Music Notes

I was so lucky to get to see Swamp Dogg in Portland last weekend. Actually, no. That doesn’t sell it. I got to see Swamp Dogg in Portland on his 83rd birthday and there was cake and his own designed Blazers themed t-shirts (you’re damn right I bought one) and an atmosphere of awesomeness, even though the theatre that lacked AC might have been enough to force a lot of 83 year olds to keel over. Now, if you don’t know Swamp Dogg, he is Jerry Williams, long time R&B songwriter, producer, and session musician who worked for Atlantic back in the early 70s. He rides the divide between country and R&B and has for his whole career. Of course, the two genres have always been very similar–except for the fans. But the artists and producers and musicians have always known this. There have been a zillion country covers of R&B songs and R&B covers of country songs. The fans might not like to know this, but it’s true. That’s why Porter Wagoner brought James Brown out to the Grand Ole Opry and Ray Charles cut multiple albums of country songs, etc. Williams wrote “She’s All I Got,” which was a big hit for Johnny Paycheck in the early 70s, as an example. Since he had little personal commercial appeal as Jerry Williams, he created the Swamp Dogg moniker for himself and released Total Destruction to Your Mind in 1970 and continues to release albums to this day, including the excellent Blackgrass; From West Virginia to 125th Street, a couple of years ago.

Well, Swamp Dogg can’t quite sing like he did a half century ago (Christgau favorably compared his voice to a nuclear alarm), but he can still sing pretty damn well, if not the high notes. When you see him live, it’s really a balance between that R&B and that country. The rhythm section is all Black guys, the guitarist and fiddler and white dudes. Sometimes the songs venture more toward one way and then more toward the other. The fiddle is pure country, the funky keyboards and bass and drums straight out of something James Brown would have used.

So yeah, that’s my bag. The only bummer is that he didn’t do “She’s All I Got,” but he did close with a 25 minute or so cover of John Prine’s “Sam Stone,” which he went full Isaac Hayes on his version of “By the Time I Get to Phoenix,” (speaking of songs done as huge hits by both country and R&B artists) except in this case, it was later in the song when he started talking about how we treated Vietnam vets so bad and also we should be nicer to homeless people and then he walked through the crowd shaking literally everyone’s hand (including mine) while singing over and over again “Oh Sammy!”

Yeah, it was pretty fucking cool. Opening was a very professional Portland band called Jack Habegger’s Celebrity Telethon, which is kind of a dumb name, but they can do it all. They reminded me a lot of Cracker in that they can go between country and rock on a dime, are probably better than rock and roll, and are just beyond a competent band. I should check them out more.

The only bummer about being in Oregon for the Swamp Dogg show is that I was not on the east coast for the all too rare Mekons tour, which Christgau discusses here and which sounds awesome. Oh well, win one and lose one, etc.

Now, we have a special feature today in the Music Notes. A couple of weeks ago, our commenter howard mentioned he had seen Miles Davis’ Live Evil band in person and I was so jealous. Wow. But Down Beat reviewed the show, which took place on February 14, 1971, and not positively. howard sent me a PDF of that review, which I post here as a screenshot, which is the best I know how to do. howard is going to be here to chat about it for anyone who wants to. Jealous!

I have little to say about Connie Francis, but obviously she was a huge deal in her time and managed to revive her career singing oldies, even as she dealt with a horrific rape at a time when it was rare to see any justice for that. RIP.

Patty Griffin is back and here’s a good profile of her.

This article tries to explain why old people hate new music. It’s unacceptable because it says that’s OK and not that old people are wrong, which they are. If you just don’t like new music, the problem isn’t the music. It’s you. OK Boomer.

A guide to the experimental and often very difficult guitarist Derek Bailey.

Playlist for the last two weeks:

1. John Moreland, In the Throes
2. Jason Isbell, The Nashville Sound
3. Chuck Prophet, The Land That Time Forgot
4. Dom Flemons, Traveling Wildfire
5. Melissa Laveaux, Radyo Siwel
6. Willie Nelson, Last Man Standing
7. Illegal Crowns, self-titled
8. Grateful Dead, To Terrapin: Hartford, 5/28/77
9. The Band, Music from Big Pink
10. Richard Thompson, Front Parlour Ballads
11. Jazmine Sullivan, Heaux Tales
12. John Moreland, Visitor
13. Neil Young, Comes a Time
14. Joseph Jarman, Song for 1966
15. Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit, self-titled
16. McCoy Tyner, Echoes of a Friend
17. Die Spitz, Teeth
18. U.S. Girls, Bless This Mess
19. Lucinda Williams, self-titled
20. Waylon Jennings, Dreaming My Dreams
21. The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974, disc 9
22. Bonnie Prince Billy, The Letting Go
23. Iron & Wine, Our Endless Numbered Days
24. Emmylou Harris, Pieces of the Sky
25. James McMurtry, Just Us Kids
26. Lydia Loveless, Somewhere Else
27. John Moreland, High on Tulsa Heat
28. Warren Zevon, Excitable Boy
29. Waxahatchee, Cerulean Salt
30. Neil Young, Tonight’s the Night
31. Bill Callahan, Rough Travel for a Rare Thing
32. Buck Owens, Buck Em: The Music of Buck Owens, 1955-1967, disc 1
33. Vince Bell, Texas Plates
34. The Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs, disc 2
35. The Bakersfield Sound: Country Music Capital Of The West 1940-1974, disc 8
36. Dale Watson, Live in London
37. Leonard Cohen, Songs from a Room
38. Sons of the San Joaquin, From Whence Came the Cowboy
39. The Allman Brothers, Eat a Peach
40. The Beatles, The White Album, disc 1
41. Ray Price, Night Life
42. Give My Poor Heart Ease: Voices of the Mississippi Blues
43. Borderlands: From Conjunto to Chicken Scratch
44. Myra Melford’s Fire and Water Quintet, Hear the Light Singing
45. James McMurtry, Live in Aught Three
46. LCD Soundsystem, Sound of Silver
47. Harlan Howard, All Time Country Songwriter
48. Esperanza Spalding, Emily’s D+ Revolution
49. Bill Laswell/Sussan Deyhim, Shy Angels
50. St. Vincent, Actor
51. Ray Price, Another Bridge to Burn
52. Chris Gaffney, Loser’s Paradise (x2)
53. Laura Veirs, Warp and Weft
54. Jose Gonzalez, In Our Nature
55. Tish Hinojosa, Culture Swing
56. Johnny Paycheck, On His Way
57. Old 97s, Most Messed Up
58. Ray Charles, The Genius of Ray Charles
59. Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain
60. Herbie Hancock, Headhunters Live 1973
61. John Zorn, Bar Kokhba, disc 1
62. Los Caimanes de Tampico, Sones Huastecos
63. Good and Evil, The Good and Evil Sessions
64. Sonny Sharrock, Seize the Rainbow
65. Bill Monroe, Live at the Opry
66. U.S. Girls, In a Poem Unlimited
67. John Zorn, The Big Gundown
68. Derya Yildrim & Grup Simsek, Yarin Yoksa
69. Steve Coleman, Synovial Joints
70. Meshell Ndegeocello, Red Hot & Ra: The Magic City
71. Mourn, self-titled
72. Virginia Wing, Private Life
73. Ariana Grande, thank u next
74. Kurt Vile, B’lieve I’m Goin Down
75. Neil Young, American Stars n’ Bars
76. George Jones, A Picture of Me (Without You)
77. Gillian Welch, Revival
78. Brandon Lopez, Ingrid Laubrock & Tom Rainey, No Es La Playa
79. Duke Ellington, Ellington at Newport
80. Tomeka Reid Quartet, Old New (x2)
81. Patterson Hood, Murdering Oscar & Other Love Songs
82. Bruce Cockburn, Salt, Sun & Time
83. Alejandro Escovedo, Bourbonitis Blues
84. Big Thief, Dragon New Warm Heart I Believe In You
85. Sudan Archives, Natural Brown Prom Queen
86. Rosalía, Motomami
87. William Parker, Friday Afternoon
88. Eddie Cochran, Legendary Masters, disc 1
89. Frank Lowe, Black Beings
90. Top Country Hits of the 1960s
91. Blue Sky Boys, self-titled
92. Adia Victoria, Silences
93. Old 97s, Fight Songs
94. Sturgill Simpson, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music
95. James McMurtry, Where’d You Hide the Body
96. Neil Young, Harvest
97. Calexico/Iron & Wine, In the Reins
98. Gil Scott-Heron, Pieces of a Man
99. Miles Davis, Birth of the Cool
100. Eric Dolphy, Live at the Five Spot
101. La Luz, Weirdo Shrine
102. Lambrini Girls, Who Let the Dogs Out
103. Richard Thompson, The Life and Music of Richard Thompson, disc 2

Album Reviews:

Caleb Caudle, Sweet Critters

This immediately sounds like it could have been used as the soundtrack for Justified. That’s a good thing in my world. I guess Caudle has been around for quite awhile, but his album from last year is the first I had heard of him. He talked in interviews about his perspective deepening as he’s aged and how this is making him a better songwriter. That makes sense. There’s a really nice duet with Allison Russell here as well. There are a couple of songs that maybe are merely pretty decent rather than super awesome, but it’s a very solid album overall.

B+

Derya Yildrim & Grup Simsek, Yarin Yoksa

I’m a big fan of Turkish and Iranian popular music and this is a very good new example. That funky weird psychedelic thing going on in this music is just a lot of fun. This stuff takes an awful lot from the 60s, but unlike so much music where you can trace the roots today, it’s all mixed up into something actually new. Here you have the soul tradition of those years, mellotrons everywhere, reverb out the ying yang, cool singing, great funky bass, reggae influences, and just a lot of good stuff. This sounds something like 70s Turkish music that really originated this stuff, but also completely different. It’s cool and you should hear it.

A-

John Grant, The Art of the Lie

This is a weird album of disco-based singer-songwriter stuff that has a lot of beats and a lot of hatred of organized religion. The title is based on Trump’s “book” The Art of the Deal and let’s just say Grant is unhappy about the state of modern America. From the Bandcamp page for the album:

Grant sets out his understanding of the new ethics of America. “Trump’s book, ‘The Art of the Deal’, is now seen by MAGA disciples as just another book of the Bible and Trump himself as a messiah sent from heaven. Because, God wants you to be rich.”

“This album is in part about the lies people espouse and the brokenness it breeds and how we are warped and deformed by these lies”, he says. “For example, the Christian Nationalist movement has formed an alliance with White Supremacist groups and together they have taken over the Republican party and see LGBTQ+ people and non-whites as genetically and even mentally inferior and believe all undesirables must be forced either to convert to Christianity and adhere to the teachings of the Bible as interpreted by them or they must be removed in order that purity be restored to ‘their’ nation. They now believe Democracy is not the way to achieve these goals. Any sort of pretence of tolerance that may have seemed to develop over the past several decades has all but vanished. It feels like the U.S. in is free-fall mode.”

So sure, you will like it politically. Musically? I think that depends on how much you like disco beats and pretty on the nose songwriting by a guy who is not a particularly good singer. In short, it’s not quite my thing, but it certainly has a good message. The best songs are pretty excellent. The beats might not quite pop enough to make up for Grant’s shortcomings as a singer, but they are fun and get you moving a little bit while you contemplate the decline of America.

B-

Madison Greenstone, Resonance Studies in Ecstatic Consciousness

Who’s up for some atonal clarinet? Me! Now, to say this is difficult music is to understate the point. The first piece is a full on clarinet drone that for some people would sound like a torture chamber created by Stephen Miller. So it depends on whether such sounds appeal to you. Me, I very much appreciate a clarinetist ready to go all the way with a vision of music with absolutely zero commercial appeal. The audience for this kind of thing is basically me. And even I admit it’s too difficult for frequent listenings. But could I buy this and throw it on once a year and also use it to get rid of the last guests as parties? Yes. Yes I could. I sent this to a friend of mine who is a conductor and clarinetist. He thought it was great and he’s very much engrossed in the classical tradition. He found the technique really amazing. So that might give you a bit of perspective.

B+

Cindy Lee, Diamond Jubilee

This double album, not by a woman celebrating 50 years in music, but by a somewhat pretentious Canadian band, was a huge hit with the Pitchfork crowd last year. So figured I’d check it out. I guess it’s OK? I mean, it’s fine right. But it is mostly just long. Like a lot of big concept albums coming out of the vague pop world these days, it feels more pastiche than that there’s much new to say. Oh, there’s the Beach Boys, oh, there’s Pavement, etc. If you want a journey through the combination of indie rock history, I guess this will do it. Just hooky enough, just lyrical enough, changes the tone just enough, all this stuff. I just don’t see the hosannahs here. Not at all. I think people can just get suckered in by something being long, which is thus ambitious.

And I mean, really, read the first paragraph of the Pitchfork review:

This may be the greatest radio station you’ve ever come across. Unless it’s multiple stations talking over each other, in and out of range. Sounds arrive in strange combinations; nothing is quite exactly the way you remember. Did that classic rock band really have a synth player, and why did they pick a patch that sounds like a mosquito buzzing through a cheap distortion pedal? And those eerie harmonies swirling at the outskirts of that last-dance ballad by some 1960s girl group whose name ends in -elles or -ettes. Did they hire a few heartbroken ghosts who were hanging around the studio as backing vocalists? Or are these fragments of other songs, other signals, surfacing like distant headlights over a hill, then disappearing once more?

The appeal is the pastiche. Plus 201 minutes of pastiche. That’s right–201 minutes, at least its in full form (the original version is only over two hours). The Seven Samurai is 207 minutes. This ain’t that. The gender identity is also part of the appeal for a lot of reviewers; I basically don’t care, I mean that’s cool, but irrelevant to the album. But the amount of discussion about music by queer musicians that starts with the identity and only eventually gets to the music, if it gets to the music at all, is a lot and I don’t think this is particularly good for the music or the identity politics. Whether you think it matters that the artist kept the album off streaming services is up to you. I just wish there were fewer pointless instrumental interludes. In any case, this is not bad music. It just needs an editor and a more original touch. But it’s sure as hell not a top album of the decade.

B-

As always, this is an open thread for all things music and art and none things politics.