I'm in a pretty mellow mood tonight. Check out this song by the Magnetic Fields, "I'm Sorry That I Love You."
And another one by them, with an animation by some kid. Also a pretty seriously mellow song from the experimental pop group.
Here's a little John Hiatt, "the Love That Harms." I love Hiatt, and that love doesn't harm at all.
John Hiatt is maybe the greatest living singer-songwriter, now that Warren Zevon has run out of lawyers, guns and money. (Leonard Cohen is really a songwriter, don't much like his singing, so don't ask...) Hiatt is also a superb rock / blues balladeer. For instance... Hiatt wrote the following song, which B.B. King and Eric Clapton covered. Everybody agrees, Hiatt's version is better. Damn, as they say. Just damn.
On the topic of singer/songwriters... Iggy Pop is pretty special too. He's a lot like Lou Reed, maybe not the greatest guy in any given genre he's working in, but I guarantee you he is breaking ground. The Velvet Underground stuff *still* sounds really good. It hasn't aged in nearly 40 years. So too Iggy Pop's work with the Stooges. It was groundbreaking and it still holds up pretty well. Yeah, I know he's pretty far out there in a lot of respects. But the dude can write, and sing, a song.
And if you want to know who Henry Rollins and Jello Biafra wanted to be when they grew up, check this out.
And as long as I'm heading toward the primal... here's the song where Link Wray invented the power chord in 1958. How badass was this at the time? So badass, it was banned. No dirty lyrics, no dirty hips, no dirty models in tiny bikinis.
Good luck at Poolesville and Rocky Gap, y'all. Be badass, alright?
5 comments:
Funny, but Just yesterday I watched Jimmy Page playing air guitar to "Rumble" on the doc-movie "It Might Get Loud" on Netflix. It's a good one, Page, Edge, and Jack White talking and playing guitars. Page is actually intelligible now that he's 66. Edge doesn't even sound Irish anymore, and White is just plain out there. Great show.
Magnetic Fields = overrated
+ that's a big maybe about the very talented John Hiatt. I was aware that the "late great" TVZ had passed,but last I'd heard, for starters, both Bobby Zimmerman and Declan Mac. are still plying their craft. And it's a bit of a misnomer to refer to the seminal Iggy Pop as a singer-songwriter, though singer, songwriter works among other things, of course. No quarrels here about the
badassness that was Link Wrath. I often train out my back door in his former Accokeek stomping grounds.
MP
RE: Riding With the King -- Sonny Landreth is one of the greatest slide guitar players who ever lived. When you're unconstrained by frets, you can go all just intonation on that bad boy, and play in tune. A lot of that distortion you hear isn't from effects pedals; it's from carefully playing notes a little bit out of phase. Note the right hand muting and left hand action above the slide.
First, you get a bassist and drummer who are locked in to each other. Then, you get a guy who can sing and play stanky rhythm guitar on the Tele. When you throw Sonny Landreth in there, magic is bound to happen.
Boz - sounds nice.
Anon / MP - I agree Magnetic Fields is overrated, but when you take away from the overrating you are still left with a band that has produced a couple pretty good albums, albeit albums that you can consign to the 'just another synth/distortion pop wave' pile. I still like some of their stuff. As for Hiatt... there were ulterior motives for saying that. In any non-professional topic that I discuss, I guarantee you that there will be at least three of my readers who are *way* smarter than me and many who can match wits or overcome me on a particular day, even where I'm not ignorant. I know that was a pretty aggressive statement; there are days when I think about others in that role, but I wanted to see what kind of a reaction I got from people, to maybe learn some things. Iggy Pop? Well, he transcends categories, doesn't he? But just because a guy is a decathlete, doesn't mean you can disregard him as a half miler if he runs sub-1:45, knowwhatImean? And Link Wray... well, you know how I feel about the early seminal electric guitar pioneers. Can't say enough good things about the guy's work.
Steve - agreed that's a special combination. It's a bunch of virtuosos who are okay with sublimating their own brilliance for the good of the band's sound. I heard that and thought, "damn... sounds like the best bar band I ever heard." Well, other than Little Charlie and the Shufflin' Hungarians, anyhow. I mean that as a high compliment because although the mega groups are nice and we always remember the music that we played at certain points in our lives, the band we caught in a club with a half dozen friends on a golden night is the music that sticks with us, and on a good night when the band is really on, we remember that. It doesn't have to be groundbreaking music; any band that can make the scene will have that effect. I still remember this one Dead Kennedy's show where I was slamdancing (it wasn't moshing then) and stage diving and getting my ass kicked by Jello Biafra with a guitar. And then they started the lead-in for Holiday in Cambodia and 500 people were dead silent and still, and the music was low and then all of a sudden the music got *real* loud and Jello turns around and starts singing in this near screech, and the club completely erupted into a huge pit of screaming and wildly dancing people... holy shit. Never been a part of anything like that. It was like being a rock inside the sun, there was so much energy flowing around.
And the DKs, on the balance, were not all that great of a band. But they could put on a hell of a show and do things to the crowd using their music that was just wild.
I hear you Jim. I sorta picked Bobby Z. and Declan for a similar reason, certainly not because I necessarily prefer the work of Dylan and Costello. But Townes will always have a special mystical place in my psyche. The last 15 or so years I think Joe Henry has been pretty much hitting line drives into the gaps at will. His run of albums from "short man's room" to "tiny voices" is one of the more impressive decade streaks of high level singer-
songwriting and nicely accomplished stylistic drift ever in the post rock and roll
age. That said I am not so sold on his most recent two albums. But the album
"scar" I still say "wow". Plus anybody with a tune titled "Curtis Flood"
MP
Post a Comment