styjuke on boy-group

not really sure why this is here, but i guess it is...

I'm really torn here - on the one hand, I've long thought it was high time for a Four Seasons reappraisal, both critical and popular (Not sure if Jersey Boys is a step in the right direction or not.) So while I'm thrilled by the existence of this track, the modifications it makes to the original are almost alarming minimal: "edit" is definitely the operative term, don't call it a remix. There are no new elements - the breakbeat and handclaps are in the original, they're just slightly beefed up (though the double-time soul claps on the second bridge are a nice touch) - so all Pilooski did, other than add some silly echo effects, and cut out a nice piano lick or two, is loop a couple of sections to make it longer. It's not even faster! So that's why it doesn't particularly sound much like a 2007 dance track. That said, it still sounds pretty great as is, and there's something to be said for not messing with a good thing - also nice that he chose a relatively minor FV&FS tune (this only reached #16 in 1967, as opposed to their seventeen top ten singles)

get ice.

this right here is my last summer mix. of the summer. i promise.

it's parts three and beyond of what you've already heard so far. it's a bonus disc for Popsical (there's room for two in that sleeve - it's a twin-pop!) it's extremely straightforwardly summery. it...s compulsively continuous-mixed, but it may not be a dance mix, exactly. it's all over the place.

i'll have more to say later. and i'll make a track-separated version for the cd. here's what you get:

1. Summertime, Summertime (Time to Smile Re:face) - the Jamies ft. Four Tet
2. Happy Summertime - R. Kelly ft. Snoop Dogg
3. Summertime - Beyonce ft. Ghostface
4. Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff ft. the Fresh Will Smith
5. SummerLove - Justin Timbalake ft. Stat Quo
6. Dear Summer - Jay-Z ft. Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, etc.
[+ Morning Sunrise - Weldon Irvine]
7. Summertime - Sublime ft. the Pharcyde
8. Umbrella (the Summerbrella ThatzmyJAM Lolly Brolly Remix) - Rihanna ft. Jay-Z, Keak da Sneak, Mims, Usher, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Clipse, Birdman, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, T-Pain, Cassie, Lil Mama, T.I., DJ Webstar, Young B, DJ Unk, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne
9. Oh My God - Mark Ronson ft. Lily Allen
10. Summer Night on Hammer Hill ["This Song is Like, uh, 'Heat Wave'?"] - Jens "The Vandel" Lekman ft. Martha Reeves + the Vandellas
11. Her Breasts Were Still Small - Tribeca
12. Vacation (The "Vitamin C is the Cure for the Summertime Blues" Remash) - Vitamin C ft. Eddie Cochran
13. The Funk Soul Surfer - H.R. Lovemuffin vs. BeachBoy Slim
14. Summer Samba - Walter Wenderly
15. Nice Day - Persephone's Bees
16. Computer Camp Love - Datarock
17. Real Summer - Future Bible Heroes
18. Don't Falter - Mint Royale ft. Lauren Laverne
19. Heavy Metal Drummer - Wilco
20. Do It Again - Steely Dan/The Beach Boys/The Chemical Brothers
21. Summertime - The Zombies

'07/.5

here's what i got for now:

albums
1. Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga by Spoon
2. Drums and Guns by Low
3. Sound of Silver by LCD Soundsystem
4. Out of the Woods by Tracey Thorn
5. Love, Pain, and the whole crazy thing by Keith Urban
6. Dignity by Hilary Duff
7. The Good, the Bad and the Queen by The Good, The Bad, and the Queen
8. Good Girl Gone Bad by Rihanna
9. Chromophobia by Gui Boratto
10. The Reminder by Feist
11. Asa Breed by Matthew Dear
12. Double Up by R. Kelly
13. The Return to Form Black Magick Party by Pop Levi
14. Children Running Through by Patty Griffin
15. Jarvis by Jarvis Cocker
16. Dirty South Dance by A-Trak
17. With Lasers by Bonde do Role
18. Our Earthly Pleasures by Maxïmo Park
19. Someone to Drive You Home by the Long Blondes
20. Prayer for the Weekend by the Ark

singles
1. "Lip Gloss" - Lil' Mama
2. "Girlfriend (Dr. Luke Remix)" - Avril Lavigne ft. Lil' Mama [also original version]
3. "I'm A Flirt (Remix)" - R. Kelly ft. T.I. and T-Pain
4. "D.A.N.C.E." - Justice
5. "Umbrella" - Rihanna ft. Jay-Z [also Lil' Mama remix]
6. "Lose You" - Linda Sundblad
7. "Our Velocity" - Maxïmo Park
8. "Whatever Turns You On" - Aberfeldy [eligibility highly questionable]
9. "I Wanna Have Your Babies" - Natasha Bedingfield
10. "All My Friends" - LCD Soundsystem
11. "Solid Ground" - Marit Larsen
12. "LoveStoned" - Justin Timberlake
13. "The Underdog" - Spoon
14. "Office Boy" - Bonde do Role
15. "Me and My Imagination" - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
16. "So Do I Say Sorry First" - Stephanie McIntosh
17. "Oh My God" - Mark Ronson ft. Lily Allen
18. "Shut Up and Drive" - Rihanna [also the remix!]
19. "101" - Albert Hammond, Jr.
20. "Raise the Roof" - Tracey Thorn
21. "Thou Shalt Always Kill" - Dan le Sac vs. Scroobious Pip
22. "Catch You" - Sophie Ellis-Bextor
23. "Ghost Ride It" - Mistah F.A.B.
24. "NYC Beat" - Armand van Helden
25. "Over It" - Katharine McPhee
26. "With Love" - Hilary Duff
27. "I Get Around" - Dragonette
28. "Be Good to Me" - Ashley Tisdale
29. "Know What I'm Doin'" - Birdman and Lil' Wayne ft. Rick Ross and T-Pain
30. "Beautiful Life" - Gui Boratto
31. "I Told You So" - Keith Urban
32. "Make it Rain (remix)" - Fat Joe ft. Lil' Wayne, Baby, T.I., R. Kelly, and Rick Ross
33. "Flourescent Adolescent" - Arctic Monkeys
34. "Never Again" - Kelly Clarkson
35. "The Magic Position" - Patrick Wolf
36. "Same Girl" - R. Kelly ft. Usher
37. "Acceptable in the '80s" - Calvin Harris
38. "The Sweet Escape" - Gwen Stefani ft. Akon
39. "I Believe" - Simian Mobile Disco
40. "Bird Flu" - M.I.A.
41. "Eres Para Mi" - Julieta Venegas
42. "Take Control" - Amerie
43. "Get Me Bodied" - Beyonce
44. "We Taking Over" - DJ Khaled ft. Akon, T.I., Rick Ross, Fat Joe, Birdman, and Lil' Wayne

let the endless revisions (caused by the big decisions) begin!

now usually i don't do this, but, uh...

Rihanna: "Umbrella (Remix ft. Jay-Z, Keak da Sneak, Mims, Usher, Lil Jon, Ludacris, Clipse, Birdman, Lil Wayne, Rick Ross, T-Pain, Cassie, Lil Mama, T.I., DJ Webstar, Young B, DJ Unk, Fat Joe, Lil Wayne)"

a.k.a. Still Summer Still Now, section II

um, enjoy!

summer stock

whoa hi! what was i supposed to be writing? about how i'm such a foggy fogy that all the music i care about is indy rock oldsters from way back in the ninetees? like em tortoise and mirah and spoon [see above], all of whom i went to see perform in the past week. despite that they haven't even put out any worthwhile new music since like 2001, or 2004, or well last tuesday, respectively. i mean [more accurately/less pointedly] i've been liking these bands since i was in college(!), which in point of fact was not in the 90s, and nor was mirah's recording career. [bbut still it's like i'm stuck in time and i can never advance and embrace new music, right? or wait, my top 5-ish albums of last year were by artists that didn't even exist when i was in college. k nm.]

briefly then:

trts@wrldcfelv
whom i have been wanting to see forever, since somebody told me once that you don't even get the full genius of their compositions til you see them replicate them live. worth the wait? well they hardly even looked at the audience, much less deigned to speak - that was borderline obnoxious. one of them (john mcentire, i hope? that's who it was in my mind) was at least smiling and seeming to enjoy himself.

as well he should, rocking the rock out double-drummer-style, with both kits front and center (that's right, shove the guitarist and bassist upstage), flanking the central keyboard/control module, whence dude'd plunk something cryptic but with unflinching hep. and the mallets, of course, further out on either side of the stage. perchance the gentlemen would rotate.

it was fun - the gentlemen can groove, and the selections are trés well-apportioned, and precisely familiar, as promised (i recognized almost every piece, mostly from the last two albums, though i could only hazard a guess at a couple titles.) discomfitingly mannered for such fluid, empathetic sound, but: exactly what you'd expect, really. neat to run into caroline, with whom i saw my very first post-rock show way back (gybe!, pre-!-shift) in u-city-ish (the long-since defunct 4040) even if she didn't want to talk to me (?)

mrh@frstuntrnchrchbsmnt
the charmer. second time this year (fourth overall?). no surprises, is good news. well, she did do three ten-second preview-snippets-cum-guessing-games from the bugs project - which were predictably adorable (logan was annoyed about this...why?) they had t-shirts for that, but no cds. best part, i must admit, was the encore of "cold, cold water"...there's just no arguing with a great song. also: opening folker benjy ferree got kinda obnoxious, but pulled out a surprisingly affecting magfields cover ("grand canyon") to close his set.

spn@rckfllrprk
whoooo! gonna be writing and writing about spoon this week/month/year, i can tell. so just on the show then: well first off i ran all the way w/ heavy backpack from the wrong subway stop (rector st.) after twofold subway idiocy and general underpreparation, which ended up actually working out ok because i completely missed the rain at that end of the ride. and also they hadn't started, though i was 15m late, it took them another good half-hour, but [blablabla] good pre-show tunes, fittingly motown-heavy, plus "mannish boy," and then, for no reason, right as they took the stage [to fiddle about some more], the opening tracks of illinois(e). ok whatever.

this band....well, should i get into our history together? ell, this post is already getting hella selfy. [it's not, obv., just about being a certain age, or in college, but about developing a personal relationship with the makers of music; most folks just have the time/inclination/emotional latitude to make those attachments in adolescence/academia...] *

the show: better than last summer @p4k, when they were weirdly (slightly) disappointing, and bantered inanely. took a few numbers to really get off the ground. but by an amped-up (+drums) "small stakes" and the horns entrance for "underdog" (!!)...they were off. so glad they're playing "stay don't go" live now, albeit w/o beatbox. most of the new record, selections from the last couple. most exciting was "take a walk." "jon fisk" w/ horns, also excellent. they played most of the songs that had been in my head the preceding week, so well done there.

honestly, spoon are just frigging sexy - i can't think of another band that gets me hot and bothered just watching them play (or even, as earlier that day, strutting down broadway listening to them ga ga in my headphones.) it's everything - every adjective that's overused to talk about their stark, sleek, lean, muscular, gritty, edgy, intense, intimate, dark, rock, music, the tension and release, lyrical (and vocal) obliquity occasionally letting up to reveal warm, brooding emotional core, like art-damaged deep soulful vacant eyes, and then there's britt's physical presence, the guitar in his hands, the jeans on his legs, the spiky of his tousle - faux-punx indeed - and they let you in it with them - being there makes you (me) seductive, toothsome, devastating, too. it'd seem they're hipster-cad-unattainable, but there it is for the taking, and that's why maybe spoon are Great, not just for indies, it's a democratic rock-band sex hip you can access too. so yeah i was dancing and rocking/freaking out basically the whole time - not many other people were - silly them. but i caught some knowing nods. also good flirting on the subway back. knuffnow.

i also sawr:


thdcmbrsts@mnnmsccntr
last night. won tickets. (thanks aka!) cool beans. never been to the mann before. colin claimed they'd never played with an orchestra before, but that's clearly a lie. i guess he meant before this tour. (but that their only other experience with strings was a quartet from the portland youth orch? doesn't make much sense either.)

the decemberists with an orchestra did make plenty of sense, at least as realized in this instance: the arrangements were rich, varied, and well-suited to the songs, and complex enough that i was reasonably impressed by how well the mann pops pulled them off after presumably minimal rehearsals. and they were featured on all but one or two numbers in an hour-and-a-quarter set.

weirdly (for a rock show) it started on time: we strolled into the amphitheater at 8:13 and just caught the second and final utterance of "fontanelle" in "the crane wife parts 1 and 2," which by itunes arithmetic means they must have started at four after. too bad, that's the nicest song on the new record. actually though they didn't end up playing much else from crane wife - just "o valencia" (the "hit"?) and unaccompanied "perfect crime" (er, "2") (meh.) strange set list - "the infanta" and "we both go down together" and "l.a. i'm yours" were all pleasant to hear, but nothing particularly moved me - i guess their coolest move was playing the entirety of the tain ep, complete with time signature wankery, zeppelin-isms galore, and a melodica/mandolin hornpipe breakdown, with meloy on drums. hadn't heard that before; it's pretty neat. [disappointing: despite the month, they didn't play "july, july!", which i'd just described to matt as the only rock song they ever made..."ok, well, maybe the closest they ever got to making a rock song."]

gotta say though...apart from a couple of songs ("grace cathedral hill," "leslie anne levine," "red right ankle"), and fewer of them with each successive album, the decemberists have long since been a band that other people are much more excited about than me. (my parents, for example.) which is okay. it's nice to listen to things that other people like, even if they're not your favorite. it just turns out that what i liked most about them - the unassuming prettiness of some of the simpler, sweeter, not necessarily clever songs on their first album - arguably their less distinctive side - is not what they focused on developing in their later work, or what brought them a larger audience.

but it has been funny to observe their progression, since i first checked them out, for some reason i can't even remember now (a blanket music connection?) when they were still on hush. actually, come to think of it, and not to play the cred card, really, they're one of a surprising number of bands (arcade fire, sufjan, shins) that i got into, basically, before the hype kicked in, who have since managed to disappoint me to a greater or lesser extent, on their way to becoming more or less the figureheads of the indie universe. not, i swear, because of that becoming. (also, sufjan hasn't really disappointed me; i guess i just wasn't super-super-enthused about him for too long beyond the filial novelty kicks of a concept album about my dad's home state.) the strokes, on the other hand, ["pre-hype strokes" is pretty much an oxymoron, but i did see 'em open for gbv, if that counts] seem to have somehow reverted from practically-mainstream to practically-indie, and i still like them just fine. so whatever that says.

anyway. several enjoyable evenings. too many convoluted thoughts about my relationship to indirok that aren't that worth gettting into. a blog post: one in a continuing series! also, sat next to j valocchi, of the phl weekly, and friend, at the dec's show, so hi to them if they stop by here.

*[first band, as it happens, i ever blogged about, fwtw. seen em 5 times now; they put me in their album art; i won their shirts and tix and records etc. etc. you know. matt and i listened to their entire discography (well, i still don't have that lafitte single) the other day, and...yeah, well i love them. new record kicks kicks kicks. more s(p)oon.]

happy summertime, knickers!

still summer, still now [part one, or sumthing]

better put this up before it's not anymore. just take a listen. not sure why it looks like the german flag...

It's Summertime - the Jamies
[vs. Smile Around the Face - Four Tet]
Happy Summertime - R. Kelly ft. Snoop Dogg
Summertime - Beyonce ft. Ghostface
Summertime - DJ Jazzy Jeff ft. the Fresh Will Smith
SummerLove - Justin Timbalake ft. Stat Quo
Dear Summer - Jay-Z ft. Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, etc.
[Weldon Irvine - Morning Sunrise]
Summertime - Sublime ft. the Pharcyde

...to be continued




p.s. i'm a premium snapdrive member now, so the old mp3 links should work again. including the springles mincepod, which i should prob. replace with this about now. also means you can download this, here.

stay after (donna) summer

from disco to disco

7 FEBRUARY 2007

Summer, the sole bartender at the M Room (formerly Manhattan Room) late on this post-concert Wednesday night, saunters over and introduces herself... "Welcome to my bar!" she smiles. She's around my age, probably a few years older (but I tend to think that about everybody), and her bright yellow T-shirt is emblazoned with the words "DISCO STILL SUCKS."

The touch-screen cash register behind her has been running a screensaver consisting of feebly witty faux-aphorisms. Summer's iPod, plugged into her bar's sound system, has been playing an unobtrusive mix of mostly classic rock and soul, pitched at roughly 20% hipster-irony, %80 earnest borrowed-nostalgia goodvibes: "I Put a Spell On You" (Screamin' Jay Hawkins, not CCR - though we'd been hearing them earlier in the evening at Johnny Brenda's) and Al Green, but also here and there the likes of I want to say Journey. Finally I engage her in conversation about the slogan on her shirt: "Do you really think so?" I ask. "I'm pretty sure disco doesn't suck anymore."

She demurs. It turns out she's wearing the shirt not so much to broadcast her opinion as to pay homage to a dude, back when she was growing up in New Jersey, at a gas station, who used to sell them smokes even though they were underage, and wore the same DISCO SUCKS T-shirt every day, so she says. Well okay. Summer does admit that she likes some ABBA songs and occasionally puts them on at the bar when she feels like dancing.

well anyway. this post has been in the works for well over five months now, and it just gets more and more relevant by the day, as i've finally removed the shrinkwrap from the copy of donna summer's bad girls album [deluxe edition] that i'd been sitting on for while... for some reason, this is the continuation of the genrephilia series stemming from my valentine's podcast. it's supposed to be about disco but the song in question is actually
3 i'm gonna stay after summer ♥ margaret berger
[and since that link is gonna be annoying, here's an actual mp3 of the song for your delectation]

which isn't exactly a disco song, really, unless you consider all dance-pop to be disco - more on which later. it's not actually a summer love song either - in fact it's the perfect post-summer lovesong ("the winter is cold and cruel/i want to be warm with you") so it really ought to have been on this mix, nevermind that marble is already hogging the most featured track.

marble - which i just figured out is what she's saying her name is on the intro, mostly thanks to these stylish 'spacers (nice subtle "robot song" remix too) - has however been crowned the "new queen of disco" by none other than wm. b. swygart. that's mostly on the basis of "samantha" and "will you remember me tomorrow", the latter of which is in the running for my favorite track on the album. those are definitely disco - they have not only the four-on-the-floor drum pulse, but also those woozy upbeat swells betwixt - but, especially in the context of the eclectish album, you'd hardly notice, since that's just one of many flavor lectropop flavors these days.

whoa, is this interview for real?

and now i have nearly exhausted all of the margaret berger-related links i can muster, except! that i may have finally found a way to order her album, which if i can do it will mean finally owning my top whatever favorite records of last year. i'll try to puzzle my way through the japanese later and let you know.

but... i didn't really come here to talk about margaret berger, love her to bits though i do. this is about disco. and whether, or not, it still sucks. still, i say, because i have to admit that it definitely used to pretty much suck. before poptimism and conscientious generalism and political-correctness and the disavowal of guilty pleasures and even before guilty pleasures (and guilty whitestraightmaleness?) themselves, there was "celebration" and "we are family" and especially fricking "Y.M.C.A." - and its fricking idiotic dance - and i heard them all the time (mostly, i want to say, at bar mitzvah parties and summer camp dances) and i really rather despised them. and it wasn't even (consciously) because i'd encountered received wisdom about disco's suckitude; i'd just heard them way too many times and was bored and annoyed.

and i pretty much still feel that way about those songs (kylie's cover of "celebration" has redeemed it to some extent, but jordan pruitt's has not done same for "we are family," and i still have nothing particularly kind to say about the village people. or "i will survive.") which is pretty unusual, because there really aren't that many songs i feel very strongly negative about. i feel like those songs (and a small handful of others) serve almost as shorthand for the whole notion of 'disco' in the minds of many people (americans, anyway) (including mine) - which is also pretty unusual; i'm struggling to think of other entire genres that are so simply and widely represented (albeit imprecisely) by a few standard tracks. now, i don't really remember specifically proclaiming a distaste for disco (as i certainly did for hip-hop and - for a good while longer - country), but i've also had pretty much no interest, until fairly recently, in attempting to actually listen to or learn something about the genre outside of the standard tunes featured on a zillion disco compilation cds - just for instance, i don't think i've ever really heard the saturday night fever soundtrack. i just...never really thought about it as music worth caring about.

which is kind of funny considering my torrid love affair with unabashedly disco-indebted late '90s french house - and, particularly, dimitri from paris' 2000 disco mix album a night at the playboy mansion [which draws equally from '78-'80 and '98-'00, and nobody would never notice the difference.] it has of course become blindingly obvious that disco is and was incredibly important and is in fact well worth checking out for historical reasons of nothing else, but also that it is the genesis of most or maybe all electronica and dance-pop and possibly every other kind of dance music as we know it, including contemporary r&b and hip-hop. disco never really died, though certain people did a very good job of making it seem like it had - and very likely it never really sucked.

Why...did "funkateers and feminists, progressives and puritans, rockers and reactionaries" band together in an "unholy alliance" against disco, destroying "the last remaining musical scene that was in any sense racially mixed" ...a scene that made crossover stars of women, African-Americans and gay men?

that question - which is paraphrased in a publisher's weekly review reprinted on amazon of a book i think i might like to read, and whose author i just might like to study with, as banal as his book titles may be - is essentially another way of asking "why did disco suck," and it contains its own implicit and unappetizing answer, which is a pretty damn pertinent one that i'm kind of amazed i never really thought consciously about before (not that werner is the first person to have suggested it.) but there are several other answers which might be equally or perhaps even more apt - which mostly involve the behavior of money-hungry record companies - on the one hand, capitalizing on a quickly overexposed trend and running it into the ground; on the other, protecting their interests (as purveyors of rock music) by hastening the death of music they saw as "dipping into their pockets" (as gloria gaynor puts it in this awesome video)

none of these answers, i might point out, has very much to do with music.

as i typically understand it, punk was pretty disparaging of most of the music going on around and just before it, in the mid-late 70s - arena rock, prog, california songwritery stuff, most certainly disco - as excessive, bloated, artificial, sentimentalized, inauthentic, etc.; and since punk was effectively the originary moment for the prevailing ethos of self-professed "serious music fans" up into the indieocracy of the almost-present and recent past, those perspectives and prejudices have been passed down and perpetuated - which, as nate patrin discussed in his emp paper from last year - has meant ignoring and dismissing a lot of quite interesting things that were going on at that point. disco in particular feels in a lot of ways like the antithesis of punk, and its status as anathema has taken a long time to wear down. (probably because - as werner points out - disco was hated equally by many different sectors of society.)

it may be having the last laugh though. that disco never really died - something that i already knew on some levels - clicked for me in a new way recently, when i did a dj set stringing together, among other things, songs by justin timberlake, chic, paris hilton (the "grease"-sampling "i want you"), and one of morgan geist's canuck-italo 'unclassics.' [you can hear something like it towards the end of my published-in-progress "love is the dancer" mix.]

in the world as a whole, it might have never even sort of died - it's just in america, the site of the backlash, that "disco" [the name] became a dirty word, and disco [the style] was forced to go (back) underground, or at least in disguise, at least for a little while. (though even in punk circles that didn't last long; consider the recently celebrated forebears of the "disco-punk revival.") just in terminological terms i wonder whether, if not for the backlash, we would now understand the category "disco" to be as broad and stylistically varied as "rock," and accordingly conceive of it as an entire genus in its own right, as opposed to the motley assortment of styles we now call "dance" and scurry to imprecisely classify under the umbrellas of rock, pop, electronica, r&b, and so forth. it seems to me that the dance club music originating in the mid-70s, bred from elements of funk, soul, pop, rock, and early electronic music, but with a new and streamlined attitude and intent, constitutes a substantially new idea, in its own right, much as the birth of rock [and roll] in the late fifties, out of a similar stew of styles, is so readily discussed as a watershed event.

and that idea's still with us, obviously - probably in a more meaningful and evident way than rock itself - but (because of the backlash, i'm proposing) we just call it dance music, or pop/r&b, or we don't really know what to call it; and "disco" mostly means kool & the gang, instead of meaning most of the kinds of music that are most popular all over the world. (except hip-hop, which is certainly its own thing, and a new idea, as well, though probably one with less stylistic breadth.) there's something to be said for limiting the musical concept of disco to stuff with (the genre's most defining feature) a pronounced 4/4 thump - but even allowing for that you've still got an incredible amount of widely varied music.

indeed, i have the sense that there's a whole vast unexplored world of funk and disco music from the '70s and '80s which, in the wake of "disco sucks," were probably ignored by most people (especially, perhaps, white people?), and which i have (therefore) been almost entirely ignorant for my entire voracious-music-devouring life. consider, for instance, these two mp3s, which are songs that were sampled by daft punk. i felt funny about discovering these samples, and more generally the rather heavy dependence of daft punk and fellow french touch folks on samples from this era. (looking through the liners notes of my copy of crydamoure's waves compilation, for instance, almost every cut features a seemingly vintage sample.)

it's not so much that i have a problem with the sampling per se, or that it calls daft punk's musical genius and artistic integrity into question for me, but there's something a little backhanded about sampling these tracks and serving them up to an audience that, by and large, are probably not going to realize they're samples, because they're probably not going to recognize the originals. not that samples should necessarily be self-evident as samples (though it's cool when they are - when, even if you don't know the source, you can recognize some element of a tracks as clearly sampled, but it still works in the context of a track), but if it's being presented sonically as of a piece with the track as a whole, i'd feel better about it if i thought that most listeners wouldn't just assume it was original work. of course that's making an assumption about the audience - i'm sure there are some dedicated and older club music fans who enjoy picking out their favorites as reworked and interpolated by the french house folks. and you could certainly argue that drawing on these older tracks helps to establish and celebrate a lineage of disco/dance music which many listeners (though increasingly fewer, i think) might try to deny or ignore.

well. there are many different directions to go with this, and i've started to outline a couple of them. along the lines of the above, there's the mystery of italo, which like "disco" itself seems to have a range of varyingly specific definitions. i recently picked up two cerrone albums and giorgio's from here to eternity and am enjoying them all a good deal - further comment at some point perhaps.

so there you go: let's talk about disco. i've know for a while now that i would need to investigate disco, if only because it's the obvious connecting middle point between soul and dance-pop, two of my current strongest reference points and the two genres i have often declared it my musicographical goal to situate on a common continuum. that that continuum is disco seems so completely obvious in retrospect that i'm not really sure what i was doing wondering about it for so long. i think i've had enough residual distrust that it took some whittling away at both ends [following the later careers of several soul singers into the disco era, plotting the steps of the slippery slope where soul gave way to something slicker - and occasionally falling over the edge myself, and not entirely minding; on the other end, tracing swedish and teenish synthpop back through the '90s and '80s through a spotty, pointillist tour of eurobosh, pet shop boys, freestyle, synthpop mk. 1, and assorted new wave oddities. meanwhile, the present climate of microhouse, dancepunk, robocrunk, electro-touch, etc. keeps on hammering away and away, in 4/4 time, at the disco foundations of it all, and everything's increasingly harder to ignore, even as i'm for the moment losing some of my grip on the two-way cutting edge.]

basically most of what i've done so far with all this stuff (disco, proto-disco, post-backlash confusion, and the diasporic profusion) is attempt to get myself roughly situated. i have a lot of getting acquainted to do, and it's gonna take a long time to really feel like i have a handle on it - assuming i don't lose interest first. it really does feel like a whole new world to explore. major gaps in my dance-music knowledge between 1969-1996 that i either didn't recognize or didn't care about before. so that's what's up.

p.s.: h/t to my friend david (not that friend david, a different friend david) for pointing out that my other friend david, who did some 'research' into this stuff a couple years ago, expressed a similar sentiment about the underlying reasons for the disco backlash:

"These self-proclaimed music critics often stated that what bothered them was that these songs were made by machines (they often were, and proudly so) and therefore lacked sincerity or realness. I think what they were really afraid of was the fact that many of these songs emanated from a mostly Black and often gay subculture — a combination which was so unimaginably scary that its musical representation simply had to be fought off at all costs.

well said, and i also really like his list of tunes - i should check out most of them; i like the ones that i know (a bunch of them are on the the pure funk compilation, which is interesting.)

it's summertime, boy!

so the spring of springles, the shortest of the seasons, is over, and the summer jamz be jamming. i'm listening to the new matthew dear cd now - it's poppin, it's cool. (possibly really really cool. don't like the title much though.) i've been writing a number of song blurbs over in the styjuke, which you can see if you scroll back through the last several pages. no major revelations yet. i'm inching forward (but having new thoughts faster than i can record them) on my disco stuff...hopefully post that very soon. also been thinkin' bout the beatles - sgt. peppers
less so than, actually, meet [not with] - which upon consideration turns out to be easily the best early beatles album, since it relegates all the dross of with to the filler-ful 2nd album. also "in my life" and how perfectly pitched its sentimentality is.

otherwise, my bloggish enerjies for the last week and a half have been going to the MIXX. which is done! at least, the musixal part of it - i want to work on some artwork and packaging and all that. maybe it will be a 2cd set with the Love is the Dancer mix (also about an hour long) but i will want to nice that up a bit first.

anyway, the latest and final version of PoPSICAL, which is now posted below, is slightly different from the one i posted a few days ago, so go listen to it now, as you read along. here it is again:

LISTEN / DOWNLOAD

sort of annoying that snapdrive (whom i like for file storage even though it can be rather slow, because it's generally generous) is not allowing direct URL linkage to mp3s anymore, which may mean there isn't a good way for you to download them - i'll look into that later, and at the very least make a sidebar player for my mixes. but for now...

Title: Popsical(!)
Format: mp3 (single file 1:02:)/CD-R (with track separation! - 24 track continuous mix)
Date: 28 May - 5 June, 2007
Packaging: tbd. perhaps: [eta: found a way to make a neat sleeve package using my printer (for once), with this image on the front; this on the back. there's even a little divot in the envelope to create spaces for two discs.]

Jan and Dean: "Popsicle"The Buffalo Bunch: "Music Box [Waves]"
Tom Tom Club: "Under the Boardwalk"
The Fiery Furnaces: "Here Comes the Summer"
Four Tet: "Sun Drums and Soil (Sa Ra Creative Partners Remix)"
Bonde do Role: "Office Boy"
Rihanna: "S.O.S."
Millie Small: "My Boy Lollipop"
Leslie Gore: "Maybe I Know"
Spank Rock: "Sweet Talk"
Phoenix: "Funky Squaredance"
Blackbyrds: "Rock Creek Park"
Shuggie Otis: "Ice Cold Daydream"
DJ /Rupture: "Mosquito"
Ce'Cile: "Hot Like We"
Mistah F.A.B.: "Ghost Ride It"
Stevie Wonder: "All Day Sucker"
Fantasia: "Baby Making Hips"
XTC: "It's Nearly Africa"
Natasha Bedingfield: "I Want To Have Your Babies"
Munk and James Murphy: "Kick out the Chairs!"
The Pharcyde: "Soul Flower"
Cassie: "Just 1 Nite"
Lil Mama: "Lip Gloss"
Rjd2: "Bus Stop Bitties"
Clinton: "Mr. President"
Talking Heads: "Popsicle"

notes:
• it's a summertime dance/DJ mix - first draft hastily assembled for a memorial day (monday) barbeque, after several days of futzing i started completely from scratch on friday, recording it again (but with most of the same music); editing and some minor re-recording over the next few evenings, a few more days of fiddling with levels and such, and now it is ready for the world. and it's barely even summer yet! which means i'm in good shape.

• it doesn't have a whole to do with this summer mix i made this winter (although i still love it though), but it has a lot in common with this, not quite a year old, summer mix from last summer. in fact, it might be the same mix. same title (cause i couldn't think of a good way to call it as a stand-alone sequel/revision), 5/21 of the same tracks, plus at least two i had wanted to put on the original popsical - "sun drums and soil" and the tom tom club cover - instead of "under the boardwalk" i used its standalone sequel/revision "sand in my shoes." other amendments due to underdanceability, timelinesslessness, and whatever.

• the second half of this mix (blackbyrds on) was originally going to be the latter half/third of what is now "Love is the Dancer" (still not sure about that title), as evidenced by the presence of "rock creek park" on both. i don't mind.

• stretched but basically obeyed the four tet rule (you can think of the first three tracks as preamble, "sun drums" as introduction, and "office boy" as start of the mix proper, because that's where the dancing really gets going anyway.)

• final resting place for the "s.o.s.">"my boy lollipop" and "maybe i know">"sweet talk" transitions that i've been playing with for like a year now - love 'em both but good riddance b/c they were getting dated and played, at least in my living room, but it felt like an obligation to air them properly. see how you like 'em now.

• what makes the songs "summer" is obvious in some cases, subtler/indirect/questionable in others, nonexistent in others, but it all sounds pretty summery to me. two popsicle songs; two lollipop songs (could have done more but that'd seem like overkill - why are there so many more of the latter when the former are so much better?) no ice cream or pinkberry songs. i was mostly unaware of the two popsicle songs until i started conceiving this. amazingly, talking heads, my favorite band, turned out to have a song called "popsicle" that i had never (consciously) heard before! and it was in my collection - and it's really good! thanks to amg for the tip. ending the mix with that makes me feel like a reel kool dj. actually allows me the rare chance to experience the thrill of discovery, on my own mix, that i'm always hoping my mixes will provide to others.

• no scandinavians.

• the idea at one point was to represent a dj style for the defunct club night whose flyer design i modified to make the above cover. the mix as it exists doesn't quite reflect the styles described there - novelties and summer jams, check, but not as much with the disco, electro, and dance-pop, strangely enough. all of those are amply represented on love is the dancer (hence my wanting to present it as a complement), but here we have more hip-hop, r&b (old & nu), and indie/post-punk(!) than i would have predicted. not to mention baile funk, ragga, electro-salsa, faux-reggae, bajun pop, and what-have-you (file under "novelties," perhaps.) but, y'know, whatever. mixmaking is such a strange balance of wholes, units, and sections - i like the way this works out even if the architecture is more slippery than you might expect.

HOT NEW MIX 4 THE SUMMERTIME!!! MORE STUFF SOON!!!

springles!

[eta:]

hey, let's talk about some music, shall we?

there may still be some color coordination issues to work out, but i've finally got my little podplayer set up, and i even made it so it doesn't start automatically when you get to the site now. nice of me no? the innaugural playlist (of this iteration) features some of my favorite singles and songles of the spring/year so far, mostly in the pop realm(s)... 2007: first quarter favorites (except it's really the first third at this point, but who's counting.) nothing tooo over the heads of the sorta folks who hang around the stylus singles jukebox and the iltp (toiletpaper i mean teenpop) thread, where i heard of most of these in the first place. speaking of the styjuke, i was just invited to join the crew there, so bully for that. let's call this practice.

lil mama - "lip gloss"
this is something like my single of the year so far - at least i can't think of anything in particular that has dominated me more so far in '07 (i figure "give it to me" is disqualified for having been on my year-end mix, even though only now is it getting the response it deserves), so until something better comes along... anyway it's pretty ridiculous that i haven't gotten sick of this considering how mindblowingly minimal the beat is (literally the same two elements, in the same two bar pattern, looped for the whole thing.) (extra) credit due, then, to lil mama, and her kinetic frenetic sing-song braggodocio, skipping deftly around and atop that beat and keeping the whole thing fresher than fresh. the lyrics, of course, are absolutely key - but i feel like they speak for themselves at least as well as they've already been written about elsewhere. (basically, the important thing is that she really is singing (er, rapping, whatever) about lip gloss; it's not a metaphor, or a come-on. srsly.)

i can't figure out whether or not this is (becoming?) an actual hit - i did hear it blasting out of several car windows (in succession; all tuned to the same station) in west philly this weekend, so that's a good sign. fingers crossed we get to see how well it withstands legitimate (rather than simulated) overexposure.

stephanie mcintosh - "so do i say sorry first"
took a little while to figure out what kind of song this is. at first i thought it was country, for some reason (the generic specificity of the lyrics? actually, save perhaps for some of the production touches late in the song, i still think it could pass.) but, no, duh, it's a rock song - a rawk song, even - although it has clean girly vox so we're not supposed to call it that.

all i know about ms. mcintosh is that she's an australian soap star. which bodes well in my experience. (hm, i'd never really thought about "australian pop" as an entity before.) but this sounds less like that other aussie soap star (who records in the uk anyway), more like those aussie rockers who, oh yeah, recorded my favorite song of 2006 (er, in sweden.) it's maybe even harder (rawer) than the v's - especially the opening moments, though the chorus gets a little bit mannered. certainly its anger and intensity seems to come from a more genuine, recognizable place - tempered as they are by a certain playfulness. this and "4ever" both employ irony to some extent, but there it was winking and here it's practically wincing.

some of the lyrics are frustratingly wonky ("i can't hear words when you scream like you do"?), but the conceit is original and works, especially the resounding chorus (though i always want to sing "or do i say sorry first," which i think makes more sense - like she's pretending to try to remember the sequence of events she and her lover have "rehearsed.")

linda sundblad - "lose you"
just gorgeous. this is one of those lush, creamy electroacoustic tracks that just seems to glide by effortlessly. like goldfrapp's "black cherry" or air's "universal travel" - but beatier - something like "heartbeat" i suppose (and its sister-songs, "time after time" and "heartbeat." also "with every heartbeat" - did i ever think to group that in with those?)

the lines about heaven also make me think of rachel stevens' "i will be there," which also fits in that swoony, mellow but danceable category. [that line also resonates nicely with the religious subject matter that linda's sort of made her calling card (q.v. "oh father"), but does it actually make any sense? why exactly does losing somebody make her think she's in heaven?]

wait a sec, attending more closely to the lyrics ("pounding heart on a saturday night"?), this song is really reminiscent of "heartbeat." it's like the same song in an alternate universe: with basically the scenario (well, it's sat instead of fri) but with a completely opposite emotional perspective on it, so that it ends up heartbreaking rather than euphoric.

i need to give it some more spins for a full assessment, but this album could be the next anniemal - (it's at least as good; more varied, tho less electro) - except of course it won't be. why did the hipsters decide to stop caring about scando-actual-pop anymore? and what happened to annie, annieway?

natasha bedingfield - "i want to have your babies"
they're all like "omg, she actually means it" - but to me the crazy thing is not necessarily that she's singing about wanting to have "random men's babies," as somebody said on iltp - i don't think anything in the lyrics suggests that random men or even multiple men are implicated - they must have got that from the video. granted, if it'd really scare the guy that much, he probably doesn't know her very well.

aside from the initial greatness of the whole premise (which is admittedly great), what really makes this awesome is how cleverly the song is structured, so that it actually enacts the very (flimsy) division between her interior thoughts and her exterior speech that she's describing - and that division gets transgressed (as she bursts uncontrollably from the "mm-mm-mm" bit into the chorus) in the process of describing it ("whoops! did i say it out loud?) that's...so cool. plus there are a lot of great individual lines. i especially love the scary middle-eight, wherein tashbed momentarily breaks into soul diva mode. and the music is really fun and silly and springy. this is an excellent springtime song, in case you didn't notice.

i still think she should say "serious like rabies" though.

hilary duff - "dreamer"
i know, enough with the blondes already, right? hils isn't blonde on the cover of her new record, actually - and these people never seem to keep their hair the same color for two seconds anyway, so i can't really keep track. whatever.

i'm gonna call it and say dignity is the paris of 2007 - not that it's as good, or as favorite, though it comes within spitting distance of dance-pop full-length gold. (a slight resequencing and a couple of judicious omissions - 14's too long anyway - might do the trick.) it's enough of a reinvention that it feels like a debut. and i've already got a possibly irrational soft spot for it that's going to necessitate a good deal of 'splaining. plus it seems to take many of its cues from ms. hilton's dubious success (that's h-duff's best parisian huskifying at the opening of this 'podcast) - and she's followed her to #1 on the dance charts, so i guess it works.

"dreamer" is not a single (nor is "danger" or "never stop," which is currently in rotation on mymyspage) but it's the one that's been in my head the most recently (actually now "between you and me" is overtaking it.) and it is officially awesome, even if the chorus isn't nearly as good as the verses (in terms of melody, arrangement and lyrics.) the "bum bum bum" bit, in particular, is brilliantly multivalent, suggesting carefree insouciance, bored annoyance, and the workaday routine (all resonant with the lyrics) while also calling out the object of the song as a bum bum bum himself. it may be snide ("i go to bed and i wake up/isn't that interesting?") but it's also possibly the mildest, most polite kiss-of to a stalker ever penned. instead of being a creepy violent weirdo, he's simply a "dreamer" who just doesn't happen to believe the same dreams as hilary does. (compare this to the venemous title track, directed at paris and her ilk - well, lindsay specifically - and remember, hilary actually had a creepy violent stalker.)

aberfeldy - (do) whatever turns you on
here you go, these guys aren't blonde. they don't have a US record contract either. even superfan tim sendra seems to have forgotten about them. boo hoo.

well this might not be a single either (i guess that's "hypnotised," which is good too - it lacks the poppy synth hooks, but has a great bit where the back-up singers say "shut up!") but it's the (almost?) title track of their latest album, which came out in the uk last year, and as far as the internet can tell doesn't seem to be coming out in the states... (even though they've recently hit the big time here.) i really hope it does though, cuz from what i've heard it's just as lovely as their lovely lovely lovely debut. erm. this song is self-explanatory, bouncy keyboard pop, with a message! i don't need to write about it - just listen for yrself and if you donnae like it phbbbbt! ok.

fyi: according to their website, aberfeldy is named after the scottish town of the same name, aberfeldy.

tracey thorn - raise the roof
does anybody actually say "raise the roof" anymore? it makes me think of early high school, specifically jeremy cooney. and that makes me think of julia stiles, and "change the world" by eric clapton and babyface, and lauryn hill (c. the score, not miseducation), and that one day we hung out at the amusement park with karen and merre. anybody else not feeling me?

ok, this one's also not a single (that's it's all true, which sounds exactly like a tracey thorn single should); it's perfectly situated as the last track on a beautiful album. but i wanted to share it cuz it's the one that makes me feel all warm and fuzzy.

which tracey has a way of doing better than almost anyone... i'm so glad this album is out; even if it's hard to imagine it bettering walking wounded or "protection"...it comes darn close. both lyrically and musically - one wonders why she and ben watt didn't work together on this, but she's found some suitable substitutes for her husband. (ewan pearson is a surprisingly sympathetic collaborator - his production work here is subtler than what i've heard from him before. and it's sweet that she's working with darshan jesrani, even if it's just one track.) "grand canyon" and "falling off a log" are also standouts, as is the arthur russell cover.

you know, i feel like people think that this is music for boring adults...and yeah, it is sophisticated and "mature," whatever that means...but tracey's no more of a has-been than madonna has been - their careers are just as old - and she's got more indie electro cred, and i don't see why she shouldn't be just as revered and celebrated. she's not much of a go-getter, i suppose. sigh; i just think it's a shame that walking wounded isn't more widely acknowledged for the perfect album that it is... i'll stop now.