on devotion

...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead - The Century of Self (lala) I loved this album when I , former ace teen calligrapher, read about the obsessive ball point pen drawing on the cover, and love it even more now that I'm listening to it. The Trail of Dead purists I know have questioned my loving an album of theirs past Madonna but So Divided knocked my socks off when it came out, big and glorious, like Voltron wrestling She-Ra on the grid from Tron with the black lights on. This is scaled back and more insular and even better on this first of many listens. True devotion to an idea is carefully drawn in ballpoint pen - it is immediately at hand and yet you can never take it back.
Television - Adventure (lala) For the 100s of times I've listened to Marquee Moon, I think I've listened to this once. I found it on vinyl at a thrift store once and returned it hoping to garner the admiration of my Television worshiping compatriots and they universally dismissed its worth. Music people like to follow a script, man. Granted, its no Marquee Moon, but there is logical progression from it to Adventure and if I may explode this a little: if adventure if in your progression, you are on the right path.
Tommy Keene - Songs from the Film (lala) Remember this album? 1986? If you do, you likely cared a lot about it back then and a lot of other things like Psychedelic Furs and The Chameleons and the pins on your army jacket, and if you lived in a place when no one else cared about these things, you cared all the more, possibly with ridiculous exclusivity. It was devotion pure and true, and I just got an email from some PR person that Tommy Keene has a new album out today, so it looks like he's still devoted too.

on indulgence

Buddy Guy - Stone Crazy! (lala) Being unable to mask my nature as a white male music nerd, my relationship to the blues is that I tend to spend more time talking about it than listening to it, but lately there has been a corrective shift in my soundtrack compulsions. It is spring (here it is anyway) and the blues is fundamentally sex music and Buddy Guy's elastic, searing tones and pleading for that good stuff mixes well with flowers stretching in shockingly conscious self-display and the air laden with pollen and all of Mother Nature's pheremonal charms. The review on AMG says "Purists may want to look elsewhere" and well, I've seen what they got over there, and I'd rather make time with what they got over here. The 8-minute "Outskirts of Town" is what it's all about, and by it, I mean "it."

Outskirts Of Town - Buddy Guy

Otis Rush - Cold Day in Hell (lala) Now that is a man's album cover! AMG seems to get pissed when blues performers go off-script, citing this is an album with "incredibly indulgent moments" I don't know why I am harping on AMG, as if they were a final say-so, but geez, what do you squares want? Does the orgasmic, sweating rictus of Otis Rush on the cover above imply that there will be a moment of this record not in service to his indulgences? I wish more artists did what they wanted to do to me in deference to what they surmise I want. Or at least came off that way. Isn't that how it works? Focusing on quantifiable results belies an misunderstanding of the ways of booty. This band on this album lurches toward climax like a pack of wild dogs in a dark alley cornering prey: cautious, hungry, yet certain to get there in some fashion. Dante could take some tips on infernal travelogues from Otis Rush. That society woman wants to eat steak and chicken while he eats plain ol' kittlin' stew! Cold!

Society Woman - Otis Rush

Bobby "Blue" Bland - Dreamer (lala) Consider the case of the contemptuous Yolanda of Charleston, who foresakes Bobby "Blue" Bland, who lays and lays and lays his body down, who leaves him in this wilderness with no money down, continually with neither resolution nor explanation. You would think Bland would see the failures in this relationship, but no, he pleads his queries until he is physically choking on them at the end. Why does he do it? Indulgence, that's why. It's why Yolanda does it, why Otis does it, why you do it, I do it, birds, bees everything down to the smallest cold-hearted triflin' quark chasing another in the ether of matter's theoretical sub-minutiae.

Yolanda - Bobby "Blue" Bland

33 1/3 update

My proposal for a 33 1/3 book made it to the shortlist along with 169 others. In the interest of keeping the jinx at bay, the subject of my proposal will remain a loosely guarded secret. But, IRL friends, in 6-8 weeks, be prepared to buy me a drink - be it in celebration or condolence - when the final list is announced. Congrats to everyone that entered into this ring.

Here are the nine besides the one I submitted that sound like titles I would snap up off the shelf, but truthfully, I've generally enjoyed all the 33 1/3 books I've read, with Forever Changes and 20 Jazz Funk Greats being my two favorites.

1. Trans-Europe Express
2. Back in Black
3. Southern Rock Opera
4. Hex Enduction Hour
5. Blank Generation
6. Whipped Cream and Other Delights
7. Dub Housing
8. Sex Packets
9. The Cars
   

raised beds

raised beds, originally uploaded by real_voodooboy.

I embraced the inner handyman and put in a raised bed around the stump of the tree we lost in the last hurricane.

100 words on acts of love

Walking through the pharmacy drive-thru lane with a dog is reasonably suspect, especially when my name is not the same or even the same last name as on the prescription, but all acts of love are suspect. Grand gestures are transparent, it’s the off-script things we do that warrant notice. Grabbed my wife’s iPod for a thing of slight intimacy, listened to “This Year” a third time walking away with antibiotics, telling the dog to leave that remnant of a possum alone and she does, homeward down a bike path under the gray soon rain and there, that is love.

Shrimp & Grits

Shrimp & Grits, originally uploaded by real_voodooboy.

From the Red-Stick Farmer's Market

noise trying to be songs vs. songs

Sonic Youth - The Destroyed Room (lala) I bypassed this on release; I don't get all that enthused about Sonic Youth's actual releases anymore, much less archival material. There was a point around Sister I declared them to be the most important band around to an unbelieving friend. That friend replied, sure they are good and all, but wouldn't you just rather listen to songs instead of a bunch of noise trying to be songs. At the time my answer was resolutely: NO, I would rather listen to noise trying to be songs because that is what the world is, noise trying to be a song, and I feel that way some of the time now, but not really. Now instead of wanting to spend time in the destroyed room I'm more inclined to straighten it up a little, even if in the process I manage to knock those piles on the desk all over the floor again.
Seun Kuti & Fela's Egypt 80 - s/t (lala) One of the cooler groups I've gotten to write about for a paid article in some time. He is leading his father's legendary Afropop band, which he joined for the first time at age 8, at Lafayette's Festival International along with Dengue Fever and others in April. Seun Kuti's version is wound tighter than Fela's, where outrage became ambiance over those 15-minute funk workouts In a comparatively compressed 8-minute song, Seun manages similar results and perhaps bears a sharper bite. Dig the "Mosquito Song"

Mosquito Song - Seun Kuti & Fe...

Gergory Isaacs - Hold Tight (lala) But back to my friend's point, there is a time to listen to noise becoming songs and noise coming out of songs, and then there is a time to listen to songs, and now is time for the latter.