Bangin’ thru OKC

Just wanted to drop a line to let you know that I’m 1,300 miles away from the coast, straight chillin’ in a hotel room in Oklahoma City, where the current temperature is 84 degrees at 1:30 am.

I miss California.

We should be home tomorrow; I’ll shoot for a real update on Thursday, when I’ll be nice and quasi-rested before taking off once again.

T for Texas

I don’t know what it is about Upstate New York that causes people to grow bushy beards, abandon electric instruments, and settle into deep, weird, soulful Americana, but I can’t tell you how thankful I am for it.  I talked about Levon Helm and the Band yesterday, and while I certainly love Helm solo and the Band, I can’t tell you how excited I am right now about the Felice Brothers.  Three of the members — Ian, Simone, and James — are brothers (duh), there’s a washboard/fiddler named Farley, and — no joke — a former traveling dice player named Christmas.  They did Bonnaroo this year and are making the folk fest rounds now, including Newport.  Like the Weary Boys before them, these guys okay this stuff straight-up, with a serious love and tenderness, but with all of the energy of a great punk band.  Here they are doing “Division St.” into Jimmie Rodgers’ “T For Texas.”  

Levon Helm - Poor Old Dirt Farmer

Want to hear one of my favorite songs of 2007?

It’s hard to decide to pick a  favorite fact about Levon Helm: that he played Loretta Lynn’s dad in Coal Miner’s Daughter; that he grew up in a small town called Turkey Scratch outside of Helena, AR; that he now plays with a small band in his barn in Woodstock, alongside special guests that include Elvis Costello, Emmylou Harris, and (somewhat shockingly) Steely Dan’s Donald Fagan; that, both with the Band and on his own, as well as backing Bob Dylan, he’s been a part of some of the most soulful, earthy, and spiritual music in the American canon.  

But then there’s this: the fact that he battled throat cancer since the late 90s, beat it, and has recovered 80% of his singing voice, then came back to record Dirt Farmer, one of my favorite CDs of last year.  Listening to him talk in the “Poor Old Dirt Farmer” video, it’s clear that his speaking voice remains as woozy as fellow Band-mate (and frequent Neko Case collaborator) Garth Hudson’s organ drones, but hearing that slow tenor over Helm’s trademark plodding drums is something special.  And listening to that weary voice interact with the farmers around him with such respect and reverence — “Mr. Jim, I was thinkin’ about you the other night.  There was a special on the History Channel about Iwo Jima” — is beautiful.  This is a man who gets it.

I cannot — cannot — wait until Newport.

Sweatin’ all over that plastic guitar

According to this post of supposed tracks, Rock Band 2 will be the greatest game in the history of games. Will I probably collapse in a fit of passion while playing “Born to Run” on a plastic guitar in front of a television? Yes, yes I will.

Any Michiganders who happen to be reading, please attempt to secure a copy of this by the time I’m up there. kthx!

* Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen

Rumors: “Rock Band 2″ May Bring Dave Mustaine And Karen O Together In The Name Of Gaming.

Everlast - “Folsom Prison Blues”

From Crackle: Everlast: “Folsom Prison Blues

This may be the worst cover I’ve ever heard.

Let me back up a moment.

I appreciate Everlast and what he’s trying to do here.  I understand that he wants to pay tribute to Johnny Cash, that he probably loves and respects Cash more than the average person, that what he is doing here is nothing but an attempt to pay homage to Cash and the aesthetic of the Johnny Cash show.  I’m aware of that.

I’ll even go one further and say that I genuinely appreciate Everlast’s music.  I don’t know if you’ve listened to “What It’s Like” in the past, oh, ten years, but it’s a much better song than I remembered.  And really, that song could serve as a template for what he should have done with a cover of “Folsom Prison Blues;” the minimalist guitar work coupled with hooky hip-hop drums and his gravelly singing works fine on its own.

But that wasn’t enough for Everlast.  Not this time.  Looking past how awful the video is — bad green screening, Everlast’s collection of truly terrible 80s western shirts, that DJ who grins a bit too much for my tastes, and the fact Everlast is alarmingly larger than Cash when they do that weird fist-bump at the end of the video — this is just bad music.  I almost said “plain bad music,” but the fact of the matter is that this is not the same old bad music.  This is bad music as it can only be done in 2008.

First of all, “Insane in the Brain” should never — NEVER — back “Folsom Prison Blues.”  I don’t say that as a staunch traditionalist; I’m a pretty big fan of what Danger Mouse did to the Beatles on the Grey Album.  I mean, musically, those two songs simply do not flow together.  I don’t have the most musical ear, so I can’t say for certain, but I don’t think that that weird squalling noise is even in key.

Additionally, there’s way too much going on here.  I listened to this song with headphones and it sounded like I had three different applications open at the same time. As for why they chose to filter the original rhythm guitar through three or four flangers, I have no idea.

This is de rigeur these days, though.  Bands across genre lines are stuffing so much, well, so much crap into their songs that the actual performance doesn’t seem to matter much anymore.  It may be theoretically interesting to see how many tracks you can put in one song, but if the performance isn’t there, it’s going to remain a dressed-up, soulless husk.  Just because we have the technology doesn’t mean that we need to use it.

Like I said, I respect Everlast and what he’s trying to do here, and what really bugs me is the fact that he has the capacity to do a really great cover of “Folsom Prison Blues.”  But this is not it.

I will concede, though, that the little Moog solo is awesome.  Totally awesome, almost to the point of redeeming the song.  But then it picks back up with that weird out of key squall.  *Shudder*

Cèleigh Chapman @ the Mint, 9 July

[full disclosure: Cèleigh and her band are friends of mine]

A good country singer is hard to find.  These days, anyone with a certified Voice is more interested in the alchemy of turning those golden pipes into something pocket-sized and bankable than they are with sending shivers down the spine.  So when you happen upon a voice like that of Cèleigh Chapman, who sang for an appreciative audience Wednesday night at The Mint, you hold on tight.
Chapman’s voice – imagine Dolly Parton with a little more Bakersfield grit – is her strongest asset, though she seems to just be learning how strong it really is.  Her set began with a series of originals that, while certainly pleasant enough, found Chapman holding her voice back, afraid to take chances.  She’s really better suited to the dirty-soul side of country music than the pop side; her voice needs to be given freedom to do what it pleases, whether it’s to scream or to pout, as that’s where her music becomes its most compelling.
It wasn’t until the forget-you breakup song “Paris,” when the rest of her band deferred to brothers Joel and Isaac Watters (guitar and fiddle, respectively), that Chapman’s power as a songwriter (and not just a singer) became evident.  This is one of those songs whose chorus is chilling enough on the page – “I hope you stay in Paris / ‘Cause no one loves you there / I hope you stay in Paris / Till no one loves you here.”  But when Joel’s delicate fingerpicking and Isaac’s moaning fiddle danced with Chapman’s high lonesome, she hit her stride.
When Chapman isn’t afraid to let her voice do the talking, she makes ghost music, country of the highest order; it’s just a matter of her being brave enough to die in order to get there.

mp3: Cèleigh Chapman - If I Should Fall Behind (Bruce Springsteen)

Gonna drive around and scream some more

I posted the other day about wanting to have fun with rock ‘n’ roll again, and I ended my post by saying (rather cryptically) that I had a mix-tape to listen to. Basically, it’s songs that I enjoy screaming along to in the car; not necessarily my favorite songs, but songs that are good for drive-screams. Here’s the contents of it, with links to mp3s where I could find them.

1. Sleater-Kinney, “The Fox

2. …And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead, “A Perfect Teenhood”

3. At the Drive-In, “One-Armed Scissor”

4. The Clash, “Rudie Can’t Fail”

5. The Dismemberment Plan, “Gyroscope” (Sorry about how weird the video is here; I couldn’t find it on iMeem)

6. mewithoutYou, “January 1979″

7. Modest Mouse, “Never-ending Math Equation”

8. Neutral Milk Hotel, “Holland 1945″

9. Outkast, “Bombs Over Baghdad (BOB)”

10. Peter, Bjorn, and John, “Objects of My Affection”

11. Pixies, “Bone Machine”

12. Refused, “New Noise”

13. The Strokes, “New York City Cops”

14. Ted Leo/Rx, “The Ballad of the Sin-Eater” (This one may be my favorite on the list)

15. Terror of the Sea, “Awful Eyes (You’ve Got Something)

click here to download

16. TV on the Radio, “Satellite”

17. The Walkmen, “The Rat” (As far as singing in cars goes, this is my favorite song; I also think it’s the second best pop song of the decade, behind “Hey Ya.”)

Are you ready for that great atomic power?

Uncle Tupelo covering the legendary Louvin Brothers (Jeff Tweedy sang this song with Charlie Louvin on Louvin’s 2007 self-titled LP):

I once met Charlie Louvin in Nashville. I was watching Cake at some festival on the river downtown, and they brought him out to sing a few songs. I was raised to respect my country music elders the way most people are raised to respect, I dunno, their pastors, so I’d like to think that I was appropriately reverent during Mr. Louvin’s time on stage. The rest of the audience, however, was not: while Cake and Charlie Louvin chugged through a few old songs, people began crowd surfing and general Nashville hootin’ and hollerin’. It was a pretty strange sight to see: there we are in downtown Nashville, watching a band who’s playing on a barge, there’s a massive football stadium on the horizon, a seventy-five year old man is singing on stage with this group of beardies, and people are crowd-surfing. At the time, I thought it was disrespectful (the singer from Cake did, too, and made it a point to say something during the set about how inappropriate it was), but, well, what else did they expect to happen? Granted, I hate crowd surfers, and I hate that they weren’t paying attention to the music, but neither were the non-crowdsurfers. Now, though, I think that the fact that people surfed during Louvin’s songs brought him into the culture; a sign of acceptance, even if the people doing it didn’t necessarily mean it that way.

Anyway, I hung around long enough after the show ended to say hello to Mr. Louvin, and we chatted for a while. I called my dad and, without telling him where I was, handed the phone off to Mr. Louvin. I couldn’t hear my dad, of course, but I’ll remember till the day I die the words that came out of sweet old Charlie Louvin’s mouth:

“Well, hello, Herman, this is Charlie Louvin. [pause] No, I ain’t shittin’ you.”

Bob Dylan - Tangled Up in Blue (New York)

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece for Aquarium Drunkard about how much I dislike the cover of Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks.  After loads of lively debate, some pleasant chap posted the  version of the record that Dylan originally recorded.  The story goes that he played the record for his brother (who knew Bob Dylan had a brother?), who was less-than-impressed.  So Dylan went back into the studio and re-recorded Blood on the Tracks, which would go on to be one of his best-selling records as well as one of his most-beloved. For what it’s worth, the cover is even less appropriate for the New York Version of Blood on the Tracks; Dylan’s original vision was so dark you can barely see into it.

Here’s that original version of Tangled Up in Blue, along with the “real” version, for comparison’s sake.

Bob Dylan - Tangled Up in Blue (New York Version)

Bob Dylan - Tangled Up in Blue (Blood on the Tracks)

And, FWIW, I stick by my original claims; I really don’t like the cover of Blood on the Tracks.

[via Pop Headwound]

It ain’t no use to sit and wonder why, babe,