The Gurdy and the Damage Done

...I've spent the past week or two endlessly tinkering with the hurdy gurdy. I further filed down some of the keys, I've worked on tuning it (sometimes having to use filler to make the pegs fit tighter), experimented with rosin on the wheel and cotton on the strings, etc. I still need to work on the bridge some more, as right now the strings sit in very deep grooves. I think I'm just going to cut the surface of the bridge almost flat, so I can pull the melody strings off and on the wheel more easily.

I thought I'd do a wrap-up post, to review what I've learned, what I like, and what I dislike about this kit and the process. Here goes.

What I've learned:
- The right tool makes the job easier. I had to fudge a few times -- like using a lino cutter to trim the top instead of a good router, or using a circular saw when a coping or table saw would have done better. I had to improvise a bit, which was good, but it taught me the limitations of substitute tools.
- Measure twice, cut once. I knew this already, but it never hurts to brush up on the fundamentals. I'm not great at making straight cuts with a jig saw. Speaking of:
- Jig saws are terrifying. I don't know why I fear them, but I do. A new blade, however, makes a big difference.
- Wood putty does not varnish well. I used some filler on a few spots, thinking it would take to varnish, but it doesn't. You can stain it, but not varnish. Oh well -- one more component of my instrument's folksy appearance.
- Go slow. This was one of the first kit projects where I actually took my time and sweated the small stuff, and I think it paid off.
- Hand sanding is almost always better than machine sanding.

What I like about the Musicmaker's Hurdy Gurdy Kit:
- It really did have everything you needed to build the instrument. I didn't have to run out and find peg soap, weird gage strings, or anything. It was all there and did not assume I lived next to a fiddle shop.
- The wood is quality, and looks great.
- The resultant instrument, in the hands of a not-so-master-craftsman, is still playable and functional.
- The staff there were fantastic. When I noticed I was missing a part, they had it in the mail within a day. Brilliant.
- The kit was accurately described on their website, and the difficulty rating was accurate. It said there would be "character building" moments, and dammit, there were!

What I didn't like about the Musicmaker's Hurdy Gurdy Kit:
- The directions were usually clear and concise, but occasionally they lapsed or suffered from bad layout. For instance, at one point they tell you to drill the tail block as shown, but don't give you any measurements. So I eyeballed it. Turns out the measurements were somewhere else in the manual...fortunately I eyeballed it well.
- I really wish I didn't have to cut the brass for the handle-crank myself. I think they could have machined that for me...it was neither pleasant nor fun to do it myself with a jigsaw with a metal cutting blade, and the outcome wasn't great.
- The pegbox lid was a bit big...by the end of the process, I was too tired to cut it down. Again -- folksy! Small annoyance, yes.
- The final piece didn't quite line up with the measurements specified in the manual, despite every effort on my part. The most noticeable outcome of this was that I had to cut huge grooves in the bridge (probably a quarter-inch if not more) to get the strings to hit the wheel. As mentioned, I'm gonna hack down the bridge a bit more soon.

Don't get me wrong, though. The positives far outweighed the negatives here.

The most challenging parts of the process for me were (and please note that these challenges are more reflective of my ability, and not the quality and clarity of the kit):
- Cutting the wheel-hole. My old jig saw blade was likely most of the problem, but it was tricky to cut a perfectly square/straight rectangle. Folksy!
- Getting the body of the instrument symmetrical. I built a rig and tried to slowly bend it into place, but in the end, the instrument stayed a few centimeters off of center. Not the end of the world, but a little frustrating.
- Cutting the excess wood off of the side of the soundboard. I really should have practiced on something before letting loose. There are some little gouges on the top from the router, but they aren't all that noticeable.
- "Machining" the block of brass into a handle crank. Brass is soft, but it is still terrifying to tear into with a jig saw, and as much as I sanded and buffed, I could never quite get it straight and even. I think one of the holes will eventually fail because I drilled it slightly off. So I look forward to doing this again...ha ha ha.
- Installing and truing the wheel. This was a bitch, only because I was working in a tight spot (the wheel hole), and the axle that the wheel is on is threaded all the way down, so the wheel would move around if I didn't secure it just right. I did have to pull the whole thing out once and just do it all over again. I also had to widen the provided bushings to allow the wheel to turn freely, which I would have thought to be unnecessary. Truing the wheel was hard, and I was ultimately unsuccessful. There is a little "wow" in the sound, but nothing too awful.
- Getting the first sounds out of the instrument. This was discouraging after all the work I did, but after experimenting with rosin and cotton, I got some good tone. My only complaint is that the instrument is a little quiet. I wish it projected more...I don't have any sound holes, but the manual said they weren't necessary for sound production. I'm not so sure now...
- Cutting the grooves in the melody bridge. I'm still working on that.

Exhaustive? Exhausting? Yes, a bit of both. But I do enjoy playing this thing, and my friends and wife find it very intriguing...how many folks have a hurdy gurdy sitting on their china hutch?

Hurdy Gurdy: Done Deal

...so, it's pretty much a wrap:


Over the weekend I applied a few more coats of varnish. Then it was on to installing the wheel. The wheel is a three-layered wood job. Once put in, I had to "true" it, which means making sure it is even and not lopsided. This involved strapping the axle to an electric drill, and spinning the wheel while working over it with a chisel. I think I got it relatively straight. Then I had to install the handle, which lead to a problem.

When truing the wheel, the epoxy holding one of the bushings in the tailpiece failed, pushing the bushing inside the body of the instrument. After some pondering, swearing, and a few different shots, I got it out using a drywall anchor and a big screw. I re-cemented it, and that pretty much got it in there. Installing the handle was tricky, and at one point I had to take out the wheel again. But it's in there.

This morning I put the strings on and rosined the wheel. After about 2-3 hours of fiddling, I managed to get something that kind of sounded like music! The sound, at least initially, is a little whispy. I think I'll get used to how much rosin to apply and how much cotton to use (you wrap the strings in cotton where they contact the wheel) to get it to really sing.

This was an interesting project, and I'll publish some reflections on the process, the pros and cons of the kit, and what I got out of it. But for now, here's me playing "Amazing Grace" on the thing, to the best of my ability. I mean, it was only just finished this morning!

Hurdy Gurdy: At the Finish Line

...yesterday I reached a milestone: I finished gluing everything on the hurdy gurdy. There were an array of bridges, nuts, and blocks to be fastened, some of which needed holes drilled into them first. The instructions, usually pretty good, were a little imprecise with measurements (the bridge should be "about an inch" from the wheel hole -- mine wound up being more than an inch -- will it function?), and in one spot had the diagram for the hole placement on the tail-piece was on an entirely different page. Fortunately I guessed at it and got it in the right place.

I also jig-sawed the keys apart, after my disastrous attempt to separate them with a circular saw. I bought a new jig-saw blade, and that seemed to help. It still wasn't easy, without a good rig to secure the rack of keys. Some of the buttons got a little chewed up, but I was able to sand them all down ok, so they looked pretty consistent.

The only drag with this kit is that you have to cut the brass for the crank yourself. I bought a metal-cutting blade for the jigsaw, but it was still murderous, and my crank (you can see it on this photo) is uneven and lumpy. I sanded and buffed it as much as I could...

Here's the pre-varnish hurdy gurdy:


Now it's varnish time. Musikits varnish kit is actually pretty nice, and it had all the necessary clothes, sandpapers, and brushes. I sanded the whole thing down, then cleaned it with the cloth included. Then the varnish went on. I tried not to lay it on too thick...a little goes on a long way. Here it is, after the first coat:


The first coat has almost dried, so I flipped it over and did the bottom. I probably won't do second coats on the tiny pegs that go inside the key-chest, since no one sees them, but otherwise, tomorrow morning I'll probably sand it down and do a very thin second coat.

Hurdy Gurdy: I Am The Keymaster

...gotta love them Ghostbusters.

Last night I glued the keychest onto the soundboard, then this morning I spend many moments sanding down the keys (little narrow blocks of wood) so they'd fit freely into the keychest. Once that was done, I put them in and glued a long strip of wood to the outside. Once it dries, I'll cut the pieces apart from one another with a jig saw (pray for me) and voila, the keys for the hurdy gurdy.

Here's the button stock drying on the keys. I flipped the instrument onto its side to take advantage of gravity, and am using a level to weigh down the button stock. This could come crashing down at any moment now.


One thing I will say about this project -- I've learned that, 7 times out of 10, hand-sanding is much more productive than using a power sander.

Hurdy Gurdy: Router? I Hardly Know Her!

This run of rainy days we've had have really kept hurdy gurdy production hurtling forth. Last night I glued the bottom on, and weighed it down with a pedal steel guitar and some hammers...gotta make due with what you have, right?

Well, kinda. This morning I went down to the Mega-Lo Hardware and got some supplies to carry me through to the end of this project...namely some wood filler, a chisel, some new jigsaw blades (maybe this will cure my fear of the jigsaw), and a few other things that I'll detail below.

This morning I took the pedal steel off of the hurdy gurdy. It looked like this:


Note the overhang -- the soundboard (top) and bottom of the instrument were provided slightly oversized -- maybe three-quarters of an inch at most. This is helpful, because, as I've tediously relayed, the instrument is not a perfect teardrop shape. Now, the instructions to this kit are pretty good, for the most part. But it suggests that, if you don't have a router, you can take care of the overhang with course sandpaper.

Now, even you have all the time in the world and sandpaper grittier than a David Mamet screenplay, I don't know if you could eliminate a three-quarter inch overhang just by sanding it. Well, you could, but it would be a ridiculous amount of work. I pondered it for a while -- use the jigsaw? Circular saw? I wasn't gonna sand it endlessly. My solution was to use a hand-held router -- really a lino cutter, with a wood-cutting bit.

I'd never used this router before, but it worked pretty well. Unfortunately, I made the mistake of starting with the top -- I should have started with the bottom, as I made some errors and had to learn to control the device, and the results of my novice hand are more visible, since they are on top. There are some pock-marks made by the router...I tell myself it adds to the folksy quality of the instrument.

Here's how the first pass with the router looked. Yikes:


I then went over it with some sandpaper -- first with an electric sander, then by hand. I got it down to something reasonably smooth, if a little, um, folksy...then I glued the peghead on. Here's where we're at:

Hurdy Gurdy Diaries...Day Six, or Something

...Musikits rates the kits they offer by difficulty. They use a hammer scale. This hurdy gurdy has the maximum number of hammers. So I'm stepping into the deep end on this one, especially since I don't really have any carpentry or wood-working chops. The ranking said there would be "character building" moments. Hell yeah it does.

So, I left the hurdy gurdy in the straightening rig all weekend to try to fix the sides. It seemed to work, although it didn't get all the way straight. So, I flipped the instrument over so the top side was up, and glued the soundboard on while it was still in the rig. I was thinking maybe that attaching the soundboard would provide the last little bit of tension to move the head-block over.

Here it is. I weighed the soundboard down with a cymbal, some hammers, some tool batteries, a big magnet, and a tape measure. The spirit of Ybor City lives on:


Once that dried, I flipped it over and started looking at installing the bracing that went under the soundboard. First I had to taper the braces at either end, making them look more triangular at the corners -- like this, basically: /___ instead of this: |___. After another rough outing with the old jigsaw, I did it with a circular saw and it cut it like a hot knife through butter.

Then I widened the hole in the brace and the tail-block with a five-eighths inch counter-sink bit. That allowed me to slide nylon bushings into the brace and the tail-block. I used epoxy to secure the bushing into the brace, then positioned it so that the axle could spin relatively frictionlessly. I glued it in, along with a triangular brace that went on the other side of the wheel-hole. I cut the wheel-hole with the aforementioned jigsaw, and it wasn't exactly straight. But I think it will work. I weighed the braces down with some hammers:


It's sitting and drying now.

While that was happening, I glued the keychest together. This is a box that sits on top of the instrument and holds the keys that fret the strings. There are no guide pins or anything to hold it together -- you just have to glue the parts together and hope they stick! I used rubber bands to hold it all in place for the time being, and also put in the keys, just to be sure the sides were aligned.

Day Three: The Hurdy Gurdy Moves

...so I left the hurdy gurdy in the straightening rig overnight, and it did move over about one centimeter: half of what I wanted it to do. Considering I had put in half the bracing strips, I took that to be progress.

This morning I took it out of the straightening rig, flipped it over, screwed it back in, and installed the bracing strips along the top. My wife looked over my shoulder and said "This looks like the height of tedium." I actually like the minutia, the problem solving, the tactile nature of it all. Whether it will result in a playable, presentable instrument is yet to be seen.

Here's how it looks now:

Hurdy Gurdy, Day Two

...the saga of the basement-built hurdy gurdy continues! I e-mailed MusiKits yesterday about the missing brass crank, and they responded almost immediately, saying they'd put a replacement crank in the mail. So that was nice! I also ordered a varnish kit to use later on -- if I ever get to that step!

So now that the tail block is set, last night I put the sides into the head block. While the sides were "pre-bent" according to the kit description, it took a surprising amount of tension to get them into the block. I was a little nervous, but it seemed to work. I also drilled a hole into the the side for the crank, which was surprisingly hard. 5/8 of an inch is a bit bigger than it sounds! Here's how it looked once the head block was glued and the hole drilled. (Sorry about the night-vision setting. That was an accident.)


The next step was to make sure the body was symmetrical. I traced an outline of the form onto a piece of cardboard, and then flipped the instrument-to-be over and compared the lines. It was definitely NOT symmetrical. The hurdy gurdy is supposed to be egg-shaped, but the head block was about two centimeters off center, which was noticeable to the naked eye. This has been a game of sixteenths of inches so far, so two centimeters was pretty substantial.

The instructions said, if the sides are mis-shapen, to use strong tape to pull the instruments sides into the proper shape. But the masking tape I tried was not strong enough, and I didn't have any other options. So I took some time and built a simple rig that held the tail block in place, while pulling the head block two centimeters over to the left. It looks like this:


It's not pretty, but it should work...fingers crossed. Then I laid in some support strips along the inside top (I can't do the strips on the bottom while it is in the straightening rig). Since I didn't have more than a few clothespins, I used chip-clips and clamps. Yikes.


I'm going to leave it in this rig overnight and see if it comes out straight by tomorrow. Cross your fingers.

Hurdy Gurdy, Man -- Day One

I don't consider myself a craftsman, by any stretch of the imagination. I'm handy around the house, I guess. I can fix things, hang picture frames, mount towel racks, all that fun stuff. And I can keep the various instruments I have in working order, occasionally re-soldering a connection or tightening a loose fitting. But I use experts for things like electrical work, plumbing, and truss rod adjustment.

The only instruments I've built are really just toys -- a shoe-box sized koto made from a kit and a fretless banjo made from a cardboard mailing tube. But I'm home a lot more now, with my new freelance occupation, so I decided I'd take on a more sophisticated kit instrument. I perused Musikits.com, and, inspired by a French-Canadian band I saw at a local festival, settled on the Hurdy Gurdy: obscure, complexly mechanical yet devilishly simple...I ordered the kit, and the photo above is how it arrived.

I think this is a good time to say I've never heard the Donovan song "Hurdy Gurdy Man," but it's been sung to me several times since I announced this project to my friends.

So, first step was to take inventory of the parts. In classic, IKEA-esque fashion, it was missing the brass crank, so I wrote the company. Let's see how long it takes to get a replacement. Everything else -- dozens and dozens of bits of wood, metal, cotton, felt, plastic, rosin, and gut -- were all present.

Not wasting any time, I took on the first step and glued the sides to the tail-piece. This should have been easy, except I spent 45 minutes cleaning out my old bottle of woodglue, before realizing it wasn't usable. Again, I'm no expert. So I went to the hardware store and bought glue and two clamps. The woman looked at me and said "Doin' some clampin', eh?" What answer is there for that question?

Then I tackled the step I feared the most -- I cut the wheel-hole in the soundboard. I hate jigsaws, and have never been good with them. This hole is a little misshapen, but will fortunately be masked by a wheel-hole cover. When I was a kid, working in a warehouse, I broke a jigsaw blade and it was terrifying -- the metal shot out across the room. Safely safety goggled, I fired up my never-used Riobi saw and, well, the blade broke. This time it was less terrifying -- just a little crack and a pile of fragments. So I plugged in my wife's dad's old jigsaw, a metal behemoth that pre-dates most modern safety measures. It cut a little jagged, but I sanded it clean and I seem to have done okay. Not perfect. But hey, that's life...

Have Mercer

In 1970, the Lyrics and Lyricists series was started at the 92nd Street Y in New York City. The idea, proposed by Broadway conductor Maurice Levine and master lyricists E.Y. "Yip" Harburg, was pretty simple: have great lyricists discuss their craft, perform their hits themselves, and curate a program of their music. The series was started at a fortuitous time, because a lot of the Great American Songbook lyricists were still alive, and were able to participate. While trained Broadway/cabaret vocalists did some of the singing, most of the time the lyricists themselves sang, which was pretty odd: many of them weren't performers -- they were writers in an era when writers stayed in their office and wrote, and performers performed, and the two rarely met.

The Lyrics and Lyricists series continues. You can see more about it here. It changed over the years, from first-person narratives to revues speared by experts or performers dedicated to one lyricist. I'll admit that I much prefer being in the company of the lyricists directly, but, well, a lot of them aren't around any more. So I can't fault the organizers for changing things.

The good news is that a lot of the early performances were recorded and released. A lot of the LPs/CDs drawn from this series are out of print, but I've been slowly amassing them...I'll probably do an entry sooner or later that runs them all down. It's fascinating stuff.

Johnny Mercer was one of those rare songwriters of the '30s and '40s who was also an accomplished performer. While that made his Lyrics and Lyricists gig a little slicker than most, it was no less charming or insightful. The other night I had the record of it on...it closes with a 29-song medley of songs that Mercer wrote the lyrics for (and in some cases words AND music for). It's probably 20 minutes long, and just devastating...I swear I almost cried. It's amazing to think of one man being responsible for so many great songs. It was just staggering. Here's the medley...check this out:

Lazy Bones
Goody Goody
Too Marvelous for Words
Jeepers, Creepers
Satin Doll
You Must Have Been a Beautiful Baby
That Old Black Magic
Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate the Positive
Fools Rush In
I Remember You
Day In-Day Out
Dearly Beloved
Come Rain or Come Shine
Tangerine
Hooray for Hollywood
Laura
Dream
Atchison, Topeka, and the Santa Fe
Something's Gotta Give
One for My Baby
In the Cool, Cool, Cool of the Evening
Skylark
The Autumn Leaves
I Wanna Be Around
Blues in the Night
Charade
The Summer Wind
Moon River
Days of Wine and Roses

Chances are, most people have heard at least a few of these, right?

Dis Ain't Da Drum...

...can a bad drum sound sink a record? I don't think so. That first Moby Grape album had drums that sound like a piece of notebook paper hit with a pencil, but the songs, singing, and guitar playing are so mighty that, well, one overlooks the anemic drummin'. I'm also thinking of the weird gated drum sound on Michael Penn's "No Myth," which is hard to tell if it's just '80s drums or if they are being blown out like that as some sort of special effect.

The subject popped into my head because I went to the record store this morning and picked up the new Jules Shear album More, which for some reason he recorded as Jules Mark Shear. (After what, three decades as just plain old "Jules Shear"? Whatever.) More has what has got to be the worst drum sound I've heard on record this year...simultaneously tinny and cavernous, very modern sounding in a bad way. Digital. The bass drum has the same sorta "pop" to it that I imagine Tom Brady's ACL does -- not a warm heartbeat, but a cold snap.

Fortunately the drum sound doesn't ruin the album...the album kinda ruins the album. I could only get four songs in before I turned it off, but this is a very mannered attempt to ROCK again, from a writer/performer who was always more a pop guy. The title track has hung around his repertoire for years, and wasn't all that great acoustic -- much less electrified all out of proportion. I guess I need to stop buying his records...

Since his mighty trio of disks with Jules and the Polar Bears, to his '80s solo albums (great big '80s pop with brains), to his amazing albums for Island in the '90s, he's been constantly surprising and enlightening...but since Healing Bones, it seems like something left the building. He did a little acoustic album a year or two ago that was a step in the right direction, which he has clearly disregarded with this beast...More was produced by Sean Slade, who made a name for himself making '90s alternative rock albums, of which quite a few now sound dated. This new Shear disk has a distinctly out of time feel, and not in a good "lost classic" way...I'm sad now.

New Release Monday: Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby

Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby
Wreckless Eric & Amy Rigby
Stiff Records, 2008

...I think this officially came out last Tuesday, but it was not an easy record to find. I can't tell if it has American distribution, or if it is imported. It's worth tracking down, though.

Eric has always been one of my songwriting/recording heroes, a status probably having something to do with him being one of the first people who made great records that I met in person. It was just once, just for a half hour, but he was opinionated, insightful, charming...I was 16, and it made an impression. His Stiff-era '70s hits ("Whole Wide World," "Semaphore Signals," "Take the K.A.S.H.," "Veronica," etc.) still sound marvelous: grubby, lascivious, fun, but undeniably well-constructed and catchy.

His post-Stiff stuff has been perennially under-rated, and is difficult to come by, which is a shame considering the quality of bands like the Len Bright Combo and the heart and soul of albums like Bungalo High, The Donovan of Trash, and 12 O'Clock Stereo. Buy 'em all, if and when you can find them. If you're in Atlanta, most of the used shops will have a copy of the last one, as it was released on an Atlanta label. It may be the best of the three, too!

Eric has moved to France, and somehow managed to win the heart of singer/songwriter Amy Rigby. They were married in a French civil ceremony recently, and this album is a wonderfully understated set that mixes new songs from Eric and Amy with songs they wrote together. It's not pillow-talk, by any means, but the two compliment each other really well. Amy's winsome wit and classic pop-song gifts elevate the inherent pop in Eric's tunes, while Eric's DIY grit make her songs sound tougher, more heartfelt...

The album is a home-recorded affair, but seemingly a bit more mid-fi-approaching-hi-fi than previous Eric projects...Amy's influence? Old-school rhythm boxes keep the beat mostly, over which the pair lay down Eric's Stonesy electric playing, some great garage organ, some strummed acoustic, and even some synth and found-sound-collage business.

Songs are pretty damn strong...Amy's "Taste of the Keys" is a heartbreaking number delivered from the point of view of a tourist-trap waitress ("...all our specials come topped with cheese..."), while her "First Mate Rigby" is a wonderful dialog, opening with:

Amy: I'm a girl with past full of boys with a past.
Eric: I'm a man with a plan to economize.
Amy: I got baggage to haul and a card for the phone.
Eric: I got bags of my own underneath my eyes.

...gloriously fuzzy chorus.

In fine mettle, Eric throws in the provocative, bittersweet "The Downside of Being a Fuck-Up" and tearful recollection "Another Drive-In Saturday." Together, they pen the hopeful opening "Here Comes My Ship," a nifty Pet Sounds knock-off called ""Trotters,"" and the great pop song "Round," which is followed by a cover of Johnny Cash's "I Still Miss Someone," which closes the disk.

Go to www.wrecklesseric.com for tour dates...and then go to the shows and buy this record from them, so they can get back to France with some money!

The Carter Conundrum

...Ron Carter is one of the more frustrating musicians in jazz. It seems to go unsaid in the jazz media, but it's rare that such a mighty talent has been suffocated by technology and the choices he's made. It's a pretty simple pro/con situation:

Pro: Ron Carter has a tremendous feel for swing, choses great notes, has flawless intonation, and somehow manages to react to other musicians while maintaining awesome time.

Con: He runs his bass through this gawd-awful pickup system that makes it sound like rubber bands strung over a tin can with a balloon stretched over it. Seriously. For the most egregious bass sound ever, listen to the first track on this album.

Carter has defended his pickup sound innumerable times, and it's his right to sound the way he does. His bass, with the pickup on, is not an acoustic instrument...it's all coming from the amp. He tends to record it direct to the board, too, which is terrible...even when it is unnecessary: like his duo album with Helen Merrill or an '80s era solo album that I have. Why do you need a pickup when there are no other instruments? It's a little bit laughable.

What's even more laughable is that I keep track of his albums where the pickup is on and the pickup is off! His early albums with Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis thankfully predate the pickup...his '70s era stuff on Contemporary is rendered pretty unlistenable by the pickup. His recent run of quartet albums find the sound still there, but toned down to a relatively listenable level.

And then there albums like the two he did with the Joey Baron Quartet, or his wonderful new duo album with Houston Person, where the damn thing is off and the bass is recorded acoustically. And the tone is rich and warm. The years of reliance on the pickup has not killed his gift for pulling as much wonderful sound out of the bass as possible...it's strangely reassuring...

Urban Rummagings

...maybe once every two months or so I'll go downtown and dig through old LPs at the few remaining record stores there. There used to be twice as many as there are now, but there are still gems to be found. I went down there on Friday and came home with a hefty stack...it was maybe $65 worth of stuff, but it's hard to put a dollar amount on music...and there were some gems here. The stack pictured contains:

Norma Jean, Let's Go All The Way (RCA, 1964) - Even more than Loretta Lynn, Connie Smith, Patsy Cline, or Jean Shepard, Norma Jean is my favorite hard-country female vocalist. She didn't write, so maybe she's not quite in the same league as Loretta or Dolly, but she was fearless in her choice of material. Also, she liked provocative album titles (like this one, I Guess That Comes From Being Poor, and the amazing Another Man Loved Me Last Night). I've already spun this, and it's great stuff -- potent and unflinching, and nicely (under) produced. ($3.99)

Bobby Short, Bobby Short Loves Cole Porter, (Atlantic, 1971) - I love Bobby Short...not really jazz, although he's a formidable pianist (he accompanies himself here). More of a cabaret songster, with a vivacious, unchecked gusto and elegant swagger. He played for years at the Cafe Carlyle in New York...I think my parents saw him there years ago and brought me back a great CD of him playing a set there. I haven't listened to this yet, but I can't wait. I love Cole Porter, but a lot of his interpreters tend to be too polite or sensual. I bet Short makes this stuff come alive...also, lots of relatively obscure Porter tunes I don't know yet. ($3.99, 2lps)

Whitey and Hogan with the Briarhoppers, Early Radio (Old Homestead, rec. 1939-1951) - I heard Whitey and Hogan on Rounder Records' wonderful Early Days of Bluegrass series, and wanted to hear more. Great rattling stringband, old-tyme country, gospel, and bluegrass...I haven't listened to this yet, but am about to put it on. ($3.99)

Nils Lofgren, Back It Up!! Nils Lofgren Live, An Authorized Bootleg (A&M, 1975) - I actually had this on CD, but it's rare that you see an original pressing of this legendary disk. Basically it's a promo-only live LP that was actually better than the live album Nils eventually issued. Only nine tracks, some with extended guitar workouts that are actually exciting (I'm not usually a big guitar shredding fan)...Nils' self-titled solo album is one of my favorite pop records of the seventies, marked with equal parts flash and vulnerability. This live set has five tracks from that great disk, delivered raucously by a tight but rollicking band. Very cool to have the original pressing, whose artwork has not been reproduced in either of the two CD pressings. Good price, too -- I've seen it for 20 or 30 bucks...($9.99)

Various Artists, Steel Guitar Express (Pedal Steel Guitar Products, 1978) - I love records by sidemen and session musicians...I recently spent quite some time flipping through such projects at Ernest Tubbs' record shop in Nashville. This is a cool compilation featuring 14 top pedal steel guitar players on instrumentals of their choosing...these tracks are actually drawn mostly from solo albums by these guys, so I'm sure once I listen to it, I'll have a laundry list of albums I'll want to check out! Featured players include Jerry Byrd, Lloyd Green, Buddy Emmons, Red Rhodes, and lots more. I'll probably want to take my steel out of the case once I hear this, too...($6.99)

Jean Shepard and Ray Pillow, I'll Take The Dog (Capital, 1966) - I fell hard for the Country Music Foundation's wonderful Jean Shepard compilation Honky Tonk Heroine, and I love good country duet singing, so I figured this would be worth a few bucks. Unfortunately, it's mostly pretty drab stuff...a lot of corn, not a lot of great dark stuff. A little, but not enough. Shepard is typically great. The unknown (to me) Pillow is adequate...($3.99)

Hank Williams, Jr., Live at Cobo Hall Detroit (MGM, 1969) - I was curious about Bocephus's pre-Southern Rock years...in Georgia, where I grew up, it was a law that you needed to have a copy of his Greatest Hits III within 20 feet at all times -- which is fine, because his boisterous, rebel-rousing country-rock hits have aged surprisingly well and are a lot of fun. I wasn't prepared for this disk, where he really emerges as a great hard country singer in the tradition of his daddy. Covers of Hank Sr. are heavy hear, taking five of the eleven tracks...from there, he does one great original ("Standing in the Shadows"), covers of George Jones and Flatt and Scruggs, and even Joe South's "Games People Play." All in front of a rowdy crowd in the same room that Seger cut Live Bullet. Really enjoyable. ($2.99)

Bill Keith and Jim Rooney, Bluegrass: Livin' on the Mountain (Prestige Folklore, 1963) - Great price on this gem, which has seen only some of its tracks reissued on CD. Keith and Rooney, along with the Lily Brothers, Don Stover, and the Charles River Valley Boys, brought bluegrass to Boston. Here Keith (banjo, autoharp, guitar) and Rooney (vocals, guitar) are backed by the Charles River Valley Boys, and really deliver some great stuff -- even if they are yankees! Keith's revolutionary banjo technique is already in full blossom (he joined Bill Monroe not long after recording this album), and Rooney is a soulful frontman. Joe Val takes some high-wire leads too. Great price on this rare original vinyl. ($9.99)

We Five, You Were On My Mind (A&M, 1966) - The title track is really one of the great one-hit wonders of a decade filled with them -- the sputtering drums, bellowing vocals, jangley guitars...I've always loved it. The LP is god-awful, filled with showtunes and standards ("Somewhere Beyond the Sea," "Can't Help Falling In Love," "I Got Plenty O' Nuttin'") reimagined as bad parlour-folk. Just lousy...at least it has the title track. ($3.99)

George Melly and the Feetwarmers, Son of Nuts (Warner Brothers, 1973) - Wow...one of the big finds of this trip, this UK-only release (how did it get to the northeast US ? why is it in such great shape) features the legendary author, critic, and singer Melly in a raucous club setting backed by an able jazz combo. Melly is an outsized character -- flamboyantly bi-sexual (he tackles Bessie Smith's "I Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl," for cripes' sake!), he is as much a raconteur as a singer, though his pitch and phrasing are wonderful to behold. Fun, bawdy, dangerous stuff. Only listened to it once, but it will be played again. I may even get the CD, which pairs it with its prequel, Nuts. ($3.99)

John Abercrombie, Characters (ECM, 1978) - My affection for ECM has been written about in this blog before. Abercrombie's subtle, languid playing has always fascinated me. You know he has an amazing harmonic and technical vocabulary, and yet he holds back...there's something thrilling about that. I usually love to hear him with a volatile rhythm section (like with Jack DeJohnette or Adam Nussbaum on drums), where his subtleties are woven into a skittery framework. Here, he is solo...which should prove interesting. I only listened to the first track, which was about 10 minutes long and started with some cool twitchy electric before an acoustic rhythm guitar came in and underpinned a careful, probing improvisation that had a strangely compositional feel (maybe it wasn't improvised). Not as interesting to me as his band stuff, but I will return to this. ($1.99)

An Evening With Johnny Mercer, Alan Jay Lerner, and Sammy Cahn, Singing Their Own Songs (Book of the Month Records, rec. 1971-1972) - Bingo...the big score of the trip. I love hearing Broadway and Great American Songbook composers sing their own song. Since most of them (Mercer and Hoagy Carmichael excepted) were not natural performers, they tend to bring an introspective, personal quality and obliterate much of the showbiz pizazz that tends to keep me from connecting to their brilliant songs. This three-LP boxed set (with book of photos and liner notes) is drawn from a series called Lyrics and Lyricists, which was held at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan, and featuring lyricists singing their own songs, receiving occasional help from trained Broadway singers. Some of the Lyrics and Lyricist evenings (including these three and ones with Dorothy Fields and Yip Harburg) have been released on CD, but they are now hard to come by and expensive...so it was nice to find this. Mercer is the picture of southern elegance and charm. Cahn is warm and modest. Lerner is a scream -- funny, sly, a bit full of himself in an engaging way. His night is my favorite...Mercer was known as a singer, but Cahn and Lerner weren't, but they come off rather well -- Cahn is light and humane, Lerner blustery and forceful. Wonderful stuff... ($8.99)

Touchstones

...I have a love/hate relationship with the ECM label (which is now owned by Universal/Decca/Polywhatever). This mysterious European outfit always intrigued me when I was a kid -- our library had a bunch of their titles, and I was mystified by the spacious, almost negative-spacious artwork. I remember staring at one record, probably a Keith Jarrett album, and asking myself "What IS this?" You can't really tell anything from the covers, which usually feature a landscape shot, or sometimes just a block of solid color. I've come to dig the artwork, as it forms a part of the label's brand. In these bland post-digital days, so few labels have an aesthetic. It's nice to see ECM continuing to carry it through.

But what makes it a love/hate situation? Let's break it out into two lists.

Love:

1. At its best, the music is a dramatic extension of traditional jazz, incorporating modal and free elements while still remaining strangely accessible.
2. The cover art is continuous and cool -- you know upon seeing one of their projects that it is an ECM release. What other label can you say that about these days?
3. They support new classical composition via their ECM New imprint, which is fantastic.
4. They supported (eventually incorporating) Carla Bley and Michael Mantler's JCOA and Watt labels.
5. They release Michael Mantler's brilliantly uncategorizable albums.

Hate:

1. At its worst, the music has a droney, new-agey feel. Very easy to make fun of!
2. The cover art is pretentious and often conveys little helpful information to the uninformed consumer.
3. They seem to indulge Keith Jarrett's every fart. They guy is great, but maybe we should rein it in a little.
4. It's hard to find a lot of their classic titles in stores (probably more stores' fault than ECM's).
5. Their list price is always high -- $18.98 per CD. Consequently, most of the ECM titles in my collection are used LPs or used CDs or promos.

It's great to see ECM address the last two factors with their new "Touchstones" series, which takes classic ECM catalog titles and reissues them in simple four-panel digipaks (no great loss, as the original albums rarely had any liner notes or photos, so they don't take anything out!) at a budget price ($11.99). I was surprised to walk into my local record store and find the "Touchstones" reissue of Marc Johnson's Bass Desires album, which I'd been looking for for a while. Other quality titles in the first batch are Bill Frisell's Lookout for Hope and Paul Bley's Open, To Love. Kenny Wheelers Gnu High is also in the first batch, but I've yet to find a copy.

...a worthwhile initiative.

Not-Reissued Wednesday: Nothing Painted Blue

Nothing Painted Blue
A Baby, A Blanket, A Packet of Seeds
Jupa, 1990

This weekend I saw Franklin Bruno do a performance in a small art gallery/performance space not far from my house. I took great comfort in the fact that not only is he a brilliant, insightful songwriter -- he is also a riveting performer and, in our limited interaction, a very nice guy. You know never know when you meet someone you admire or see a favorite musician live for the first time. They could be jerks, they could be lousy performers, they could be both...I've seen it all!

As usual, seeing Bruno live sent me scurrying through his discography which has quietly grown quite sizable, when one considers things under his name, with his band Nothing Painted Blue, and his new outfit, the Human Hearts. He doesn't make bad records, so you can jump in anywhere...

This curiously-titled platter is the self-release debut of Nothing Painted Blue. The little insert boasts "Sixteen hours in the studio, sixteen songs...", which explains the stark, unadorned sound quality. You have to wait four songs to even get a harmony vocal overdub! It sticks pretty closely to the guitar-bass-drums format, with the great, underrated Kyle Brodie pounding the skins. (I actually asked the drummer who played with Bruno this weekend what his name was, on the off chance it WAS Brodie -- it wasn't but he did a great job nonetheless.)

It's definitely a nascent effort. The songs have a lot of future Bruno hallmarks: a sort of nervously skittering intellect, endless wit, bluntly catchy hooks, etc. Bruno's voice isn't quite the bold bleat it is now, and the songs lack a certain depth and nuance, but it's a very exciting debut, and has aged quite well. Plenty of bon mots to go around, like:

She was as subtle as a raw fish
She was as stable as a drug
If she'd been any less standoffish
She would have been a bearskin rug

From what I can gather, this isn't an easy record to come by. It was apparently pressed twice, the second pressing including a bright yellow tour poster -- which is the pressing I had. I got it from a dealer at a record show...it looked like he'd bought the stock of a failed indie distributor, as he had a lot of weird early '90s and late '80s indie rock and punk records. I think this one was $8.00, and it was still sealed. I also got a red vinyl Happy Flowers record and the first self-released Bob Paisley album (which ain't exactly indie rock -- not sure how that got in there).

Most of Nothing Painted Blue's oeuvre is easy to find. I especially like their most recent album, the hard-rockin' Taste the Flavor and the brilliant Monte Carlo Method. But you can't really go wrong with anything Bruno's done...

Here's a shot of him in action from the other night:

On the road again...

So, for the past ten years or so, before even graduating from college, I've worked for record labels, often charged with the task of "supporting" touring artists while on the road. Said "support" consists basically of alerting the local media well in advance of the gig -- press, radio, local societies and such. I hesitate to say it's a thankless job. It's more like covering your ass...you want to be sure to have at least one or two big media hits (like a juicy radio interview or a feature in the local paper), so that when no one shows up to the gig, you can say, "But we had a big feature in the Buttscrunch Journal." The actual correlation between local media and show attendance is, of course, fleeting and unproven.

It was interesting to be on the other side of the fence a few weeks ago, when my young-ish band (we've been together about a year and four months) took in a short tour of the southeast. It was the first time for all of us, and even though it was only six days, I think we learned some lessons...those being:

1. Sleep
If you do one night where you get less than 7 or 8 hours of sleep, you leave yourself open to infection and grumpiness. And headaches. It's a vicious cycle.

2. Eat Well
Fast food and donuts also lead to headaches, crankiness, and indigestion.

3. Friends Are Great
Call it playing it safe, but for this first round we hit towns where we had a lot of friends and family. They came. They bought a lot of merch. They brought us snacks. They cheered loudly.

4. The Media May Not Matter
We didn't have any big media hits, outside of some good radio spins in one town. And it didn't seem to make much difference...which is fine, because local press and radio were astonishingly unfriendly and unhelpful.

5. Seven Hours Is Probably Too Long
Driving seven hours (which turned into eight-plus with traffic) and doing a show that night may be too much. Again, tired and headaches and crankiness can result.

The above makes it sound like the tour was a big malnourished crank-fest, which it wasn't! We just noticed that these little things would start to come up, and fortunately my buddies are all too nice and civil to act on any ill-achieved impulse. It was great fun...

New Release Monday?

...I'll fess up -- I've been bad! I went on tour with my band a week ago, came home sick for a week, and am only just now feeling like standing up for longer than it takes to stumble to the bathroom. Forgive me. I'll resume posting with some regularity this week.

I got this awful cold in Athens, Georgia. I've since spoken to a bunch of folks who were at the same event, and apparently something was going around -- and not just excitement and enthusiasm. One of the worst effects of this bug is that my ears are really clogged -- I can't hear well out of my right ear. So I don't want to assess anything critically right now, feeling as how I am somewhat incapacitated.

It's ironic that one of the records I really want to sink my words into is Brian Wilson's new one, Lucky Old Sun -- the irony being that Brian is deaf in one ear...I'm only temporarily impaired, but I still want to let it clear up before I talk about someone else's music. I will say that, while far from perfect, this is by a great length his best (non-SMILE) solo album. The lyrics (mostly written by bandmate Scott Bennett, but also one tremendous tune from Van Dyke Parks and one okay one by Brian himself) are a big improvement, and melodically and arrangement-wise, this is much more ambitious.

I'll also blog a little bit about what it was like to do a short tour myself, after supporting touring artists for the past ten years in a different capacity. Stay tuned...

...gone pickin'...

...I'm traveling and playing music this week, so there will be no posts for a while!

Forty-Five Friday: Alan Licht

Alan Licked (aka Alan Licht)
Calvin Johnson Has Ruined Rock For An Entire Generation
Eighteen Wheeler, 1994

...I don't delve into the used seven-inch bins at record stores all that much. In the northeast, at least, that usually means a ton of gutter-punk singles, that all look and sound pretty much the same....that said, today I found a few random platters at one store that were intriguing -- no more so than this one. The cover says it all, doesn't it? I actually don't mind Calvin Johnson, though I am seeing a lot of indie pop bands taking on his mannerism without his wit and soul...

As far as Alan Licht goes, I've had mixed success with his records. I liked his CD Sink the Aging Process, but his two-disk set New York Minute didn't do much for me. I should revisit it. I really enjoy his writing on music, like his short book An Emotional Memoir of Martha Quinn and the liner notes to Sink.

But I won't lie. I bought this one for the cover. I started to play it, and it sounded like a looped bit of guitar noise, but my wife made me take it off after the first minute. Still, great cover, right?

Cocaine Reggae

The other day I posted this question on a social networking site:

Does liking the new Walter Becker album make me a bad person?

I'm only partly joking when I ask that...Becker, best known as one-half of the joint-chamber known as Steely Dan, has a new disk out called Circus Money. Of course, the Dan made a career (and hopefully a fortune) in welding a sort of wry, after-hours cynicism with a sophisticated harmonic palette. Theirs wasn't really a Randy Newman-style pop misanthropy -- it seemed more first person, in the sense that Newman's narratives play out as grand fiction, whereas Fagen/Becker's writing seemed more like reports from the frontline of depraved boredom.

Becker always intrigued me, as he was something of a silent partner in Steely Dan. He co-wrote everything, but rarely sang, and while he contributed much in the way of guitar and bass, a lot of the more heralded bits of their oeuvre came courtesy of hired guns (like "Skunk" Baxter on "My Old School" or Chuck Rainey's bass lines on Aja). Becker stepped forth with a solo album in 1994, which was intriguing but a bit gauzy...it had a smoke-filled quality that I couldn't quite reconcile, despite some strong songs and the surprising soulfulness of Becker's singing.

Circus Money is different. It's very sparse -- although slickly executed and immaculately produced, the tracks feel pared to the bone. The predominate feel is reggae...but to call describe it as "really relaxed reggae rhythms" as Stephen Thomas Erlewine does in his remarkably uninsightful allmusic.com review, is to miss the point entirely. This is a tight, profoundly uncomfortable sort of reggae...if most reggae is pot fueled and mellow, this is dry, flaky, cocaine reggae. It reminds me of the way your nose feels once it finally stops bleeding.

It's a record worth hearing...Becker's bass playing is tremendous -- he knows his reggae shit, but isn't afraid to stray from the formula. The chord progressions are typically ingenious, with quirky modulations all over the place. More than once the band will lock into a one-chord groove over which a keyboard will layer a second chord progression, creating a great sense of tension. Lyrically Becker is in fine mettle, dashing off disgusting scenarios populated by loathsome characters, wrapped in desperation. I think my favorite may be "Darkling Down," which wraps up with this little run:

Who will feast on this buzzard's banquet?
Who will render my heroic bust?
Who will choke on my lachrymose musings?
Who will eat my zero dust?
Who will wear this puke-streaked tunic?
Who shall gorge on this cup of spleen?
Who will sing about the good bad and ugly
And all and everything in between?

I believe that this disk is the first recorded work produced by Becker without the involvement of Donald Fagen...maybe that's significant, maybe it's not. But it is an intriguing project...not the kind of stuff I usually listen to, but maybe that's why I'm listening to it so much.

Reissue Wednesday: Tony Rice

Tony Rice
Night Flyer: The Singer Songwriter Collection
Rounder, 2008

Behind the drab cover and awkward, inaccurate subtitle (Rice is not a songwriter, and not all of these songs come from the singer-songwriter cannon) is actually an interesting, well-chosen compilation covering an overlooked era in the music of the maverick guitarist and vocalist Tony Rice. From about '83 until '92, Rice cultivated a kind of acoustic roots music art song. He applied his bluegrass chops to slightly more sophisticated material from singer/songwriters, country, and jazz, along with vividly reimagined folk and bluegrass songs...the result was a series of wonderful records like Cold on the Shoulder, Native American, and Me and My Guitar. The records have been somewhat overshadowed by Rice's major triumph's like Manzanita, the first records with Crowe and Grisman, and his recent work with Peter Rowan. Hopefully this collection will correct that oversite.

There are two particulars worth noting -- first off, the liner notes by Ron Block are great: insightful, passionate, thoughtful, and conversational. Secondly, and this is not really mentioned in the promotional literature or on the sticker, this collection contains Rice's last recorded vocal, "Pony."

I've had some trouble with my voice lately...nothing major, but some unwelcomed wear and inflammation brought on by a combination of bad habits and gastro-intestinal issues. But even this mild threat hit me really hard. I mean, your voice is who you are. It's how you express yourself to other people. It's how you communicate emotions and thoughts...it's how you talk and sing and interact. That said, when I was struggling (and I still am a little) with my voice, I got really depressed. It seems like a basic right, you know? Something we all take for granted.

Tony hasn't sung in ages, due to some strain of dysphonia. No one knows exactly how -- maybe the upcoming biography on Tony will address it, but I doubt it. Bluegrass people don't talk about it. It's an extensive sort of denial that persists...

In 2000 or 2001, during a break from recording a Rice, Rice, Hillman, and Pederson, Tony sat down with John Carroll and recorded a version of "Pony," a Tom Waits song. First off, it's a brilliant song, with a cascading melody and a resonant, powerful lyric. So many Waits fans that I know seem to be into his music just for the weird factor...they always say "Listen to this -- it's like two hobos beating on an oil can inside a factory!" They never say "Listen to this -- it's such a beautiful, well-crafted song!" Waits' own performances, I feel, sometimes undermine the grace and beauty of his craftsmanship.

This version of "Pony" is devastating...maybe it is the circumstances. You can hear Rice's voice fraying. You can hear the great amount of effort he is putting into pushing air through his throat and over his vocal cords...his struggle goes hand in hand with the lyric of the song, and the result is just hard to take. My wife made me turn it off. I only listened to it once. That was all I could stand...it's really sad. But kudos to Tony for having the balls to release it. Tom Waits may pretend to be raspy and broken down...Tony Rice is raspy and broken down. I'm not sure if its art or documentary, but it deserves to be heard.

Best. Sticker. Ever.

Sorry this photo is a little fuzzy...I took it with a camera-phone at a record store. Beneath the fuzz is probably the best sticker I've ever seen on a commercial music product. In case you can't read it, it says: Nordic Folk Metal Comeback of the Year.

Now, record stickering deserves its own post, and I'm sure I'll do one in the near future on the subject...but in the meantime, let's give this one some thought. Stickers, I thought, were designed to make people who normally wouldn't buy the album buy the album. They are designed to widen your audience. Well, this thing has the opposite effect, and brilliantly so! Think about it as a dialog between the sticker and the potential consumer:

Consumer: I like metal.
Sticker: Do you like Nordic metal?
Consumer: I do like Nordic metal.
Sticker: Do you like Nordic folk metal?
Consumer: I do, but really only bands from the classic Nordic folk metal renaissance that happened a few years ago.
Sticker: Well, do I have an album for you. Remember Vintersorg?
Consumer: Didn't they break up?
Sticker: They came back.

I love this sticker. By insuring the narrowest possible audience for their release, this band/record company will be guaranteed the CD will only fall into the hands of those truly worthy and capable of understanding the magic therein. That is, if people read stickers on CDs/albums/etc. Do they?

New Release Monday: Let's Whisper

Let's Whisper
Make Me Smile
WeePop!, 2008

...I've had this one on repeat for what seems like the past week, and probably is. First, some formalities: if you don't know WeePop! Records, you should! They are a UK-based imprint that serves up indie-pop, a genre whose definitions and boundaries tend to confound me. As a listener, I tend to like about half of what I hear that calls itself "indie-pop." WeePop have a brilliant little model: they release limited edition (used to be 120, now it's 160, I think) three-inch CDs (CD-Rs, technically) by bands they like, all done up in increasingly intricate hand-made packaging. Visit them at www.weepop.net. Buy their stuff. I do, for what it's worth.

So this one showed up on my doorstep last Saturday, and I've spun it dozens of times. More formalities: Let's Whisper is a side-project from Colin Clary and Dana Kaplan of New England indie-pop magnates The Smittens. I assumed that, because they are just a duo and The Smittens are a whole band, that this project would be a quieter, more stripped down, low-fi yin to The Smittens' yang. It's actually a curious reversal: The Smittens great new album The Coolest Thing About Love (buy it here) continues their winning streak of defiantly, joyously low-fi pop -- geeky, adorable, well-crafted and spontaneous in equal measure.

Make Me Smile is something else. Contrary to their duo shows (which is the only way I've seen them perform), there are bass and drums, along with some vocal and guitar overdubs, that make this much fuller than I anticipated. Also, it appears that much of it was recorded in an actual studio, and it has a rich, warm sound that's not really low-fi. And, after having forced my ears to dig for melodies under layers and layers of tape hiss with so many acts who think that low-fi recordings will make bad songs better, it's actually a welcomed vibe!

There are only 160, and you should really buy one now, because it is a genuinely wonderful, heartwarming effort that soars via all that is good about indie-pop and sidesteps all the genre's cliches. The writing is first-rate, starting with Dana's "Dylan Song," which to me is a incredibly thoughtful meditation on a subject (childbirth, I think) which too often leads to icky, sentimental songs. Colin's "Tender Circle" is another in what seems like Clary's endless supply of heartfelt, genuine, insightful love songs. Colin and Dana collaborate on the bittersweet audio postcard "Open Road" and the ridiculously sublime "When You Were Eating Ice Cream." I never thought I'd like a song with a refrain that went "nummy num num," but it's lodged in my head...and you know what, people do look cuter eating ice cream than they do eating steak. Bingo, gang!

The Smittens camp has seen a lot of action lately. There's also a split seven-inch with Tullycraft that you can only get at shows or via the Happy Happy Birthday to Me singles club. CDs, EPs, 45s...don't deprive yourself of any of it.

Forty-Five Friday: Alex Chilton

Alex Chilton
Singer Not The Song
Ork Records, 1977

What's more fun than seven-inch records? For some reason they go hand in hand with the concept of Friday...hence, Forty-Five Friday! Of course, some of y'all will give me grief for kicking off Forty-Five Friday with a seven-inch that plays at 33rpm. Pobody's nerfect.

I stumbled on this gem a few weeks ago, after a ball game at a used record store for six bucks...it's an original pressing, complete with the hard cardboard sleeve, and is probably worth more like $25-$45 in this condition, though I doubt I'll ever sell it. It's the first officially released Alex Chilton solo project, post-Box Tops and post-Big Star, although he'd recorded solo sessions in between the dissolution of the Tops and the formation of Big Star. Those sessions wouldn't see the light of day until a 1996 CD called 1970.

By all accounts, the mid-seventies were shaky times for Chilton. The unfair neglect of Big Star's work by the general public, combined with Chilton's alcoholism, seemed to cast a dark, dark shadow around everything. When he was allowed free reign in the studio to follow his own muse, he produced the brilliantly ramshackle 1978 single "Bangcock." The sessions that created this EP, however, were supervised by John Tiven.

Tiven is an interesting figure. I met him once, and he seemed like an earnest enough dude...kind of a hustler, but that's what you do when you are a freelance producer. In the '70s he contributed a bit to Memphis power-pop lore by producing this disk and as one half of the band Prix with Tommy Hoehn. In '78 he released a solo album under the name of The Yankees, which was a minor success and an engagingly rough-edged new wave pop album. Since then, Tiven has emerged as something of an R&B svengali, taking veteran artists who still have some stuff to strut and co-writing songs with them and producing the resulting recordings. Unfortunately, he's not that interesting of a songwriter or producer, and the results tend to be relatively tame and dull.

Still, on a record like this, Tiven must have felt like he was herding cats. Even in the William Eggleston cover photos, Chilton looks wrecked. Alex is a great guitarist, yet all the guitars on the record are played by Tiven -- was Chilton just too zonked? What emerges on Singer Not The Song is a weird, uncomfortable collision of styles: Chilton's freewheeling spontaneity (which he'd explore further on the brilliant Like Flies On Sherbert) and Tiven's more controlled roots-pop.

The resulting disk is charming, mostly because of Chilton's spacey singing and the quality of the songs...opener "Free Again" was originally cut by Chilton in '70, and is a wide-eyed country stomp well matched on side one with a version of the Rolling Stones' title track. Side two features a version of Chilton's much-recorded "Take Me Home and Make Me Like It" that is a little smothered, but amusing -- especially when compared to Tiven's mannered, self-consciously lewd version on the Yankees' record. For me, the record's highlight is "All The Time," a pop gem co-written by Chilton and his girlfriend Lesa Aldridge, where Tiven's devices (what's with the weird flanged guitar?) are undone by Chilton's brilliantly casual vocal.

This material was compiled eventually as a CD, now deleted, called Bach's Bottom, along with the 1978 single ("Bangcock") and some other stuff. Tiven couldn't resist tinkering with it, though, and remixed a bunch of the tracks re-inserted some guitar left off the original released mixes. It's nice to have the original mixes, though.

An interesting corollary to this disk is that Chilton wrote liner notes to the Bach's Bottom reissue that were not used, illuminating the tension of the sessions. Surely alcohol and drugs played a role in keeping things off the rails, but more than that was a difference of intent and process between Tiven and Chilton. Chilton writes..."The young producer was appalled and failed to see the beauty of letting the music happen in a manner so obviously out of control. Some of these have undergone some major audio surgery at the hands of the producer who, after seventeen years, still does not seem to know the chords."

Yikes...

Short Circle

...for whatever reason, and I can cover this in another post later, I've been listening to a lot of music from old musicals, and jazz singers who interpret such stuff. I'm just dazzled by the degree of wit, literacy, and inventiveness when it comes to lyrics, not to mention the melodic genius behind much of it. The fact that most folks were either lyricists or music writers, but not both, probably had something to do with it -- although folks like Cole Porter and Frank Loesser seemed to do just fine all by themselves.

Anyway, I popped into one of my favorite used record stores a week or so ago, and found a lot of music that fit this description -- much of it at bargain prices. I picked up some really rare stuff, like the now-deleted CD of Cole Porter demos and the very rare CD of Yip Harburg singing some of the songs he co-wrote, songs like "Over The Rainbow," "If I Only Had A Brain," "Old Devil Moon," "It's Only A Paper Moon," and more...I love hearing songwriters sing their own stuff, especially when they aren't known as performers, and those disks are a treat.

So, I came back with a big stack of records and CDs, all in the great American songbook vein. I noticed that many of them either had some handwritten dates scrawled on the jacket or a little imprinted insignia, like what a notary uses. Here's a picture showing both:


The name on the imprint said "Karl Van Duyn Teeter." The man clearly was an fan of early jazz and musical theatre, from the records...I punched his name into Google, and things get interesting. It turns out that Dr. Teeter was a very highly regard linguistics professor at Harvard, who had done extensive research on indigenous and endangered languages. There is a great obituary of him here. According to his obituary, he was also a noted jazz buff, coronet player, avid cyclist, and cook. I think I would have liked this guy, had I the chance...

Things like this are what make collecting records fun and intriguing. On one level, they are just vessels for sounds. That alone is wonderful...but on another level, they are artifacts, passed on from person to person. While I don't know how Dr. Teeter's records got to me, it seems to have the makings of an interesting if sad story. His widow maybe didn't want them around...couldn't bear to have them in the house anymore. Maybe his children didn't share his passion. Either way, they wound up on the racks, at 1.99 each...I hope he knows a handful of them found a good home.

Reissue Wednesday: Wrong Way Up

Wrong Way Up
Brian Eno and John Cale
Opal, 1990
Reissued on All Saints/Hannibal, 2005

I can’t believe this thing is 18 years old. This album could vote. It could legally marry albums of the same sex in certain parts of the country. I’m not that old, and I’ve had the same copy of it for probably fifteen years or so – a promo CD with a hole-punch in the right-hand corner of the booklet. I recently upgraded with the 2005 reissue. More about that later.

Wrong Way Up is a record that can almost be as defined by what it isn’t as what it is. When it came out, I was fourteen or so. I knew Eno from his role in the second through fourth Talking Heads albums, which were already dear to my adolescent heart (and you couldn’t pick a better drummer to match your heartbeat to than Chris Franz). I knew the Velvet Underground, but Cale represented everything edgy and weird about them to me – the scraping viola, that profound extra-rock element that, even more than Lou Reed’s perverted outlook, separated them from the perceived boomer blandness of much of ‘60s rock. I didn’t know either man’s solo careers yet…so what would this be? Jerky electro-acoustic rhythms with harsh viola harmonics? Ambient electro synth blips? Neo-classical mood music?

Sigh of relief. It’s pop music. Sigh of astonishment. It’s playful, jovial pop music. It’s actually fun. Maybe I was just 14, but I knew these were characters known for being a bit on the dry and theoretical side at times. So how cool is it to hear them aping the Beach Boys on “Empty Frame,” or giddily rocking out on “Been There Done That”?

This was a disk I wore out back in ’93 or so. My friend’s step-dad had it, and my friend nicked it and played it for me…I bought a promo for five bucks at one of those god-awful record swap-meets at the Radisson hotel (the one that looks like a castle) in Atlanta. I learned the chords to pretty much all the songs. I tried to imitate Eno’s rhythm programs on the primitive keyboard I had. Every time I picked up a violin, I hacked away at the “Lay My Love” riff, which is in F, not an easy key for a novice fiddler.

I had sorta forgotten about this one for the past five years or so…then a reissue quietly snuck out. It had a pair of extra tracks – an unreleased instrumental and Eno’s version of “You Don’t Miss Your Water,” which had been on the Married to the Mob soundtrack, I think. But more importantly, it had a lyric sheet – which was not included in the original package. Deciphering the lyrics through the haze of multi-tracking and reverb on the album was never easy…reading through them for the first time was pretty revelatory – like running into an old friend on the street that you haven’t seen in years. You talk, you catch up, you are overwhelmed by new information. Once the shock of the new dies down (the lyrics), you are left with the warm familiar glow, unchanged (the music). It’s particularly great to know exactly what they are saying in “One Word,” a song in which Eno and Cale sing different things at the same time, beautifully folkishly intertwined.

I’ve been fascinated by these sessions, and tried to get every bit of music that emerged from them. In addition to the album tracks and the two bonus cuts on the reissue, I’ve found these nuggets:

- “Grandfather’s House”: A pleasant Cale-sung number, included on the “One Word” maxi-single (remember those?)
- “Ring of Fire”: A surprisingly bland and disappointing Eno-sung version of the Johnny Cash classic, released on a promo-only clear-vinyl 45.
- “Shuffle Down to Woodbridge”: An instrumental credited to Cale, also on the clear-vinyl 45.

Clearly the good stuff is on the record! I’m not sure if there is anything else…there’s so little Eno vocal material out there, I’m sure every morsel is relentlessly documented, and I’d know if there was any other stuff.

I guess a good record is like an equation: two sides balanced by an equal sign. On one side is this disk, with all it’s wonder and playful questions. On the other side of the equal sign are my fourteen-year-old ears, unencumbered and ready for something, anything. I’m not sure if I played it for my friends if they’d laugh at me or not, but Wrong Way Up still sounds good to me now…

Hold Steady on the iTunes path...

...or supersize that album...no, seriously, do it.

The new Hold Steady album came out two Tuesdays ago. Like literally tens of thousands of Americans, their last album Boys and Girls in America took me by surprise and instantly infatuated me with its musically widescreen Springsteenism and the wry examination of the intersection of adolescent hedonism and adult responsibility. It sent me back to the ramshackle glory of their first two disks…though it must be said that, for whatever reason, Boys and Girls in America doesn’t seem to be aging well. I’m not sure what it is, but I listened to it on the way home from a party the other night (seems like the perfect time, right?), and it just wasn’t grabbing me the same way. I don’t know.

Either way, if you are interested in lyrics, you need to pay attention to the Hold Steady. From a purely mechanical level, Craig Finn is a virtuoso, dazzling with half-rhymes, twisted internal rhythms, and some surprisingly compelling resolutions that really shouldn’t work, but do.

But there’s enough critical mumbo-jumbo jaw-wagging about Finn and company on the interwebs. That’s not why I’m doing this…there’s an interesting reversal about Stay Positive – a reversal of industry practices and how labels are pushing artists.

A little background is in order…we are now in the digital age, where online retailers like iTunes are accounting for more and more sales. In order to entice consumers, every major retailer (or coalition or retailers) wants what they call “exclusive content.” Buy this CD at Best Buy and get an exclusive DVD (which may very well be shit shot on a crappy home camera and edited on someone’s Mac)! Buy this album as a digital download on iTunes and get an exclusive unreleased track (which was probably left off the album for a reason)! When an artist delivers a project to a label now, they are also encouraged (may be forced) to deliver this dubious bonus material. Frankly, it undermines the artistic process in two ways:

1. If you, the artist, have a good song that just doesn’t work as part of the album, you are expected to let the label use it as a bonus track for iTunes (or another retailer) – thus isolating and limiting the track’s potential. Sure, once the window of exclusivity expires, you can put it somewhere else, but chances are it will be difficult to make it part of a coherent statement and will wind up on some odds’n’sods compilation down the road.

2. If you, the artist, have a song that is a steaming pile of horse pucky that you don’t want anywhere near your album, you are expected to let the label use it as a bonus track for iTunes (or another retailer) – thus exposing your soft creative underbelly to the kind of people who buy your album on iTunes to get the bonus material because they want everything you’ve done. In a nutshell, you are rewarding your most loyal fans with your worst music.

I’m amused.

So, back to Minneapolis’s finest (now Brooklyn’s finest, because that’s what you do – you move to Brooklyn), the Hold Steady. I am not sure of the entire tale, but basically the new album Stay Positive was released on iTunes early…two or three weeks before the street date of the CD. Maybe copies had leaked, and the label wanted to combat file-sharing and such. Because the iTunes version was released early, retailers were getting the shaft – people who were big fans, buy it on street-date kinda fans, were already going to have the album. So the label put the bonus tracks on the full-scale physical release, instead of bundling them to the digital release. The first 50,000 copies of Stay Positive come with three extra tracks (inexplicably stuck together as one long track on the CD). Kinda cool, but it made me thing a great deal about how the content-mad culture out there may be driving a dagger into the heart of the album as a medium for expression.

Maybe I’m overthinking this.

As for Stay Positive? It’s good. It’s darker than Boys and Girls in America – it’s the morning after, perhaps. That said, I feel like the band feels a little stuck. They’ve made three great albums, and expectations continue to inch upwards. There are moments when I get the feeling they are unsure of what to do, of how to wrap up songs and phrases, when to let an idea lapse and when to pursue it. Then again, one could take that very uncertainty as an artistic expression – we’ve all been there.

New Release Monday: Chris Difford

The Last Temptation of Chris
Chris Difford
Stiff Records, 2008

If a heart breaks in the forest, will anyone hear it? What if it sounds this good? Thus, the Difford dilemma. I’ve always said that the best lyricists, in any genre, should make it look easy. Should make you want to pick up a pen and start writing, blissfully unaware (at least initially) of the degree of craft, wit, style, and syntax one must possess to be at all effective.

There should be no dissent that Chris Difford is one of pop’s very best lyricists. Yet his gifts are tempered by a relentlessly self-effacing personality, insuring that he is under-represented when it comes to anything but penning great lyrics for others to sing and write melodies for. With vocalist/multi-instrumentalist/melodicist Glenn Tilbrook, Difford was the bedrock of pop juggernaut Squeeze. A recent Mojo review went as far as to say that Difford was the band’s big talent – that Tilbrook’s genius for Beatle-esque hooks was often mired by a short attention span, a fondness for trendy production techniques, etc. It was a daring statement, and upon much reflection, I think it’s right. Lyrically, Squeeze have been consistently brilliant…musically, things have been hit or miss.

I’m too young to have experienced the heyday of Squeeze, but I did see them do an acoustic performance at a local record store when I was a kid – I think it was winter of 1993. Pete Thomas, of the Attractions, was playing drums, but since this was an acoustic gig, he played tambourine. Still a thrill, to think of one of pop’s finest skinsmen diligently tapping. He did a fine job. I was unfamiliar with the band, and immediately taken by the upside-down harmonies – with Tilbrook’s glorious tenor on top and Difford’s gruff baritone coming in just right, often in perfect unison.

It has been interesting to watch the Squeeze principals go their separate ways…Tilbrook’s two disks have seen some really glorious melodic flights trapped in a mess of ADD-addled skatter, some childish humour, and half-baked lyrics. Difford’s, beginning with I Didn’t Get Where I Am in 2003, was something else entirely. Thoughtful, quiet, bittersweet musings. Almost defiantly middle-aged, Difford does not insist on recapturing his drunken youth. It’s a bold decision, and leads to some provocative music.

Glenn Tilbrook couldn’t resist getting a dig in a Difford’s direction, offering this couplet on his second solo album: “Your folksy noodlings have petered out / they didn’t raise pulses or your bank account.” Yikes…but Difford’s music repays careful attention, and Tilbrook has never been one for sitting still for more than four minutes twenty.

Squeeze is back to being a going concern, which is surely good for everyone’s pocketbooks, but I do hope it doesn’t draw attention from The Last Temptation of Chris, Difford’s wondrous new solo disk. Pairing up with songwriting ace Boo Hewerdine was a stroke of genius, underpinning Difford’s prose with subtle but infectious melodies. Difford, always timid about his singing, bounces back with performances that are intimate and conversational, yet tuneful. He seems to be singing a bit higher than normal, and sounds great doing so.

The subject matter, and how Difford explores it, is typically brilliant. “Reverso” is, yes, a song about a man having his vasectomy reversed upon experiencing a late-in-life romance…not a true story, Difford assures us, but a great idea for a song, gathering themes of love, youth, aging, agony, and renewal together for five minutes of masterful storytelling. “Come On Down” is about the intersection of love and finances, another rarely touched-upon subject, and is rendered exquisitely. It’s ultimate lines, where Difford brings to a head the issues at hand are among my favorites:

I said I know the problem, you’ve seen it many times.
You think you have it sorted, but then you’ve crossed the lines
That blur the very image you’re trying to preserve.

He loves her, but he keeps borrowing money and behaving irresponsibly. Denial has run its course, and now things are on the surface…

I could dissect, dismantle, and discover endlessly on The Last Temptation of Chris, but I’ll resist. Alas, I haven’t seen a single copy in a retail store. I had to mail order it. Don’t let retail indifference lead you to an in-Difford-ish experience…