Chris Blackwell: The Missing Link

I like finding connections between different, seemingly unrelated parts of my life. Like when one of my favorite singers does an album with a basis in mathematics, something that's always been friendly to me.

In my consumption of the James Bond Ultimate Edition DVDs, I've enjoyed watching the supplementary material on Ian Fleming. It turns out that Fleming, the creator of my childhood hero, had a longtime mistress named Blanche Lindo. Blanche Lindo was the mother (not via Fleming) of one Chris Blackwell, who grew up to be a successful record producer and also scouted locations for the first Bond film, Dr. No. In the early 90s, he provided the financial backing to start a label called Axiom with a producer named Bill Laswell. The label's output, especially, Praxis' first album, was some of my favorite music of the early 90s and I'm still a huge fan of Laswell's work. Cool to see a connection between my obsessions of the 80s and the 90s.

And lately when I drive thru my town, I see a new optomotrist's office called Golden Eye.

Singing toddlers

The Little Goat is very talented at mimicking what she sees. Musically, she has learned a lot of lyrics to some of her favorite music, lately having learned most of the words to 'Once Upon a Dream' from Sleeping Beauty. Lots of people have put videos of their children singing online and a couple caught my eye lately:

Grindcore baby is really talented: he has obviously internalized a style of music and is improvising appropriately. On the other hand, this country baby has seen too much tv. It's a fine testament to how well toddlers can imitate but the implications are disturbing: he's been in front of the TV to see the music video a lot of times. Unless his parents have an acting career planned for him, that's poor parenting; ok, especially if his parents have an acting career planned for him.

Babygoat's playlist

A while back I got a little cheap mp3 player in a drawing at a teacher conference. It's way too small (128 M) for my uses but seeing Babygoat begin to sing some songs from time to time inspired us to fill it with her favorite music. Here are some of her top requests...

Music from the Sesame Street canon is probably most popular, with the top choice being:

What's the Name of That Song. The original version is much better but I only have an mp3 of a later version.

1-2-3-4 is one of my favorite songs of late, discovered via a good feature at Entertainment Weekly on special guests on Sesame Street

Rubber Ducky is certainly a big hit in the tub

I Love Trash has led her to searching for Oscar in many trash cans she sees

Elmo's Song is only annoying the first 10,000 times

Sing After Me has her practicing melismatic singing from time to time.

Outside of Sesame Street, she likes
Moving Right Along (from The Muppet Movie) and Lolly Lolly Lolly Get Your Adverbs Here from Schoolhouse Rock, tho I suspect she thinks she's singing about lollypops. Other faves include Bicycle Race by Queen, Yellow Submarine by The Beatles, and This is Halloween from Nightmare Before Christmas. I was hoping she'd pick up on The Elements by Tom Lehrer but so far she's not into it. She does love Kitty Cat Dance, thankfully.

You down with LHC? You know me!

One life-changing moment I had back in the 80s involved watching an episode of PBS' great show Nova entitled 'What Einstein Never Knew'. It was a great encapsulation of advances in physics following his last great work in the 20s and included brief overviews of things like string theory and the high-energy physics work at the Large Electron Positron Collider at CERN. This episode fascinated me so much I even sent away for the transcript and began to follow some of the topics in the news. I was disappointed when the Superconducting Super Collider was canceled but finally a similar project, the Large Hadron Collider, is now coming online.

Check out the cool LHC photo gallery and then get down with the incredible LHC rap that is referenced within. If you want to worry, you can read what's troubling some folks but keep in mind that some predicted such results with the atom bomb.

Album-a-year

Haven't done something like this in a while: via the llama, pick a favorite album for each year you've been alive. I decided to attempt to avoid artist repetition as it's tough for me to pick a single favorite and allows me some variety.

1973: Quadrophenia - The Who
1974: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Genesis
1975: One Size Fits All - Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention
1976: Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder
1977: "Heroes" - David Bowie
1978: Van Halen - Van Halen
1979: Exposure - Robert Fripp

1980: Gentlemen Take Polaroids - Japan
1981: Discipline - King Crimson
1982: Signals - Rush
1983: Synchronicity - Police or 90125 - Yes
1984: Double Nickels on the Dime - Minutemen
1985: White City: A Novel - Pete Townshend
1986: They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants
1987: Uplift Mofo Party Plan - Red Hot Chili Peppers
1988: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
1989: The Real Thing - Faith No More or Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys

1990: Ritual de lo Habitual - Jane's Addiction
1991: Ask the Ages - Sonny Sharrock
1992: Angel Dust - Faith No More
1993: Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe - Fishbone
1994: Hallucination Engine - Material
1995: Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters
1996: Fantastic Planet - Failure
1997: Vegas - The Crystal Method
1998: El Oso - Soul Coughing
1999: California - Mr. Bungle

2000: Joys and Concerns - The Negro Problem
2001: Guest Host - Stew
2002: Shy Angels - Sussan Deyhim
2003: Electric Version - The New Pornographers
2004: The Grey Album - Jay-Z, The Beatles & Danger Mouse
2005: Guero - Beck
2006: Love - The Beatles and George Martin
2007: Inamorata - Method of Defiance
2008: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

My toughest years to choose an album were the early-to-mid 90s (when I was working in a music store) and mid-70s. I found that it was also tough to pick something in the recent 5 years; while I certainly have lots of music that has been released in that period, I'm not as familiar with it as I'd like to be. Too much music.

My own personal radio station

Got myself an iPod the other day and have been filling it with my music since then. When they first came out I wasn't sure what the point was but now I can see they're like having a personal radio station. Most folks are happy with a smaller playlist (less than 20 G) but weirdos like me and Ms Goat require more variety and depth. Last night, after I'd gotten most of my prog and hard rock all loaded up, I did my first shuffle of the 5152 songs (taking up 20 G) that I had on there and this is what the first 10 songs were:

Soundgarden: Fresh Tendrils
Rush: Time Stand Still (insert sound of Ms Goat groaning)
Genesis: Follow You Follow Me
Yes: Angor Wat
Hawkwind: Down Through the Night
Aphex Twin: iz-us
Randy Coven: Au Privave
Queens of the Stone Age: Everybody Be Happy
Audioslave: Seven Nation Army (live)
Air: Empty House

Hopefully 80 G will be enough space for me. I knew it was ok back when Ms Goat got hers but I've been acquiring a lot of music since then. I recall once thinking that if I had more than 400 CDs I wouldn't be able to know and appreciate them as well as if I had fewer. At some point I must have realized that my latest count is around 1200. Good thing hard drives keep getting cheaper...

1000 True Fans

Many years ago, back when I had dreams of a career in music (around high school), I had visions of an imaginary world where almost everybody was in a band. I knew back then that such a lifestyle wasn't easily supportable but part of my vision was that everybody had their day job ('at the factory' as I put it) but could still maintain a creative career alongside of that by virtue of everybody 'buying their friends' albums'. Somebody very smart has thought this out built upon the idea of The Long Tail and decided that an artists just needs 1000 True Fans to not have to have a day job.

I can't say I like the term 'true fan' used this way: anybody who would 'buy the t-shirt, and the mug, and the hat' seems a bit closer to 'fanatic', and if somebody ever drives 200 miles to hear me sing I'll drive them to the sanitarium.

As an aside, I actually know a guy who recently quit his day job to do that; hopefully he has enough support to stay out of office work. Give some of his tunes a listen!

Cachao, RIP

Back when I was learning everything I could about bass players I would buy lots of recordings just for the bass playing. Occasionally that brought me to some real music, such as the work of the Cuban bassist Cachao. This great player and composer passed away this past weekend but his beautiful sound will live on.

Passing Strange

A few times I've mentioned one of my favorite songwriters in music today, a fella who goes by Stew. He hasn't put out an album lately because he got sucked into a theatrical production based on his life that is now on Broadway, Passing Strange. After seeing a video of an open rehearsal I'm tempted to head to NYC just for the show but it looks like that'll have to wait until it tours or something.

Bass leadership

Last Sunday I read an idiotic op-ed in the LA Times about Mike Huckabee that claimed Huckabee's being a bass player shows he may not be a good leader of the nation because bassists are really just frustrated guitar players. Maybe it was written as a joke but it got some great letters in yesterday's Times (that they didn't publish online) that summed up my thoughts well:

1) lots of bassists can 'lead from the bottom' (one letter simply said 'Willie Dixon') and one could even write a similar opinion that said Huckabee's instrument gives him insight into what a functioning musical unit (and therefore a functioning political unit) requires.

2) the op-ed obviously reflects on the author more than bassists. Joe Queenan is the frustrated guitar player while most of us have embraced our role as essential parts that support the guitarists and sax players who are desperate for attention.

His remark about John Entwistle being a 'nonentity' is strong evidence for this article being a joke which makes me wonder why they couldn't find an op-ed that deals with Huckabee's desire to change the constitution instead. I don't think I'm hypersensitive about this topic; I can laugh well at the many good jokes that are told about bassists but this was just dopey.

Jefito lives!

A couple of years ago I came across a music blog run by a fella calling himself Jefito. A few months back it fell off the map (probably due to all the bootlegs he'd begun to post there) and he'sfinally resurfaced with Popdose. He's brought a bunch of friends along (maybe hoping to spread out culpability) and while he's doing more streaming mp3s, rather than tempting me to fill up my hard drive w/ downloads, the same sharp eye is focused on pop culture. He's still running some of the same great features, like the Cassingle Vault (you know you want to hear Chynna Phillips' solo attempt) and Chart Attack (relive the hits of the 80s and 90s!) but I was surprised to see a decent article on torture porn.

Babygoat rocks the boat

Babygoat is enjoying her daycare but recently caused a stir: I had dressed her in a nice Iron Maiden onesie that we'd received as a gift. Apparently the image of Eddie on the front disturbed the other children and we've been asked that she not wear that to daycare anymore. It's good to see Eddie is still scary, I guess. On the other hand, I'm sometimes disturbed by how many high school kids are wearing Eddie shirts just to wear something cool looking and not because they like Iron Maiden.

Free music - Randee of the Redwoods

A song from a character (played by comic Jim Turner) that occasionally showed up on MTV around 15 years ago (and may still be around), Randee of the Redwoods' Either Way It's Fine With Me (3.7 M mp3) is a joyous romp through indifference. A few years ago some chap was posting mp3s of the Dr. Demento show and this was in one of the clips, which is why the mp3 is far from pristine. Either way, it's fine with me....

Joe Zawinul, RIP

Jazz lost a great keyboardist recently with the passing of Joe Zawinul. His work with Weather Report was pretty legendary and very influential on me when I started to listen to jazz-fusion back in high school. If you're not familiar with his work, a number of good tributes are out there to help you.

Vacation pt. 1: Vegas!

Our trip began up in Las Vegas where Ms Goat completed her set of Beatlesfests (NY, Chicago, west coast) begun long ago. We stayed at The Excalibur and they provided less than royal treatment tho the location was better than we've had before. Tho one can't stop whilst strolling through a casino, there are lots of lights to keep the baby distracted and plenty of opportunities to make jokes like 'I'm putting her on 47 red!' to gawkers.

At the fest I met Pete Best and babygoat met Denny Laine; it was a little weird to have many attendees ask if we were 'starting her out young', almost a tacit admission that they were in a cult. There was some live music there, too, with Laurence Juber putting on a fine display of technique in his solo guitar recreations of Beatles tunes and a cover band called Liverpool doing a good reproduction of the entire Sgt. Pepper's album (probably the only time I'll ever see Within You Without You live). On the down side, The Pete Best Band was not remarkable except for having two drummers (weird for a band led by a drummer) and Peter and Gordon should have stayed retired.

While there, I had a tune from the Diamonds Are Forever soundtrack stuck in my head, a bopping number called The Whyte House (2.2 M mp3) that is played during a casino scene; John Barry is the man. Gandhi was again excellent food and we've yet to find a casino buffet there that's truly vegetarian friendly tho we hardly starved. I didn't do as well on the slots this time but I was glad to see that Slotsky was still around: I'm very amused to see a slot machine named after a socialist revolutionary.

Music: Song For My Father

In honor of the passing of my first Father's Day as a father, here's a jazz classic. Horace Silver wrote a great tune called Song For My Father and recorded it back in 1964. Then Leon Thomas put some words to it a few years later.

Something that makes me call this a classic is that even though the bass line is very simple, I still love playing this song despite the fact I'm only playing 10 notes (I think) the whole time. In contrast, I liked Ravel's Bolero (which has a similarly uncomplicated bass part) until I had to play it with an orchestra.

Musical goat report, 6/5/07

Goats are being used to rid the south of kudzu with the help of guard-llamas. And their brave fight has even inspired a song that's becoming a hit.

Ask the A.V. Club

Recently discovered The Onion's Ask the A.V. Club feature and I'm quite impressed with its high quality of answers. I enjoyed seeing some scholarship when they addressed (halfway down the page) the great question of who originally wrote that 'Chinese music' melody?. I gave the full research project a once-over and was happy to see that Rush was not ignored.

A later entry tackles the question of whether American Idol is bad for music and fields it as well as I can imagine. One thing I like about AI is how it give exposure to those who want to be exposed, freeing serious musicians from falling into that trap. I've also noticed that it may be helping make cover bands more acceptable as people realize that a rock/pop canon has formed and it's not so bad to see non-original artists performing it.

Brad Delp, RIP

You may not like the band Boston; their first album is still all over AOR radio despite being over 30 years old and hearing anything that much can make one's ears weary. That first album is a pop-metal masterpiece that, to my ears, was as much responsible for all the hair-metal and melodic rock of the 80s as Led Zeppelin and glam rock. I never got into many of those bands from the 80s for exactly that reason: they were all trying to do something Boston already did perfectly.

The lead singer of Boston was a guy named Brad Delp, a man with one of the greatest voices you'll hear on pop/rock radio and a major part of Boston's sound. He died a while back (I would have posted this sooner but I wanted to post the Stew track in conjunction w/ his being featured on Jefito) and while that's too bad, at least we don't have to hear his voice go downhill.

Hollyann (4.73 M mp3) is from Third Stage, their 3rd album, which had the nerve to combine AOR with mature lyrics about becoming an adult. The high note he hits may have sustain that's assisted by some studio magic but it's still a note few men in pop music would dare to attempt.

"Hurt" - double cover

Kermit the Frog does Johnny Cash doing Nine Inch Nails. I thought he was strictly a banjo player... via Ain't it Cool News.