Against All Odds

Just a quick one tonight:

My favorite heavy rock blog, Ray’s Realm, recently pointed me toward a beautiful, mind-blowing 2007 heavyass release by Maryland’s AGAINST NATURE called Anxiety of Influence. Oh boy: 2 tracks, both 24+ minutes long. Contemplative, definitely. Hypnotic, perhaps – but this ain’t no drone-doom by a long shot. These are really well-paced, thoughtfully-constructed prog guitar suites, rockin’ dark and hard and smooth, from unique riff/gtr idea to unique riff/gtr idea, in a manner more akin to a 1/2 tempo CAPTAIN BEYOND than any OM. And when they start quoting Dave Brubeck’s “Take Five” . . . well, doncha just know this be doom of a different color. Actually saw these guys play recently, opening for London’s mighty PAGAN ALTAR, and they didn’t leave much of an impression either way. BUT hey, they weren’t doing either of these monumental tracks! Definitely deserves to be shoe-horned into my Top Rockin’ Releases of 2007 list.

And how amazing is this: they’ve gone and made the whole shebang freely downloadable – ok, “donation optional” – on their website. Yes, all you luddites who retain some vain hope that the entire major label music industry isn’t going the fuck under (hurray!) in the wake of all this “illegal” information being passed easily through cyberspace . . . well, this eve, your downloads are GUILT-FREE! Though, if you’re like me, you’ll click and follow their $10 PayPal link.

Pickin’ My Brains Out

I’m ruminating on the BANJO this eve. It’s got a real nice sound, the BANJO does: brittle, metallic, hollow-toned and bone dry. Dry like the way my skin usedta feel after spending too much time playing basketball under the hot SoCal sun, in the face of them nasty Santa Ana winds. You know: face feels tight as a drum, and when you smile, lips crack and ooze a bead of blood. Yep, the BANJO sound has a dry, cracked, blood oozing sound.

BANJOS have always been on the periphery of my vision. One of my first memories is of my dad’s BANJO – one of them 4-string, tenor types – rusting out in our garage. Never heard him play it, but it got me pondering what it might sound like, in the right hands. As a little kid, watching cornball Hee Haw TV reruns – ol’ Roy Clark was always front and center, soloing madly on his trusty BANJO. Yeah all his pickin’ & grinnin’ always got me jumpin’ and stompin’ like a little freakazoid. And of course, there were those adolescent, post-soccer victory lunches at the local Shakey’s Pizza Parlour: sharing a pitcher of A&W rootbeer with shin-guarded pals and oogling the guy dressed in cheap, faux-Victorian barrelhouse get-up, as he clawed out Scott Joplin’s “The Entertainer” on an out-of-tune BANJO in time with a player-piano. Ya see, I just couldn’t shake the BANJO if I tried.

The following fine tunes are only a tiny sampling of the 1000 or so BANJO tunes you just gotta hear before they lay you to rest down in the churchyard. Feel free to point out your own favorites. I’d love to hear em, especially the way I’m feeling tonight.

OBRAY RAMSAY – “Cold Rain and Snow” (from The Music Never Stopped: The Roots of the Grateful Dead CD on Shanachie Records, 1995): An early 60’s classic from the mountains of North Carolina, some of ya’ll will know this from the myriad of versions THE GRATEFUL DEAD waxed throughout their long career. Obray’s high lonesome croon and 3-finger picking crawls down my collar toward my heart like it must’ve to Jerry Garcia’s once, all them years ago.

CLIVE PALMER & BOB DEVEREUX – “D Tune” (from the Suns & Moons LP on Rainyday Records, 1978) Clive’s best known for his involvement with the INCREDIBLE STRING BAND and the great CLIVE’S ORIGINAL BAND, but he’s done a slew of other worthy banjo recordings which explore the edwardian popular songbook in that intentionally stiff, proper English style of his. Here he offers up a more fluid, circular mode of melodic playing that, when I listen closely, makes the floral-print wallpaper turn into spinning pinwheels before my very eyes.

STEELEYE SPAN – “Blackleg Miner” (from the Hark! The Village Wait LP on Chrysalis Records, 1970) One of the first I ever heard by these Brits, and still among my most favorite. That’s Terry Woods on 5-string banjo – he’d go on to play in THE WOODS BAND and, a decade later, the freakin’ POGUES. What a perfect instrument to ram home the no-retreat union miner strike message laid out here. God I love them harsh downstrokes he punctuates the twangin’ riff with throughout.

JIM KWESKIN – “Blue Skies” (from the Jim Kweskin Lives Again LP on Mountain Road Records, 1978) This old Irving Berlin chestnut never sounded so bittersweet. Recorded around the time of Mel Lyman’s death (following years of protracted sickness), I read this as Jim’s packet of good tidings to his old harmonica player, well-loved friend, and almighty figurehead of the cult to which he belonged. Though I could be wrong. Gonna post long ‘n’ hard about this Kweskin guy, as soon as I can find my kazoo.

Pig State Unplugged

Beneath my other life/façade, I spend a heck of a lot of time listening to both British and American FOLK MUSICS. Yes, the scrapings of strings, the wheezings of squeezeboxes, and the howling of love/death letter poems from Sussex to the Mississippi Delta, from Co. Clare to the Appalachians, and then back again. It’s both the artistic heritage of our common people and the collective musical fart of our senile forefathers, and boy it sure sounds/smells good to these ears/nostrils. Expect me to elaborate and pontificate loudly about it all on this here blog throughout 2008. But for now, I’ll direct you toward a few recent YouTube clips that sum it up better than I can right this minute. Do meet

MARTIN CARTHY. This guy is the living, breathing embodiment of the entire Brit-folk revival. The man has dedicated his life toward giving flesh and blood life to the words running up and down the Jungian backbone of so, so many archetypal folk songs. Plus: he spent some real quality time blastin’ eardrums in England’s longest-running electric folk trip of them all, STEELEYE SPAN. I was all set to see Martin play solo recently at the Cecil Sharp House in North London (what better setting?), but work called and I ended up spending the eve on an acute psychiatric ward instead. Sigh.

TONY HALL. Screw all them Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood paintings in London’s National Gallery, it’s Tony whose the real fuckin’ British national treasure. His instrument of choice is the melodeon, and his playing exemplifies the kind of beautifully rough-hewn trad style thay first drew me to this music – and the kind of playing that’s sadly overlooked by so many of today’s hipster “free folk” musicians. His classic Fieldvole Music LP was reissued on CD by the amazing Free Reed label (more on them later) last year, but as you can see Tony’s still alive and well, and still clickin’ and clackin’ with the best of em.

SPOT/ALBERT. Since there ain’t no CHARLIE PATTON on YouTube, it’s SPOT who’s stealing the mixed-race spotlight tonight. Any reader of my blog knows SPOT more for his plug-in-and-off-ya-go SST productions from the first half of the 80’s. But he’s also a real talented player of most any instrument that straps vibrating strings over a hollow body of wood. SPOT/ALBERT is his latest duo, pairing this mulatto wonder with Cuban-American bodhrán player Albert Alfonso. They usually play Celtic music but tonight they’re feeding the maniacal audience with a little taste of TX blues. Can’t wait for their latest CD to go public.

This One Goes Up To Eleven: Top Rockin’ Releases of 2007

2007: yeah not a bad year at all in which to have lost just a little more of my precious hearing. Here’s hoping I stumble upon another 11 this worthy in 2008!

01. THE HIDDEN HAND – The Resurrection of Whiskey Foote (Southern Lord Records): Wino & co. dug deeeeeep into their Confederate roots to pull out a heavy rock odyssey of Homeric proportions. Though this band may be dust, it’s a heady epitaph they’ve left us with.

02. ELOPE – 9 Distilled Dreams (Gravitation Records): Hot tip from the folks at WORDY DIVA. Just gorgeous, long-gone stoner ballads from this otherwise hard-rockin’ Swedish trio, who gotta be the best songwriters amongst the current crop of bearded, bell-bottomed Scandinavian bands going. THE SOUNDTRACK OF OUR LIVES included.

03. AGNES STRANGE – Strange Flavour (Rev-Ola): ‘07 reissue of a great, lost ‘76 UK private press. What STATUS QUO woulda sounded like doing a HAWKWIND/PINK FAIRIES tribute rec! The perfect soundtrack for walking up endless flights of piss-stained stairs in the bit of council-estate West London I spend so many of my waking hours.

04. GREG GINN & THE TAYLOR TEXAS CORRUGATORS – Bent Edge (SST Records): 70 minutes of ornery, cantankerous walkin’ blues/jazz instrumentals from a man whose name was once synonymous with suburban hardcore punk. A personal reinvention via gtr if ever there was one.

05. BRANT BJORK & THE BROS – Somera Sól (Duna Records): Desert monstergroove merchants now turbo-fueled by drummer Alfredo Hernandez. For me, BBB beats QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE every day of the week.

06. FATSO JETSON – Live (Cobraside): Best damn hard blues rock band EVER made up of martians posing as overweight humans beings. And finally caught live, with every alien tongue a-lolling. Note: the gatefold LP inner photo (showing off their very personal music shrine) has gotta be the only one on the planet to feature SACCHARINE TRUST’s Worldbroken LP. Yeah!

07. PAT TODD & THE RANKOUTSIDERS – Outskirts of Your Heart (Rankoutsider Records): Pat finally put his LAZY COWGIRLS to rest for good, only to come up with the best damn platter (a double CD) of his howlin’ career. Country & Western the way it ought to be played – i.e., with a pint of whiskey in it’s belly and rocked out as if by THE RAMONES. Yikes it’s hot hot hot.

08. STINKING LIZAVETA – Scream of the Iron Iconoclast (Monotreme Records): The most powerful instrumental doom-jazz trio on the planet today, an utterly gone live experience, and a Philly cultural institution. Better believe this is all steak, and no cheese.

09. GEORGE BRIGMAN – Rags in Skull (Bona Fide Records): I don’t care if this “shoulda been better” – it’s the first new George B. rec in like 2 decades! I’ll take him any way he wants to deliver. Here, the tunes are good and he’s still singing with that bitchen baritone-Zappa voice and playing with that wild Tony McPhee-gtr tone of his. Maryland oughta be proud of this guy’s bedroom prog/blues peculiarisms.

10. MOUNTAIN – Masters of War (Megaforce): Hot tip from RAY’S REALM. The best heavy rock n roll gtr/voice jumbo combo platter of all time, Mr. Leslie West, returns to shoot life up the backside of a dozen of Mr. Bob Dylan’s tunes. And hey if Dylan was good enuf for THE JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE, THE 13TH FLOOR ELEVATORS and freakin’ NAZARETH, well then: he’s AOK in my book too! Esp. cool is Leslie’s heavyass rock take on “Mr. Tambourine Man” – amazing, as I betcha this guy worked up genteel, folk-rock versions of some of these very same tunes in the mid-60’s with his first band, THE VAGRANTS. A 1000 times greater a listening experience than you’d ever imagined this boomer could come up with so late in the game.

11. GENTLEMANS PISTOLS – Gentlemans Pistols (Rise Above Records): Boy did I ever listen to alot of blues-based rock in ‘07. And straight forward, UK hard boogie-blues shufflin’ you may think this to be, but their sledge hammer delivery sends this into the cheap seats every goddamn spin – and brings me crawling back on my belly like a kingsnake, day after day. Shit, the singer even attempts to revive the ghost of SAVOY BROWN’s Chris Youlden – like it was cool to do so! Precisely what this fair island needs to get it’s musical shit back on the right track for 2008.