Stuck in Your Head

It seems like there's always a tune going in my head. Oliver Sacks talks about this phenomenon in his book, Musicophilia, referring to these particularly "sticky" tunes as earworms. Often it seems like they are tunes we don't even really like, and it afflicts everyone, from Young Folks to Old Man (see what I did there? I just two named two tunes that have been earworms for me that I don't actually like).

Sacks talks about the science behind this in the book (or you can read a nice little interview with him here), but there's really no explanation as to why certain tunes become earworms for no apparent reason. For years now, one of my most recurring earworms has been an old Grateful Dead tune, Here Comes Sunshine. Understand that I was never a Deadhead, and I never even owned the album this song is on, Wake of the Flood. In fact, I didn't even know the name of the tune until I sat down to write this and tracked it down by trial and error on the internets. And yet that ten-note guitar phrase has probably been my most haunting earworm for the past few years. WTF? Do other people have these seemingly random, unexplainable earworms?

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Angel of Rock and I are starting to prepare for our SXSW sojourn next month by hitting the complete official showcase listing and going through five letters per week. This week is 'A' through 'E.' Anyone is welcome to join us and send your suggestions, whether it's bands you already know and want us to check out, or something that sounds worthy of further exploration to you. There are thousands of artists at this thing, so I welcome all the help we can get!

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The good folks at NPR Music ran a piece about the Malian ngoni master Bassekou Kouyate this past week, which you can check out here. The piece ran on All Things Considered on Tuesday, which was also the release date of his new album, I Speak Fula. It's a great record, and Bassekou is well on his way to legend status. Not only are we presenting him with our friends at Walker Art Center on April 10 at The Cedar, we'll have the band for a few extra days for some special programs with schools and the community. It's a rare and wonderful opportunity that speaks to the core of The Cedar's mission. Here's what to look forward to:

Bassekou Kouyaté & N Goni Ba concert au Womex 2008
Uploaded by mondomix. - Music videos, artist interviews, concerts and more.

A good day...

Involves:

1) Having only one class
2) Lunch with a wonderful friend
3) A lovely bike ride in the snow
4) Plans to go ice skating and
5) listening to this.

A Series of Tubings

Were Grammy awards distributed this year?

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Lots of inspiring writings from friends on the intertubes in the week past, starting with our own Angel of Rock. Her mention of concert etiquette made me think of the movies. Not of moviegoers talking through films (although one wonders why they paid money to attend a presentation they were intending to yak through; that ten bucks would provide the foundation for a dandy buzz at the local watering hole and no one would want to shush them).

No, the thought was of cinematic dissonance: contradictory imagery presented simultaneously. For instance: two people speeding along in a top-down convertible, yet their hair remains perfectly in place (while blowing wildly in the distant wide-angle shots).

My favorite example is the club scene, where two show-goers are able to have a normal conversation in spite of the din issuing forth from the stage. One instance that comes to mind: in 'Some Kind of Wonderful,' The March Violets are wailing away while down front Keith and Watts are conversing practically sotto voce.

OK, I'll admit it: that was just my excuse for mentioning Mary Stuart Masterson and the screen character on whom I had my biggest crush ever.

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A Facebook friend posted a link to this article about the comeback of vinyl, and commented:

'I love to keep hearing this kind of report. It speaks of the often hidden masses who still want to sit down and LISTEN to music rather than just use it as wallpaper. Digital is convenient and versatile, yes--but for the active listener there's nothing like vinyl.'

My response was a respectful demurral. It is nice to see any format do well if it means more people buy and listen to more music. But as much as I love widescreen cover art and the tactile sensation of handling a record and its sleeve, I have never bought into the whole 'vinyl is better' argument.

Perhaps my ear isn't sophisticated enough to detect added warmth or depth. I never seem to get that far, as other issues distract. After the first play, you have a used record. And with that, over time, come the inevitable surface noise and stylus tracking distortion. And oh, if that spindle hole isn't cut perfectly dead center, drug me before I am subjected to turntable wow.

The belief in the superiority of vinyl sound quality can bring one perilously close to the cliff of audiophilia. It's so easy to get caught up in the search for that elusive piece of sound reproduction hardware offering incremental (and often psychological) clarity and authenticity.

Not that I was always immune. In the late 70s I owned a digital delay ambience synthesizer, a component designed to process and transmit audio signals to rear speakers with a delay time that varied in milliseconds according to the time it would take for live music to reach from a stage to the walls of, say, a concert hall.

The thing about that gizmo was I often found myself so interested in what it was doing to fool me that I would lose sight of the music. And that's been the point for me ever since: the song's the thing. It doesn't matter if it's coming through the AM radio speakers in a 1971 Dodge Dart or through a Vibratone 9000.

If you are open to aural immersion, it's the music, not the medium.

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This morning another Facebook friend posted a link to this blog piece on Blender's website. The subject was 'The 5 Most Awesomely Ridiculous Mashups Ever.'

For me, the gold standard is still Party Ben's 'Boulevard of Broken Songs.' But many of these five come close. My favorite is the Beatles/Nine Inch Nails mash, but the R-Rated lyrics have me thinking I'll post this one instead, and you can decide whether you want to delve deeper. Cheers!

Really Fun /Not so Fun

First in the "That Was Really Fun" category was last Saturday's turntable set from Kid Koala at the Cedar. He mixed everything from "Moon River" to M.I.A with stops at every station in between. Loved the jazz trumpet solos carefully picked out by dropping the needle over and over just a few grooves apart.


Nary a laptop or set of headphones in site, please note. His gear consisted of three turntables and a tableful of vinyl. It was fun to see how marked up some of the records were with bits of tape. According the KFAI turntablist nerds standing behind me, (enjoying the heck out of his set) the tape can be to simply to mark one's spot or it can be to set up a slightly random skip back loop. It was also great to watch somebody smile the whole time he was spinning. No hipster attitude at all.

Somebody pointed out to me the next day that the audience was almost totally men. Huh. Guess I was too busy watching his moves on our big screen to look around me.

A week previous, a benefit for Haiti at the Cedar raised something like $13k for Doctors Without Borders. What a fun night. Of course it's a truism, one I've repeated in past posts, that it's always fun to party with the Brazilians (and their fans.) When the Carribean island musicians are added to the mix, well, you can only imagine. My favorites were the loud punk-samba combo early in the evening and the big dance orchestra Charanga Tropical (with three fiddles!) who closed things down. A good time was had by all, and I was too busy pouring beer to even get close to the green room!

Gotta put in a plug for my local neighborhood weird and wonderful winter event, the Art Sled Rally. Rally year three was last Saturday, and while slightly better organized that last year, it was no less fun. The hill was slightly less steep, so there were fewer fantastic crack-ups. Favorite sleds just for design alone would have to go the the Packman contingent, the Alien Sled dogs( My neighbor's dog was so curious that she sniffed their...well, you know what dogs do) and the slinky. (Good thing the slinky driver was wearing a crash helmet. That was fast!)

The Packman group was led by a yellow round packman, obviously, which trailed a long string of yellow balloons. (The dots on the screen, y'know.) This was followed in quick succession by blue ghosts and all the various fruit one could capture to obtain points, each on their own sled. Loud applause by a certain age demographic followed.

Not so fun? Coming home from a long day at work only to rush out the door to treach a class only to return home around 9:30 to find the bathroom sink refusing to drain. "Why do these things happen at the worst possible times?" she whined, rooting around for a pipe wrench.

It wasn't just the trap.

I explore the plumbing behind the wall after work tonight, probably instead of finishing this post. Wish me luck.

Wed 10:37 p.m. Snaking three feet into the wall had absolutely no effect. Neither did taking apart the trap under the tub. Calling plumber in a.m. All creativity spent on plumbing; none left for blog.

Tune in next week as, following the trend of recent posts, I will reveal my mysterious childhood music history.

Partner Collaborations

High on my current rotation at the moment is the new Laura Veirs CD, July Flame. Yes, I've been listening partly in preparation for her March 2 Cedar appearance, but Veirs has been a favorite of mine since her 2005 Year of Meteors. It's not just her skills as a singer and songwriter that make her recordings compelling... these are taken to a whole other level with the arrangements and production by her partner Tucker Martine, who has worked with her on every one of her seven official recordings except her self-titled debut. And when she's here in March she'll be very pregnant with their first child, due April 15.

(Martine also happens to be the producer of my top albums of both 2009 and 2008: The Decemberists The Hazards of Love and Musée Mécanique's Hold This Ghost).

This combination of a talented female singer/songwriter and partner male musician/producer has yielded a number of my favorite records over the years. The best Shawn Colvin records: Steady On and A Few Small Repairs, when John Levanthal co-wrote and produced (before he moved on with, and eventually married, Roseanne Cash). And the greatest Suzanne Vega record, IMHO, is Nine Objects of Desire, her last with then-husband, musician and producer Mitchell Froom (now married to Vonda Shepard... wow, a roadmap might be helpful about now!).

There is something special about these collaborations, when the whole seems to become greater than the parts. While I can't say yet whether July Flame is a great record, it's definitely a keeper, and one requiring a greater listening commitment before its real value is revealed. That's always a good sign in my book.

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Another discovery of the week: the second record by the Swedish band Fredrik, called Trilogi. I really enjoyed their first one, Na Na Ni. This is atmospheric pop, full of adventure, with just the right amount of hooks. Unfortunately, a short U.S. tour in February only hits the eastern seaboard. Maybe we'll get them further west in the fall. In the mean time, here's a spooky video from the new one:

Fredrik - Viskra from The Kora Records on Vimeo.

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I want to take this opportunity to thank my fellow bloggers for some really great work over the past few weeks. I really look forward to every new posting here these days. And I have a couple of responses to the most recent ones:

To Angel of Rock: I respectfully disagree with your friend that "going to a show doesn't really count as hanging out." There are few more profound bonding experiences than seeing a particularly inspirational concert with another person. I have old friends with whom I still talk about shows we saw over thirty years ago. Our mutual concert experiences are far more memorable than most of the other things we did together. It may not be obvious at the time that "the company" is important, but especially when the concert is particularly memorable, doesn't it provide a particulary rich and deep experience to share?

And to Veronica Fever: my parents were big music lovers. Some of my earliest childhood memories are infused with music, whether it be family picnics on the lawn at Tanglewood, or my dad's passion for Oscar Peterson. My three older siblings all had their own musical identities. It was my sister Susan who first brought The Beatles into the house, and they quickly became my favorite. And I joyfully remember all of us in the car at the drive-in in Cape Cod, summer of 1964 (I was seven), watching A Hard Day's Night, which converted my dad into a Beatles fan, too.

Concert etiquette

Musically, I'm feeling very scattered this week. So I'll try something a little different and get your opinions on something that has been bothering me.

A conversation that transpired yesterday:

"It's been a while!"

"Yeah! Well, I saw you on Monday. But going to a show doesn't really count as hanging out."

I think what they meant is that we were not able to have any real conversations. But this touches on a question that I spend a lot of time thinking about. As someone who sees as much live music at The Cedar as possible, I've become accustomed to the idea of "the listening room." Basically, wherein the music takes priority over the drinks, the conversation, and (apparently) the company. Am I a bad friend? Socially awkward? Inconsiderate?

Oh dear.

So, what's the deal? Is this acceptable behavior? Do you act this way or have friends who do? Should this be an item on my self-improvement project?

Took 99 Stitches in His Yas-Yas-Yas

If you're a blues nut you must own this book, 'Barrelhouse Words: A Blues Dialect Dictionary' by Stephen Calt. Mr. Calt takes a scholarly approach to defining the words and terms common in the blues lexicon. If you have pondered the true meaning of 'rounder' or 'goofer dust' in the lyrics of old blues standards, this book is for you. A couple of examples:

"Canned Heat e.g. 'I gave my woman a dollar, to get herself somethin' to eat / She spent a dime for neckbones an' ninety cents for that old canned heat' -- Will Shade, 'You Better Let That Stuff Alone'

"A trade name for Sterno, a commercial product introduced around 1900 that retails as a heating or cooking gel. Desperate or derelict alcoholics would squeeze and strain the gel through a cloth to extract its denatured alcohol base, and mix the latter with water or some other liquid to create a toxic confection known simply as 'canned heat.' "

Toxic confection. Gotta love a dryly humorous euphemism. Or how about:

"Shim-Sham-Shimmy" e.g. 'Check all your razors and your guns / Do the Shim-Sham-Shimmy till the risin' sun' -- Bessie Smith, 'Gimme a Pigfoot'

"A variant of the 'Shimmy-She-Wobble,' recorded by Cab Calloway as a dance introduced at the Cotton Club in 1930. It probably remarked on the light complexion of Cotton Club dancers, shim shams having been a black idiom dating to slavery for 'Negroes of mixed blood.' "

Until I owned this book I didn't know what 'keyhole' meant. Now I do. You can too.

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I enjoyed Main Figurehead's post of the 23rd, specifically his points about our formative years of music appreciation. He got me thinking about my own such evolution, and his theory held up well. Try it yourself.

(One question to MF: Why did the Beatles reach you when they did? Had your musical seeds been sown prior to that, or was this totally out of the blue?)

My family members were a big influence early on. Mom liked classics and soundtracks, so before I started kindergarten I had already heard lots of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Lerner & Loewe, and Brahms and Sibelius. Dad enjoyed easy listening, so there were doses of Henry Mancini and Jackie Gleason. I liked 'em all, and still do. ('Some Enchanted Evening' came on the box the other night, and all activity ceased until Ezio had had his way with us.)

The wild card was Aunt Martha, the bohemian of the family. Her tastes ran to folk and jazz, and she got me going big-time on The Kingston Trio, The Limeliters, and Odetta, as well as Duke Ellington, Johnny Hodges, and Cannonball Adderley. I won't go as far as to say that at age eight I was understanding what all those latter explorers were saying, but I was interested. (I am reminded that in my college years, one hazy night I was listening to 'Birds of Fire' by The Mahavishnu Orchestra and thinking what a fine Christmas present the album would be for Martha, who was by then in her 60s and retired. I slept that one off and, as I wasn't a 'wake-and-bake' sort, talked myself out of it in the cold light of the following dawn.)

The mid-60s were a latency period, though. As a rather isolated country kid I missed the cultural revolution fomented by The Beatles and their contemporaries. On occasion my half-sister would come to visit, always wanting to know who I thought the cutest Beatle was. I hated 'em just for my having been subjected to such an exercise. (To my credit, I always chose John.)

It wasn't until the fall of '68 and my entry into high school that the early cultivation paid off. Top 40 radio was at an absolute peak at the time, a cross-genre panoply of ear candy. One could hear Aretha Franklin, Tom Jones, The Doors, Jeannie C Riley, Hugo Montenegro, and Jimi Hendrix back to back to back. Those were the key years, really...1968-9, when some real building was done atop the musical foundation of my childhood. After that, it was off to the races...album rock radio in 1972-3, and KSAN (and the last gasps of free-form radio) in 1974-5...age 20. By then I was ready for anything...ECM, reggae, Afrobeat, space drones (Tangerine Dream and Klaus Schulze remain big influences), avant-garde...for a time in the 70s I owned several Sun Ra albums although I'll be damned if I was ever able to make heads or tails out of 'em.

Oh, and Dad? I still play Henry Mancini and Engelbert Humperdinck records and think of you.

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My latest round of needle-drops yielded the typical quota of major and minor pleasures. Top o' the charts this time around: The Gilded Palace of Sin's album, 'You Break Our Hearts, We'll Tear Yours Out.' This one is hard to categorize; call it a mutant strain of dark Americana. I'll fall in line with other listeners who reckon this would appeal to fans of Nick Cave and Tom Waits.

So go here, read the encomiums, and mash on the player. If you like what you hear, I can certify that the rest of the album is equally worth your time. Cheers.