Bill Dixon (October 5, 1925 – June 16, 2010)
Some Bill Dixon recordings we’ve talked about:
Weight
Intents and Purposes
on Cecil Taylor’s Conquistador
Bill Dixon in Italy Volume One
All About Jazz Remembering Bill Dixon: 1925 – 2010
I’m a fan of:
A.
B.
C. all of the above
D. none of the above
What do you think the odds are of a C?
Neil Young with Crazy Horse
Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere
While I’ve admittedly worn out the ‘great LP’ category with LPs that are not great in a grand-scheme-of-things sense, Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere is an unconditionally great record: “Cinnamon Girl”, “Down By The River” and “Cowgirl In The Sand” on one record and it’s not a complication. Simply amazing, no? Word is Neil had a 103° fever when he wrote these songs so I say put that man in a sauna and let him sweat some more beautiful magic out.
And the rest of songs are equally soulful tough sad funny gritty and chunky. The title track is all laid back slick pickers and breezy southern harmonies – good ole time music-making. The acoustic “Round and Round (It Won’t Be Long)” sounds like Devendra Bandhardt with huevos and soul and “The Losing End (When You’re On)” (what’s with the parenthetical titles?) that opens Side 2 is a lovely ramshackle shit kickin’ and heartbroken opry tune complete with a crazy call-out for the twangy geetar solo. “Running Dry (Requiem For the Rockets)” opens with Robin Lane on violin over that lovely Crazy Horse sound sounding like The Dirty Three only dirtier and when the ballad starts I’m reminded of the Bad Seeds only badder.
Released in 1969 (what a year!) and sounding fresh and tough and tender today. What a great record.
I love funky old fucked up photographs of impersonal (to me) subjects. The accidental, the slip, shake, shadow, blur, through the glass darkly, even the misplaced finger over lens can create an image of some one or some place I have no connection with that’s yet somehow deeply moving. (It’s not so much that they steal your soul, it’s that they have a tendency to leave it out).
I think the accidental captures life’s emotive content and the anonymous can rattle our ghosts and hidden desires. These images can be any thing; angels (like that girl above), devils, dreams, nightmares, hopes, fears and foibles. As life would have it, I stumbled upon an eBay seller that specializes in old fucked up photographs of life’s misplaced moments. Here are some favorites…
cham·bray
n.
A fine lightweight fabric woven with white threads across a colored warp.
[Alteration of French cambrai, cambric, after Cambrai, a city of northern France.]
The fabric that put the blue in ‘blue collar” and accounted for the top half of the “prison blues” uniform. Lightweight yet durable, gets better with age and looks great with jeans – what more could you want from a shirt? Workers wore them, prisoners wore them and the chambray shirt was standard military issue. Stenciling or stamping was often used for obvious reasons. All in all think tough, cheap, easy to clean and very American.
“You got your butane in my Zippo!”
“You got your Zippo in my butane!”
Z-Plus Torch Flame Zippo Insert
$12.95
The slide-in replacement from Blazer turns your stinky Zippo into an odorless wind-proof cigar-torching machine. Brilliant. You could even slip it into something vintage…
Inspired by Stephen’s forum post and coincidentally a blog post by one my favorite clothing designer’s Post Overalls, the question of ‘what is American spirit?” seems to be answered in historic terms by the photographs of Darius Kinsey from the decades preceding and following the dawn of the 20th Century.
Jimmy Giuffre
Tangents In Jazz
Wow! 1955! Wow! Giuffre called his music “blues-based folk jazz” and this record is nothing short of a monster of cool minimal blues-based folk jazz. Did I mention cool? The closest thing I can think of in terms of overall sound & feel is Sonny Rollins’ Freedom Suite. And we know how much I love Freedom Suite.
This record also sounds like a Suite and you get the feeling Giuffre loves hanging onto notes and subtly twisting and turning them to lead your musical mind here and there; to a country tune in one phrase, a blues line peaks out from the next, a quick trip to Paris and then slide back into the jazz suite. Lovely.
Giuffre strings things out, shifting the drums and bass into accent mode and time is handed from one instrument to another – like a skeleton. “The beat in implicit but not explicit: in other words acknowledged but unsounded.”
From the liner notes -
Q. Why abandon the sounded beat?
A. For clarity and freedom.
The lineup: Jimmy Giuffre: clarinet; Jack Sheldon: trumpet; Artie Anton: drums; Ralph Pena: bass.
I listened to this record for the very first time last night and felt like I was listening to a dream. I love when that happens.
“I still enjoy playing with a stomping rhythm section occasionally, but my heart lies here; I believe in this music.”
Chuck Berry
One Dozen Berrys
How could I not pick this one? Berry’s second LP from 1958 on Chess Records includes “Rock and Roll Music” any old way you choose it, “Reelin’ and Rockin” and “Sweet Little Sixteen” which the Beach Boys borrowed for “Surfin’ USA” and Berry won co-writing credit for (Berry/Wilson) after litigation. “Sweet Little Sixteen” reached number two on the charts and Chuck had to wait nearly fifteen years to top that with his only number one hit “My Ding-A-Ling” one of the dumbest songs of all-time. Chuck Berry sure knows how to appeal to a mass audience – K.I.S.A.S.S. (keep it simple and sexual stupid).
Come to think of it, a lot these songs strike me as amalgamated saccharine cheese puffs or maybe tater tots and I like modern jazz even when they try to play it too darn fast. Maybe Chuck is just too cheery for me. Too berry. But what am I saying – John Lennon said “if you tried to give rock and roll another name, you might call it ‘Chuck Berry’” and Robert Christgau “Chuck Berry is the greatest of the rock and rollers.”
I swear, I did not photoshop. This is the new Dogfish Head Limited Edition Bitches Brew!
“In honor of the 40th anniversary of the original release of Bitches Brew, Miles Davis’ 1970 paradigm-shifting landmark fusion breakthrough, we’ve created our own Bitches Brew – a bold, dark beer that’s a fusion of three threads imperial stout and one thread honey beer with gesho root, a gustatory analog to Miles’ masterpiece.”
Oh man, we need some for a Monkeyhaus Bitches Brew Side 1 through 4 fest. Come to think of it, we need lots.
les rita mitsouko
marc & robert
Tantalizingly tantalizing electro-pop-french-punk-funk circa 1988 from guitarist Fred Chichin and singer Catherine Ringer. marc & robert is more produced and synth-pop-driven than The No Comprendo and we even get the Sparks joining in on two tracks “Hip Kit” and “Singing In The Shower” but there’s still a lovely touch of wild otherness mainly delivered by Catherine Ringer’s vocals to keep me on my toes throughout (I would not be at all surprised to learn that the CocoRosie girls are big fans).
This is the second Les Rita record produced by Tony Visconti and he adds some blatant T-Rex riffs (who he also produced along with David Bowie and the Sparks among many others) on “Smog”. Jesse Johnson guitarist for Prince pet project The Time also had a hand in mixing and engineering this record and I think these guys/girl are at their best when they’re at their wackiest – which is mostly always.
that’s the cover for the 12″ (yuck, yuck)
