Atlantic/Stax Rhythm & Blues: That Old Black Magic - Tiny Grimes Quintet

"That Old Black Magic" - Tiny Grimes Quintet

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/that-old-black-magic-remastered/824781926?i=824781934

Recorded in New York, December 30, 1947

I enjoy Tiny Grimes's "Midnight Special" and Joe Morris's "The Applejack" a lot, but if I had to pick one of Atlantic's early instrumentals, it would be this one. Grimes manages to extract some beautiful tones out of his guitar to provide a dream-like atmosphere along with some great horn-guitar dialog throughout the song. Yet, the best part is how it nicely balances that cool, soothing sound of the horns/guitar with the simple but tough hammering of the piano riff throughout the song, allowing it to have quite a kickass bottom to boot while making its general point. A very enjoyable instrumental as a whole: it may sound a bit dated, but there is at least some real magic to the elegant rhythmic simplicity of this song that I find very enduring.

Verdict: Decent

Atlantic/Stax Rhythm & Blues: Joe Morris - Lowe Groovin'

"Lowe Groovin'" - Joe Morris

Apple Music: https://music.apple.com/us/album/lowe-groovin/1405581026?i=1405582605

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/track/5yY7DHBYfxNceVtOz0bCu2?si=5e44b180cf5a4811

Recorded in New York, December 12, 1947

Perhaps the first significant landmark single on the label, and if you are familiar with a lot of '50s Atlantic singles, you can hear how much this rich, gritty, horn-based sound would be the bedrock of the many classics to come. Yet, this jazzy piece of rhythm and blues is probably not very impressive today: it has a decent swingin' horn riff and enough of a lazy strut to keep your attention going, but as far as '40s jazz and old-school R&B goes, the excitement level and compositional substance here do not begin to compete with contemporary classics like Wynonie Harris's "Good Rockin' Tonight," Dizzy Gillespie's "Manteca," Louis Jordan's "Barnyard Boogie," or Amos Milburn's "Chicken Shack Boogie." R&B as a genre had still not reached its summit, but at this point, the label was still more focused on getting itself financially and artistically stable rather than competing with the trailblazers of the day. With this context in mind, it will be easier to appreciate the six instrumentals opening the Atlantic Rhythm and Blues compilation: none of them are major stunners, but they do have their place when learning about the label's history. Listen to this to pay tribute to the beginnings of Atlantic Records, but for true gut pleasure, move on to "Drinkin’ Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" and beyond in the history of the label.

Verdict: Decent

 January 2024 Overview

Writer's Check-in

It feels strange that I even write here that I have not regularly written here in 7 months. I mean, does anyone need a monthly overview from me if nothing has been done? Is making something like this too egotistical on my part? Maybe it is, but I enjoy writing these, so I won't stop doing them anytime soon. To be fair, with trying to recover my love of music (which has been going quite well, though we are not fully back to it), it has been hard to get the motivation to get back into writing, but I think this month I'm going to try to at least try to write any rough thoughts that I have on here. Anyways, it's not like this is serious writing: if it sucks, nobody will truly care, and if it is good, my friends will at least get a kick out of it. So, that's what is new.

In other news, music listening has been a bit of a rocky road this month. For the first half of the month, I enjoyed listening to Nico, Etta James, Echo & The Bunnymen, Slayer, Feelies, and many others. Yet, in the middle of the month, I felt I was forcing myself to listen to music when I wasn't really enjoying it, so I decided to take a break for a week and not listen to music, which meant forcing myself to not listen to it even if I felt like it. Seems like a rather psychotic exercise (but hey, a third of the things I do seem psychotic to outsiders, so it's not like it matters), but in the end, it worked out nicely. It gave me a nice period to explore more of my burgeoning hobbies of film and TV, and coming back, I feel I am enjoying it more. I am sure by the end of February and early March, I'll be back writing more ramblings about music and maybe even adding more about movies and TV in the process. So, for any of you still reading these, more stuff will be coming soon!

Best/Surprise/Disappointment

A bit of a new format for these overviews: instead of discussing statistics (which are soulless numbers anyway), I'll talk about, for music and movies, the best album/movie I consumed this month, the biggest (positive) surprise, and the most disappointing one. I'll also talk about whatever show I've been watching the most this month.

Music

Best Album: Crazy Rhythms - The Feelies

I didn't find them that interesting upon first listen, but after enough patience, I absolutely love these guys. Even with their rigid guitar style, they were masters of build-ups, pop hooks, and sustaining tension and excitement while being an ultra-tight and colorful group. You can hear how this album is the roots of so much college rock in the 80s and beyond, and yet, it is absolutely timeless. It's strange to me that a band with songs are perfect as "Crazy Rhythms", "Fa La Cela", and "Forces at Work" are not hugely popular: yes, this is an artistic exercise, but with their love for Beatlesque pop and the rock n roll spirit, the entertainment value is quite high. A reviewer once said this band stumbled into the "cosmic Rosetta stone", and that was exactly right. Definitely one of the greatest guitar albums of the era.

Most Surprising Album: The Marble Index - Nico

I didn't find this album all that impressive when I first heard it, but now, I can really understand the power of the transcendental state it can induce. The songs blend into each into one dark, disturbing, but hypnotic drone that manages to push this sort of chamber folk in the rawest, most intense direction possible. "Frozen Warnings" alone is one of the most mind-boggling tracks with those icy, choppy piano patterns. Highly recommend this album (along with Chelsea Girls, Desertshore, and The End) to anybody interested in 60s music at all: you simply CANNOT get this type of vibe and spirit from anyone else. 

Most Disappointing Album: Joan Baez - Joan Baez

I thought listening to this landmark album would deepen my appreciation, but instead, I found that I enjoy this even less than before. Joan's voice is gorgeous, no doubt, but to perform each song with such stiffness and pretentiousness is almost insulting to the rough, dirty spiritual perfection of the folk sources it pulls from. No wonder it didn't take much for Dylan to wipe her out in the public consciousness.

Movies

Best Film: Life and Death of Colonel Blimp - Powell and Pressburger

A movie I think gets closest to being what Arthur was to rock music, it manages to take a sort of stiff old-school morality and make us not only empathize with it but weep for its demise. Gorgeous sets and color, charming story and characters, and many powerful scenes. It sprawls for nearly three hours, and you just want to bask in its grandness and beauty. Even Candy himself is just a loveable fool and idealist that, when you really feel his heart in some scenes, it can make you tear up. One reviewer on RYM put it best when he said that the two storylines by themselves, the need for uncompromising brutality to win WWII and the life of a British military man and aristocrat, are not very interesting, but putting them together, it become one of the greatest statements of the old vs. new world ever made. And the movie is pretty funny too!

Most Surprising Film: Burn After Reading - the Coen brothers

Most people seem to regard this as a weak effort after No Country For Old Men, but for the life of me, I cannot understand why. It has a beautifully intricate plot, hilarious dialog, a great cast, and a sharp message that conveys a lot of bad people just unfortunately happen to be bad people who do bad things (though that doesn't mean we should try to understand their motivations anyways). I understand that, compared to the world-weary and bleakness of No Country For Old Men, this one feels a little less deep, and this movie fails to be a masterpiece because, unlike Miller's Crossing or The Big Lebowski, they fail to put a central figure within the chaos to help the viewer make sense of what happened. Yet, it is still an excellent movie that I think anyone can enjoy, and it is absolutely essential for fans of the Coens.

Most disappointing film: The Killer - David Fincher

The real tragedy of this film is that the first 30 minutes are actually excellent, and if you made those first 30 minutes a standalone movie, it would have worked a lot better. Yes, it is your typical Fincher, but that first quarter was filled with some interesting psychology and philosophy about life, beautiful camera shots, and a great lead actor, set, and script to build up to a climax you wouldn't have expected to occur. The rest of the movie, however, just wasn't all that great with your typical revenge plot: a bit better than your average movie of that type due to Fincher's unrelentless cynicism and dark mental explorations, but it was all too predictable that sort of fizzled out. It will be a better watch than most of the crap you'll find on Netflix, but I would pretty much recommend this to people who love Fincher's style.

TV Show

Curb Your Enthusiasm - Larry David

Anybody who knows me knows I'm a very big Seinfeld fan, and I've been recently doing a proper overview of Larry's career, starting with Seinfeld all the way to Curb, and it's incredible how many great ideas he had in him. I will say that while Larry didn't deliver a single season less than great starting with Season 3 of Seinfeld all the way to Season 7 of Curb, featuring his gifts in dark comedic psychologisms, plot weaving, sharp cynical worldviews, minutiae analysis, memorable characters, and personal writing in all of its hilarious glory (and pretty innovative too, since pretty much most sitcom comedies these days are either derived from the Seinfeld formula or Curb formula). He managed to, at times in these seasons, transcend comedy and almost make it into something much more tense and revealing explorations of his inner hatreds and fears, which is why his strange forms of humanism penetrate so deeply into our hearts. 

I think around Season 8 of Curb you can feel he started to finally exit his initial peak, sort of like what Nashville Skyline was to Bob Dylan or Goat Head Soup was to the Stones, which was still quite excellently written and done but lacked a strong sense of purpose and sharpness. To his genius, he corrected it with the next two seasons with wackier plots that helped the show feel fresh and new again (the strong writing helped to counterbalance the waning of the show's improvisational genius). Season 111, however, was the season that really made me lose faith that Larry really had more greatness inside him. Curb's form of cringe comedy only really works if the actual substance and writing behind it is strong, but without it, it just ends up being cringy and unwatchable. I'll admit there was one truly great episode in the mix ("The Watermelon"), but the rest of the season felt forced, overproduced, and tiresome in a way that left a very bad taste in my mouth.

However, today Larry is coming out with the first episode of his final season of Curb. I think Larry himself realized how weak the last season was, and decided to leave before it was too late. I am a bit worried about how this will turn out. If anything, I would like him to depart from his usual formula and go for something more reflective or at least something we wouldn't expect. Even if it is a failure, an intriguing failure is a more interesting way to end off than with a generic boredom. We'll see tonight when it ends up being.

Monthly Playlist

Here is the link to this month's playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/4v5NejORehxgI1LXsBbEHe?si=521947c9d49742cb&pt=ab7e9ae4b67c5bd1ba10550a0df29bb5

I'm pretty happy with this one overall, even if it is slightly skewed toward Echo & The Bunnymen and Randy Newman over everyone else. Still, I think this playlist captures my state of mind throughout the month quite well, and I think the apocalyptic cynicism of stuff like PiL's "Swan Lake" and Iggy Pop's "Neighborhood Threat" will complement nicely with the optimistic spiritual glow of Randy's "Birmingham" and Hackett's "Every Day". Moreover, the playlist has an unusual tilt for me towards the '80s and '90s, which should hopefully make it a bit more interesting than what you regularly expect from my playlists. As for the playlist's title (I'll Make A Change Into Something The Same), you'll have to listen to the thing to find the reference. Good luck hunting for it!

Here is the tracklist:

1. "Anywhere I Lay My Head" - Tom Waits
2. "A Promise" - Echo & The Bunnymen
3. "The Game" - Echo & The Bunnymen
4. "Cissy Strut" - The Meters
5. "I'd Rather Go Blind" - Etta James
6. "Stone To The Bone" - James Brown
7. "She Smiled Sweetly" - The Rolling Stones
8. "Proud Mary" - Ike & Tina Turner
9. "Frozen Warnings" - Nico
10. "Lament" - Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
11. "Neighborhood Threat" - Iggy Pop
12. "The Shape I'm In" (The Last Waltz version) - the Band
13. "Midlife Crisis" - Faith No More
14. "Marie" - Randy Newman
15. "Milk Cow Blues" - Sleepy John Estes
16. "Bring On The Dancing Horses" - Echo & The Bunnymen
17. "John Riley" - The Byrds
18. "Raised Eyebrows" - The Feelies
19. "Crazy Rhythms" - The Feelies
20. "Pleasant Street" - Tim Buckley
21. "Hounds of Love" - Kate Bush
22. "Baltimore" - Randy Newman
23. "Every Day" - Steve Hackett
24. "Bastards of Young" - The Replacements
25. "Swan Lake" - Public Image Ltd.
26. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" - Bruce Springsteen
27. "Birmingham" - Randy Newman
28. "Alameda" - Elliott Smith
29. "She's Not There" - The Zombies
30. "How Could I Be Wrong" - The Auteurs
31. "What You're Doing" - The Beatles

That's all for now. Thanks to anybody who still reads these, and stay tuned for more ramblings and musings on this blog!

December 2023 Overview

December 2023

Writer's Check-in

Hello everyone, it's been a while. I wish I could say the reason that it's been so long was that I'd been working on other projects or devoted more time to listening to music for music's sake, but unfortunately, that was not the case. The real reason was that around mid-July, I simply lost interest in music...period. Seriously, as if I had caught some horrible disease that started showing symptoms overnight, I flipped from song to song, artist to artist, album to album, even trying to get something out of music videos, live performances, and movie soundtracks, to absolutely no avail: nothing was doing anything for me emotionally anymore.

I've fought some difficult mental battles before, but this was a beast of an issue that I had no idea how to fight. Initially, I just tried to pretend that the problem didn't exist and kept listening to music as usual, but I think that ended up making things worse. You have to understand that this took place last summer, and last summer I was getting paid for doing absolutely nothing. All I basically did all day was sit and listen to music for hours on end, and inertness combined with overdosing on a certain activity is a recipe for disaster, especially when that activity is the center of your life. So, as I was sitting there doing nothing but listening to a bunch of songs that weren't moving me at all, the frustration started to intensify and morphed into a mild depression, where I had pretty much relegated myself to solely listening to three albums: Ocean Rain, Low, and Heroes. These three albums I listened to at a fairly unhealthy degree, squeezing every drop of enjoyment I could possibly get out of them before hitting rock bottom with music. And then, once my brain started to finally reject the 20th listened to "Always Crashing The Same Car", I finally hit a point where listening to music ceased to be an activity I wanted to do.

This is not to say that I didn't have some good experiences with music in this horrible interim: Elizabeth Cotten, Parliament-Funkadelic, Jimmie Rodgers, Toots & The Maytals, Louis Armstrong, and the Impressions kept me company in the periods where music occasionally started to do something for me again. Yet, my workload last semester destroyed my hope of it returning to normal: having 12-16 hour workdays drained whatever dopamine and serotonin I had left in my brain, and music was not able to properly gain a recovery for months.

In the meantime, I had to have something keep me going, and what worked as a formidable replacement was TV and movies. I decided to rewatch Seinfeld from beginning to end, and that provided a nice dose of artistic substance in my life that made this period bearable. From there, rewatching Wolf of Wall Street and then seeing Killers of the Flower Moon in theaters made me interested in properly establishing films as a second hobby, and I did. From November to December, I watched 30 movies, mostly revisiting old favorites (Taxi Driver, The Godfather I-II, Goodfellas, Pulp Fiction, After Hours, Fargo, etc.) or finding new ones (The Big Lebowski, The Conversation, Scarface, Barton Fink, Rumble Fish, etc.). It has been great exploring movies so far as a serious hobby, and I plan to continue my exploration to keep it as a great second hobby (right now, I plan to rewatch Reservoir Dogs and watch Casino and From Dusk Till Dawn for the first time). I might even start writing about it here, who knows?

Still, nothing can truly replace what music can do for me, and miraculously enough, my urge to rewatch this wonderful scene from The Big Lebowski made me want to listen to "The Man In Me" once again, and it was, by far, the best experience I had listening to music in nearly 5 months. So, thanks to the blessings from El Duderino himself (no, I clearly DON'T believe in the whole brevity thing!), the recovery of my interest in music began. It has been rocky so far trying to get it back, with many highs and lows, but I can say quite confidently that I have not lost it forever, and at this rate, my intense love for it will be fully back by the end of this month (and if it is not back by at least February, I am probably dead or something).

Not the cheeriest subject to write about on New Year's Day, I know, but hey, I won't say I regret this period ever happened. It was a big period of growth for me personally with all sorts of things, and developing another hobby to complement music is certainly not something that I would claim was a bad result (especially since people watch movies much more than they listen to music these days, so hey, not a bad conversation starter, right?). And at the end of the day, I am slowly getting my love for music back, so not an unhappy ending to this story thankfully.

As for this blog, I will probably start to actually begin writing pretty regularly here whenever I feel I am ready to get that going again. It may just be some random thoughts, or it may be something more structured, frankly, I have no idea. All I know is that writing about music keeps me sane and fulfilled, so I'm gonna keep using this blog for as long as I can. In the meantime, here are my top 10 albums of 2023 along with my playlist for December 2023. Thank you to all my family and friends who kept going during this time, and happy new year to everybody!

My Top 10 Albums of 2023

1. 1928 Sessions - John Hurt is more of a grandfather figure to me than just a mere "favorite musician," and the healing power of these gorgeous songs only grows with time. "Louis Collins" is not just my favorite song of all time: it's become intertwined with who I am and who I hope to be with the time I have here on Earth. I thank god every day that his music has survived nearly a century because I'm not sure how I could live without these 13 gems of folk music.

2. The Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings - unfortunately, to no fault of most modern listeners, people are not exposed to why people really worship Louis Armstrong: the godly trumpeter who, with his skilled band members like the god-among-men Johnny Dodds, not only laid the foundation for jazz as we know it but also made music that sounds just as beautiful and timeless as it did in the 20s (provided you can deal with poorer recording quality compared to modern standards). Of course, nobody should go right into the complete sessions: listen to the compilation I linked before touching his complete sessions. Yet, every appreciator of the legacy of 20th-century popular Western music shouldn't die without once sitting through the entirety of the complete sessions, where nearly every recording brims with so much energy that it can add a few extra years to your life. People tend to note "Potato Head Blues" as one of the great masterpieces of the 1920s (and rightfully so), but really, nearly all of this material I can say about, from the fluttering "Cornet Chop Suey" to the playful "Ory's Creole Trombone" to the serenity of "West End Blues". Genuinely cannot praise this stuff enough: historical context be damned, this is music that gives people a reason to live another day.

3. Folksongs And Instrumentals With Guitar - there is no way a fan of Mississippi John Hurt could not learn to love Elizabeth Cotten and vice versa: listening to them is like sitting right on their front porches, letting the honest, pure beauty of their music flow through as they melt away your troubles with love and compassion. I loved "Freight Train" the moment I first heard it, but the album itself is a wonderful piece of music: samey and repetitive, sure (Cotten never built up a collection of great songs as large as John Hurt unfortunately), but there's not a single moment on this record that does not soothe the soul in some way. Whether it be the grandmotherly empathy in her voice or the beautiful chord changes in her songs, her music will find a way into your heart and keep it warm even in the toughest of storms.

4. The Best of Blind Blake - my first musical love was Scott Joplin, so it makes sense that this sort of music was extremely easy for me to get into, especially by the greatest ragtime blues player who ever lived. Not much to say about this music besides if you find "West Coast Blues" as much of a howling good times as I do, you'll love every single danceable ragtime number he's put out. Musically rich and friendly despite the wildness, this man is proof that rock 'n' roll starts when you want it to start.

5. The Best of Charley Patton - I've enjoyed the hell out of a lot of Delta blues in 2023, so let me sum it all up by putting my favorite Delta bluesman, a voice so shredding that it can still kick the bejesus outta you. I think the coolest part about Charley Patton is his guitar work though: nearly all of his songs are catchy as hell, and they're all catchy in strange but compelling ways, like the way "Mississippi Bo Weavil Blues" literally sounds like a swarm of insects ravaging a cotton field or how cocky the guitar kicks along the fiddle on "Going To Move To Alabama" or how the anguished riff of "I'm Going Home" literally sounds like a pained journey up above. Lots of cherish in these recordings that sound quite timeless if you can get past the shitty sound quality: you'll not get this vibe from anywhere else.

6. "Ragtime Texas" - Henry Thomas was an excellent performer with his own warm, grizzly charisma and beautiful panflute playing to boot, but this probably wouldn't matter as much if he started recording music in the late '30s or '40s when he had much more competition in this sphere. Even in the '20s, there were dozens of performers like him who could compete with him in terms of personality and musicianship (and many that were far superior). The real reason that he found an audience back then and many still listen to him is that he was one of the last practitioners of folk music before the recording era, dating to the late 1800s and beyond. It's the perfect time capsule, one that offers much of the spirit of a long-gone era but seamlessly mixed with the more accessible, commercial folk styles of the 1920s. This makes these recordings quite accessible if you are used to the sound of pre-war music, and given how gorgeous all of these songs are ("Fishing Blues" and "Bob McKinney" are some of my favorite songs of all time), they are really worth your while beyond the historical context. Folk is the closest thing to a spiritual experience you can get from popular Western music, and listening to this, you realize how much of it came naturally to these guys, as if they had a boundless supply of heart and soul that allowed them to glow a century later. Absolutely indispensable material.

7. Funky Kingston - Otis Redding was a figure whose style was so organic to every person's raw essence, but nobody could truly replicate the spiritual explosion of hearing him perform: most people simply do not feel on such a level. Yet, Frederick "Toots" Hibbert probably got closer than anybody to not just recreating that magic but also building upon it in a genre with as much emotional immediacy as soul music: reggae. It's this glorious synthesis that makes Toots & The Maytals my favorite reggae band, one that invokes your inner strength and grit to attain that better tomorrow they sing about. 

The original tracklisting of this masterpiece was great, but really, it is best to take in all of the peak material of around 1973-1974, so hearing the compilation tracklist (starting with "Time Tough") is the right way to do it. Every single song on this record is a perfect jewel of funky soulful reggae, soothing your worst fears while making you want to get up on your feet and groove to it. "Pressure Drop" and the title track (deservingly) get most of the accolades, but something like "Pomps & Pride" is simply one of the great humanist songs of the decade. It is that song that kept the fire of music burning within me when I was afraid I would lose it forever, so I owe that song, and this record, a lot. Even beyond that personal significance, I think it's one of the most satisfying listening experiences a 70s record can offer you. They even make the cliched "Take Me Home, Country Roads" sound fresh and transcendent, and if that is not high praise, nothing is.

8. Ocean Rain - a new favorite that, as I mentioned before, was one of the records that kept me going in that initial dark period. Yet, I rarely hear this record mentioned at the same level as many post-punk classics like The Queen Is Dead, War, and Pornography when it really deserves the same level of acclaim. The album is so incredibly lush and ornate that you'll want to drown in its beauty, even if such a world could only exist within the recesses of Ian McCulloch's dreamy romantic mind. It is melodramatic and pompous in the best senses of those words, capturing that magical optimistic spirit of the '80s where you feel anything is possible, yet it feels like a deeply personal record, showing you monumentally beautiful feelings ("Silver"), disturbing inner turmoil ("Nocturnal Me"), gentle empathy ("My Kingdom"), and dreams that can sweep you off your feet and take you along with them ("The Killing Moon", one of the greatest songs of the entire decade). It is not a perfect album (the first side feels a bit lacking melodically compared to the perfection of the second), but it's one of the high peaks of post-punk that I think anyone can get into once Ian's charisma gets to you (and since his vocals are often quite sincere, I can't imagine many people feeling opposed to them).

9. Mothership Connection - one of the most important and iconic cultural artifacts of the 20th century doesn't need any of my praise to get people to listen to it. Hell, I went to a jazz bar a few days ago and the choruses to "Give Up The Funk" and "Mothership Connection" are so entrenched in Western culture that everybody knew them without knowing it came from this record. The album is so visceral, upfront, and straightforward with its genius that you almost forget the blood, sweat, and toil it would take to create something this musically immaculate, where every beat, rhythm, and rhyme is so perfectly funky and tight it seems like seamless music anyone can create. Every single dance album since tried to capture even a tenth of the personality and inspiration that George Clinton, Bernie Worrell, and the rest of the P-Funk empire possessed at this time, and who could blame many of them for failing at such a Herculean task? 

Yet, this is not an album to hold as a museum piece: I played this music in the car with many friends who had never heard of Parliament, and the smooth, bubbly seductiveness of "Supergroovalisticprosifunksication", "Handcuffs", and "Give Up The Funk" immediately won them over and got them interested in the group. This album is nearly everything I hold dear in music: understanding the real way to give people a good time is to speak to their little light under the sun, letting the love and groove flow organically to make friends with their listeners. This is one of those perfect masterpieces (among my top 10 albums of all time) that I really feel anyone can love and get them interested in what music is all about, and there is nothing more beautiful than that.

10. Low - the album that I found to be a dear friend and emotional support when things were really going south for me, and the perfect album to hear when your insides begin to fracture while the modern world continues to give false promises of a better tomorrow. Really, it is written for all of us, those who feel isolated and internally crumbling while the hustle bustle of modern happenings ceases to halt even for a moment. This album is one of those critical favorites that nothing new can be said about it, but that's what it meant to me when I really felt hopeless about music. I've always been a fan of it, but it took a personal crisis for me to really see what made it so special to begin with. It's funny how our appreciation of art sometimes requires us to improve as people, right?

So, those are the 10 albums that defined my year. I could have expanded this list to be much longer, but I think I gave a good enough picture of what I was listening to. 

Monthly Playlist

I've decided to start giving names to my playlists, so here it this month's, titled "From My Toes Up To My Ears" (guess which song it's from): https://open.spotify.com/playlist/0v0JkYg0qYnDbKvJhG6Wfd?si=68da7135c1a840dc

It's a nice little eclectic playlist containing bits of dub/reggae, post-punk, big beat, jazz fusion, funk, country, Dylan, 60s girl groups, thrash metal, and all kinds of other things. It does have some longer songs (the second half of Tubular Bells, Miles Davis's "Right Off" from Jack Johnson, and Pink Floyd's "Dogs"), but I don't think anything on the playlist is inaccessible. So enjoy! Here is the track listing:

1. "The Man In Me" - Bob Dylan
2. "Hero Worship" - The B-52's
3. "Tubular Bells Pt. II" - Mike Oldfield
4. "It's Gonna Work Out Fine" - Ike & Tina Turner
5. "Giant Steps" - John Coltrane
6. "Amazing Journey" - The Who
7. "Funkier Than a Mosquita's Tweeter" - Ike & Tina Turner
8. "When It's Over" - Wipers
9. "My Life Is Right" - Big Star
10. "The Rumor" - The Band
11. "Something Happened To Me Yesterday" - The Rolling Stones
12. "Right Off" - Miles Davis
13. "Dogs" - Pink Floyd
14. "Hallowed Be My Name" - Alice Cooper
15. "Hello In There" - John Prine
16. "Sam Stone" - John Prine
17. "Good Old Music" - Funkadelic
18. "Setting Sun" - The Chemical Brothers
19. "Don't You Cry For Me" - Ronnie Lane
20. "These Days" - Nico
21. "Ball and Chain" - Big Brother & The Holding Company w/ Janis Joplin
22. "Revolution Rock" - The Clash
23. "That's All Right" - Arthur Crudup
24. "I'm Alone In The Wilderness" - Culture
25. "You Know You're A Man" - Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band
26. "Peace of Mind" - Boston
27. "Everything Turns Grey" - Agent Orange
28. "Solid Foundation" - The Congos
29. "Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again" - Bob Dylan
30. "Oh Yoko!" - John Lennon
31. "If You Want Blood (You've Got It)" - AC/DC
32. "I Like It Like That" - Chris Kenner
33. "Have A Cuppa Tea" - The Kinks
34. "Halloween" - Siouxsie & The Banshees
35. "King Tubby's Meets Rockers Uptown" - Augustus Pablo
36. "Tonight's The Night" - The Shrielles
37. "Teenage Wildlife" - David Bowie
38. "Hangar 18" - Megadeth
39. "Seven Seas" - Echo & The Bunnymen
40. "The Cutter" - Echo & The Bunnymen
41. "Pressure Drop" - Toots & The Maytals
42. "Waiting On A Friend" - The Rolling Stones

All right, that's all for now. Thank you everybody for reading and sharing this passion with me I'm slowly getting back. Happy new year everyone!

Song of the Day: Back in N.Y.C. - Genesis

Back in N.Y.C. - Genesis

 Song of the Day

Apple Music link: https://music.apple.com/us/album/back-in-n-y-c-2007-stereo-mix/358933158?i=358933179

Spotify link: https://open.spotify.com/track/6cOY9RoMaakpIlWrqHgwgp?si=d7ea410004174406

As much as I absolutely love and worship the British fantasy prog nirvanas of Foxtrot and Selling England By The Pound, The Lamb Lies Down Broadway is slowly becoming my favorite Genesis album. Of course, the reason this one took its time to really make its impact on me is the approach itself was bound to be enigmatic: the fairy tale sound and lyrical themes in their 1970-1973 albums were prisms for Gabriel to use to express his deeper feelings and fears about himself and the world around him, but the music and lyrics of Lamb were clearly aimed directly at exploring the crevices of Peter's subconscious in this highly complex and encoded rock opera that fans still struggle to decipher fully. That's why this album pushed me and so many away at first because you have to fully put yourself in his shoes to even understand what is going on, but the album transcends that problem by the sheer raw but subtle vocal power of Gabriel, the way he can make lyrics that sound so pretentious and obtuse on paper sound so personal and tear-inducingly beautiful. This is easily the most confessional album he ever made, and it is the sheer power of sincerity that pushes this album to such intense emotional heights.

Most of all, the rest of the band clearly understood this fact, and they worked hard to keep the melody and arrangement standards as high as they were on Foxtrot and Pound. This song, in particular, is the perfect demonstration of the magical synergy between Gabriel's thematic vision and the band's ability to build the musical world around it. Just hearing Banks's synth riff that opens "Back In N.Y.C." is enough to move me to tears. It is a cold and spacious sound that persists throughout this album, yes, but the riff's majestic shimmer is utterly cosmic and mystical, amplifying the spiritual effect of each and every verse Gabriel wrings out from the depth of his heart. It expresses such a transcendent but deeply humane feeling that I have no ability to put words to the power it has over me: it manages to be a very personal confession and a universalistic anthem of freedom that never fails to blow me away. And even if the rest of the song is not quite the same out-of-body experience, both the chillingly sinister overtones of the "cuddled the porcupine" and the bouncier "off we go" themes add even more emotional depth to the composition rather than take away from it. 

It is just such an incredible piece of work, yet just one among the many treasures that this album has to offer. Compared to other rock opera classics like The Wall, Lamb is much less accessible, but like Pete Townshend's rock opera masterpieces Tommy and Quadrophenia, it is better to listen more closely to the depth of emotion they attempt to express rather than try to make sense of something that was so personal to their authors. It really is one of the pinnacles of progressive rock in general, so I think everybody with even a passing interest in art-rock should give this album a try or two. It is rare that something so bombastic and ambitious can sound so intimate, and that is more than enough of a reason it should endure as the masterpiece that it is.

General Update and June 2023 Overview

General Update and June Overview

Writer's Check-in

Hello everyone! I know it's been a little too long since I have posted regularly about music, especially since this is about 13 days late. Somehow, it just didn't feel right to post about music for a little while, and since I already had a lot on my mind and just wanted to enjoy music as is for a while, I decided to hold off until I really wanted to get back into it. I will say these last 45 days or so have been a very reflective period, where I've taken time to really look back and think about whether the way I am living and doing things is right for me. Much of this was spurred on by watching Moonage Daydream, recommended to me by a very close friend, and in a way I can't express, it made me readjust my thinking in a healthier pattern and gave me clarity to really evaluate things. I've made drastic cuts to things I felt weren't doing much for me (I've already been minimally engaging with social media, and now I've really taken measures to cut myself off from a large part of the internet for good). I've begun to build up some habits I felt were lacking in my life (such as cooking, exercising, and just thinking more about my future in general). It's been a good period overall, and I've felt much better about trying to improve certain things than coasting through everything without thought.

As for the essay I wrote earlier this month, I'm aware that many of you might have been shocked and repulsed by it. It was written when I was feeling very depressed and emotional in general, very much a spur of the moment where I tried to get out a lot of the ideas and feelings that were in my head. I even considered taking it down since I don't think it really had a coherent message and might have been a bit too over-the-top, but I decided to keep it because it does, to a large extent, reflect how I feel about modern society. If it reads as a bunch of overdramatic tripe, just ignore it and feel free to even tell me such in the comments. If some people find it something they resonate with, that's great as well and more the reason I'll keep it up. It was certainly not what a lot of my friends were expecting, and if it rubbed any of you the wrong way, I apologize for that.

Yet, I still feel really deeply about the idea that this loss of humane ways of acting and living in the modern world, and it really is responsible for so many problems we see today, from political extremism to collective inaction to the mental health crisis. The thing that really bothers me is that this crisis seems to be something few people care about. People do see social media, extremism over moderation, and turf wars over empathy in personal relationships as the norm that should be upheld (even if people don't realize that they are upholding these things), and the fact that such a small number are talking about this core crumbling and degradation is concerning. On some level, I think everybody knows this is happening, but until enough people start to evaluate whether a good chunk of our modern innovations is actually improving society, I see no way of making serious progress in any sphere because if we aren't looking at things from the human perspective, what good will it do? I do honestly believe there might still be hope for a great "spiritual humanist" revolution, but as of now, it is still an idea that is not shared by many. At the very least, even if everything I am talking about is pure nonsense (and I am open to that being the case), it is better, for balance, to be a devil's advocate for a lot of these modern innovations than sing the same hosanna most people do these days. For what it's worth, the modern world has, at least, done one amazing thing: working on stopping a lot of racism, sexism, ableism, homophobia, and other forms of discrimination, and that is one improvement I am very, very thankful for.

In other news, as far as music writing goes, I've tried out way too many things with mixed success and satisfaction for me. Some have told me I should have stuck with some of those schedules for longer, but looking back, it seems the song of the day reviews were the most successful. So I think I am going to go back to those for now. I'll probably be writing two fully-fledged articles eventually (one on Otis Redding, the other on pre-war blues), but expect many casual reviews in the coming days.

So, I guess I am standing at the crossroads for many things in my life, but so are most of us, and I'm glad I even have an opportunity to be at such a point than having to plow through one path for the rest of my life without my own choice being involved.

Music Stats for June

Total Listening Time: 210 hours. Didn't think I'd ever hit such a number, but I'm also not surprised that it happened.

Top Artist: The Beach Boys. Revisiting one of my favorite bands ever will always be both fun and rewarding, especially since music tends to take on new meanings as you age and grow.

Top Album: The Complete Blind Willie Johnson. It's still my benchmark for sheer emotional expression in music, just because the slide guitar + vocal attack of Blind Willie Johnson is still so powerful even a whole century later. There has never been a song more direct and emotionally devastating than "Dark Was The Night - Cold Was the Ground", and it isn't even by far the most intense song he ever recorded. He also is probably the most accessible pre-war blues great to get into, so if you are interested in getting into classic folk and blues, this is an awesome place to start!

Top Song: "Wave" - Antonio Carlos Jobim. Whatever reservations I have about Jobim, I can't think of many songs that can soothe my nerves like this one. It's absolutely serene.

Video of the Month for June

"Have You Ever Loved A Woman" - Freddie King

I was listening to some Freddie King this month and decided to watch this video again, and oh man, is this an incredible performance. Maybe lacking in subtly for some, but listen, Freddie sings and sweats his heart out more than almost any electric bluesman and makes his guitar live and breathe like a human being, so why complain? This is absolutely incredible stuff, way more devastating than his original studio recording and makes you feel the electrifying power this guy had as a performer and musician. Most of all, it shows why Freddie King was the electric blues veteran to survive into the late 60s/early 70s and how could easily hold his own against the Rolling Stones, Allman Brothers Band, and Led Zeppelin in this highly competitive era. 

Articles & Reviews

Well, I started June with song reviews and then jumped to doing general music thoughts about all sorts of things. Here is everything I wrote this month:

Song Reviews

1. "Let The Mermaids Flirt With Me" - Mississippi John Hurt
2. "Hyperbolicsyllabicsesquedalymistic" - Isaac Hayes
3. "It's Too Soon To Know" - The Orioles
4. "Gee" - The Crows
5. "Crying In The Chapel" - The Orioles
6. "Money Honey" - Clyde McPhatter & The Drifters

Assorted Ravings and Rantings

1. June 9, 2023 Entry
2. June 10, 2023 Entry
3. June 11, 2023 Entry
4. June 12, 2023 Entry
5. June 14, 2023 Entry
6. June 17, 2023 Entry
7. June 23, 2023 Entry

Monthly Playlist for June

Here is the link to the June playlist: https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3b1xxccHe18yBxjQdMEPQ4?si=c87637adb574440e

The playlist should also reflect my growing interest in getting into jazz and bossanova, though much of it is still in the rock-blues-soul axis you expect from a playlist of mine (along with one of the guys who got me into music in the first place, Scott Joplin). This playlist feels like a disorienting mish-mash of many different things, but I love all the tracks on there, and I hope you guys enjoy it as well. Here is the tracklist:

1. "Doin' The Cockroach" - Modest Mouse
2. "Wave" - Antônio Carlos Jobim
3. "The Girl From Ipanema" - Stan Getz & João Gilberto
4. "Could It Be I'm Falling In Love" - The Spinners
5. "Floyd The Barber" - Nirvana
6. "Hard Time Killin' Floor Blues" - Skip James
7. "Drunken Spree" - Skip James
8. "Blue Rondo à la Turk" - The Dave Brubeck Quartet
9. "Dumb (MTV Unplugged Live)" - Nirvana
10. "Construção" - Chico Buarque
11. "Deus Lhe Pague" - Chico Buarque
12. "Alameda" - Elliott Smith
13. "God and the Devil In the Land of the Sun" - Antônio Carlos Jobim
14. "Shhh / Peaceful" - Miles Davis
15. "Let Your Light Shine On Me" - Blind Willie Johnson
16. "Third Stone from the Sun" - The Jimi Hendrix Experience
17. "Crosscut Saw" - Albert King
18. "Undenied" - Portishead
19. "Come On Boys Let's Do That Messin' Around" - Blind Blake
20. "Heroes and Villains" - The Beach Boys
21. "Floating Bridge" - Sleepy John Estes
22. "This Whole World" - The Beach Boys
23. "Whatcha Doin'" - Sleepy John Estes
24. "Kiss Me Baby" - The Beach Boys
25. "Shake It and Break It" - Charley Patton
26. "Gladiolus Rag" - Scott Joplin, performed by Joshua Rifkin
27. "Bitches Brew" - Miles Davis
28. "Shelter From The Storm" - Bob Dylan
29. "Devils Haircut" - Beck
30. "I Belong To The Band" - Reverend Gary Davis

Anyways, it's been a hell of a month and a half, but music happens to be a helpful guiding force no matter wherever I am. Thank you all so much for allowing me to express my love of music here, and let's hope I can write a bit more to get some of that love out regularly!

Assorted Ravings and Rantings on Music #7

Assorted Ravings and Rantings on Music

Entry #7

Gonna be trying out a format where I number a collection of observations.

I Ain't Gonna Be Worried No More 1929-1941 - Sleepy John Estes

1. I think I can judge the difference between a great bluesman and a good bluesman if I see there is more than strumming with a main chorus. On this front, even if Sleepy John Estes ain’t no Blind Blake or Robert Johnson in terms of playing power, he does try to add enough musical depth beyond just his crying vocals, which are plenty enjoyable on their own (making him a very distinctive singer). The smart thing about this guy is that he always teams up with the right people like his trio with James "Yank" Rachell and Jab Jones or his later stuff with Hammie Nixon. Forget the vocals and his lyrical skills, the feel of each one of these songs is so unique and beautiful. Songs like "Milk Cow Blues", "Girl I Love", "Floating Bridge", "Street Car Blues", "Whatcha Doin'" are some of the best recordings of the whole pre-war era in my book just because they have such a strong understanding of how to make a song sonically beautiful, and even if a song of his threatens to be boring, either his vocals or one of his sidemen will come to pick up the slack. Of the 23 songs on here, barely any of these seem boring and uninteresting just because there is care to make sure there is enough musically going on to accompany his vocals. No wonder he ended up being remembered well enough to influence Dylan, the Beatles, and Led Zeppelin. 
2. When they call the earliest session of Sleepy John Estes a "session of masterpieces", they are really not exaggerating. Seriously, the trio of Jones, Estes, and Rachell was an incredible combination, where the combination of Rachell's mandolin and Estes's crying tone would stitch a gritty but gorgeous web of sound held down by Estes's and Jones's rhythms. I'll be damned if "Girl I Love" isn't one of the best versions of "Rollin' and Tumblin'" I've ever heard with those beautiful mandolin runs, and "Whatcha Doin'?" is one of the most untrivial, upbeat songs I've heard from the era as Jones and Rachell sync their rhythms together. "Street Car Blues" is even more mind-boggling in how it literally paints a picture in your mind of a street car in a bustling down with his mandolin work. The true magic of the sound really comes, in my opinion, with "Milk Cow Blues" and "Black Mattie Blues", gorgeous songs that almost sound locked away in their own little beautiful, intimate paradise that feels real and lush even with their minimalism. I wouldn't say every single song is distinctive from this session, but together, they do form one of the most wonderful sounds to come out of this whole pre-war scene.
3. Can I talk a bit about how nice Nixon's harmonica work is? The guy is clearly one of the most influential harmonica players because this is really one of the earliest examples of the regular style of playing harmonica as rhythm and accompaniment, and he would also teach Sonny Boy I his skills, which means pretty much the roots of most harmonica players contains at least some of Nixon's style. He has a warm, friendly tone that loops, swirls, and curves adding itty bitty hooks to many of his songs that would otherwise not be nearly as interesting. He even takes the time to weave his lines around Estes's voice, especially in songs like "Floating Bridge". The story is distinct and interesting and Estes's voice is plenty memorable, but what pushes it to classic state is really all of the cute, playful lines that Nixon plays around him that make it distinctive.
4. If there is a flaw to this material, I feel Sleepy just isn't a great guitar player himself. When he doesn't have Nixon or his trio backing him up, he verges closer to just being "good" like many other players of the era. His voice is really the main thing that prevents any of these songs from getting boring or unlistenable, which is one of the most powerful voices of the era that can pierce very deeply. Yet, it isn't always enough to push his material to the top level, which is I wouldn't say he was like a titan of his era. But that doesn't mean he wasn't great when at his best, and his classic material from 1929 to 1937 is unquestionably essential listening for people interested in pre-war music.

Smiley Smile - Beach Boys

1. Honestly, I used to be too harsh on this album. Much of the reason I used to despise the record was that it was the second album I heard after Pet Sounds very early on in my listening journey, and it freaked me out! Seriously, the drugged-up sound of "Goin' Bald", the weirdness of the takes of "Vegetables" and "Wonderful", and the eerie confusion in songs like "Gettin' Hungry" and "Wind Chimes" all shocked me to the bone, and from there, I almost stopped exploring the Beach Boys' discography as a whole. Thankfully, Today! and the Smile Sessions tracks I heard made me continue on with his discography, but I pretty much avoided hearing this album again until recently. Hearing this album again after being a much more experienced listener, this album isn't all that scary, and at the end of the day, good melodic songwriting is good melodic songwriting: most of these songs are listenable and rarely such because many of them either are great songs at their core or have some nice fragmented ideas.
2. Still, don't listen to people who are going out of their way to praise this as some masterpiece. There is no way the Beach Boys could be great in a format like this, where Brian's melodies work well with intricate polish and care and the vocals are great when harmonized. You can argue there is a charm to the unfinished ideas, but I don't see how these fragments can be as enjoyable compared to the polished perfection of Today! and Pet Sounds or have the scenic melodic ambiance of the non-song-oriented songs of Smile Sessions. And frankly, there is way too much dissonance between the cheerful soul of some of these songs and the tired, weary way they are performed. That dissonance is not artistic, it is a defect of the band falling apart at the time, which is why the songs make you feel uneasy, but they cause mild unease rather than actually using such dissonance as an artistic tool, which is why most of these are just not all that great.
3. I fully support Brian adding in a longer bridge on the Smile Sessions. What makes "Heroes and Villians" such a masterpiece is how it feels like the life of a person rolling by before your eyes, and with that bridge, it is almost like you are watching the climax of the story as the protagonist bares his soul to his audience. The "dance Margarita" lyric is so unbelievably beautiful, it wrings out a tear every time I hear that section, and that's why ultimately when the "children were raised" section begins, it feels like a proper epilogue to the story. That's why I have even less use for an album with now the inferior version of the song, as great as the single version is even without the bridge.