I woke up with Greg Dulli's crooning his memorable cover of Hole's "Miss World" in my head this morning. There's something about Dulli's raspy soulful vocal and the New Orleans flavored jazzy arrangement that turns Hole's original into southern bluesy confessional. I love the fact that it's just piano and sax for most of the song. The stripped down sound accentuates the passionate emotions of Courtney's lyrics.

Just like Mark Kozelek of the Red House Painters, Dulli doesn't just cover a song, he possesses it, takes it over and unleashes it back into the world with a resurrected skin and feeling. This one's a keeper. It makes me long to be back in a low lit half empty French Quarter bar, hanging back with a cold drink and hand rolled cigarette. Songs like this cover of "Miss World" capture the spirit of the city I miss and still love. This is what I feel when I hear Dulli's cover.

The songs of this production are obviously provided with HAWKWIND and OZRIC TENTACLES leanings. Remarkable are the delay and wah-wah drenched guitar, a hypnotic tribal drumming and what is typical for many psych bands - vocals are very rare, only given with some mantras.

Ayermandominar is starting somewhat clumsy but soon hurries up reminding me of MR. QUIMBY'S BEARD with wah-wah guitar work. Some effects simulating the crying of the whales are interspersed at the end and the song is made in an interesting trancy mood even if it contains some tempo changes. Other standout tracks are the gripping Circles underlaid by Mark Dixon's didgeridoo and the epic Conditioning with high-speed jamming deluxe.

Hopefully the band decides to continue and to reissue their songs on compact disk or vinyl soon for having the chance to purchase this interesting recordings which are first of all recommended to fans who are swirling around the Hawkwind and Tentacles circles - 3.5 stars really.

by Rivertree


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To Begin With: Being from Kentucky and being at a Bluegrass Festival in San Francisco, is a strange and fraught experience.  To offer an analogy, imagine the perspective of an African-American attending a hip-hop festival where nearly everyone (say 99.9%) in attendance is European-American.  It’s not exactly that those people shouldn’t be allowed to listen to my music.  In this case, I have an extremely tenuous personal relationship to bluegrass music.  Still, there’s something weird about it all, something maybe even painful.

Beginning again from the end: At the end of the evening my partner and I hopped on a bus to head home.  It was packed with festival goers – many of them out-of-towners like us.  Contrary to popular belief, megalopolitan people can be quite hospitable.  So conversations sprang up all over the bus.  Ahead of me was a tall, bald-headed fellow wearing black gym pants and a t-shirt.  He was asking about stops (as many of us were) and ultimately struck up a conversation with a much shorter man wearing (it was a BLUEGRASS festival after all) a straw hat over his straggly, longish hair.  The taller man was from Portland, and apparently contemplating a move to San Francisco.  They talked about the climate in San Francisco, the fog, gardening, etc.  Finally, comparing San Francisco to New York the shorter man (a San Francisco native who apparently spent some time in New York) made a preposterous claim.  "The East Coast," he said, "is about doing.  The West Coast is about being.  Here, people are concerned about beings, there they’re concerned about doings."  Are you kidding? – I thought.  He was not.

On the subject of topos: Will Oldham (aka Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy) is a masterful musician/lyricist/ performer.  Though I have not been long in the company of his music (nor am I by any means a connoisseur), I find him a passionate craftsman of traditional tunes and themes (Folk/Bluegrass/Scotch/Irish/Welsh/English).  Think Nick Cave, if his return to tradition were rooted in the sounds of Australia (maybe they are, I don’t really know).   He weaves words and sounds together with an ear for the tongue of a certain South.  [As far as I can tell, people who aren’t from "the South" are nearly incapable of distinguishing the many accents.  For instance, in "The Life Aquatic" Owen Wilson claims to be from Louisville, Kentucky, but speaks with much a sweeter, slower accent than anything found there or anywhere in Kentucky.  At best (though this is probably misguided as well), it’s something along the lines of an aristocratic Savannah drawl.]  Oldham is a Louisville native – of sorts.  He’s as rural as he is urban, and vice versa.  His music reflects all this; fusing a punk/low-fi ethos with hipster irony, theatrical showmanship, existential quandary, and the scenes, imagery, language, and music of Kentucky.  What is borne of all this is a sight to behold.  Lying in Golden Gate Park, it was odd seeing him live for the first time.  He was hamming it up for the natives, issuing an ironic "Fuck you" – potbellied, in overalls, a hillbilly.  He referenced Cherokee Park.   He and his band-mates gulped moonshine from a jar.  "Fuck you yuppies and your marijuana and your beautiful trees."

The Homeless, They Wander:  After Sam Beam finished up his weird set [replete with failed audience participation and (not one, not two, but) THREE instances of forgotten lyrics], my partner and I set out along Fulton St. in search of food and beer. [An aside on topos: Throughout the many shows, audiences were warned that smoking cigarettes was strictly prohibited and alcohol, we found out, could not be sold on the premises of the park.  At one point during his set Beam remarked, "Did I hear him right?  You can’t smoke cigarettes, but if you got pot then go ahead and smoke it.  SHIT!  That’s some California shit."]  Along the way, we noticed what appeared to be a fellow traveler in the land of weird – a red-bearded, beer-bellied freak wearing a cap made out to be the mane and ears of a cougar – who was stoned out of his mind.  Red-eyed and bleary he pulled out his I-phone, hoping to find a Thai restaurant nearby.  He eventually decided to join us walking in the direction of Haight, where he knew there was a good Thai restaurant.  In the course of our walk it became clear that this man is on a mission to RAVAGE his consciousness.  He explained to us in detail that this month was "Rock-tober" and that he was going to party every single day if he could.  For him, this was not simply a matter of turning life into idle recreation.  NO!  He had just been to "Burning Man" and his faith was affirmed.  For him, partying is not recreation; it is the substance of life itself.  It became clear to me that, spawned in suburban America, there now exists an entire sub-culture of wasted people.  They have their own religion – you get fucked up, you burn a giant man in the desert.  Get it?  Of course not.  There’s no purpose.  It’s an act of pure absurdity.  Our stoned freak friend, decked out in cougar cap and red sneakers to match his eyes and beard, went on to tell us that they canceled Halloween last year.  According to him, an angry mob of poor and black people (euphemistically described as "people from Oakland") had descended upon the innocent holiday festivals beating, stabbing, and even shooting white urban San Franciscans.  I assume he’ll vote for Obama.

From the Holler to the Hollow: There is a creeping anxiety sweeping across yuppie-America.  For a long time, it was only really palpable in "intellectual circles" – ever the avant-garde, that bunch.  Completely divorced from the material necessities of life which busy most people and anchor them to the earth, yuppie-America has been rendered entirely idle.  Unlike Aristotle’s contemplative philosopher, however, this group has not been thereby thrown into a critical examination of their own lives.  Steadfastly, they have absorbed themselves in anything (ANYTHING) but.  They’re playing video games, getting high, fucking indiscriminately, watching television and YouTube, shopping, tooling with their new clothes and gadgets, blogging, and attending music festivals.  Of course, this is the natural extension of the work-culture of the new managerial/tech class.  Not only are they never hungry or tired or afraid or in love (i.e. not only are they congenitally BORED); but, they don’t actually do or make anything.  They simply are.  And, what the hell are you going to do with that?  Even worse, they don’t get to be anything in particular.  There are many paths that seem to lead out of this (dare I say it?) existential impasse.  Disproportionately, (hoping to be assured that they do, in fact, exist ["How can I be, if I’m not something?]) they consume identities.  Given their curious neo-liberal "multiculturalism," they see no problem in that.  So I sit there, in a park, with a bunch of yuppie liberal atheists and I watch as Will Oldham hams it up and I listen as Iris Dement sings of the love in her heart and Ralph Stanley tells each and every festival-goer that they are blessed by God.  In a world where poverty equals authenticity, Ralph Stanley -- from the fourth poorest state in the union and from the poorest area of that state -- sings to a bunch of yuppies in California, assuring them that they are.

Coda: There are no homes to go back to.  Probably, there never were any in the first place.  But, seriously, what are you supposed to do with that?

Today marks the seeding of the fiftieth and final episode of the brilliant Blogariddims series, a near-monthly “podcast” with which many readers of w&w no doubt have some passing acquaintance. Indeed, if you’re omnivorous like me, you’ve likely downloaded every one, each time enticed by the loving, careful, idiosyncratic and refreshingly all-over-the-map episodes from some of the most interesting and engaged music bloggers on the ol’ ‘osphere (if I don’t say so myself).

Nuff nuff props to Droid for imagineering the whole thing and running a pretty tight ship all the while. It was a pleasure to be involved, and I’m delighted to have been able to contribute to the appropriately motley final episode, which features 11 mini-mixes from former contributors to the series.

As with my previous contribution, Another Crunk Genealogy (#11), I couldn’t resist teasing a particular musical thread throughout my mix. In this case, however, rather than letting a suggestive set of rhythmic patterns guide my track selection, here I’ve decided to focus on a particular melody, often — but not always — taking the form of a familiar bassline cutting across (rhythm&)blues, soul, pop, hip-hop, dancehall, jungle, and bubbling, to name a bunch. It’s a surprisingly common riff, suggesting perhaps the naturalness of playing such a thing on an instrument (esp guitar/bass) rather than some (prolly) specious theory of origins. Many readers/listeners will know it best via Sly & Robbie’s Bam Bam riddim, which notably supported, among other hits, the early 90s crossover classic “Murder She Wrote.” Others will be transported back to Otis Redding’s “Tramp” right away.

Although I wouldn’t purport that this is a comprehensive genealogy of any sort, I’ve done my best to bring a number of the more important/influential tracks to employ this melody, throwing in a few (obscure) curveballs for good measure, and doing my best not to get too hung up on pseudo-genealogical orthodoxy. For the record, I’ve crammed the following 13 tracks into my 7 minutes (no numerology a gwaan, trust me); and while I tease some tracks in and out, the general sequence is as follows –

      >> Lowell Fulson, “Tramp”
      >> Otis Redding & Carla Thomas, “Tramp”
      >> Cypress Hill, “How I Could Just Kill a Man”
      >> Prince, “7″
      >> Sly & Robbie, “Bam Bam Riddim”
      >> Chaka Demus & Pliers, “Murder She Wrote”
      >> Cutty Ranks, “A Who Seh Me Dun”
      >> Cutty Ranks, “Limb By Limb” (original + jungle remix by DJ SS)
      >> Janet Lee Davis, “I Will Always Love You”
      >> DJ Playero, “DJ Playero Pistas #7″
      >> DJ Playero, “DJ Playero Pistas #9″
      >> ??, “Bubbling MSN Remix”

I don’t really want to get as prolix here as I did in my notes for “Another Crunk Genealogy.” Suffice to say (and I think you’ll hear) that there are lots of connections ricocheting around in this mini-mega-mix. For one, Lowell Fulson’s “Tramp,” which I tease in and out of the mix, is the track sampled by Muggs for Cypress’s “Kill a Man” — the latter track meshing/mashing incredibly well with Prince’s “7″ (talk about nonsense numerology), a song that — cheese aside — always seemed kind of hardcore (and hip-hop influenced) with that low, 808-y bass playing that line in particular.

To step back for a minute, it’s worth noting that the version of “Tramp” recorded at/for Stax by Otis & Carla has also been widely sampled by hip-hop producers (though often for its drums rather than bassline). So between those two bluesy hits from 1967, that riff — played both on bass and by horns — was really in the air, both in the late 60s and the early 90s. It turns up in lots of other soul (not to mention rocksteady) and hip-hop tracks, and it’s not that surprising that such open-eared musicians as Sly & Robbie might have nodded to it on their massive production for 1992, the Bam Bam riddim. The opening — and recurring — guitar lick on that riddim is pretty clearly (and consonantly) related to the riff from “Tramp,” and though I could have stuck entirely to Bam Bam versions/voicings, I’ve also observed that several other reggae riddims from that time period seem to sample the riddim’s guitar, including the Pitch / Fever Pitch riddim produced in 1993 by Sly and Gitsy (which supports, among other big chunes, Cutty Ranks’s fierce “Limb by Limb”).

Couldn’t resist squeezing another genre into the mix, so I took the opportunity to work in, if briefly, a jungle remix of Cutty’s “Limb” before segueing to, even more briefly (for which you should thank me), a cloyingly cheesy cover of “I Will Always Love You” by Janet Lee Davis (which Droid sent to me via email about a year ago when I was looking into connections between Bam Bam and Fever Pitch, primarily for my research into early reggaeton history).

I finish with a couple “reggaeton” / “underground” pistas — c/o Daddy Playero — both inspired by (and sampling from) the Bam Bam / Pitch material. Those riddims became major sample sources for proto-reggaeton producers in the early&mid-90s, right alongside the (now better known / more synonymous) Dem Bow. Likewise, Holland’s bubbling scene has fixated on the Bam Bam as sample source. Not only are a good number of standard bubbling loops derived from the Bam Bam, but I remain totally tickled by the anonymous (to me anyhow) producer who decided to interpolate a couple measures of Bam Bam in his MSN messenger remix (which also made an appearance in my full-length Blogariddims mix). I drop in this final bit right at the end, ramping up the tempo from a steady 100+ to around 140 before crashing out with a reverbed landing on that original Fulsom guitar chord. Bam is right!

You gotta hear it in context, natch, so gwaan and grab Blogariddims 50 right now (& maybe the other 49 while you’re at it). Still, for anyone who wants to hear the mini-mega-mix it on its own, here it is:

      >> wayne&wax, “bam bam big!” (mini-mega-mix) [16mb / 320k]
      

Blogariddims done! Long live Blogariddims!

Here’s the full list of final episode contributors, for those wanting to peruse tracklists and notes and such. Fine company, I have to say –

0- Droid Intro
1- Autonomic (6.01)
2- JEPM (eden + meme) (8:41)
3- Matt B (6:33)
4- Rambler (7:09)
5- Wayne (7:00)
6 - Droid (7:44)
7- Gutta (6:02)
8- Heatwave (6:04)
9- Hal (8.01)
10- Flack (6:15)
11– Slug/Droid outro

/fin

The sad part: this was another woefully underattended concert. The Atlas is a good venue, comparatively intimate for an auditorium setting, but Saturday night went beyond intimate. “Small crowd, huh?” Harper laughed. “Let’s hope y’all know how to clap loud and fast.”

Still, the sub-50-percent capacity did little to dampen the spirits of the group. Harper is luminous in a trio—his accompaniment hard and tight, his brushwork impressionistic and masterful—but thoroughly unleashed once the full sextet is onstage. With fireworks on the tom-toms, he punctuates his players’ solos in all the right places, challenging them to match him flourish for flourish, and in his hands, a standard like Bobby Timmons‘ “Moanin’” becomes something else entirely—as he barrels through the four-beat swing, his hands blurring before your eyes, you can’t help but feel that the song will never be the same.

On tenor sax, Dayna Stevens has the hoarse smokiness of a low-range Paul Desmond, and his interchange with Bruce Harris (trumpet) is funky, sensitive, and graceful. The other players—Jon Notar on piano, D.C. native Ameen Saleem on bass, and Jean-Marie Collatin on assorted percussion—form a tight unit with a slick, easy response to the histrionic virtuosity of their leader. Also nice: the full dynamic range, even when down-tempo (cf. “I’ve Never Been in Love Before”).

They wound down the set with “All Praise Is to God” (a Harper original), “Tamisha” (a Saleem original), a piano-led “Amazing Grace,” Ruben Brown’s “Float Like a Butterfly” (not a bad tagline for this combo, come to think of it), and a few others that escape the memory.  There wasn’t a doubter in the house. But the house, after all, was small.

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Model Gabriel Aubry managed to find the time to accompany his baby mama actrress Halle Berry to ELLE Magazine’s event last night in Beverly Hills. I’m told Gabe just released an album. The reason you haven’t heard about it is because nobody cares.

I hear actrees/singer Jada Pinkett-Smith didn’t attend Tyler Perry’s bash this weekend because she refused to cross the WGA picket line. Singer Usher also didn’t attend for the same reason. Good for them! Not everybody cares about being seen. Writers are the life blood of television and movies. Without them we wouldn’t have great shows such as “The Game.” I also received another email from a former Tyler Perry extra who said she had a check stub to prove Perry low balls his extras. But I don’t want to beat that dead horse. We already know Perry is cheap, which is why he built that studio here instead of Hollywood where he would have no choice but to unionize his sets.

Don’t Idris Elba and Thandie Newton make a cute couple? The two attended the LA premiere of the movie Rocknrolla last night. But not together.

Some cougars have no shame. They say director Gina Prince-Bythewood showed up at the LA movie premiere for “The Secret Life Of Bees” WITH teen actor Tristan Wilds on her arm. We’re hoping that’s not true.

Actresses Eva Pigford, Jill Marie Jones and Sanaa Lathan attended the premiere. I was very impressed with Sanaa’s work in “The Family That Preys”. Maybe she can give Gabrielle Union acting lessons.

Even though she’s beginning to show her age, Nia Long is nothing short of spectacular!

Photos: Wireimage/Getty