Music Notes
So, I was reading Rachel Lee Rubin’s new short book on Merle Haggard’s “Okie from Muskogee” and I learned something I didn’t know but that also didn’t surprise me. You know how on the famous Johnny Cash Live at San Quentin album, how the prisoners cheer when he sings on “Folsom Prison Blues” “I shot a man in Reno, just to watch him die”? Yeah, that didn’t happen, or at least it was wildly amplified in the studio for effect. I’m not sure about the rest of the prisoners’ cheers on that album. I put this on Twitter and was really surprised how outraged people were to find that out. There are a couple of things happening here, I think. First, while music people are well aware that live albums are doctored all the time, the casual fan find them to represent authenticity and so that is shocking. Second and more important, there is this myth of JOHNNY CASH, PURE MYTHICAL ARTIST. And while I love Cash too, that is more an image created by Rick Rubin in the 90s during the American Recordings era than anything based in reality. It’s not as if Cash didn’t engage in some mythmaking of his own–the Man in Black and all that–but it had almost completely faded from public memory before Rubin got involved. Meanwhile, Cash himself was certainly more than open to commercial trends and everything else he’s associated with not being.
Rubin’s book is pretty interesting even outside of this. It’s part of the 33 1/3 series that Bloomsbury has, dedicated to short books on particular albums. Somehow I wasn’t familiar with this before, even though this evidently is the 128th book in the series. I probably should read more about music given how much I listen to. Anyway, she goes into a great bit of detail on the complexity around “Okie from Muskogee,” coming down squarely on the side that the song is satire, which it obviously is except that people have used it ever since it came out as an excuse to make fun of the South and conflate country music with right-wing politics. Never mind that Haggard himself was in fact smoking marijuana and doing any other drugs all the time, that while his politics were bonkers he spent much of his time on the left, including opposing the Iraq War and endorsing Hillary Clinton for president in 2008. Haggard himself was always cagey about the song’s real meaning, which is probably for reasons of selling copies of it. Anyway, the book is full of interesting facts, Rubin has a deep knowledge of country music history, and it reads quickly.
Why is modern jazz so terrible at self-promotion? I believe we music fans owe it to artists to buy their album in some form. I buy an album every Friday without fail. But I do rely on streaming services to listen to albums first. With very very few exceptions, even the best artists release some clunkers. Having been burned many times in the past, with the rise of streaming, I started listening to albums before buying them. Every album reviewed on these posts, with very few exceptions, are albums I have streamed. And then I buy one on Friday. I have a very long list of albums to listen to and I pick them from that list. I have a lot of more jazz albums on that list than I review here. That’s because at least half the jazz albums are nowhere to stream. And I think that’s crazy. There’s a scene in Season 2 of Treme where the jazz trumpeter Delmont Lambreaux briefly fires his manager (Prez!) for not getting putting his music on social media. The manager responds with something like, “Do you think there are people in Idaho who want to buy your albums?” And the answer is, yes! Not a ton maybe. But yes. Modern jazz artists make no money anyway. So why not put the albums out there for people to hear like musicians in every other genre? All not streaming albums does is mean even I won’t hear them. The specific album that brought this point on is the new Mark Dresser album, Modicana. I want to hear it. But I’m not going to buy a solo bass album without listening to it first because a lot of solo jazz albums don’t do much for me. But since I can’t stream it anywhere, I guess I won’t buy it at all and that takes a little more money out of the jazz world. Then I tried to stream Matt Mitchell’s Forage instead. At least that allowed me one song on Bandcamp, which means I can’t review it but at least I can see if I might want to buy it. But that’s not much. Get it together jazz labels and artists.
Waxahatchee, arguably one of the top 5 acts performing today, has a new EP coming out this fall, so that’s great.
Here’s an essay on Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues.” I also think The Who’s version is pretty great.
Rolling Stone has a list of the 50 greatest Latin pop songs.
A discussion of early Fleetwood Mac.
MIA has some sort of documentary coming out, which I wouldn’t care about except it’s a reminder about the time she had a screenshot of a LGM post in the liner notes to one of her albums. Can’t remember which one now but I was at a friend’s house and he had it and I looked through it and my jaw dropped. This was before I joined the blog, so in the days when it wasn’t even good. Sorry, couldn’t resisting trolling my blogmates there.
Album Reviews:
Mary Gauthier, Rifles and Rosary Beads
Gauthier is one of those singer-songwriters who I know I should have listened to for years but who I never quite got around to. That was certainly a mistake now that I have heard Rifles and Rosemary Beads. I was a bit skeptical on the concept at first. She co-wrote each of these songs with veterans or their families as part of the Songwriting with Soldiers nonprofit. Because this nation so fetishizes its military, while not actually giving them the long-term care they need, I was maybe a little nervous about this. And look, some of the songs are not necessarily breaking unexpected ground. The first track covers the standard “soldiers fight for each other, not the cause” bit.
But at the same time, the experiences of soldiers is actually a great theme for songs. There were a number of excellent folk-country songs that came out over the years representing the Vietnam experience–Kris Kristofferson’s superb “Shipwrecked in the Eighties” is my favorite, but also Johnny Cash’s “Drive On”, Tom Russell’s “Blue Wing”, and Terry Allen’s “Blue Asian Reds” come to mind as first rate work. And so it is on Rifles and Rosemary Beads. First, Gauthier sings the hell out of these songs. The power in her voice carries them through the occasional cliche, while the very real suffering of soldiers and their families in the aftermath of our idiotic wars makes for, at worst, good songs and mostly much better than that. This is a good piece on what this project meant to one soldier, but even beyond the social value of the project, I was pretty blown away by the whole thing.
A
Beach House, 7
This is perfectly fine Pitchfork-friendly indie music by a band who has been doing that for a long time. Like so much of this band, and similar bands, it’s perfectly pleasant to listen to while I have the strong feeling that despite the critical praise, I am listening to nothing that means much of anything. It’s dreamy and spacey and a bit rocky and there’s a good place for that in the world. In other words, it’s fine but not something that goes on the list to buy. And maybe I’ve met enough people who overlapped with my wife at Vassar that I roll my eyes a little bit at the hipster culture of Vassar graduates in their 30s, as did Victoria Legrand. A strictly personal prejudice, but you know I have more than my share of those and besides, I have to listen to these conversations and you don’t.
B
War on Drugs, A Deeper Understanding
I’m a big fan of this band’s previous release, Lost in the Dream. But I didn’t get to this 2017 release until this week. Too many albums out there. Simply put, it’s been a long, long time since any band did better stoner guitar rock. Despite Mark Kozelek’s trolling of them and their music, or maybe because of it since Kozelek is such a crank, this is band where you can sit back, turn up the volume, and enjoy the ride. Great album.
A
Beth McKee, Dreamwood Acres
McKee, a southern singer-songwriter, is a lifer, putting out an album every couple of years despite not having a lot of commercial success. Dreamwood Acres, just recently released, is a more than worthy addition to her work. Soaked in the sounds of the South with a blues-rock basis, this might not break new ground sonically, but McKee is a fine songwriter and is a fantastic singer who sounds great here. Very much worth your time, especially if Lucinda Williams or Bonnie Raitt is who you groove to.
B
The Sadies, Northern Passage
Another solid album of country-rock by a Canadian country-rock band that has been churning them out for a long time. Plus an excellent guest appearance by Kurt Vile.
B+
Melissa Laveaux, Raydo Siwèl
This is a cool album. Laveaux is a Canadian of Haitian descent and this album is about Haiti, mostly about how the U.S. has fucked it over, specifically in the long occupation of the nation from 1915-34. Literally. She has noted, one song is about “telling the Americans that they don’t know how Haiti works and to get the fuck out.” And while I don’t understand French, not to mention Creole French, I fully approve of the topic. Moreover, Laveaux’s voice and the music is great. This is an angry album, but it’s also a fun album to throw on. She is a good guitarist and the producers bring in a wide variety of global influences to back that up. A very worthy album.
A-
Circuit des Yeux, Reaching for Indigo
I’ve seen Haley Fohr, who performs as Circuit des Yeux twice, by total chance, opening for other bands. The first time I saw her, it really was a “what the fuck is this” moment. She plays with her hair in front of her face, looking like Cousin It with shorter hair. I assume this comes from a place of extreme awkwardness. The first time I saw her, she didn’t speak. The second time, she did and, well, it was quite awkward. Which, whatever, who cares, just noting it’s an interesting stage persona. And then the voice, well, this is going to be something you like or you do not like. It’s an affectation, a voice of choice, which is fine of course. I guess I would describe it as something from a gothic, otherworldly place. The thing is, I just can’t stand the voice. It may not shock you that Pitchfork feels differently. In any case, it is worth a listen, as you haven’t heard anything like it.
C+
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and none things politics.