Get an early taste of Wilco’s new album Sky Blue Sky on their site where they offer the track “What Light”, an obvious reference to the Velvets. I heard a part of another song as well as snippets of the whole album on this past Thursday’s edition of All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen chats the with the infamous Robert Christgau, Will Hermes and former WFMU DJ Meredith Ochs about the new Wilco album, and latest offerings by Modest Mouse, Fountains of Wayne and Bright Eyes. I haven’t heard the new Modest Mouse album yet, which has been out for a couple weeksbut I am looking foward to as well as all of these new releases. The NPR crew also play a very funny country song by Elizabeth Cook which by the title“Sometimes It Takes Balls To Be A Woman” you can get a sense of what it’s all about.
Tag Archive for 'music'
Wilco New Song: “What Light”
Published by March 25th, 2007 in Random, Free Tracks and 2007. 1 CommentIn an obvious attempt to avoid posting anything of substance I bring you my half-thought out list of twenty-four must have albums if stranded on a desert island (as inspired by this Flickr pool).
[Reading left to right, top to bottom]
A Band of Bees—Free The Bees
Amon Tobin—Permutation
Arcade Fire—Funeral
Bebel Gilberto—Tanto Tempo
Black Uhuru—Sinsemilla
Boards of Canada—Children Have The Right To Music
Burning Spear—Creation Rebel: The Original Classic Recordings From Studio One
Count Basie—Listen My Children And You Shall Hear
Dave Brubeck—Time Out
DJ Shadow—Entroducing
Don Caballero—American Don
Duke Ellington—Latin American Suite
Fugazi—Repeater + 3 Songs
Jaga Jazzist—What We Must
John Coltrane—Ole Coltrane
Led Zeppelin—Houses of the Holy
Miles Davis—Kind of Blue
Nati Cano’s Mariachi Los Camperos—Llegaron Los Camperos!: Nati Cano’s Mariachi Los Camperos
Nick Drake—Pink Moon
Nitin Sawhney—Beyond Skin
Paris Combo—Motifs
The Future Sound of London—Lifeforms
Yes—Tales from Topographic Oceans
Yo-Yo Ma, Emanuel Ax, Isaac Stern—Shostakovich: Trio, Op.67/Sonata, Op.40
There you have it. From Classical to Mariachi with a little of everything else in between.
Terry Gross interviewed Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand today on NPR’s Fresh Air. He recently put out a book called Sound Bites: Eating on Tour with Franz Ferdinand, which compiles the columns he wrote for The Guardian about the different places the band ate at around the world and his gastronomic insights.
I’m not a big Franz Ferdinand fan but thought it was a fantastic interview. Kapranos is very personable and articulate. He talked about the various jobs he’d had in restaurants prior to forming the band, read some passages from his book, and told anecdotes about some of foods the band had partaken in during their travels. He talked equally as much about how the band formed and the song writing process. And of course Terry asked great questions and managed their conversation expertly.
You can listen to the interview here.
Even though this should be filed under Rat’s Ass, Could Give A I’ll take the bait and respond.
Dear Ms. O’Neal Parker, after reading your article, Why I Gave Up On Hip-Hop in the Washington Post, I have come to the conclusion that you, sadly, are one of those people that has allowed age to ossify their ability to stretch and grow with the world around them. What makes me say this?
I don’t know the day things changed for me. When the music began to seem so obviously divorced from any truth and, just as unforgivably, devoid of most creativity. I don’t know when my love turned to contempt and my contempt to fury. Maybe it happened as my children got older and I longed for music that would speak to them the way hip-hop had once spoken to me.
Rap and Hip-Hop haven’t stopped speaking, it is you who have stopped listening. Seriously, read what you have just written, you sound like some pathetic has-been whining about how no band can rock as hard as Boston used to, pining for those hot nights in the back seat of an arctic blue Camero all the while still rocking the same feathered hair you had in 1981. Take a moment and get familiar with the world around you because it keeps moving forward all the while you are staring at where it was.
My husband, Ralph, and I try to tell [our daughter] Sydney that rap music used to be fun.
That is just sad. Really, did your parents dictate what you could listen to based on its propensity for “fun”? No, judging by the tale you wove your love affair with Hip-Hop was one rooted in the forbidden and the thrill of the new and novel. Let your daughter experience the same, and if you raised her right she’ll be able to discern hate from love and lies from truth.
That my decision to end our love affair had come only after years of disappointment and punishing abuse. After I could no longer nod my head to the misogyny or keep time to the vapid materialism of another rap song.
Hip-hop had long since gone mainstream and commercial. [Emphasis mine]
That, right there, is the problem. You are so wrapped up in commercial products that you cannot see the world around you. Commercial products are packaged and marketed for the lowest common denominator and by their very nature are often unchallenging and devoid of substance and meaning. Let me put it this way, do you go to TGI Friday’s expecting cuisine that will at once challenge and sate you? Let me answer for you, “Yes.” TGI-Friday’s is Middle-American convenience food and commercial Hip-Hop is exactly the same as it plays into the expectations, stereotypes and prejudices of mainstream America.
Maybe as the coolest black boys kept getting shot on the streets while the coolest rappers droned: AK-47 now nigga, stop that.
Maybe as the madness made me want to holler back: “Niggas” can’t stop AK-47s, and damn you for saying so.
You just made your prejudices crystal clear. Guess what? Not all rap is about gang bangin’ and ho smackin’. Wake up, open your ears, and stop consuming all your food–intellectual, spiritual, and material–from the commercial troughs. There is plenty of work in Hip-Hop that is positive, spiritually engaging, socially and politically conscious, as well as being an achievement musically. Here’s a list:
- Aceyalone
- Blackalicious
- The Coup
- El-P
- Five Deez
- J. Live
- Latyrx
- Lyric Born
- Ohmega Watts
- Talib Kweli
- Sage Francis
- Wale Oyejide
Now take your over-educated-ivory-tower-Hip-Hop-hatin’ ass out to the damn store, buy some CDs from these artists, and learn something before you write about it because you sound like a fool.
I’m not a man that purchases singles, whole albums are what captivate me. To hear an artist’s vision across an hour or so is to be transported for a moment into their world, which is something singles, 12″, and EPs often cannot do. However, when it comes to listening I prefer to toss all those tracks in the air and hear them as they flutter back down.
The beauty of random play is just that: it’s random. All sorts of serendipitous connections are made between what might otherwise be construed as disparate pieces of music. Can a Bach Cantata really flow into an Ellington Ballad to only shift course into a Cumbia number? Only random listening will tell you (for the record it does and amazingly at that). Music becomes a joyous process of rediscovery as artists and songs take on new meaning through different associations and contexts.
The unfamiliar can drive some to distraction. My wife in fact hates random playback as she finds comfort in the anticipation of what song follows; music is linear and therefore should be heard in an obviously sequential manner. Order rules her listening habits. Throw caution to the wind, I say. Two-Step Garage numbers should be allowed to precede Swing, and by all means Post-Rock can follow an flowing organic Ambient piece. Live your life a little less certain and you could be surprised by what you find.
