That other musical genre

Evan

This is for everything that doesn't have its own musical topic. So we don't have to decide if The Waitresses, for example, are Punk, or New Wave, or something totally different.

So here they are:

And the equally uncategorizable Romeo Void.

And maybe a singer-songwriter.

Still kills me every time.

And here's another.

Beautiful.

And one more from the 70s.

And for a total change of pace, one of the most kick-ass theme songs of all time:

(Admittedly without having done a thorough survey of every theme song and objectively determining each one's kick-assedness.)

And another:

And yet another:

Evan

And here's a grab bag of songs from one of my favorite soundtracks of all time, Valley Girl:

Can't seem to find a good "Cool Places" with both Sparks and Jane Wiedlin . . .

Evan

Been thinking about girl groups lately.

entity

There's not a sample of this available online yet, but it looks interesting: Peter Evans has created a (jazz?) record based on Ran Prieur's essay "Beyond Civilized and Primitive."

Evan

It's that time of year. Post 'em if you've got 'em.

grant

Well, in that case:

God Rest Ye METAL! Gentlemen.

and, from the tail end of the Great Depression:

Eddie Cantor, "The Only Thing I Want for Christmas (Is Just to Keep the Things That I've Got)".

Evan

A nice Jewish boy, Eddie Iskowitz.

Here's another Jewish Christmas song, by Israel Baline (Irving Berlin), and covered by one of my favorite bands.

No mention of Jesus, Santa Claus, anything Christian, or anything even vaguely relating to Christmas except sleigh bells, snow, and Christmas cards.

Happy Hanukkah.

Evan

Another favorite:

And another:

Pure joy.

grant

More METAL FOR SEASON.

Not Dio. Not Christmas.

Evan

The Anvil movie was truly amazing. Jewish Canadian metal.

There really aren't any great Hanukkah songs. "Mao Tsur" is fine, but it doesn't rock. Or swing.

Although there is Matisyahu.

(Huh. He was in Brooklyn yesterday. And ditched the beard and Chasidic garb. Hmm.)

And on the Christmas side, I always wondered how this pairing happened:

Evan

Two more:

genlob

This needs to be heard more.

genlob

Don't know why this isn't embedding but it's The Cramps - Goo Goo Muck

grant

(You have to take the crap out of the URL between "watch?" and "v=whateverIDforthevideo".)

genlob

Ah. Thanks grant.

Evan

I've been listening to this one over and over lately -- Lou Reed's alternate mix of "What Goes On":

And here's a nine-minute live version:

That rhythm guitar is hypnotic. And -- somehow -- the keyboard fits in nicely.

And here's The Feelies' excellent, stripped-down cover:

T Hedge Coke

I dream of a world where Otis Fodder albums go gold and people throw money at him (gently, natch) in the streets. The layering! The impatience! The calling a song "If You're A Fan of Don Henley You're In Luck"! If he hadn't been on the Two Zombies Later compilation, I'd possibly never even have come across that gem of unsigned, consigned, and designed performers.

Most of the songs/albums are available free here or there online, and here's Music To Drive Cross Country By, with the aforementioned "If You're a Fan..." track.

Evan

Carole King just got a star on Hollywood's Walk of Fame.

So here's a sample of what makes her a genuine musical goddess:

Sekhmet

Wow.

wonderland

This is a great thread. I wondered if folks might like this from Emeli Sandé? I've not tried to embed a video before, please bear with me if this doesn't work.

Frustrating. I can see the video fine here in the edit window but I'm not seeing anything there when I hit 'Save Comment'. Sorry for being such a newb, anyone give me pointers? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiwK5JcQbtM was what I was aiming at.

grant

(This board is MAGICAL. You just paste in the unadorned, unHTMLed youtube.com address. Not a link, not an embed. Board does all that itself.)

wonderland

Thanks @grant!

'. . . there's no need to be afraid
I will sing with you my friend.'

WOW Board, you are even more awesome than I realized! Thank you thank you. Have some loves.

wonderland

Perhaps the esteemed citizen of Liminal Nation would also like some loves, for example this from Jason Mraz? I heard this when we did an arrangement of it in the Gospel choir I sang with for a while. (Trigger warning: I think the guy is christian, and he does call God 'he' in passing, but it's not doctrine all over or anything.)

T Hedge Coke

Trying to work out if Queen Adreena is really good, loud, strong Rrrrrraaaaawwwwk! or if it's just a nostalgia trip that resonates well with me. Or, if they're just a raunchier Komeda with more feedback.

Is the only way to really rock since there's been commercially viable rock marketing, actually to just cartoon it and consciously subsumed to progress?

The authenticity trap's a bit evil, isn't it? And the originality trap.

wonderland

Hmm, I have just tried a couple of Queen Adreena tracks out onYoutbe and I didn't get into it yet. Just noise for me. Something has to be as good as Pixies' 'Bossanova' for me to stand that kind of noise. But that might be my own nostalgia trip. I know sometimes have to listen to things for a while before I work out what is grabbing me about them. I will have to try listening to some Komeda some time when I have a fatter connection, vids are too wide for where I am right now.

Originality trap, authenticity trap? (I totally might not be hip enough for this thread.) You want to write a little more about what you mean, T Hedge?

I am coming at music from a perspective of 'I like the sound of that right now'/'I don't like the sound of that right now' and I get through to wondering why if I have spare attention in the moment. I've not managed to join in writing about it on the internet before, not more than a line or two way back when. Not what you might call a sophisticated listener.

What's your opinion on the state of rock (or any other kind of) music as an industry at the moment? What little I know about the music scene is that everything changed shape (marketing, promotion, how/whether bands get 'big' and so on) in the last decade or so. I had the vague impression that there was a wave of promo moving into
genre as an attempt to find the 'big money' again - but that perhaps it had just stopped existing - maybe just cultural fragmentation of the user base?

I woke up with Metallica's 'Nothing else matters' in my mind's ear. Sweet. :)

Grotto of Nolte

The industry is terrible for most performers, people are making a lot less money than they used to, at least in EU/UK/US. Giggin pays less, there's more verticality in that labels now also do tours (they call them 360 deals) and merch etc. Add to this the digitalisation of music distribution and piracy and things are looking quite bleak - for the INDUSTRY.

Personally I think there's still loads of great new music being made, but I have less interest these days.

wonderland

Saint Saens' Introduction and Rondo Capriccioso with Joshua Bell. That's a good thing.

wonderland

Arto Tunçboyacıyan's 'Dear my friend Onno' is lovely.

Anyone understand Armenian enough to busk a translation of the lyrics? I don't.

genlob

David Byrne, Where does he fit in? Post punk arthouse polyglot mebbe? I saw him at the Brixton Academy fronting a 16 piece latin ensemble one time. Thing I like most about him - he does excellent groove. Here're are three of my go to Byrne tracks when I wanna get down with my bad self.

T Hedge Coke

I still categorize David Byrne, in general as punk, in the same sense that any old school punk band/performer really was more a movement than a sound, and grew and changed. (And, because I can't stand the terms "post-punk" or "world music.") Individual songs or albums can be this genre or that. But he's definitely an arthouse performer at all times, too, and has long been so.

A friend of mine was telling me that when he and Cindy Sherman were a thing he was telling people at a dinner who didn't recognize his name, at least, that he was her Yoko Ono and treating things in a way that my friend couldn't tell if he was earnestly excited and laughing or if he was only making people feel as if they were with him on something, and I realized, that's his music for me, too. Letting the outsider in or keeping the insider out. Good sounds, though.

Seth

Byrne has just published a book about how he thinks music works that, by all accounts, avoids all the usual pitfalls of that kind of thing while also being a splendid read. Reviews have been very good, might try to get it cheap in the sales.

T Hedge Coke

I'm going to have to grab that book, if I can, when I'm back in the States.

Listening to some of Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music again. Post rock. Pure rock. I'm not sure at all. And, I don't care if he recorded it seriously or not, it's guitar feedback playing other guitars to record their feedback and that shit is awesome. There are plenty of albums that make me want to jump up and down and metal scream at the sky like I want to crack the firmament with excitement, but most of those do so for a riff or a great surge they've been building to and MMM takes about one and a half seconds to get me there and can sustain it for ten, twenty minutes, easy.

Which, got me thinking again: How important is the structural consistency of a song, for you? Or, I should say maybe, the expected consistencies, the traditional (in the broad Eurodominant popular music tradition) consistencies.

I can never, I think, satisfactorily explain why unexpected sounds or counterpoint rhythms, notes stepping on each other, all of that appeals to me. I love a song or a structure of sounds cohesive enough to be a song, coming simultaneous to another full set of complimentary sounds. I was trying to explain to someone, the other night, why shifting rhythms, irrational rhythms, juxtaposed and polyrhythms appeal so much to me, and I think it's that it draws my attention more intensely and because I can sense how much I'm missing, if I attach to one rhythm or focus on one pattern. That's for MMM, but more, too, obviously. A helluva lot of jazz and noise bands. "Dissonance" or "irrational rhythm" will carry you so far, but they've got bad semantic prosody. Bootsy Collins said one of the reasons the JBs started doing stuff apart from backing James Brown was because Brown was so insistent on maintaining a constant sound in a song and tightness to make sure that even with flourishes you hit the golden moments and get to the end of the song. I see the point, but I'm glad they stretched a bit, separate, too. I've got a live version of Parliament's Aqua Boogie on tape where someone starts playing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star midsong and everyone else just churns forward on Aqua Boogie, which highlights both beautifully.

Evan

Everyone is rocking out to Lipa Schmeltzer!

Or possibly not.

T Hedge Coke

Flo Rida has suggested, before, treating the entirety of the Florida music scene (from Dirty South to Florida rock to Manson/Scarling performative horror-kitsch over the years and today) as a scene/supergenre, the way we can treat other regional music lineages/scenes.

Whaddaya think? Is there mileage in that? Or is it just geographical proximity that links it all?

Grotto of Nolte

Don't see many links between Tampa Death Metal and Flo Rida myself.

grant

Growing up as a musician in Florida, I think there is kind of a theme running through everything that comes out of here, but it's really hard to sum up.

A lot of it has to do with the way "freak" culture (or even... the feeling of being outside-the-mainstream, pre-culturally) expresses itself in a variety of different other subcultures - and also the way Floridians never seem to outgrow the past.

So you get Tom Petty doing Byrds-style jangle rock at a time when no one else was doing it, because it was kinda weird and kitschy (REM came out a couple years after "Refugee" charted, if I remember right)... and 2 Live Crew being over-the-top pornographic (Luther Campbell recently ran for Miami mayor, did you know?)... and Sam Beam (Iron & Wine) making weird lo-fi country in his bedroom... and The Postmarks trying to fuse Interpol (who are *almost* a Florida band... a couple members played together here before they moved to New York) with thrift store film soundtracks... and Marilyn Manson (some of my friends still call him "Bryan", just because they can) being, well, super-freaky, but with lunchboxes. (Their earlier shows, Manson would bring some of his lunchbox collection on stage. Nostalgia and fetish wear.)

There's something that links KC and the Sunshine Band with Obituary, in that context. They were both doing a slightly off-kilter and over-the-top version of the stuff they'd have been hearing on their older siblings' stereos (or maybe the high schoolers when they were entering middle school). Just old enough to be out-of-fashion, just off-the-mark enough to be something new.

grant

"Call me a hole" is pushing all of my buttons right now.

ALL of them.

Been a while since I was so delighted by a quodlibet.

Evan

Liberace was a total badass. But what's with those women?

I remember going to the Liberace museum in Vegas. Fantastic.

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