Cultural Detritus, Reviews, and Commentary
Leonard Cohen – The Future Columbia CK 53226 (1992)
Yes, a few bright spots (“The Future,” “Democracy,” and even “Always” is okay), but The Future is uneven at best. The worst of the synth pop (“Closing Time”) had me thinking even “Jazz Police” from I’m Your Man would be an improvement.
DJ /rupture – Minesweeper Suite Tigerbeat6 MEOW045 (2002)
Did you know that there are really only two kinds of people? Well, there are. One kind are globalists, who believe in a overarching hierarchy of things, with all people and things with each in its place and, axiomatically, problems arise from people and things being out of place (or unhappy with their place). The other kind are universalists who think that basically everybody is equal, with everyone and everything having direct access to participate in life and society and problems arise when people and things are denied equal treatment. While there are degrees of each, these are very obviously mutually exclusive positions. Guess which side DJ /rupture’s music falls on? The latter, or course. Minesweeper Suite is a DJ mix album that splices together music from around the globe, putting it all on an equal footing. In a way, this is precisely the kind of thinking explored in Michael Denning‘s book Noise Uprising, about music in the early days of electrical recording technology. DJ /rupture (born Jace Clayton) looks for connections between music from different parts of the planet, and opportunities for complementary mappings for the beats and melodies and timbres. So, in a way, this is music that seeks to locate a universal folk music, inclusive of, well, everything (sort-of). It maybe stops short of including all kinds of music — this is mostly the music made by and for the poor, the humble, the minority, and those outside the grip of hegemonic global media, which translates to the music of the Global South. But isn’t that precisely what somebody interested in universalism would do, break from the globalist system that imposes a narrow band of “mainstream” music on everyone else? The alternative to all that that Minesweeper Suite presents is a rootless music that easily floats among many possibilities. Whatever bits of “mainstream” music are included in the mix tend to get no special privilege, but are also given honorable and supportive treatment.
In a 2008 essay, DJ /rupture said this about his genre of turntablist music:
“DJed music develops in the great centers: London, New York, Paris. But the artists make much of their living in forays to the periphery. To state culture bureaus, our music sounds like art and the ‘avant-garde,’ a means of prestige. To kids coming of age in a world of technology and unhinged capitalism, our music seems to sound the way global capital is—liquid, international, porous, and sped-up.
Yet our sounds are also a vocabulary for those who detest the walled-off concentrations of wealth, and steal property back: the collectives that build their own sound systems, stage free parties, and invite DJs to perform. The international DJ becomes emblematic of global capitalism’s complicated cultural dimension.”
As for the specifics of the music, there is a lot of Jamaican stuff, Indian, North African, and old and new American R&B and soul. The bass tends to feel loud, to the point of developing a round, liquid and kind of giggling effect, with a noisy, overdriven edge. At times it creates a foreboding quality, almost like the good parts are buried under a impossibly massive and impenetrable deluge, though most of the time the music has a hopeful quality that looks toward promising possibilities.
You can download this album (and others) for free from DJ /rupture’s web site.
Patti Smith – Trampin’ Columbia CK 90330 (2004)
The title track is quite good (it’s indebted to Marian Anderson‘s version from He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands), as are “Radio Baghdad” and “Gandhi” (“Cash” is decent too). The rest is dreck. Most of this is just over-polished, boilerplate stuff played by a band lead by noticeably over-the-hill rockers. The songs often sound stiff, like the rote hard rock of “Stride of the Mind.” Gung Ho may never have really achieved a level of excitement, or offered anything of anthemic power, while Trampin’ does reach those heights. But this album also scrapes the bottom of the barrel of feigned significance on “Jubilee,” “My Blakean Year” and “Trespasses.” Unfortunately, the merits of a few really nice songs are lost amongst the rest of this miserable garbage.
Sensational Nightingales – It’s Gonna Rain Again MCA 28033 (1972)
Soulful, mellow gospel produced by Ira Tucker of The Dixie Hummingbirds. This lineup of The Sensational Nightingales featured Horace Thompson, Brother Joseph Wallace, Charles B. Johnson and Willie George Woodruff. The group was among those top-flight gospel acts that updated their sound to contemporary tastes into the 1970s. With accompaniment led by a reverb-heavy guitar, the smooth, simple vocals are all catchy and inviting. The sound is vaguely similar to The Swan Silvertones‘ I Found the Answer, The Consolers, and probably lots of other gospel of the day on Peacock Records and Nashboro Records. There is some filler toward the end, but I can’t help but really enjoy this.
Sly & The Family Stone – The Woodstock Experience Legacy 88697 48241 2 (2009)
I think it’s great that the complete performance of Sly & The Family Stone at Woodstock has finally been released — it only took 40 years! What is amazing is that the band has a long-standing reputation as having put on fierce live shows in their prime, yet other than a few stray songs on festival compilations they never released a full-length live album. That always seemed incongruous. Now, finally, at least the Woodstock performance is available. It starts off inauspiciously with “M’Lady,” which is followed by an apology for the bad sound and a plea for corrective measures. After that, the sound does improve, even if it’s still not perfect. The group certainly did have a complex sound, with vocals coming from just about everybody, a horn section, and lots of interaction from all the performers. The music placed stiff demands on the still evolving equipment of the late 60s. Anyway, when the band gets rolling, they are quite a force, regardless of the sound problems. They focus on a lot of uptempo, funky numbers with a lot of drive. Rose Stone‘s organ takes a prominent position. This is just a great performance, and I can only hope that a band as successful as Sly & The Family Stone–led by a noted producer no less — recorded more live material that will be released some day.
There are a few things to be said about the packaging here. A whole series of “Woodstock Experience” collections were released featuring Woodstock recordings of an artist/group together with the studio album they released beforehand (in this case, Stand!). The cynic in me looks at this as a crass marketing move, given that live Woodstock performances are likely to appeal mostly to fans who probably already have the studio album — forcing them to repurchase it to get to the new live material. Though these seem to be priced such that you aren’t totally ripped off if you are repurchasing. More significant is the inaccurate designation of “previously unreleased” material. “Love City” is denoted here as previously unreleased, which is incorrect because it was released on the 1994 comp Woodstock Diary.
Swan Silvertones – I Found the Answer Peacock PLP-181 (1973)
An album supposedly culled from leftover material recorded for Vee-Jay Records in the 1960s that develops a soul-inflected sound — though given the apparent absence of Paul Owens and the possibility that it’s Claude Jeter imitator Carl Davis rather than Jeter himself here, I wonder if this material is from the post-Vee-Jay era. There are bouncy, up-tempo rhythms as well as slower, smoother, organ-drenched sounds. At times there is even just a bit of country-rock influence. From songs like “How Great Thou Art” it’s easy to see the direction the group would take through the mid-1970s during their tenure on HOB Records. This album has an easygoing charm. It’s yet another forgotten gem in The Swan Silvertones’ catalog.
[Note: Though I don’t believe this is available on CD by itself, it’s available in its entirety on Raisin’ the Roof]
Pere Ubu – St. Arkansas spinART SPART 108 (2002)
Approaching its third decade as a band, Pere Ubu sounded surprising close to its late 1970s roots on St. Arkansas. If “avant garage” has long been the term of choice to describe their style of rock and roll, it remains the right way to describe this album. As a band, they thrive on the fringe of acceptability.
St. Arkansas is a road album. David Thomas reportedly wrote the words from Conway, Arkansas to Tupelo, Mississippi, from I-40 to U.S. 49 to State 6. Movement is implied in the songs, compiled from isolated moments and drawn into a surreal reflection of americana, as if passed by in a moving car, in a blur.
“The Fevered Dream of Hernando DeSoto” opens the disc very much in the band’s style of old. But this isn’t purely a retreat into the past. St. Arkansas has gems to offer both newcomers and Pere Ubu’s cult following. At times the album grooves (“333” and the Brian Wilson-meets-Ray Davies sounding “Phone Home Jonah”), while other times it perplexes at a halting pace (“Michele”).
Pere Ubu’s lineup of the last five years can coax a balance out of extremes. The liner notes suggest: “Most people know that by moving between the two speakers of your hi fi system a point can be located at which the sound seems to lock into place. Ordinarily this is the point that forms an equilateral triangle with the two sound sources. With Pere Ubu, however, this point has been located directly in front of the right hand source. There are reasons for this.” If this all seems very deliberate, know that the production on this album is a little raw and hollow. It’s not terrible, but it seems somewhat underbaked overall.
This is a good one, and it is worth saying again that it is probably the closest to the band’s 1970s sound as anything since that time — if that’s your thing. Yet it is a notch below the underrated return to form album Ray Gun Suitcase, which has the advantage in freshness and inventive techniques, even if it is less song-driven.
Pere Ubu – Ray Gun Suitcase Cooking Vinyl COOK CD 089 (1995)
Pere Ubu were one of the stranger rock bands to emerge from the punk era. But by the late 1980s their sound shifted to a more pop-focused arena. 1995’s Ray Gun Suitcase was a sort of return to a rock sound. The band’s lineup had changed a lot since the 1970s, so this is closer to the “alternative rock” milieu than punk, but there are hints of the band of old — such as electronic effects by Robert Wheeler that recall Allen Ravenstine‘s experiments of the past. What is most new here are the song structures, many of which play like mini-suites with numerous shifts in tone. Also, there is an emphasis on theatrics, in the formal sense. Singer David Thomas adopts affected singing techniques that seem drawn from avant-garde theater (“Vacuum in My Head”). So guitarist Jim Jones plays some driving, anthemic riffs, but those come and go in any given song. The bass (Michele Temple, plus Paul Hamann) is prominent, and the overall sound is crisp but full, with a lot of separation that lends an almost hollow effect. There are definite rhythms and melodies and chord progressions, but also atonal interjections and other elements at odds with convention. Overall, the subject matter of the songs seems to look back a bit, with an interest in “Americana,” but for the purpose of understanding what cultural history means for the future — this is not nostalgic navel-gazing by any means. This would establish a foundation for much of what the band pursued for the next decade.
David Bowie – Santa Monica ’72 MainMan GY002 (1994)
A few of the slow songs drag, but mostly this is a fine set from the peak of Bowie’s glam period. Mick Ronson proves to be as much the star as Bowie himself. It’s interesting to know these guys were performing “I’m Waiting for the Man,” and quite well actually. For what it’s worth, this was recorded during the Ziggy Stardust tour, but only released over two decades later.
Boris – Attention Please Sargent House SH-055 (2011)
Boris is a great band. And they can do a lot of different things. Moving into the realm of pop rock, they do, however, reveal a weakness: they don’t have an adequate pop-rock singer. But, it’s a small weakness on an otherwise decent record.