, if that's a help. Is the most boisterously frenzied part of the track, very different from Seo Taiji's percussive darts but the only section that matches the original's intensity, which is why I'm welcome to interpreting it as more pained than I'm getting from the verse's apparent positivity on the page.

Going back to my first interpretation, that they mean the verse straight, "I was in despair but now I'm determined to make the best of it" could be a great personal story – I hope it's a lot of people's – it just seems to skip the world, how you get there, when actual families mess up and when actual teenagers run away.

That said, trying to cover "Come Back Home" is like trying to cover "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" or "A Day In The Life" – the original is so singular and its impact such a given (which kind of neutralizes it) that somehow approximating or at least taking account of the original is pretty gutsy, even if BTS themselves are running away from the original's predicament.

Also, I'm absurdly delighted that, in the runaway section, BTS say, "Angry? Hungry? Yes I'm hangry," from the support-group present. (Rapper is J-hope according to this color-coded vid.)

*Lip-synching, obv, but with amazing dance moves they couldn't have done otherwise. The crowd is truly animated, like the Michael Jackson audience at the Motown anniversary concert.

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The Cars That *Don't* Go Boom, Pt. 1

May. 15th, 2023 12:38 pm
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Used the phrase "rhythm comes down from the top" in my previous post, meaning that the top not the bottom was directing the rhythm. This is part one in an attempt to elaborate.

I first heard Brazilian funk – funk carioca – because M.I.A. and Diplo were getting excited by it and I was getting excited about their Piracy Funds Terrorism bootleg (2004); got (or Chuck Eddy sent me) the Favela Booty Beats compilation (also 2004). Waited 15 years to venture beyond that, but in the meantime I took in that the music was doing something viscerally different. I didn't (and don't) have the words for what I was hearing. It seemed more shouty than most of what I listened to, and more percussive – and the percussion seemed higher-pitched: wood-like cracking and clacking sounds more than deep resonance. I was both excited and a little put off, though I didn't turn away specifically because of that, just had other music to pursue.

I tend to think of bass as the heart-beating body of music – "bass" not only meaning bass guitar but sometimes tuba or cello or stand-up bass or a baritone voice or hollow cheeks or a deep drum or an electronic drum like an 808, etc., whatever is acting the part. But there's a bounce to it, a roll, not just the thud or the bomb of a big drum or the whack of a snare. Obv. you can have good rhythm without it, even with just a voice and two spoons, but for me bass is the liquid in the soup. It's the broth, the flow.

But a good deal of funk carioca (or whatever one should call it; I'm ignorant and really don't know the best overall term*) is giving us a turnaround, the high pitch directing the rhythm rather than riding it – this is viscerally effective, while flipping the emotional sense: like snapping the towel in your eyes rather than tickling your feet. Dancing that feels like fighting. Maybe it's fists rather than hips (though the videos these days sure seem booty heavy).

—What I'm saying is too simplistic, of course, in setting up a high pitch/low pitch opposition. For instance, in American rock and soul and funk and hip-hop the top doesn't just ride the bottom either; American funk especially is all about interplay, where it's not settled what's foreground and what's background, who's riding and what's being ridden. Same for jazz and Latin jazz** and various electronic dance genres. Etc. There's often no single answer to "what is directing the rhythm?" And as you can tell, I'm hardly set on what I'm calling "bass." So this is about a feeling as much as it's about a definite easy-to-identify-and-agree-on difference. It does pertain to about ⅓ of the Brazilian funk I'm listening to these days.

These three are the tracks that grabbed me most on Favela Booty Beats:

First, "O Baile Todo," nice 'n' shouty but there is an instrument acting bass-like and it's one of the track's pivots, just as it'd be on a James Brown record.

Bonde do Tigrão - O Baile Todo


Second, "Chapa Quente," the drums have a flow but for lots of this they're following the voice around like a puppy.

Os Tchutchucos - Chapa Quente


Third, "Bate La Palma de Mao," none of the drums are being a bass, though a tom sound is taking care of the clave when the horns are on. The chorus could be today, the shouty voices and high percussion dominating the beat.

MC Mascote - Bate La Palma de Mao


Finally, "Injeção," a track I didn't hear at the time, though obviously M.I.A. and Diplo did because they used a treated version of the Rocky sample in a similar way in "Bucky Done Gun." There are sections with drums pounding out the clave rhythm, but good bits of this are simply voice and percussion. The balance is shifted.

Deize Tigrona - Injeção


*I assume (and Wikip tells me, but I actually have no idea) that in Brazil the simple word "funk" is the usual term, if you're waving your hand in the direction of that broad area in Brazilian music. But "funk" would confuse readers for whom the term means the American funk of e.g. James Brown, Kool & The Gang, etc., and stuff that sounds like it. Am going with funk carioca because that's the other phrase that seems most common as an umbrella term for the Brazilian funk. ("Baile funk" shows up as well, but Wikip insists that in Brazil that's the term for the parties, not the genre.) Problem is that the word "carioca" references Rio de Janeiro, and most of what I'm hearing these days is coming out of São Paulo and Belo Horizonte and Recife. But again I don't know Portuguese and I don't know Brazil. I'm hoping that "carioca" is like the "Italo" in Italo disco, where it's understood that not all of it comes from Italy.

**The claves themselves, the pair of percussive instruments that the clave rhythm is named for, are a higher-pitched percussion, not a deep resonator.

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Noite De Crime (DJ Wesley Gonzaga, Artist Of The Year, 2021)

May. 7th, 2023 01:24 pm
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DJ Wesley Gonzaga's "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil" may be the greatest example I've got of a particular strain of funk carioca, the tendency to subordinate or delete the bass entirely and make the rhythm come down from the top, voices or clave or handclaps or mouth farts or beeps or screeches or samples or squiggles. 2021 might turn out to have been the peak year for this – the hot upper register – prior to everything giving way to the deep rural beats from the north or the reverberating trap thuds from the even farther north.



But this isn't my post – if the post ever comes – on that tendency. I may not have a lot more to say about it than the phrase "rhythm comes down from the top," actually.*

—Dave's already written this better than I'll be able to: "For a good stretch this song is propelled primarily by a gun being cocked and a synth piano line that sounds like what happens when you're about to change the battery in your smoke detector and it chirps right in your face. And it fucking rocks." And, about baile funk in general: "Sounds and timbres that don't belong in songs at all that somehow *anchor* them, verses shouted in from the back of the room that still take the spotlight, horrible noise that can somehow stay horrible even as it makes you want to dance." (Read his full comment here.)

When "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil" was getting drubbed in the 2021 People's Pop Poll, and LZM wrote, "I like the rawness but I still think it could do with better mixing,"** I countered with "This does tap something primal. But I think it's a pretty well-honed aesthetic, esp. how Gonzaga uses one set of piercing chirps as the architecture, then doubles in with another set."

Jake Linford, who's 20 years younger than I am, delighted me with this complaint:


Anyhow, just remember, when someone talks about Wesley Gonzaga's screaming ear-shattering laser fire, on the one hand, and someone talks about Wesley Gonzaga's severe but serene sonic architecture, on the other, we're talking about the exact same notes.

So, "rhythm comes down from the top," "piercing," "architectural severity."

Expand( Noite De Crime )



Expand( Footnotes )

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Frank's low scores peoples pop world cups

Apr. 19th, 2023 01:10 am
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Tom Ewing's Peoples Pop Polls are moving off Twitter in the next couple of days, and as this will have a big effect on turnout and maybe even what the polls do, I thought now would be a terrific time to post my "Frank's low scores peoples pop world cups" file. (I'll link the polls' new location when Tom posts it; he'll surely post the info at the Twitter site and likely on the Freaky Trigger Peoples Pop page as well.) [EDIT: Actually, poll functionality was much worse elsewhere, so People's Pop Polls moved back to Twitter but are winding down, will end next May unless Twitter becomes impossible sooner.] [UPDATE 2025: Peoples Pop Polls now running quarterly on Bluesky.]

For what the polls are, you can read Tom's explanation at the aforementioned Freaky Trigger page. My own explanation is this:

Tom's invented a game where he gets a bunch of us to listen to music that other participants choose, and gets at least some of them to listen to music that *I* choose. It's quite brilliant, actually, this strategy, since it allows me to force my enthusiasms on others while getting me in turn to listen to and take account of other people's enthusiasms, and in the process keeps a lot of us hooked. This goes along with many of Tom's other projects, which often are about confronting himself with other people's tastes and choices and cajoling us to confront his own opinions and tastes, meanwhile we discover and/or rethink a lot of good music, and find new worlds and new ideas. The Peoples Pop Polls are in the category of what he and friends call "orgafun," which means he finds a way to turn the adventure into a game or competition. In these Pop World Cups, Tom's practice of pitting sharks against sharks and minnows against minnows in the qualifying round, as well as creating "B-side" subtourneys, ensures that a lot of tracks that are new and surprising to many of us stay in the conversation for more than one round.

Bali Baby "Designer"

My nominees, though, rarely stick beyond the qualifiers. This is not because my taste is so singular, necessarily, but because I just fell naturally into the role of, let's give 'em something new, let's give 'em something they don't know, let's give 'em something *I* don't know.

My first nominees were for a charity poll in May 2020 for Refuge, a women's shelter, and so I chose tracks I loved by two artists who'd courageously participated in the New York Times's Me-Too series back in 2017, Tina B and Vanessa Carlton. You shouldn't get the impression from this that my nominees going forward were a punch bowl of worthiness, however: I quickly decided that the electorate was veering too easily to postpunk and Britpop and fairly well-known Anglo-American pop, rock, and soul – music that was okay, usually, but surprisingly unsurprising given Tom's own exploratory nature. I shouldn't have been so surprised, given that it's probably an ironclad psychological law – the mice effect – that people prefer the music they're most familiar with. But I decided I was going to nominate what there wasn't enough of and, for that reason, what people ought to and maybe wanted to hear, but I particularly wanted to include stuff that challenged the middlebrow massive that kept giving victories to artists like David Bowie and Talking Heads. So I sought out old Korean ballads and new fucked-up Soundtrack rap, and stuff on the border of gratingly great and gratingly unlistenable. And of course reaching out beyond myself means, you know, reaching out beyond myself, and reaching to the world's music means reaching to a world that's often awash in chauvinisms and sexism – though almost certainly a lot of the c's & s, being in languages other than English, I didn't pick up on even as I was nominating it. Anyway, not to be simplistic about artists I've often made little effort to understand in context, but my nominees have included guns, butts, and guns and butts together.

But also, crucially, I'll only nominate something for which I feel enough of an emotional commitment that when people inevitably vote it down I'll think, "What's wrong with these people?" So even with all the variety, and even though I was mostly eschewing rock, nonetheless you get a footprint from this music that pretty clearly says "Frank Kogan" and that sounds not so surprising from someone whose official favorite album is still Raw Power by the Stooges (but definitely the Bowie mix; hey there, middlebrow massive!).

Expand( Types of polls )

Expand( What's wrong with these people? )

Frank's low scores peoples pop world cups

Click the song title if you want to hear it. Click "(qualifier)" if you want to see the heat, and when you get there scroll down if you want to see comments. In italics I've listed the name of the particular poll the track competed in.

Backbone "5 Duce- 4 Tre" 10 votes (qualifier) 2001
Kidd Kenn "Slide (Remix)" 12 votes (qualifier) covers [flashing lights in video]
Bali Baby "Designer" 15 votes (qualifier) debuts
Fairies "Hey Hey Light Me Up" 16 votes (qualifier) covers
SECOND CHANCES POLL: Backbone "5 Duce- 4 Tre" 16 votes (qualifier)
Hurşid Yenigün "Şeker Oğlan" 17 votes (qualifier) covers
Wa$$up "Jingle Bell" 20 votes (qualifier) Christmas
DJ Wesley Gonzaga, MC Cyclope & MC Laureta "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil Na Bandolera" 22 votes (qualifier) 2021
Rail Band "Mali Cebalenw" 23 votes (qualifier) Black history 68-72
Franz Waxman "The Birth Of Andrei" 24 votes (qualifier) soundtracks

Franz Waxman "The Birth Of Andrei"

Expand( Frank's scores that are almost as low as his other scores )

Expand( Footnotes 1 & 2 )

***Twitter had tech problems on the 3rd day (the final day) that "Gurage Tone" and "Tobago Gals" were up in their placenames qualifiers, though that probably cost those tracks no more than a handful of votes since by Day 3 most votes have been cast. But the tech screwup may have redounded to "Gurage Tone"'s benefit ("Tobago Gals" was in a different heat and wasn't running against "Gurage Tone"): "Gurage Tone" had finished fourth – last – in its qualifier, but there had only been one vote separating 2nd place (qualifies for Round One) from 3rd (doesn't qualify) when Twitter stopped recording votes; Tom decided this was unfair and close enough for a runoff so he staged one, and for some reason he included 4th place "Gurage Tone" in the runoff as well, maybe 'cause he liked it – but he liked 3rd place Helen's "Zanzibar (Afro Mix)" more, which won the playoff decisively [for a while this became his frequent but not universal practice, to include the 4th-place track in a runoff when there was a tie for 2nd, but I think this was the first time he'd done it, and he seems to have now stopped] – "Gurage Tone" finished last again but this may have given it more listeners: when it came time for the Golden Beat nominations (for Best Song One Hasn't Heard Before The Poll), it got six, more than anything else I've ever brought to these polls. So I'd say that, oddly enough, "Gurage Tone" has been my most successful song. So it ran again, this time for the Golden Beat in the Placenames World division! – where it finished last again, of course, and once again was behind "Zanzibar (Afro Mix)" which finished second (and got my vote because, since I knew "Gurage Tone" before the poll, I wasn't allowed to vote for "Gurage Tone"). So more people heard "Gurage Tone" than if Twitter hadn't messed up, it garnered an historic, never-to-be-repeated three last places in a single Pop World Cup, and though not that many people voted for it, everyone who did started their own band! Anyway, great track; not high impact when you first hear it, but it sticks with you.



("Gurage Tone" got into the second Second Chances poll in Dec. '22 and this time scored only 29 against slightly worse competition, but this resulted in 3rd place by one vote so it failed to extend its last-place streak.)

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A Poll Of Many Colors

Mar. 19th, 2023 02:53 pm
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ILM just ran a Poll Of Many Colors, women in country music: best or favorite artists, albums, tracks. I only did tracks. Poll results will probably start next Friday, possibly with a new thread.

This is what I wrote, with a few tweaks, and I've added embeds. The person making the Spotify playlist was kind enough to post what he could:

I'm late to the party so doubt you'll have time to put any of these into your playlist, and LOL at trying to find them on Spotify anyway.

To call my knowledge of country music "spotty" is to overestimate the number and size of the spots and to underestimate the vast amount of blank space. But last June when Tom's Peoples Pop Polls were doing 1966, I did a kind of dive for country music, especially looking for country women to toss into the Suggestions Box.

In the meantime here's one from 1985:

Lacy J. Dalton - Over You
Deep burnt voice, makes me want to hear more.

[A little while later]

Another from 1985:
Louise Mandrell - Devil In A Fast Car
Sounds more Flashdance than her sister.

[A little while later]

From hither and yon. Yes, I can find a way to put hip-hop into a country poll!
The Forester Sisters - Crazy Heart
More heart than crazy, but the guitars mince some garlic over in the cutlery section of Bed Bath & Beyond.
Faith Hill - One
Keep forgetting how good Faith Hill is. This is quiet storm, basically, that doesn't forget to get a little noisy.
Bonnie Guitar - Hello, Hello Please Answer The Phone
Question, what genre has the most telephone songs? Think country's a contender.

Norma Jean - The Gambler And The Lady
You're either on the boat or you're off the boat.
Haley Georgia - Becky
"Becky" is blissful and buoyant and one of the great songs of 2017 and when all the online creeps kept telling Haley it was shit she must've listened, 'cause it's been wiped off the Internet except for this snippet.
LeAnn Rimes - Family
Saw a live clip of this where LeAnn says "And just admit you have a dysfunctional family" and she raises her hand really high.
LeAnn Rimes - No Way Out
And she didn't know a way out.



Taylor Swift - You're Not Sorry
Taylor Swift - Lose Yourself
SHeDAISY - Lucky 4 You
Carrie Underwood - Jesus Take The Wheel
Allison Moorer - Dancing Barefoot

Sarah Buxton - Space
Laura Bell Bundy - Giddy On Up
Sarah Darling - Whenever It Rains
Cassadee Pope - Wasting All These Tears

[18 hours later]

Most of the cows have left the barn already, but here's 1966. Among my surprises and discoveries when diving into '66 was how much country was still wrestling with rock 'n' roll and, for the women, wrestling with the girl group sound. For instance, Dolly Parton's "Don't Drop Out," produced by Ray Stevens, was going for a Spector/Shadow Morton/Shangri-Las sound. This is while, out on the pop charts, the girl groups were either disappearing or – in the case of the Supremes and the Marvelettes – morphing into mid '60s soul.

Of course, the country acts were not trying to absorb or meld with the (barely yet named) "rock" genre. Lots of country acts covered "These Boots Are Made For Walkin'," but they got no closer.

One happy surprise, though, was hearing Bonnie Guitar and Margaret Whiting veer towards the art-pop of Petula Clark, say, or Burt Bacharach. Bonnie Guitar (see upthread) is especially interesting – I'd never heard her, but she's terrific. She sounded as at-home on Bacharach type stuff as on Carter Family type stuff, and I could imagine her singing a Bond theme. If you can tell me more about her, I'd be grateful. In the Suggestions Box I was also posting for someone who couldn't figure out how to post, and I ran his choice of Scott Walker's "Mrs. Murphy" right into Bonnie's "Grey Rain Years."



I made a couple of Sixties playlists with a bunch of stuff incl. these and some male-sung country tracks; the second playlist includes the Bonnie-Scott merger. And the first playlist's got my Suggestion Box segue from Norma Jean's "The Shirt" to the Rolling Stones' "Mother's Little Helper." This segue is one of the meanest things I've done in my life.

As much as I love the '66 country tracks, after 10 of them in a row I feel like I'm in an airless closet. If I'd been a kid in a country-listening family, I would've seized on the Stones as a giant bear claw to claw my way out.

In the '00s I wrote that country should change its genre name to "Resentment." For the '60s you could call the genre "What A Drag It Is Getting Old." —An interesting exception was Wanda Jackson; not that she's better than the others, but in going all Jimmie Rodgers she was arriving like a breeze of air and space.

In my actual 1966 – a mostly unhappy year for me – I was trapped in a room not with country but with the Rolling Stones. But since the Stones sounded like they were trying to claw their way out of themselves, I was able to ride with them.

To sum up, though, I'm impressed at the extent that country '66 was willing to engage with other people's present.

Jody Miller - I Remember Mama
Former folkie who foreshadows Emmy Lou/Ronstadt sogginess, which is actually perfect for the big fat sentiments of the song.
Jan Howard - You Really Know
This track's in the country and girl-group zone: her voice can wail, but's got a whip.
Connie Smith - Same As Mine
Excuse me, you've got the wrong house.

Margaret Whiting - The Wheel Of Hurt
Brings formidable style to the sobbing bucket.
Patti Page - Custody
The emptiest house in the world.
Norma Jean - The Shirt
What a drag it is getting old.



Bonnie Guitar - Grey Rain Years
Deep grey voice but with mirth playing around the edges.
Jan Howard - Bad Seed
Traveling the more conventional country track, Jan is just as warm and dangerous as on the rock 'n' roll side; and that harpsichord might actually, after all, be a nod to the shiny new stuff over on the pop charts.
Wanda Jackson - Tuck Away My Lonesome Blues
Loretta Lynn - Saint To A Sinner
Wasn't God who made honky tonk angels.

Interesting thing about Jody Miller: I read in Wikip that in the early '60s she would appear on a television folk show hosted by Tom Paxton. In my folkie days I'd got an album I liked by Paxton, Ramblin' Boy. A few years later, in my rock nihilism days,* I read an old Sing Out! article circa 1965 called "Folk Rot" by Tom Paxton, a savage denunciation (iirc) of the new electric rock 'n' roll direction by erstwhile folk heroes like Bob Dylan. Beginning summer vacation of '71 I left my Sing Out!s on a friend's porch with a note lending them to his older brother, who was learning guitar (the mags had lyrics and chords). Neither the friend nor the brother ever saw them. I suspect a parental intervention, though maybe a dog ate them. Anyway, when Clark McGregor put together his anthology of old commentary about Dylan, Paxton refused to let him reprint "Folk Rot." So I haven't seen it since, but I remember it ending with Paxton quoting from and sneering at a crossover chart hit, "Home Of The Brave": "Home of the brave, land of the free, why won't you let him be what he wants to be." By Jody Miller. Maybe Paxton felt betrayed.

*which haven't ended, by the way; but neither have my folkie days.

[Two days later]

Got my ballot in, tracks only, with maybe an hour-and-a-half to spare. While my number 30, "Suds In The Bucket," is a rockin' little record, it's surely not the 30th best woman-sung country song of all time, just the 30th best that I, my ignorant self, could think of (while restricting myself to only one song per artist except I invoked The Taylor Swift Exception and gave Taylor two, finally choosing "Should've Said No" over "Lose Yourself" as the second on the grounds of better (in)fidelity).

Only eight that I "nominated" i.e. linked above actually made my list; voted a different LeAnn Rimes ("Blue") and a different Sarah Buxton ("Stupid Boy"). My guess is my ballot's the only one with Cassadee Pope and Daveigh Chase. Never saw Big Love but from what I remember people telling me, Chase played either a screwed-up character or a character in a screwed-up situation; anyway, her "Happiest Girl In The Whole U.S.A." adds a grabbing passion to the song's supposedly staid and comfy happiness. I have no memory whatsoever of Cassadee Pope's "Wasting All These Tears" prior to three days ago except I must've heard it when it came out 'cause it made my 2013 Nashville Scene ballot. Is an angry self-pitying wailer that you'd think'd want an Avril Lavigne or an Amy Lee to drive it through the wall, but Pope's thin reeds manage to do just fine.

As you may have figured, I'd no trouble voting "country" songs that sound like they're invading or being infected by another genre.

Expand( My top 30 songs )





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Film scores occupying the middle

Feb. 9th, 2023 02:17 am
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Tom's soundtracks poll starts later today, and for the hell of it I'm jotting down some thoughts about one reason I'm looking forward to it. I'm deliberately overstating and simplifying for the sake of clarity, so leaving out my usual thicket of caveats and asides and parentheticals. Bear in mind that modernism kind of throws a spanner into the works of my argument, and I'm not saying whom I mean by the "intelligentsia" beyond "people like you and me," a definition that leaves out most intellectuals who actually work for university music departments. But what follows is most definitely correct as to "classical" losing the intelligentsia and is probably correct as to movie and TV scores occupying a middle ground. As for the reasons I give for why "classical" lost its place, I'm just fooling around, hoping to spark some further thinking. Anyway…

Between 1950 and 1970, "classical" music gradually and then quickly lost the intelligentsia. If you want to mark a turning point you could say the summer of 1964 when positive reviews began pouring in for the movie A Hard Day's Night.

This obviously didn't kill "classical"/"serious" music (whatever you want to call it), and this didn't kill a lot of people's interest in it. But it was no longer the top social dog, the thing.

Nothing quite like this reversal, this losing of place, has happened in any other art form. What I'd put as an important reason for classical's plummet is that, e.g., popular rhythm & blues like "Sixty Minute Man" (1951) was at a pretty large formal distance from Beethoven and, crucially, did a shitload of sociomusical stuff that Beethoven didn't do, or barely did – especially rhythm but not only rhythm: in some ways it, along with many popular recordings, benefited from the invention of the microphone to unleash varieties of the human voice that opera couldn't – or anyway, didn't.

The Dominoes "Sixty Minute Man"


I don't think any other popular art form had this combination of doing something valuable that was also vastly different from what the "art" or "highbrow" conversation was paying attention to. For example, dime novels are still recognizably the same species – or at least genus or family – as Brontë and Austen. Maybe even gift shoppe knick-knacks are relatable to sculpture – anyway the bread-and-butter paintings and pictures from art fairs and motel walls and posters and postcards and magazine illustrations and magazine photos still seem the same universe as Rembrandt. Different in quality but not different in kind. Westerns and comedies and melodramas on film and on TV might be a fun test case. They too take advantage of the microphone and what it opens up for recording and creating voices, as much as the crooners and the rock 'n' rollers did – but I still think movies and TV are the same genus or family as plays and novels when it comes to narrative. And pictorially I'd say they share an order or genus with Rembrandt and Constable and Degas. Not that this is my main point. The main point is that if the highbrow discourse around "music" hadn't walled itself off from music that was really good and drastically different from "classical," "classical" itself wouldn't have had to take a crash.

The Beatles "Roll Over Beethoven"


But also, r&b and pop were already enough suffused with western romanticism that when the intelligentsia jumped the classical ship they could take their romanticism with them.

Now to the soundtrack poll: it's still going to be more pop songs and rock songs than it's going to be movie themes and show music – here's the nominations list. But as for the latter two, they are (or were pre-1970) still considered on the far side of the wall between classical and everything else, but formally they bring a lot of classical with them. The basic movie and TV scores especially tend to deploy the vocabulary of 19th and early 20th century classical music. Okay, here's a caveat: Yes I know that, from ragtime forward, jazz and easy listening and rock and hip-hop aren't so dumb as to never learn from "classical" and "serious" music. But one thing I'm liking about the soundtracks poll is that we'll listen to people who were doing it all along, their standard palette.

Bernard Herrmann "Scene d'Amour" (Vertigo)


Franz Waxman "The Birth Of Andrei" (Taras Bulba)


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Doghouse Reilly visits the soundscape

Jan. 20th, 2023 01:38 pm
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Nominations day is tomorrow for the Peoples Pop Polls' World Cup Of Soundtracks, the caveat being that the track has to have made it onto a soundtrack record (album, single, official playlist) and that the record has to be the track's first appearance.

I get four noms but one thing I'm looking for in particular would be neither a movie theme nor a song but rather the moods and note patterns that make up the bread-and-butter background music for the world's movies and TV shows. Don't know if I'll find something with enough presence to actually work as a stand-alone track. And despite this kind of stuff being the bulk of what's on soundtracks, on soundtrack albums it gets middle tracks or doesn't appear at all.

Here's an example of what I have in mind, kinda sorta, except (1) there wasn't a soundtrack album and (2) it wouldn't work as a stand-alone track anyway. It's the first scene (not the credits, but the actual first scene) and the beginning of the second of The Big Sleep, scored by Max Steiner. For the first 1:55 there's music, strictly background, inserted for mood and tone, I assume – there's only some motif-ish stuff, 0:23-0:38 and 0:59-1:03. The second half of the first motif, where they repeat it in a higher key, lightens the original moderately heavy mood; I'm not sure the function of the second motif except it's the reason I went for The Big Sleep here – incredibly, since my general attention to sensory, nonverbal input can be described as inattention, I remembered this motif from when I first saw the movie age 18, remember it reoccurring in the movie and have remembered it ever since (assisted by my seeing the flick another six times or so) – though maybe that's a sign of its being more intrusive than intended.*



I don't recall if these mini-motifs follow particular characters throughout the film. My guess – though I haven't paid nearly enough attention to movie scores – is that Steiner writes a bunch of stuff, motifs and moods and tones, maybe not a lot of it, and the stuff gets inserted and reinserted, perhaps with different instrumental shadings, where appropriate. Is true of A Summer Place, which Steiner also scored and which has a soundtrack I listened to this week. (I assume there are articles and stories in libraries and the Web that go into detail about such things.)

Anyway, despite passively experiencing movie and TV music my whole life, it isn't something I've made an effort to understand, really. Now's the time! – at least a little bit of time. My impression has been that since – what? – the '80s? mid '70s? – when "soundtrack LPs" became more and more vehicles for selling songs (and the songs for selling the soundtrack LP), even less of the composed background music has made it onto LPs or tracklists or playlists or anything. But maybe countering that trend are specialty markets that just lap that stuff up and support the archival release of soundtracks that never made it onto record in the first place – e.g., the aforementioned A Summer Place (1959): it didn't get an actual soundtrack album in its time, but one got released in 2003. So there may be a banquet, a glut, a surfeit, and I've barely wiggled my toe in it. Btw, almost all TV commercials have music, and perhaps a few jingles make it into history. But most of the music in commercials isn't even jingles, it's several-seconds-long brushstrokes of some style or mood, one brushstroke following another.

Anyway, though I don't think it'll ever be poll fodder, I'm wondering if the label Sublime Frequencies has done anything with this – putting these composed – sometimes just barely (I'm guessing – again without much knowledge – a lot of addy music is some keyboardist or guitarist or other musician being told, "Play this sort of thing for a few seconds" [had a reed- and wind-playing friend in SF who was hired for a commercial and said that this is what it was like]) – putting these moods and tones and squibbles onto CD or into streams and playlists. Perhaps – another form of life I haven't really looked at – the large vague area called "techno" or "electronica" has some musicians appropriating these pervasive but lost sounds into their own musical landscapes.

*The bit that annoys me, though, is the falling riff that accompanies Carmen's falling into Doghouse Reilly's arms. Such music just gets in the way. I remember that in White Heat, right in the midst of a tense scene where a frightened Virginia Mayo is trying to hightail it out of her lover's house before her ex-lover comes to attack them, she hurries down the stairs and tiny notes descend with her, and this was so obvious and stupid that I laughed out loud.



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Train Kept A-Rollin'

Jan. 12th, 2023 02:40 pm
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When I was trying to be a guitarist I'd marvel at Jeff Beck, because you just never knew where he was going to put the note – instead of playing a guitar line he'd just hold the tone for as long as he could. And then a fuzz on and a fuzz off, and later, fast, a tense start, quick splintered notes, losing their balance, about to crash.

"Someone To Love Pt. 2"


"Train Kept A-Rollin'"


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"With their own lives" (Mark Sinker on Tove Jansson)

Dec. 18th, 2022 11:47 am
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My friend Mark Sinker, on Tove Jansson (link):

except for readers in the US, where they never quite took off

E.g., me, for whom it is an unknown universe.

This, by Mark, is — seriously — one of the great descriptions I've read in my life, the entire paragraph, of which these are the final three sentences:

Here and there small unidentified beasts watch from the margins, odd little folk with their own lives stopping to gawk. Shining eyes peer through the foliage, one pair — from within a tree root at bottom right — gazing straight out at us. We meet these little characters nowhere in the text, but only as our attention ranges the less-described reaches of the image.

"With their own lives"!

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End-Of-Year 2021 ballots, etc., Pt. 3 (Expert Witnesses Poll)

Dec. 1st, 2022 06:27 am
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Just Tuesday I sent my ballot for the Uproxx critics poll for 2022. For my “outlets” I put "Dreamwidth" and "Peoples Pop Polls." I hope Philip doesn’t actually know what Dreamwidth is and decide to disqualify me. The reason I didn’t put “koganbot” is that I’d already put @koganbot as my Twitter handle.

Anyhow, since 2022's year-end lists are now already in play, I should at least somewhat try to continue my grappling with 2021. Last January 23 I sent a ballot to the Expert Witnesses poll (Expert Witnesses were a group of people who back in a somewhat-recent day created a community out of comment threads on one of Robert Christgau's post-Village Voice endeavors, a blog called Expert Witness, where he continued his ongoing Consumer Guides; "Expert Witness" is now a Facebook community). For some reason, or no reason, I never got around to posting my Expert Witnesses ballot here on Dreamwidth, so here it is. From my voter perspective, at least, it's the best of the three current-day Pazz & Joppish polls in that it doesn't have Uproxx's way-too-early deadline and stupid scoring system and irritating date restrictions; also, unlike Uproxx or Pazz & Jop Rip-Off it gives EPs their own category and 10 not 5 singles, or 0 singles as in Pazz & Jop Rip-Off. Also doesn't have Pazz & Jop Rip-Off's ungainly alphabetization rules. (See the footnotes here for my gripes about those, though when reading those gripes take into account that the people doing these things are putting in the labor and I'm not, and for the P&J Rip-Off and Expert Witnesses I'm sure unpaid.)

My number 1 album here, Babes Wodumo's Crown, is also the number 1 on the ballot I just submitted to Uproxx, in that it came out in December '21 and therefore is within Uproxx's Dec.-1-to-November-30th time period, and obviously wasn’t even out when I submitted last year's Uproxx ballot. Is the densest music I've ever heard from gqom, most packed with voices and sounds, takes the basic suspense of gqom and overloads it with life.

[I don't think the Wikipedia write-up on gqom is all that useful, but here's the link.]

Frank Kogan
Ballot for the Expert Witnesses Poll 2021

ALBUMS
1. Babes Wodumo - Crown - 20 points
2. Various Artists - Sounds Of Pamoja - 14 points
3. MC Carol - Borogodó - 10 points
4. Bee DeeJay - On The Map - 10 points
5. Squid - Bright Green Field - 10 points
6. 75 Dollar Bill - Live Ateliers Claus - 8 points
7. Ashley Monroe - Rosegold - 8 points
8. Slant - 1집 - 8 points
9. Juçara Marçal - Delta Estácio Blues - 7 points
10. Billie Eilish - Happier Than Ever - 5 points

SINGLES
1. DJ Wesley Gonzaga, MC Cyclope & MC Laureta - "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil Na Bandolera"*
2. MC Thammy, MC Jhenny (DJ Malícia) - "Vulgo Malvadão"
3. MC 2Jhow, MC Rennan & MC Fahah (DJ NBeat) - "Vem Sentando Vem"
4. Anderson Neiff, MC Terror, Laryssa Real, MC Magrinho - "O Neiff Me Ligou"
5. DJ Wesley Gonzaga - "Mtg Ta Brotando No Plantão Pra Tira Foto Com Revolver"
6. MC Thammy ft. Eo Don & Barca Na Batida - "Eu Adoro Eu Me Amarro"
7. MC J Mito, MC Yuri, MC Menor da Alvorada, DJ Will DF - "Aquecimento do Striptease"
8. DJ Guuga & MC Don Juan - "Acabou Você Não Deu Valor"
9. DJ Guuga & MC Danny - "Faz um pix pra mim"
10. Nathan Evans - "The Wellerman" [TikTok ver.]

MINI ALBUMS/EPs
Tia Maria Produções - Lei Da Tia Maria - 3 points
Grrrl Gang - Honey, Baby - 3 points
Hello Psychaleppo - Jismal - 3 points
Annie - Neon Nights - 1 point

Conflict of interest: Was bandmate briefly with Rick Brown of 75 Dollar Bill in 1982. Great guy.

Babes Wodumo ft. Madanon, Rhythmsounds & Bongzin "Sanbonani"


Anderson Neiff, MC Terror, Laryssa Real, MC Magrinho "O Neiff Me Ligou"


For the Expert Witnesses Poll results go here and scroll down about halfway.

*The asterisk after "Sarra Nela Com Fuzil Na Bandolera" actually had some significance for poll scoring, but I forget what it was. Maybe it got 2 points instead of 1.

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"These numbers challenge our understanding of football."

Nov. 1st, 2022 11:24 am
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I guess if you'd asked me "Are there more quarterback runs and scrambles in the last couple of years?" I'd have said, "Uh, hmm, yeah, I guess so; yeah, I think I've noticed that; it's more than just Baltimore."

But this piece last week by Ben Solak, incl. statistics, really is an eye opener ("The Simple Math Behind the Colts' Decision to Turn to Sam Ehlinger") – says not only are there more scrambles, but also that the scrambles on average are more effective than passing plays. And that for the only passer – Patrick Mahomes – whose passes are more effective than the average scramble, they're not more effective than his own scrambles.

Anyway, my mouth dropped open. This is new information, way beyond what I may have vaguely noticed. Not that I'm the one who looks at football with any kind of educated eye. But as Solak himself says, "These numbers challenge our understanding of football."

Ben's biggest caveat: you can't simply choose to scramble as much as possible – scrambles work best when the defense is not only set for a pass but when the play unfolds as a pass play, so defenders are really not in position to stop a run.* So (for instance) the Bears' Justin Fields scrambles the most of any quarterback but his scrambles are relatively less effective because he's not that good a passer so defenders don't have to buy in as much on his pass threat. (He's still 9th best per scramble, as he's a really good runner.)**

Anyway, read the piece.

Kyler Murray 2-point conversion (click on pic.twitter.com/LdwcnQQr8S)

A couple of Jalen Hurts scrambles analyzed by Shane Haff (click on pic.twitter.com/cexPX7IURS)


*"... not only set for a pass but when the play unfolds as a pass play," Solak doesn't actually differentiate the setting and the unfolding, but it makes sense to.

**Also, one thing Solak doesn't bring up one way or another is whether scrambles tire out a defense more than any other type of play does. I don't know, but my guess is that scrambles tire out a defense hugely. I remember watching a clip of defenders from the Sixties saying how much they hated playing against notorious scrambler Fran Tarkenton. I don't think Tarkenton was trying to gain yards running, though; he was just keeping the play going so that he could make a good pass.

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Glance

Oct. 19th, 2022 03:25 pm
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A couple excerpts from Dylan's Philosophy Of Modern Song are up at the NY Times (here, or if that doesn't work, here).

Reading the introduction by Ben Sisario I was thinking, "He [Dylan] is reimagining 'Strangers In The Night' as the sudden eyeball connection between Miss Lonely and The Mystery Tramp/Napoleon In Rags." But when I read the actual excerpt, that's not it. Napoleon and Miss Lonely had been destabilized and brought down and that's what made connection between them possible. But in Dylan's "Strangers" it's the glance itself that's destabilizing, a sudden connection that rearranges everything.

In the actual Sinatra song it's the lovers who are forever, "Lovers at first sight, in love forever," while in Dylan's retelling it's the glance that lives forever. This is like sudden surrealism, like Buñuel, a lightning bolt – except I understand fuck-all about surrealism and Buñuel, didn't think I liked Buñuel, dour humor, sourpuss, having seen two or three of his movies but then saw his Wuthering Heights at the Public Theater and thought I got it, the lightning darts – but I was afraid to follow up, 40 years past.

Also thinking of the sad electric glance in David Johansen's "Frenchette": "I get all the love I need in a luncheonette, in just one glance, so let's just dance." But that's a different glance, a half-sustaining glance, not a destabilizing Dylan "Strangers" glance like little spear holes in the outer shell of the universe.

Frank Sinatra "Strangers In The Night"


SPOILER This is the last scene so don't watch it SPOILER Luis Buñuel Abismos de pasión SPOILER


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Woman In Funk Carioca

Oct. 16th, 2022 01:55 pm
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A young woman in a Brazilian funk video, she's lying on a couch, an older woman (probably her mom) in the next room; the young woman gets up and dances down the stairs and out the door, dances along the narrow street, happy, passes others in her dance; rain starts, she keeps dancing, turns around, dances home, into the building, back to her couch.

MC Delux "Vem Camila, Vem Camila"


I've got a file with the obtuse title, "Women In Funk Carioca" – the obtuseness is that the file is merely a list of women MCs currently active in funk carioca, that the list doesn't include any of the other women in funk carioca, the publicists, the fans, and crucially, the twerkers in the videos, the actors, the flirters. They're women, they count.*

It's the title that's obtuse. not the fact that I don't list dancers: I don't know their names anyway: They're not in the credits and I wouldn't know how to find names unless I flew to Brazil and learned Portuguese and did actual research. What was obtuse was that when I titled the file I wasn't even thinking to look for dancers' names, only the women MCs' (and producers', if I'd found any) – and not even thinking while knowing I wouldn't know where to look: the point is, I wasn't thinking.

As for this video**, the young woman I singled out isn't the only woman in the video: there are a couple others in shots with MC Delux, dancing and twerking as he raps. That's the usual situation of dancers in funk videos, to be near the MCs and wiggle their rear ends. What's different about this video – though I hope there are others like it – is that it presents a female dancer as a subject of the video; it's her day. She rises, she goes out into the world and into the sound. The dance is her dance.*** It's not an addendum to anything else.

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The Moray Eels eat the Holy Modal Rounders and the Velvet Underground & Nico for dessert

Sep. 14th, 2022 10:09 am
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In 2013 I wrote a couple of blurbs that I'm still proud of for Spin's "Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s": The Moray Eels Eat The Holy Modal Rounders and The Velvet Underground & Nico. Linked them on my LJ at the time, w/ my critique and commentary, lotsa critique – criticized the cake and ate it too! – here: "Concrete toes and pigeons' feet."

Since then, as far as I can tell, my two blurbs and the 98 others, and the list itself, have disappeared from the Spin site.* Fortunately, I'd downloaded my blurbs and the entire list, though none of the other blurbs. This March when repairing old posts I added my blurbs to the post as an update, and stuck the list in the comments. Reposting here, now, too.

"Mobile Line"

#37

The Holy Modal Rounders – The Moray Eels Eat the Holy Modal Rounders (Elektra, 1968)
Part of New York City's urban folk bohemia, the Rounders heard in rockabilly and old rural string bands a vision of new music. On this, their fourth album, the styles were still mostly from the rural south of the 1920s, with added garage blues and scraps and bits from rags and barrelhouse and the American songbook (such as the melody but not the words to "Three cheers for the red, white, and blue"). But each instrument played its own accents and unique curlicues, not in direct support of the main melody or the singer (whose mic is always set to "soft"). Imagine a number of people wandering into a room and simultaneously telling their individually varied stories, while never losing touch with what the others are saying. The effect isn't dreamy or diffuse but slightly crazed, as everyone seems to be listening to notes just out of earshot, and every sound can potentially drive the wagon off various cliffs in any direction. FRANK KOGAN

#3

The Velvet Underground & Nico – The Velvet Underground & Nico (Verve, 1967)
It's a convention of drug songs as much as love songs that if you say you don't care, you do care. But a line like, "When the smack begins to flow and I really don't care anymore" does glorify self-destruction, as a rebuke to senators and society, to niceness and complacency. Choose to choose, choose to go. While Simon & Garfunkel hit big with similarly death-obsessed lyrics, the Velvets brought the conversation to eye level, skillfully precise ("up three flights of stairs," "twenty-six dollars in my hand"). The music matches, feels as sick and dirty as the protagonists. But the drones and unison pounding are a frame for cascades of notes and syllables that are as virtuoso as Diddley and doo-wop without announcing themselves as such. So the whole thing's got a lilt and a dance, solace for the broken people. F.K.

"Heroin"


Expand( Spin's Top 100 Alternative Albums of the 1960s )

*Wrote Spin via their Web email asking if there was a way to access the blurbs or if they were all gone. Heard nada.

**[EDIT EDIT EDIT: [profile] skyecaptain has found all the blurbs in the Internet Archive's Wayback Machine. He says to apply this URL format but in reverse numerical order; so Oliver Wang's blurb for Marshall McLuhan's The Medium Is The Massage, which is number 100 on the Spin list but is their first slide, is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=1

And Mike Powell's blurb for The Incredible String Band's Hangman's Beautiful Daughter (no. 53) is here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=48

So my two blurbs are here:

https://web.archive.org/web/20150310090636/http://spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list/?slide=64

https://web.archive.org/web/20130401055230/http://www.spin.com/articles/best-100-albums-1960s-sixties-alternative-list?slide=98

(I know, the bottom one is a different URL at the start, not sure why. Wayback Machine is cranky, I guess. I don't really get it, but once you're into one of these blurbs, you can probably find your way to the rest.) END OF EDIT]

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Ain't gonna hang no picture frame (Top 10 Westerns)

Aug. 31st, 2022 03:44 pm
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About a month ago I accidentally ran into a Twitter film poll of top ten westerns and I thought “Why not?” and this is what I posted:
 
The Searchers
Two Road Together
The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
Red River
The Wild Bunch
For A Few Dollars More
Day Of The Outlaw
McCabe & Mrs. Miller
Seven Men From Now
I Shot Jesse James
 


Btw, when I saw McCabe in its first run it didn't occur to me to think of it as a western at all, either revisionist or otherwise, and honestly I still don't; but the snowbound showdown is so intense and so emotionally similar to the snowbound final third of Day Of The Outlaw – which is unquestionably a western – that I included both. And both endings redeem what was up to then too much wise-ass-ness in McCabe and too much clumsiness in Outlaw.
 
(Okay, I'm being too glib. McCabe came in w/ a puff of air that the film deliberately pricked and then built him up again as a man in desperate circumstances; Day got the Robert Ryan character to get over himself. Still, some of the puffs and prickery and self-involvement were the films', not just the characters'; of course as usual in Altman lots of the bullshit is really funny, too.)
 
This being a top ten it's not that representative of my general bread-and-butter taste, which tends more towards bread-and-butter oaters (Day, Seven, and Shot, for instance). Whereas I surprised myself with how top-heavy w/ A-list and A-list spaghetti this is.
 
I've only ever seen the last 25 minutes of I Shot Jesse James, actually. I misread the start time on the film program. And that was 47 years ago! Still, I'll stand by my memory of gigantic close-ups facing off against other gigantic close-ups almost as if it's Eisenstein but w/ the visceral naïve force of Sam Fuller, magnified.
 
Here's my tweet – and also here's the link for my old Sight and Sound/BFI post 'cause of its real good discussion of westerns with Dave and Mark on the comment thread.



P.S. A couple that I've never seen that keep showing up on people's ballots are Meek's Cutoff (dir. Kelly Reichardt) and The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford (dir. Andrew Dominik)

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TSJ our glorious blah blah blah, "like trying to have a conversation with a pile of cigarette butts"

Aug. 28th, 2022 08:45 pm
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For me, my greatest Jukebox moment was Ke$ha's "Blah Blah Blah" – it isn't that what I wrote was so good – it was okay, and what I wrote in the comments was genuinely exploratory about the song's clatter making me think of "Mony Mony" – though I did get to work out those thoughts better on my blog – it's that when I started writing my blurb, song playing umpteen times in the background, I was rating her a 6 and putting her and the song and the experience at an I-know-better, ho-hum distance – but then a minute later, halfway through the blurb and the song I was saying, "No, this moves and pushes, something here in the sound" – and a minute later I was at 9. So I hit submit on my blurb and later that day the reviews went up and mine was 2 points higher than anyone else's and 4½ more than the average AND I WAS RIGHT!

The Singles Jukebox, March 2nd, 2010, Ke$ha ft. 3OH!3 – Blah Blah Blah

Anyway, to me it was something, to start a sentence and by the end the world was a little different. And something *I* was comprehending was the force of her music and the force of her wrongheaded challenge – "wrongheaded" 'cause I will stand on my writing and my talking and my blah blah blah – my glorious blah blah blah – but I was right to listen to hear a human being, a human complaint, a desperate boast, to pretend, a demand, to push past the blah blah blah – in that challenge (and how much was that challenge and that image a concoction created with her collaborators or forced on her – the real Kesha Rose Sebert – by her producers and managers? – one of whom she would later accuse of raping and abusing her), a woman – a concoction, maybe – was embodying that complaint and the force of the music, asserting dignity out of vomit.

Anyway, the reviews were up and of course there was a comment thread, people thinking, rethinking, re-wording and revising their rethoughts.

BUT: the comment thread is no longer up on the site. After 50 comments a thread spills over onto another page, and in this instance all of the first 50 were wiped out, and only one measly comment number 51 remains. Fortunately, Edward still has TSJ file with all the comments; he sent them to me last March as I was repairing my old LJ/Dreamwidth posts and taking stock of the big broad Ke$ha conversation elsewhere and bringing the links up-to-date, to The Singles Jukebox, to people's LiveJournals, to Jonathan Bogart's old Tumblr essays, and so forth.

So now, under the cut, here they are, the Jukebox comments. The copies are missing the italics, though, which has a big effect here because people are continually pasting in each other's comments and commenting on the comments, that something's a quotation almost always indicated by italics. So without the italics you have to figure out for yourself what's the quote and what's the response to the quote. This has an almost mesmerizing, poetic effect, the quotes, some repeated several times by different commenters, the same thoughts snaking through the conversation but adorned differently each time, as if everybody's saying them and then arguing with what they themselves are saying, the thought and the counterthought coming out of the same brain and then permutating into the next, the collective brain continually contradicting and rewiring itself.

[EDIT !!! UPDATE !!! HURRAH &%*# !!!: There's a place web.archive.org that calls itself The Wayback Machine that actually archives old posts (I don't know how thorough these are) from Stylus and The Singles Jukebox and I don't know what else. I've rarely used it because I haven't had much luck with its search engine, but if you have the original URL – which we do for the after-Stylus Jukebox, since The Singles Jukebox itself has not been deleted and presumably won't for a long time, even when it stops creating new content in a few days – then you can plug that into the search box and it'll take you there voila, and here we are, "Blah Blah Blah":

web.archive.org/web/20170607125254/http://www.thesinglesjukebox.com/?p=1988

ALSO, it turns out that back in the day I'd downloaded the entire "Blah Blah Blah" post and comment thread to my computer as a Chrome html file, which means I didn't need to get all the comments from Edward 'cause I had 'em already, and I have no excuse now not to add the italics back in, though don't keep your leftovers simmering on the stove while you wait for me to get around to doing so. END EDIT]

Kudos esp. to Kat for setting up the tone, the questioning, "I find it very difficult to pinpoint exactly what it is about Ke$ha that annoys me...," and Tal for hearing a lot of what I'm hearing, and OF COURSE Erika, "Listening to Ke$ha is like trying to have a conversation with a pile of cigarette butts," which I wrote down at the time and which sent me on this mission of retrieval.

And to Edward, William Bloody Swygart, and all the others who gave us a place to play, and a home for our blah blah blah.

Expand( Comment thread, The Singles Jukebox, Blah Blah Blah )



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This was such an assured moment (Magnum, P.I.)

Aug. 12th, 2022 08:45 am
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I remember exactly when it hit me, that I understood the show's low-key greatness: a police detective and several cops approach Magnum and tell him he has to come downtown, and they pull out handcuffs, and Magnum in his lightweight Hawaiian gear says, "Guys, cuffs? Isn't this a bit much?" and this was such an assured moment, like Howard Hawks with Bogart, or Hitchcock with Cary Grant; it felt lived-in, director and actor being firm in where they are, knowing the world they're creating.

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Roger E. Mosley

Aug. 12th, 2022 07:54 am
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Playing T.C. in Magnum, P.I., Roger E. Mosley and the writers pulled off something difficult and risky, especially for a black man: creating a character who's strong but with a tendency towards slightly buffoonish self-deprecation – "good humor" being the character's way of getting by while being taken advantage of but also potentially turning into the character's crutch. This fit the show's conception: each of the four leads has weaknesses he retreats into and which grate on the others; then the case and whatever predicament Magnum's gotten into call them to action, and through the action they rise into themselves. Although the tone is very different from Buster Keaton – much more life-sized and relaxed – it's as if in each episode the ensemble goes through a Keaton-like transformation, finding purpose, achieving grace in motion.



There was a moment – don't remember its context, the particular story, but T.C. does something noble for someone, maybe volunteers to help some little kid with a paper route, and he does it well, and then when no one's looking you can see him being a bit smugly proud of himself.

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Arguments against unmoored maus aren't interesting

Jul. 7th, 2022 05:08 pm
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Found a scrap of paper with this sentence fragment in not completely legible handwriting:

"arguments against unmoored maus aren't interesting 'cause there aren't"



Found another scrap, "The riff he's singing goes mi-sol-mi, fa-fa-fa-fa do do mi. Then La Do-la-do la do do re do – but it might actually be in another key." This was less useful than one would hope, in that the rhythm is not well-indicated. I tried to sing it, but the tune didn't ring a bell (as they say).

Perhaps it is the melody to "Unmoored Maus." No lyrics seem to be available.

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