plug tuning, pt. 1

Title: Musician Plugs
Format: CD
Date: 2002, it must have been. april i think?
Packaging: in a jewel case with inserts made from a time-life "faces of the 20th century" calendar meredith gave me from back in the 20th century. half of greta garbo upside-down on the cover; the other half rightside-up inside. clark gable on the back. the calendar part (from the back of the pictures) is in the interior tray and i traced it onto the cd itself too:



also, calendar inside the 'booklet,' forming the numbers (mostly) for the tracklist:

1. super furry animals • some things come from nothing

2. boards of canada • roygbiv
3. wilco • radio cure
4. damon albarn, afel bocoum, toumani diabate, et. al. • kela village

5. the mountain goats • horseradish road
6. aphex twin • {siding nails}
7. empire state • bugs in the system
8. califone • trout silk
9. infectious organisms • city limits
10. tortoise • equator
11. spoon • take the fifth
12. rjd2 • {here's what's left}
13. yo la tengo • autumn sweater
14. {the} beck • paper tiger
15. hrvatski • gemini (early)
16. john vanderslice • from out here
17. plaid • new family
18. the chemical brothers • the sunshine underground

i made this mix for my parents. the concept was to plug some musicians to them that i thought they might enjoy (males, i guess, specifically, as a counterpart to the highly successful "chicks" series of mixes for my mom.) musician plugs is what audiologists call custom-fitted ear plugs for people who want to retain their hearing and also hear clearly when exposed to a lot of loud noise. mine are purple and live in little a neon yellow case.

it didn't really work out too well for that purpose - for one thing, i don't think they listen to it much, maybe because it's got a lot of electronica. also, it maintains a pretty consistent mellow mood, meaning the songs don't really stand out that much, so it doesn't do a very good job of plugging the individual artists. (spoon's awesome "take the fifth" taking pride of place as the lone high-energy cut providing a release and a contrast to the rest of the moodery.)

on the other hand, i think it is a nice li'l mix, for those very reasons - i like how it sustains that mood while covering a decent amount of genre territory including hip-hop [9] and "world" [4]. though most of it is indie and electronica of various stripes, or some combination. it has some of the classic examples of a particular type of gorgeous synthesized portamento chordal sequence that just makes me melt - i'm thinking especially of [1] (which used to be my radio show theme song), [12] and [15]. (another one would be squarepusher's "journey to reedham") i sometimes refer to these bits as "keening," though i'm not quite sure what that means.

anyway it's a pretty listen, and an interesting snapshot of what i was listening to at the time - some of these artists i haven't given much thought to in the past five years (empire state, infectious organisms, hrvatski), though there are also many of my perennial favorites on here.

real is the old fake

this just in:

full speed ahead
rock and roll is dead
the girls and boys from the mickey mouse club
clocked it in the head

those are the opening lines of "fake is the new real," one of the more immediately arresting songs on the recent debut release by soul/r&b/pop songstress alice smith. the album, for lovers, dreamers & me, is pretty good - it might be great after a few more spins. it might be offering a genuinely new perspective (and perhaps one way forward?) for the whole soggy morass of neo-soul/adult-contempo-r&b/singer-songwriter pop, though it might also just be those same things again, particularly well-executed.

but i mostly bring it up to tussle with those lyrics for a minute. in case you didn't guess, the tone of the song is flatly disapproving of the state of affairs ("we're living in phony times," etc.) the predictable rockist party-line of course, though conceivably it could have been a celebration of the teen-pop revolution...(did anybody ever write a celebratory song about rock and roll being dead? that would be awesome. and how glad they were not to have to rock out anymore?) more interesting is that it seems several years out of date - not that such a sentiment is unpopular in 2007 (in time, we can only hope...) - but, hey, the mickey mouse gang aren't boys and girls anymore.

it's an excellent, succinct summary of some major trends in pop music c. 1997-2003, but the story doesn't end there: as of 2004-06, rock is back in pop again in a major way. granted, it may not be the kind of rock and roll to which the song presumably means to refer; and it's hardly made an incursion against hip-hop/r&b - but the lyrics don't complain about those things. come to think of it, isn't it a little funny that an artist in smith's genre-cluster is bemoaning the death of rock, and complaining about teen-pop? what's it to her? (well, it's a society/lifestyle issue too, but whatever. )

in fact, it turns out that the song, which was written by imani coppola, dates back at least to 2002, when it was on coppola's independently released little red fighting mood (about which the internet contains almost no information.) her other contribution to for lovers, the funky, show-tuney "woodstock," is also recycled, from another '02 indie album, whose title - post traumatic pop disorder syndrome - may tell us something about her mind-state at the time. [eta: album title correction, from the horses mouth - also, "fake" is on both albums. let's reflect on how the correct title affects the implications i had insinuated.]

imani hails from the class of '97, probably somewhere near that cardigans/beck(/cibo matto/cornershop/etc.) funky alterna-pop realm i was just discussing, possibly with more of a neneh/lauryn hip-hop vibe, possibly more fiona/paula cole songwriter territory. i get the sense that the word "quirky" shall be applied liberally.

[project: somebody needs to come up with a name for this music/phenomenon, the late '90s artsy, eclecticist pastiche party pop/rock vanguard, which was in some ways a great failed hope for the fusion of art and commerce - people don't make records like this any more, or if they do they certainly don't sell. hint: i've definitely used the collage/college pun before to invoke this stuff.]

i haven't actually heard chupacabra, or any of coppola's music, which i probably should if i'm going to talk about her. but basically, she had a major-label debut that for whatever reason didn't lead to a major-label career; dropped out of sight (but not out of music, apparently); just released her second reasonably-available album, which sounds "difficult" (hard to say if that's in the interesting way or the boring way.) i'd had the impression that she had done more songwriting for other folks, like pop folks, in the interim, apart from this smith album, which has plenty enough indie integrity (and soul integrity to boot) to be a perfectly sensible match. but i may have been confusing her with chantal kreviazuk, about whom i also know nothing.

ok, well it would have been more interesting if i could link imani more directly to the kind of industry-approved teen-pop that she attacks so pithily (not sarcasm: i really like that stanza!) but come to think of it she was a kind of teen-pop herself - she was only 19 when her debut came out, and she got an mtv hit out of it if nothing else. no big shocker though that she's joined the ranks of the failed-star music-biz disaffected (aimee mann, brie larson, plenty other major-label dropouts that i'm having trouble thinking of) and seems to be doing the fringy artsy indie cult-following thing á la ani difranco and [sorta?] me'shell ndegeocello (or jane sibery to name somebody less multi-racial - or, sorry, issa, wtf.)

i guess this was a mostly failed attempt to continue the game of drawing links between '00s (teen)pop and '90s alterna/rock/songwriter/etc. (wow, look at that comment, dave; we were so gushy then!) (oh right, we still are.)

speaking of mia doi todd - oh whoops, we weren't, but she certainly fits in here - bertine's 1999 debut album, morbid latenight show [from before she started using her surname - tho with a name like zetlitz why would she wait?] turns out to be surprisingly close to what i had expected the golden state to sound like. bit of a trip-hop thing to it (think morcheeba); definitely "pancultural" as heather puts it, and generally jazzier, loungier than you'd expect from her later work - though it is still dance-pop, more or less. but it doesn't seem like "diva" territory to me, much more auteurist - she writes all her own tunes (!) - and not too far off from that the self-consciously hip, eclectipastichepop posse. neat. [eta: actually, she didn't write all of the tunes - amg lied, and eventually i went downstairs and looked at the liners. but, she wrote all the lyrics, and wrote or co-wrote almost all of the music.]

stop-gap song-gab

just taking a little break from writing about music for that other place (most recently a bio and two reviews on sway - not yet pubbed but watch that link) to write about music here for a change. sidebar updated to include links to the old podcast posts. (i'd almost forgotten i'd started to do that. never fear, i've already got an idea for a new one: expect it later this week! ha, i mean decade!) also, some new links that i won't have time to fully follow, and a ish-ton of new titles in the acquisitions dept. flick, did i really buy/earn/acquire forty-seven new records in october? what the christ?! no wonder it's eternal! so you can see why i haven't been able to think of anything to write about here lately.

and that's not counting my prodigal/prodigious itunes/download influx lately - i'm still in the midst of processing new/ish albums by [in stupid lacitebahpla order] tunng, tmbg [bonus disc], the veronicas, the mitchell brothers, the clientele, the avett brothers, susumu yokota, sugababes, studio, sloan, skye sweetnam, royksopp, roisin murphy, radiohead, pole, paramore, pantha du prince, panda bear, minor majority, lucky soul, lil wayne, lethal bizzle, les savy fav, kompakt, kathy diamond, jens lekman, jay-z, iron + wine, helios, colleen, cassius, britney spears, black milk, beirut, amerie, aly & aj, aesop rock, and 65daysofstatic. er, among others. (and that's just the '07 stuff: new years' coming soon y'all - have you got your listing brain in gear?) (and a couple of those emboldments are based on a single serious listen, or even less - many of the others i've barely begun to graze.) back to the racket, basically. but it's been good to me, thistime, thusfar. guess i'll be reporting back on these... all in due time.

i have in fact managed to process more of that october overload than you might be imagining, though there's certainly a ways to go - i thought i could point to a few recordings that have stood out in recent weeks enough to achieve some prominence in my headspace - many of them, as it happens, on the older side of things. i'd post mp3s but i've been at a total loss for a decent server lately (free or otherwise, just so long as it works - let me know if you have suggestions.) couple youtube links tho:

"been it" - the cardigans
i know, it's pretty ridiculous that i didn't own first band on the moon until now (after all, it's officially a 1st-tier album by a 1st-tier band within the swedish pop/rock category - shhh i don't own any ace of base either, but that's also nothing a 99¢ bin somewhere isn't just waiting to fix.) guess everybody else had their fill of it about a decade ago (!), whereas i, c. 1996, was about a month late in jumping on the odelay bandwagon, which meant i lost out on the chance to catch the cards' opening slot on that beck tour which easily makes my missed-concert-regrets top 5. (this is in 8th grade mind you.) had things been different, my swede-tooth phase might have arrived significantly earlier - or not. actually, i was hepped to life a few years later, via "carnival" and "gordon's gardenparty" on my first girlfriend's first mixtape (aw), but never fully completely embraced it past a few songs.

so anyway, i had a pretty good idea of what i was in for when i finally snagged fbotm (for only 50¢!) at circle thrift the other week, but i don't think i fully anticipated just how much unmitigated poptastic brilliance it contains. of course i knew and loved "lovefool" for the perfecto-popslice it is (covered it in a college band, even, and no-way ironically), but it's almost diminished in its album context: among its less polished peers, it's so seamlessly shiny that it sounds sarcastic, revealed to be the snide euro-pop caricature it obviously always was - albeit note-perfect enough to outclass the genuine article even as it mocks it. but it's the weird, complicated, elegant, almost grotesque, blissfully jaded constructions - "losers," the "iron man" reinvention, "your new cuckoo" - that elevate this disc to the height of pop/rock in the most literal sense of that usually glossed-over term - or, better - art-pop, wherein not one iota of the pop is sacrificed, and yet it just bleeds archly artless artifice.

most of all, it's "been it" - perfectly perfect pop, with about four times its share of hooks, but more than that, so inventive in every direction - i could dissect practically every second and come out gleaming and beaming - it's like the breeders "cannonball" like that - but, i hazard, better? just a couple - that indelible opening, synch'd bass and bass-drum pick-up fill before it bursts into full-on cooing pop. the varied hesitations in the deceptively arhythmic verse riff [0:35]. fake-out slope-rhyme of "sister" with "mistre-ess." the alarm clock at [2:13]. the seemingly antithetical verse (crunchy rock sparseness) and chorus (fleshy pop swoon) unexpectedly merging [3:20] for a tantalizing moment (rok gtr + pop vox) before the entropic, unspiralling breakdown. whew. and all of it, of course, lofted heavenward by nina persson's gossamer croon, the band's truly unshakable asset, in finest feather here.

this has been my dishwashing album of choice lately (along with in rainbows), and that's the one that keeps sending me back for the replay button. the feel-good dishwashing hit of the fall! yeah i know it's old news - shut up. at this rate i'm going to have to actually investigate those later-day cardigans records that i'd always passed over dubiously...until then, though.

"one sound" - knife in the water
awright. already wrote about this one. maybe you didn't notice though, plus i thought it belonged in this round-up. could've come up with another of their tunes to write about - the album keeps going and growing on me; "seat of pity" has been in my head plenty, and i went and got earned myself their later cut the cord album too, which promises to be just as enthralling. but this'll save me some work. here's what i wrote:

"dusty semi-country minimalism. nine minutes plus. same progression just repeated and repeated, sometimes with verses. organ harmonizations just so-slightly off, never quite resolving they way they should, but growing familiar enough that you almost don't notice - the unsettling rendered inconspicuous through desensitization. 'i want to fall right back to sleep/to dive back in the sheets.' hypnotic."

and it's still just as powerfully intense. between these guys, okkervil (new album very nice), and spoon (obv.), i'm cultivating some major affection for austinites lately, and looking to expand - def. intrigued by what i hear about future clouds and radar (and cotton mather, of which that's an offshoot.) go tx!

"can i change my mind" - tyrone davis
got this a few months back but it just keeps getting better. totally my serendipitous soul find of the year - and not from one of those collector-cheatin' rare-groove compilations i'm so ardently ambivalent about neither - just a budget-quality reissue i stumbled across in a random $2.99 bin in boulder. the whole album's sweet - "knock on wood" gets reinvented as a ballad, the arrangements throughout are consistently stellar, even when the songs sometimes dip below that mark - but it's plain to see why the title cut was the single, and apparently a respectable hit, though mostly lost to history, at least for folks like me.

it locks right off into a loping, almost mellow funk groove, with a nimble, rubbery bassline and chunks of guitar hittin' on the 2 so fat you could slice 'em - plus another guitar licking out effortlessly spidery spangles. and the horns - a single unison swell, repeated once up an octave, and then retreat, to make room for mr. davis' achingly langorous entrance on the vocal. the way he yawnily slides into that opening line - "...aaw, she didn't bat an eye" - is just priceless. ditto his smooth semi-crack on the word "time" at [1:14]. aw shucks. so gooey.

an intriguing premise too - it's nothing new under the soul sun for him to be lamenting his lapses that lost him his love, realizing it only too late - but the way he asks the title question, so innocently, as though he'd be doing her the favor, when clearly it's her mind that would need the changing. sly, kinda, but seductive. ooh, and check the reggae version by mr. mittoo, too.

marshall crenshaw - marshall crenshaw
part of my ongoing campaign to get more comfortable or at least better acquainted with the [non-synthpop, non-talking heads] 1980s, partially sparked by my reading of this fascinating, smartly-written book, whose most substantial contribution to my understanding of the t-heads was a historical contextualization by means of occasionally interjected news-headline highlight reels, pop'n'politics anecdotage, and downtown-scene local color. also part of my ongoing campaign to get more familiar with more singer-songwriter types, if nothing else so that i can have more coherent things to say (and examples to give) in situations like that knotty wrangling with folk songwriting i was doing a few posts ago.

the same (the former, esp.) is true of the feelies [crazy rhythms, 1980] and aztec camera [high land, hard rain, 1983] albums i also picked up recently, and scritti politti before that - of that bunch, crenshaw is clearly the least post-punk (ergo least punk) and most songwriterly - not sure if he quite fits into the "new pop" rubric with which i'm haphazardly lumping the others, but whatever. i've known for a long time that i would like this - it's just been a question of whether i'd go with the readily available original release or hold out for the spennier rhino bonus-tracks reissue: i didn't. actually i don't think i really knew who he was until tara mentioned him, with vague disinterest, as somebody her dad liked - even though i feel like my dad might have one of his albums, maybe even this one.

right, so it's very obviously dad-rock - there was probably no disputing that even at the time - but let's not forget that it's still rock (it came out in 1982, the year of my birth - according to amg "a brief, exhilarating moment in between the fall of disco and the rise of MTV, when the eternal verities of real rock & roll broke through once again.") it reminds me, more than anything, of the likes of joe jackson and graham parker (and oh yeah robert gordon duh - elvis c. was never this prosaic), though not as punkily disaffected as either of them ("cynical girl"'s lyrics notwithstanding) - especially the way he talks about 'girls' (might as well spell it 'gurls') girls girls, walkin' down the street [q.v. "pretty girls," "local girls"], feels like a direct lineage from the beach boys and big star. is it just me or do people like this no longer get away with making reference to 'gurls' anymore in such a flip, factual manner?

anyhoo, peep it it pops. (obviously, btw, what this really is is power-pop, 'nuff said.) i couldn't choose a favorite track to single out for this - "rocking around in nyc" has one of the nicer unanticipated harmonic moves (the "...she's facing disaster" bit); the groovy "there she goes again" has been known to course through my head in the mornings, compelling me to put the album back on; "someday, someway" is a perfectly sensible single choice with swell harmonies - though in general i like the rootsy-cutesy rockabilly cuts less than the more straight-forward rockers (although honestly the best thing on here might be the cover of arthur alexander's "soldier of love," because that song is just so awesome and it's a pretty good cover.) which, ultimately, is kind of the problem - marshall crenshaw is a triumph of formalism, and everything on it shines with wholly admirable, consistent craftsmanship, but not with the spark of truly inspired, individuated songs-qua-songs. still craftsmanship is something - you certainly don't get it this good too often. remember, i like formalism.

[eta: if only marshall crenshaw were a brit (bloody sounds like one innit?) he would get some coolness points for being pub-rock, which is clearly what this is, except that it's american. nevermind that pub-rock is like the most dad-rock thing conceivable, it's still cool because it begat brinsley schwarz who nick lowe who begat elvis costello, or something like that. right? i need to investigate it more, but first somebody needs to make the early nick lowe albums available/affordable. obviously it should/would be yep roc, who are his current label and who just reissued robyn hitchcock's catalog and billy bragg's before that. ok?]

transient random-noise bursts with announcements - stereolab
i don't have anything to say about the music on this yet, except that it's slightly underwhelming so far (tim sendra don't fail me now), but now that i've finally got it, which means i've now completed my collection of classic-era (i.e. pre-cobra) 'lab proper full lengths (groop's an ep rite?), which for a long time didn't really seem possible (though as it turns out there are only five)...i thought i'd be justified in asking a question that has always bothered me about this album:

is it "[transient random]-[noise bursts with announcements]"

or is it "transient [random-noise] bursts with announcements"?

i like the latter better, i think, as a theoretical description of music (that there would "random-noise bursts", which happened to be transient, as the primary feature, followed by the announcements.) but the former kind of seems more likely? can't tell.

as far as more current stuff goes, well i will admit that skye sweetnam's "music is my boyfriend" (awesome video too), roisin murphy's "overpowered" (ditto), lethal bizzle's "police on my back," britney spears' "heaven on earth" (yeah, "piece of me" too but that's old hat) and the veronicas' "untouched" all remain pretty righteous. but y'all knew that right?

as rumored, the bonus disc to they might be giants' the else, entitled cast your pod to the wind, is pretty phenomenal ("why did you grow a beard," "brain problem situation," "i'm your boyfriend now," "employee of the month" = future classics), though despite being fluffier and fresher, it'd be hard to say it's actually better than the album proper. which is also quite good by the way.

oh yeah, and did i mention that i rather like this devon sproule character?

i love amg. (so much more than bmg - that was always just a marriage of convenience, while it's lasted, but they're hardly the kings of convenience these days...) i love stephen thomas erlewine's catholic tastes and generous yet authoritative tone; i love thom jurek's exhaustive, opinionated, lovingly detailed, forthright essay-reviews (even when i don't completely agree with them) [but apparently lots of people don't] - and i especially adore tim sendra's [first record bought: monkees greatest hits - hey me too!; favorite magazine: highlights for children] gleefully tweeful indie-pop crushes. (and i like the other reviewers too - andy kellman on electronica; marisa brown on hip-hop; john bush on assorted things but i associate him with earlier techno for some reason...everybody on everything really, which is part of what makes the site so great - you get the sense that everyone involved has at least a decent familiarity with basically any kind of music that comes up.) btw: all of the reviews i linked above played a substantial role in convincing to pick up the albums, in certain cases without any other information.

i love the sense i've gleaned of what many of the reviewers/editors must be like, even though i of course have no idea - i particularly like when the gang gets together to dish about recent pop singles or, like, how hot kat mcphee is. it's a little like getting to hang out with your favorite professors (or maybe your camp counselors) in an incongruously informal social setting; slightly awkward but revealing. (wish they were still doing that - i haven't quite warmed to this new blog format yet, though it seems promising; it's nice to have comments, and it seems like it'll be easier to keep track of things. actually, it fills in some of the gaps left by stylus' departure.)

i love the monthly new release lists (though they're only up for three months) which are the handiest memory guides that always seem to include not just the best releases (as they claim) but pretty much every notable release from the month period. which brings me to the key point that amg somehow manages to give at least marginally positive reviews to an unlikely majority of records, without seeming unduly gushy or indiscriminate - they rarely deliver pans, even to controversial records, always patiently exploring the positive aspects of records while putting them in perspective. and the reviewers convey a sense of individuality and personability without ever letting themselves get in the way of talking about the music. which is understandable enough, since it's supposed to be an authoritative, encyclopedia-style publication; it's just impressive and inspiring how much creativity passion the writing still manages to convey, within those restraints.

most of all, i love and hate how easy it is to just get sucked into the web of all music guide: starting with their often-intriguing album of the day, or the notable releases of the week on the sidebar, or just looking up the records i just heard, or just bought, or saw at the record store and wasn't sure whether to buy (a total personal ritual), or was just thinking about...and then end up following hyperlink after hyperlink, constantly learning new things even when i thought i'd explored a particular strand to its furthest extent . there's so much music! and these guys think they can contain all of it!? (it's like something i said the other day to somebody who offered to lend me a book: thanks, i'd like to read it - i just have to finish the internet first.) no question, i spend more time on allmusic.com, on a daily basis, than any other website.

and now.....

OMG! OMG! OMG!

yup, there i am... just joined the team, as an "expert" (or something like that) on uk and scandinavian pop. of which there are some mildly surprising gaps in amg's coverage, which i am thrilled and honored to be filling. there are certainly a bunch of albums and artists - including many of my recent favorites - that i'm looking forward to covering for them. the pieces i've done so far - bios and album reviews on richard x, margaret berger, and amy diamond - have given me the opportunity to revisit some favorites and in most cases come to some new realizations and reflections about them. (well not that new...mostly just how bizarre amy is, and how amazing rich and marble are.)

i'm keeping a running list of absent bios and reviews i want to write - not just in those genres, since i'm hoping to be able to write about other stuff for them as well - let me know if you come across something that they're missing. and then, of course, there are many more (inevitably) other artists in my "area of expertise" that i haven't even heard of - my editor just tossed me a short list of them the other day - "artists who've been charting recently in scandinavia." so there's plenty to explore there. which is good - it'll encourage me to write quickly and efficiently about the ones i don't care about/can't find enough information on (seeing as how i can't read swedish); and it'll keep me from wanting to write nothing but raves. may have already discovered a new keeper this way too - norwegian folk-pop band minor majority. (hm, maybe a little too earnest and maudlin though. we'll see.)

anyhow. that's the news. hopefully i can get myself some discipline. (and not spend hours composing silly blog posts like this one, so i can get to actually sharing insights about music. er something.) so far, anyway, i feel like this is going better than my past attempts at holding down music-scribing gigs. hey hey hey!

go! power at halloweentime

pullet with dragonfly wings

i don't typically associate halloween with great music - not being a misfits fan (or a goth), the pool of season-appropriate standbys runs surprisingly shallow - but i have happened to see a number of great shows on hallows-e'en past: most memorably elliott smith at the beacon theatre in 2000 (hm, well apparently on or near) (he played "don't fear the reaper" as an encore), and the roots at the electric factory in '01 (all-out in dapper pimp attire.) ok, and for that matter i guess that particularly memorable tmbg show in '01 as well. (i do remember the moldy peaches being in costumes.) anyway. the go! team concert at [the venue f.k.a. t.l.a.] this past wednesday wasn't quite up to those levels, nor was it the euphoric dance-dance-revelation à la this past st. paddy's' junior senior show that i'd secretly hoped for. BUT it was pretty fun nonetheless, and a nice break from not going to any concerts b/c i didn't have sufficient interest or anybody to go with.

i just went by myself b/c i didn't have anybody to go with. which woulda been more fine if the show had started at 8 as advertised - instead it was doors at 8 show at 9, so i ended up seeing all of the 'support' band's set (good choice for halloween, but their handmade book+cd album packages were much more extraordinarey than the actual music) and then waiting for a full 50 minutes for the 'team... i mean, i know that's not all that unusual of a delay between sets (though it srsly should be - but save unprofessionalism rant for another day), but it can substantially drain one's energy level to have nothing to do but stand there for almost an hour, vaguely jockeying for position, vaguely eavesdropping, vaguely nodding to the boards of canada (?!) on the sound system but not so much as to seem like you're trying to attract attention to your familiarity with it. so once they finally showed, ninja [that's her above, with the wings - thnks flckr] and company had some work to do get me back into it. and they weren't helped out by the sound - it was loud and indistinct enough that it was often hard to make out the melodic/harmonic content of the music, with or without earplugs.

yet slowly but surely, the goodvibes pulled through. not sure if it was my ears getting acclimated or just my resolve to revel firming up, but after spending the first half of the set debating leaving early, i finally started acquiescing to ninja's exhortations (hands in the air! jump to the beat! ladies go like this!), um like i meant it. by the point, two-thirds of the way in, when she declared "(sorry, but) this is the go! team, and we're not going to accept anything less than all-out, sweaty, shakin-yo-booty, dahncing, from everybody in this room!," the crowd was ready to get really into it too, so we had ourselves some right good, jumping, almost-abandon. helped that they played some of their best tunes then ("ladyflash" i think was what they launched into - definitely the high point.) "bottle rocket" also around then (though i have to admit i'm not very good on the names of their songs.) the horn parts and such were never as loud as they needed to be, which meant a lot of the hooks got lost - but even so, my impression remains that they have just a handful of great songs, and a lot that are sort of undistinguished. the show didn't particularly make me want to check out their new album either. but, y'know, that's ok.

hum. actually, i think what really made me want to post about halloween-night music was the djing i heard at silk city slightly later on. (some of it apparently - maybe? - by one of the guys who was in liquid liquid.) there was too much unexciting house/minimal stuff that never went anywhere interesting - and there was definitely not nearly enough room to dance. but it was all worth it for a couple of selections that it just tickled me to hear. first (right when i got there) that weird frankie valli pilooski edit - hearing it actually played out at a club made me instantly much more appreciative of its existence, even though it's still a complete wtf? dunno if the crowd knew what they were hearing (is it actually getting successfull?) but they seemed to be playing along. later there was an airing of that ross of love insta-classic "kick out the chairs," and an uncanny recreation of the peak moment of my own halloween dj set ("crescendolls" > "thriller"), but best for sure was hearing "late in the evening" - oh man! totally unexpected, brought me such a smile...i sang along with the whole thing (esp. the horn parts!) he looped the intro groove for a really long time before starting the song too - made me wonder if it was a sample...has anybody done that?

anyway. that made me happy about djs. and wondering if maybe having my binders pre-packed (rather than starting fresh every gig) is tending to make my sets staler and less inventive, less likely to pull out unexpected chestnuts like that - and what effect mp3jing would have. (ha! coinage?)

oh, btw: i guess i should mention that i went to a concert last night as well - the çudamani gamelan, from bali, at lang at swarthmore. i went in hoping but not expecting to have my generally low level of interest in gamelan changed - and it wasn't, particularly, but i did enjoy the first few numbers, especially, more than any gamelan i've seen in the past (which has basically just been the swarthmore gamelan. who do not play nearly this fast or precise.) after a while it did all start to get indistinct - the pieces seemed to be less form-based, with fewer quick, dramatic shifts - but probably i was also just having trouble continuing to pay attention. liza argues that i should dig this stuff because i like steve reich - which is true, to a point - my problem with a lot of it is that it's noisy and aggressive in addition to being harmonically and structurally minimal. um. but i like the stuff that's less noisy all-the-time. and there's no question that this group had some seriously astounding technique - especially the xylophone lines that were split up between multiple players alternating beats. so wow for that.