Music Notes
By 
I finished watching the Netflix series Break It All: A History of Rock in Latin America this week and while I wouldn’t say it is breaking any new ground in the art of documentary film, this straightforward series is worth your time. It is the brainchild of Argentine rocker Gustavo Santaolalla, who became a major player on the Buenos Aires rock scene in the 70s and then after the dictatorship (there were some years of self-exile in the U.S.) he went back and really blew the lid off the scene. He then became a major producer of bands across Latin America and later won Oscars for his soundtracks, including Brokeback Mountain and Babel.
I thought at first the film took a really catholic view of rock and roll. It centers around two scenes–Buenos Aires and Mexico City. BA is reflective of British rock and CDMX of American. Makes sense. But there’s very little attention paid elsewhere–a bit in Uruguay, Chile, and Colombia, with nothing from the Caribbean. At first I thought this a bit confusing, given how much I know about the great music coming out of the 70s around the region that was influenced by rock and psychedelia and traditional music. But that’s because I was thinking about this as a North American. If you are Mexican or Argentine, you are surrounded with that stuff all the time. Playing actual rock and roll….that really was revolutionary. The perspective that matters here after all is not the North American. It’s what all this meant to the people making the music. It helps to remember that when watching this.
It was also revolutionary because the state hated it. There’s no way to discuss this stuff without putting it into the context of the politics of the Argentine dictatorship, the PRI killing of the students in 68, and the other disastrous politics of the region, including Carlos Salinas’ embrace of free trade and the peso crisis that swept in, as well as the Mexico City earthquake in 1985. Mexico literally banned rock and roll for years after 68, so it was truly an underground thing. Argentina wasn’t much better.
Because of this, musically, Latin American rock takes off in the 80s. The first episodes, the acts really are imitating British and American music. By the 80s though, some great bands started forming. The thing that really opened my mind here was the role of MTV Latin America, which went live in 1993. So often in histories of rock in English, MTV is seen as mostly negative, pushing forward pretty bands instead of good bands. But in Latin America, what it meant is that you could be anywhere in the continent and actually hear Spanish language bands from other countries. This created a continental scene and one that also extended to Spain. So take a band such as Cafe Tacvba, one of the most important of all the Latin American rock bands. They didn’t initially do much in Mexico. In the old days, that might have been it. But their videos went viral in Chile and that got everyone’s attention and finally got back to Mexico that people needed to get with the program. Really interesting rock bands–Aterciopelados, Soda Stereo, Maná (which gets surprisingly little attention), and later my beloved Bomba Estereo– started to appear and today this scene is as robust as any in the world. The film closes in more or less 2005, which is sensible enough.
The whole documentary is narrated by the musicians themselves, plus David Byrne, which seems a little out of place but really isn’t because of his work over the decades promoting Latin American bands. The end of the documentary does get a little worshippy of Santaolalla, who is indeed hugely important, but it feels a bit ass kissy. Still, you could do far worse with your time than watching this.
Other news and notes:
Great write-up of Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs, one of the great albums of all time. Oddly, I feel people disrespect Bone Machine, which to me is almost its equal.
Phish is a horrible band, but I did appreciate this long New Yorker portrayal, which at the very least gets at the appeal for people with bad taste. And I guess to their credit, they are still writing songs, or more accurately “songs,” since they are such laughably bad lyricists. But hey, true to their vision for a very long time. OK. So, sure, I have a certain respect, begrudging as it may be.
We’ve leaned too far into our silos, echo chambers so loud we can’t hear anything else. We’re so afraid to be wrong that we stick our fingers in our ears and yell na-na-na like toddlers. We’ve replaced civil discourse with clapbacks, disregarding the nuance and curiosity that make us whole. Instead of listening, we lean into performative understanding — pursed “puppy face” lips and hallmark nods looking down our noses in condescension — feeding our egos and clinging to our need to be right — as if not being a “lemming” or “sheep” makes us any less lost.
This is the zeitgeist. In the absence of fairness doctrines, punditry wins the profit wars. The more extreme the ideology, the more viral the content — trauma always goes viral, followed closely by drum majors in a parade of think pieces. Our feeds stay on these trauma loops, a rack of centered therapy-speak without context and a whole lot of loud opinions teetering on medically sound posits, all lacking the proper pedagogy behind them. Facts have been replaced by “because I said so.” Knowing the ledge used to mean something. Now, it just means knowing the algorithm.
This is why Big Ears is a wave.
Because having big ears — truly listening — isn’t just about music. It’s a metaphor, a practice, a mindset. Especially now, when the U.S. is full-on Mike Jack… Motown 25 moonwalking back from diversity, equity, inclusion — isolating itself from the world instead of engaging with it — having big ears becomes a radical act of liberation.
Participating in using these ears means you’re listening for the unfamiliar, you’re open to being changed, and you care enough to sit with discomfort, hearing the voices on the margins, to stretch your perceptions. This is the only way we grow. This is the only way we evolve. And this is the only way we move forward — not as silos, but as a collective, and no this ain’t no hands across ‘murica, because as part of my mental health practice, I’m still minding my black ass business. I’m just asking that as part of your mental health practice, you may want to move accordingly.
Salute to Big Ears Festival — not only for the opportunity but reminding me that having big ears can lead to big hearts, and right now, we jive need both more than ever.
We lost David Thomas from Pere Ubu. I confess to mostly missing that band over the years, so I don’t have too much substantial to say except that it’s impossible to hear all the good bands. There’s just so many. A couple of other big losses in the music world are the famous LA DJ Jed the Fish and the legendary Nashville and Muscle Shoals session guitarist David Briggs.
Excellent essay on Jason Moran’s Ellington project, which I saw a couple of months ago.
60 years since the release of Coltrane’s A Love Supreme.
The continued domination of “The Sound of Silence” over the world.
Modest Mouse is starting its own music festival in Washington. Not surprisingly, leaning very heavily into 90s rock.
Michael Tilson Thomas’ 80th birthday.
Need a little help here–going to be at the Long Play Festival this coming weekend in Brooklyn. What should I see?
This week’s playlist:
- George Jones, The Essential, disc 1
- Old 97s, Most Messed Up
- Bomba Estéreo, Amanecer
- Bobby Bare, Cowboys and Daddys
- The War on Drugs, Lost in the Dream
- The Band, Music from Big Pink
- Cat Power, Sun
- Jesse Winchester, Love Filling Station
- Chris Lightcap’s Bigmouth, Deluxe
- Tom Russell, Blood and Candle Smoke
- Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left
- Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
- Anthony Coleman, Selfhaters
- David Byrne & St. Vincent, Love This Giant
- Miles Davis, In a Silent Way
- Stevie Wonder, Songs in the Key of Life, disc 1
- Merle Haggard, Daddy Frank (The Guitar Man)
- Tammy Wynette, D.I.V.O.R.C.E.
- Charlie Louvin, The Many Moods of Charlie Louvin
- Karl Shiflett and Big Country Show, Worries on My Mind
- Dwight Yoakam, Hillbilly Deluse
- John Moreland, In the Throes
- Hurray for the Riff Raff, The Past is Still Alive
- The Anomanon, The Derby Ram
- The Regrettes, How Do You Love?
- Sir Douglas Quintet, Mendocino
- Bobby Bare, The Winner and Other Losers
- Leonard Cohen, Various Positions
- Johnny Paycheck, At Carnegie Hall
- Mon Laferte, Seis
- Iron & Wine, The Creek Drank the Cradle
- Sam Rivers, Trilogy: Offering
- Hank Mobley, Hi Voltage
- Waylon Jennings, The Ramblin’ Man
- Mary Halvorson, Cloudward
- Gary Stewart, The Essential
- Merle Haggard, Swinging Doors and The Bottle Let Me Down
- Grateful Dead, To Terrapin: May 28, 1977 Hartford, CT
- Roy Campbell/Joe Maneri/Mat Maneri/Matthew Shipp/Barre Phillips/Randy Peterson, Going to Church
- William Parker Organ Quartet, Uncle Joe’s Spirit House
- Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Heart I Believe in You
- Palace, Arise Therefore
- Bill Frisell, Quartet
- Terry Allen, Juarez
- Norman Blake, Back Home in Sulphur Springs
- The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974, disc 6
- Funkadelic, Live: Meadowbrook, Rochester, Michigan – 12th September 1971
- Bill Callahan, Apocalypse
- Muhal Richard Abrams, Blu Blu Blu
- Stevie Wonder, Talking Book
- The Clash, London Calling
- Anthony Braxton, 3 Compositions of New Jazz
- Bonnie Prince Billy, Master and Everyone
- Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay
- The Tallest Man on Earth, The Wild Hunt
- Tanya Tucker, Sweet Western Sound
- Parquet Courts, Human Performance
- Rosalía, Motomami
- Torres, Sprinter
- Drive By Truckers, Brighter than Creation’s Dark
Album Reviews:
Willie Nelson, Last Leaf on the Tree
Willie really can’t sing anymore. He’s over 90! But he is still putting out completely decent albums, this one mostly very well-chosen covers. He’s been writing about age and death for over a decade now but he still keeps on and so he keeps on working too. What the hell else is he going to do? The title track here, a Tom Waits cover, is really elegiac, a very fine old man song. As I age, I find myself struggling a bit with my mental health around it, even though I hope to have a long way to go! So songs like this really touch me. He really is the last leaf on the tree from late 50s/early 60s country music, except for Bill Anderson, who is a very, very different artist on the far other side of country music from the Red Headed Stranger. In short, I was prepared to say, look Willie, maybe it’s time to hang it up. This is, after all, his 76th studio album! But it’s not time to hang it up! He has great people around him who have made his last decade far better than anything he’s done since at least the mid 90s and maybe more consistent than the late 70s! It’s really quite remarkable. And his cover of Beck’s “Lost Cause” really works. We’re not talking about Shotgun Willie or Phases and Stages or Teatro here. And things do begin to drag on the bag end. But it’s a solid album.
B-
Laura Veirs, Saltbreakers
Catching up on my Laura Veirs catalog and this is a 2007 album I’d not heard. It’s early Veirs and maybe a bit of a minor album. I’ve found that while she’s always been a good songwriter, she’s really grown in that world over the years to the point that these days, she’s close to a great songwriter. Here’s she still just pretty good. The arrangements are fairly straightforward indie folk, the songs signify a bit but I don’t find any of them grab me. I like Veirs so I like this album well enough if I don’t want something too intrusive while I work or something like that, but if I was recommending her to new potential fans, I’d tell them to listen to later albums such as Warp & Weft and My Echo, which are A or A- level work. I did however really like the closer here, “Bright Glittering Gifts.” That’s a first rate song.
B
Guided by Voices, Nowhere to Go but Up
Oh Bob Pollard, you know you are a legend and that your band has plenty of places it could go. Though it just kind of goes to the standard GBV thing on this 2023 album. Solid rock and roll, crunchy, noisy, throwaway lyrics. You know, a Guided By Voices album, like the dozens of other ones. Describing it as anything more or less than that would be too many words.
B
Ecuatoriana–El Universo Paralelo de Polibio Mayorga 1969-1981
The great Analog Africa label, responsible for so many wonderful releases of global music over the years, released its 37th volume in 2023. By now, it’s expanded to Latin America. This is a weird release–Ecuadoran space music of the 70s. This stuff combines modern electronics with indigenous sounds, all based around sci-fi influences. You think War of the Worlds was bad in the U.S., but in 1949, when it was played by Radio Quito, a mob burned the station to the ground. So let’s just say Andean peoples took this kind of thing seriously. Well, twenty years later, bands started to create music that combined this interest in science fiction with a critique of social justice and these centuries old musical traditions to make some weird and funky spacey music. I don’t know how much of it one really needs to hear–honestly 5 or 6 songs of this is probably enough since it does kind of soudn the same. But I’m glad I heard something from a time and place in musical history about which I had no familiarity.
B
Marshall Allen, New Dawn
Marshall Allen, long the leader of the Sun Ra Arkestra, has released his first ever solo album at the age of 100. Slacker! In truth, being in the Arkestra meant all your musical tendencies needed to be through the band. Rashied Ali once called it a cult in an interview, annoyed that none of those guys would play with anyone else. And to be honest, that’s accurate, Sun Ra was a weirdo cult leader. But boy did he make some great music. These days, the strictures on the band are loose enough that Allen decided to go ahead and so something different, which John Gilmore never did after he initially took over after the Ra’s death. It is surprisingly chill and really swings, which was always the secret of the Ra. No matter how weird it got–and it got pretty weird–it always came back to big band sounds. This isn’t quite that, but the influences are clear. One way this is very not a Ra album is that there’s no piano. Instead, there’s a big string backing, which can be overwhelming, but is not here. Plus you have Jamaaladeen Tacuma and his great electric bass and a couple of great cameos, including from Neneh Cherry, who is after all Don’s daughter.
A-
Agalisiga, Nasgino Inage Nidayulenvi (It Started in the Woods)
Country covers in Cherokee. How do you make country music completely new again? This is one way. There’s a long, long history of country music in Native communities. Sherman Alexie has written of this, how country music was the soundtrack of growing up Spokane, in his case. But given the dying Native languages, how many are singing these songs in a non-English language? Agalisiga is a Cherokee guy who sings almost like a mid-century cowboy singer more than a Nashville star, including some quality yodeling. This feels straight off the Plains like Jimmy Rodgers or Bob Wills or various cowboy singers recorded in the folk revivals of the 1960s forward. Remarkable sound on an audacious album, combining classic covers “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “I Shall Be Released,” which originals and a nice instrumental number. Here’s an interesting article on this guy.
A
As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.