Teddy Pendergrass - Greatest Hits: Love TKO (listen)
I am not the biggest fan of the slow jam, but I love when I'm out at Teddy's Juke Joint (different Teddy, the above photo is the view from Teddy's DJ booth) and he spins some Teddy Pendergrass. Everything out there is already red and glittery and reflective and a little disorienting, but when "Love TKO" or "Turn Out the Lights" slinks out those speakers, the shit is on.
Let a thousand lacy underthings fall gracefully to the ground in honor of his passing.
Duke Ellington - Collages(listen) Robert "1-String" Gibson - "It Ain't Easy" (via Myspace) Gastr Del Sol - Camofleur
I forget I should listen to Duke Ellington. Someone should occasionally remind me. Collages from 1973 is from the Duke's lush yet trippy side which, honestly, I wasn't aware he had. I particularly like the way the piano staggers across the alien expanse of "Nameless Hour" like a dazed astronaut after a crash, his own footprints in the dust being the sole sign of life.
Should that astronaut investigate the rattling at the edge of the crater, he might find the curious Robert "1-String" Gibson sitting on a milk crate issuing endless epiphanies into the thin alien air.
That astronaut would most likely be unaware that his every movement was being monitored by the storied mystics of Gastr Del Sol, who defy Gibson's perma-blues rattle with the accusation that it is "Most blues are subtitled either no sense of wonder or no sense of scale." No one on the planet's surface knows what they mean by that, but they like the way they say it. The scene up in the aerial meditation tower in which these observations are made would look something like this.
I'm thrilled to find Camofleur at the library since I have purchased and lost it at least three times over the years.
Various Artists - Alan Lomax in Haiti, Vol. 7 - Francilla (listen)
God, Haiti. You can text “Haiti” to 90999 to donate $10 the Red Cross for relief in Haiti.
I watched The Road last night, met with a dietitian this morning, visited a very sick friend in the hospital and then saw the news about the Haiti earthquake. Mortality is in the wind.
Volume 7 of the massive Alan Lomax in Haiti boxed set is comprised of spellbinding songs sung by the young woman the Lomaxes hired as a housekeeper during their stay in Haiti in the 30's. These songs are already 1000-pound feathers drifting on the breeze of history, but they feel a little heavier today.
In news so fluffy I feel a little foolish mentioning it now, my list of the 5 most intriguing Baton Rouge CD's of 2009 is finally up. Lots of last minute entries and a couple of local fires held its publication up a bit. You can read about those in this week's Record Crate blog, where I also explain why I love metal.
I don't know how this fits in, except to help us approach the gravity of the now, Philip Glass was on The Colbert Report, assisting the voice of the American consciousness in a parody of the composer and our disconnect with the wars in which we are embroiled.
The arc we walk is laden with shadows and our progress marked by the occasional trash can.
A person I recently interviewed stopped my wife to say how much he enjoyed talking to me.
This sickeningly narcissistic and reflective mood I'm in compelled me to take the above arc-ing sidewalk to the barber shop and make this winter beard presentable. I am smitten with the biker goddess that cuts my hair. She is like a real-life Katey Segal from Sons of Anarchy. She told me about having a houseful of grandkids for the holidays and how she doesn't whip her grandkids, and that's why they run rip-shod over her.
Blogging has somehow begat a magazine called Artful Blogging, which basically looks like if Redbook were staffed by etsy veterans. Lots of off-center pictures of vintage clothes in hangers languishing in natural light and careful piles of buttons and books and stones. I dare not check to see if Artful Blogging has blogs on its website, because that may open up a feedback loop of e-coyness that even I am unable to traverse. The campus bookstore is so weird; they don't stock the five decent magazines I would consistently buy on weak moments, but they carry Artful Blogging.
This Dengue Fever compilation of Cambodian lounge pop is beyond beguiling. It makes the barber shop and bookstore and the sidewalk feel exotic. I don't know if it or any of the above answer any questions posed in the previous post. Or what I was even asking.
Gil-Scott Heron - I'm New Here (forthcoming 2/19) Owen Pallett/Final Fantasy - Heartland(streaming at MySpace) Gastr del Sol - Camofleur
That is the film drop box outside the camera store I pass on my walk home. The idea of it seems to quaint in the face of digital photography, in how we record ourselves (those of us compelled to do so, anyway) instantly. I find myself irked that there isn't a good Blogger app for the iPhone (BlogPress is OK but I don't like how it does the pictures) so that I can write these things as they happen. I suppose as a programmer, if I were more dedicated to the task, I would concoct a way to automate the entire process, jack into the matrix and become one with my data. But then as a writer, that would be missing the point. The beauty is in the culling, in the mulling, in how you make a new scratch pie from each moment's surprise ingredients. You kill time with a keyboard so that you can puts it's head up on the imaginary wall like a trophy.
I came across a blog I really like. firmuhment is handwritten on ephemera and scanned in. I wonder if the camera store would be into me dropping off rolls of 35mm film and handwritten notes in their little drop box and posting it as a blog for me. I suspect this place is so antiquated that I might have to explain "blog" to the sweet old camera guy who processes the sweet old holiday photos for the sweet old ladies that have been dropping their film in that box for decades. He probably knows who the film is for by recognizing the kids in the photos. Plus, try explaining 'blog" to anyone. Why would you do such a thing? I've tried explaining it to myself.
I've considered the idea of doing a letterpress blog, setting type blocks on a scanner like an olde tyme newspaper and hitting the button, but I don't have the blocks or the time. I had an uncle that had a printing press set up in his garage and once I had my name in little lead and wood blocks. Now, instead, I have this.
And this is getting corny, so instead of gazing with me into 1000 digital navels, groove on the phoenix that is the mighty Gil-Scott Heron. I was listening to this new record of his as I took the above photo. There is a guy who knows how to talk about what he's talking about.
The Who - "Baba O'Riley" The Grondhogs - Who Will Save the World? The Mighty Groundhogs (listen) The Fugs - Greatest Hits (listen) The Godz - 2
I woke up with "Baba O'Riley" in my head. I even picked up my daughter and air-guitar spun her around the kitchen to the "teenage wasteland" part, something I can still do since she isn't quite there yet.
This version of "Baba O'Riley" is all awesome.
The little demon in the above picture is actually the chance arrangements of jalapeños on the cornbread muffin I had for a snack. Were I to adopt a mascot for my life, it would be a lil' cheese and jalapeño corn muffin demon.
Ozzy Osbourne - Under Cover (listen) Various Artists - Mississippi Tapes Vol 35: Satan is Real (via ROOT BLOG) 'Oxford American' Digs Deep Into the South (from NPR) Ablehearts - The Flood (via OngakuBaka)
I forgot to take a picture of the pork chop special I just had over a business lunch at the Chimes, so here instead is the box of Roundy crackers from the Vietnamese grocery. Still chuckling. "Roundy" is the punchline to some unspoken joke I dare not unearth from within my dark heart.
Just from saying the infernal punchline, the Devil now compels my afternoon listening. The mysterious Mississippi Tapes has emerged with vol. 35 - "Satan is Real," placing the Louvin Brothers' warning tale as the engine pulling boxcar after boxcar of Euro black metal damnation. I'm not sure which is worse for my soul, that or Ozzy's cover album from 2005. I still think Ozzy has one of the great voices in rock, or maybe he has 1/3 of the best voice and its glory is revealed in triple-tracking.
John Lennon's "Woman" is not really helped much by the Prince of Darkness' interpretation, but Ozzy's cover of The Crazy World of Arthur Brown's "Fire" is everything I hoped it would be.
The demagogues behind Mississippi Records were smart to transfer black metal to cassette and then back to digital, it lets the blackness shine through. They should have let old Charlie and Ira play out on their tape; they would bind the devil controlling my playlist in chains of i-run.
Perhaps they also could've found room for the death metal rooster (Thanks, The Rumpus)
Your and my soul both can be redeemed by checking out this interview about the Oxford American music issue, and then buying the issue. And the Ablehearts will do the final cleanup.
