Kris Kristofferson – The Essential Kris Kristofferson

The Essential Kris Kristofferson

Kris Kristofferson – The Essential Kris Kristofferson Legacy C2K 64992 (2004)

Kristofferson was something of the Tim Hardin of country music: a gifted songwriter with so-so performance abilities.  The classics like “Me and Bobby McGee,” “Sunday Morning Coming Down,” have definitive versions recorded by others, but this collection features one great tune after another, so it’s easy to look past Kristofferson’s limited vocals and the plodding, broad-brush production values.  Lyrically, Kristofferson, especially in his early years, wrote in a way reminiscent of beat writer Jack Kerouac, also recalling French writer Jean Genet a little too: these were songs about those operating just outside acceptable society, out traveling the country, trying to make some sense of it all and find a place.

CAN – Tago Mago

Tago Mago

CAN – Tago Mago United Artists UAS 29 211/12 X (1971)

CAN was perhaps the greatest German band ever. Highly influenced by James Brown, The Velvet Underground, and classical, CAN defined electronic rock. Far ahead of their peers, the group never enjoyed much more than a cult following. Kraut rock may now be an obscurity, but the popularity of modern electronic music makes CAN very appealing to virgin ears.

CAN’s musical conception is broad and sweeps out large chunks of space. Most cuts on Tago Mago run from seven to eighteen minutes. Roots in psychedelic rock, R&B/soul, and blues are clear in hindsight. The funky drive from one of rock’s greatest rhythm sections takes over the first half of the double-LP. Jaki Leibezeit on drums and Holger Czukay on bass produced extended comic trances. The rhythms used were unlike anything at the time, but now sound quite akin to sampled loops.

Tago Mago is an enormous work that covers diverse terrain without missing a step. Japanese singer “Damo” Suzuki covers enormous territory. He moves from endless vamps, to impassioned cries, to processed experiments (only Yoko Ono dared as much). “Paperhouse,” driven by the glorious guitar of Michael Karoli and the sublime keyboards of Irmin Schmidt, rocks like a Funkadelic tune. “Oh Yeah” and “Halleluwah” move as if a pack German James Browns are chasing you with a funky stick.

Exciting experimentation is CAN’s greatest asset. “Aumgn” developed by randomly overdubbing the recording tape. This process, as identically done with spoken word years before by William S. Burroughs, and followed Steve Reich‘s iconic “Come Out” by a few years, and predates hip-hop turntable mixing in the South Bronx by a year or two. CAN eases into the closers “Peking O” and “Bring Me Coffee of Tea.” Atmospheric space towards the end of Tago Mago largely dispense with traditional song format. The funky beats of the first few tracks disappear, leaving just sound ebbing and flowing.

This is two albums in one. What begins anchored by identifiable roots closes on the level of an avant-garde Stockhausen composition. The album expands your horizons; yet, CAN is always present to guide through this free trip to paradise.

The wide path cut by Tago Mago is consistently articulate. CAN expertly maintains an immediacy while slowly unveiling their abstract themes. Brilliant experiments are still danceable (“Halleluwah”). Afrika Bambaataa described Kraftwerk as “some funky white boys.” CAN were the godfathers of funky white boys. This work makes a clear connection between avant-garde rock and electronic music.

Mainstream music has accepted CAN’s music, though credit is still lacking. Influence may have been indirect, but CAN proved to be decades ahead of just about everyone else.

Articles on War in Syria

Links to some articles on the war in Syria, and the Turkish Role:

“Erdogan Blackmails NATO Allies”

“So Why Did Turkey Shoot Down That Russian Plane?”

“An Invisible US Hand Leading to War?: Turkey’s Downing of a Russian Jet at the Turkish/Syrian Border was an Act of Madness”

“Turkey Could Cut off Islamic State’s Supply Lines. So Why Doesn’t It?”

“We Need to Talk About Turkey”

Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit

Courtney Barnett – Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit Mom + Pop MP221-2 (2015)

Courtney Barnett’s first full-length album trades in some of the dense yet laconic wordplay of her first two EPs for more refined guitar sounds.  This is definitely a fuller, more developed production than here earliest recordings.  The rhythms are crisp and everything is in tune.  The trade may take away some of the quirky charm, but it makes up most of that ground with assured rock textures.

Barnett has long worked with a kind of pastiche of old alt rock styles, everything from underground rock of the early 1970s (The Velvet Underground‘s Loaded), to witty underclass poetry with almost incongruously contemporary pop-rock backing (Ian Dury & the Blockheads’ New Boots & Panties!!), to slacker punk (her song “Avant Gardener” from How to Carve a Carrot Into a Rose, with its deadpan vocals, is a dead ringer for “You’re Gonna Watch Me” by the short-live Cleveland punk band Pressler-Morgan One Plus One).  This album, though, is less a grab bag of influences worn on her sleeve than an integration of influences into a more streamlined package.  Take that as you will.  She’s consolidating what has been done before, expanding it to fit her purposes.  Is it wrong to say she’s domesticating this stuff?  Probably!  Anyway, she takes the counter-culture and kind of makes it seem lived-in, and roomy enough to accommodate just about anyone, in a low-pressure kind of way — the sonic equivalent of going to a friend’s place (but not your best friend’s place) and “crashing on the couch.”  This probably won’t knock anyone over, but it may just grow on you if it doesn’t seem immediately appealing.

The Crowd

The Crowd

The Crowd (1928)

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer

Director: King Vidor

Main Cast: James Murray, Eleanor Boardman

King Vidor’s silent film “The Crowd” was the most acclaimed early feature to use a melancholy, existential ending where a character with great aspirations learns to accept a life short of that, in this case as an anonymous failure.  This would become a sort of film staple, especially in “art house” cinema, with similar examples ranging from Yasujirō Ozu‘s Otona no miru ehon – Umarete wa mita keredo [I Was Born, But…] (1932), Ingmar Bergman‘s Sommarlek [Summer Interlude] (1951), and Satyajit Ray‘s Apur Sansar [World of Apu] (1959), to name a few.  This is one of Vidor’s very finest films — up there with Our Daily Bread (1934).  The pacing is meticulous and graceful, the humor well-placed, and, of course, the acting superb.  Large parts of the film are shot on location — a rarity for Hollywood films of the era — and the sense of realism that the bustling city shots provide is really a useful counterpoint to the ambitions of the protagonist John Sims (James Murray).  But what separates The Crowd from much of what simply has a similar ending is that this is a film that from beginning to end is about ordinary people.  It is not an epic.  There is no hero.