Here at THE VINYL DISTRICTwe're good consumers. All Mp3's are posted to promote and give exposure to the music and are linked for a limited time. Please download to preview, then head promptly to your local vinyl vendor (or - OK, CD store too) and fork over your hard earned cash. You'll appreciate the piece of mind.
Got something you think we should be listening to or reading? thevinyldistrict (at) gmail.com
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went into the neon fruit supermarket, dreaming of your enumerations! What peaches and what penumbras! Whole families shopping at night! Aisles full of husbands! Wives in the avocados, babies in the tomatoes! (Allen Ginsberg, “A Supermarket In California”)
With the unfortunate invention of piped-in Muzak, background music has become a fixture of our daily lives in rather incongruous places. Getting our teeth cleaned in the dentist’s chair and waiting on hold on the telephone are examples that spring to mind. But surely the most annoying use for Muzak is in the supermarket. At all hours of day and night, shoppers gather under harsh fluorescent lights to scrutinize the potential contents of each other’s refrigerators. This dismal chore must be accomplished with the accompaniment of moldy oldies or bubblegum pop music so heinous that it makes the lettuce wilt in shame. There’s something about the supermarket’s neon artificiality and seductive consumerism that makes anyone on the periphery of society feel ill at ease. I was surprised and delighted to discover a mini-genre of what I call “supermarket ballads.” Imagine a hopped-up Iggy Pop or bleary Joe Strummer wandering around the local Save-A-Lot late at night, dazzled by the mirage of affluence and plenitude, lusting after suburban soccer moms and composing anguished yet hilarious masterpieces of alienation and commodification. It’s a safe bet you’ll never hear these songs over the loudspeakers while doing your grocery shopping, so download them now and remember to bring them along on your ipod.
You get a little jaded doing alla' this blogging. Well wait, let me clarify--one's email inbox tends to fill up quite nicely with solicitations from bands, invites to gigs, and all sorts of announcements. It's dizzying. But ya' know what...I welcome it when it delivers something that makes me finally sit up and take notice:
Eli "Paperboy" Reed and the seven piece True Loves are bringing their brand of old school soul (think Wilson Pickett and Otis Redding...) to the Rock and Roll Hotel on September 19th. Featured recently on NPR's morning edition alongside Sharon Jones and the DapKings, as MOJO magazine put it: There are singers who sing, then there are singers whose sheer power of expression can knock you off your feet. Eli 'Paperboy' Reed falls firmly into the latter category ... [he] threatens to be one of the defining voices of the year."
Eli's given TVD two pairs of tickets (2 winners!) for this Friday's show at the Hotel, along with DC's The Ambitions and The Jones. (And you'd be wise to catch Eli and the True Loves in this more intimate setting before they hit the road with Duffy this October.) But if THAT wasn't sweet enough, he's tossing in a copy of his new "Roll With You" on vinyl for both winners.
So--get to typing! Leave us an old school comment why you should be one of the chosen two winners for the pair of tickets and a copy of the LP shipped right to your door. We'll take solicitations for the show until noon on Friday and please remember to leave some contact info!
I had to laugh when Madonna introduced Gogol Bordello at last year’s Live Earth concert as her “Romani gypsy friends.” None of the band members are actually Roma gypsies; the whole point of the “gypsy punk” genre is a self-conscious symbolic identification with those consummate outsiders. “Gypsy punk” reflects an ongoing effort to blend together every kind of rebel music and distill it into the auditory equivalent of a twenty-four hour vodka party. Authentic gypsy music is as variable as Romani culture itself, assimilating a multitude of influences from all over the world. Modern “gypsy punk” upholds this multicultural aesthetic by layering punk, hip hop, reggae, klezmer, and rock over traditional gypsy melodies. The live performance aspect is one of the best features of the genre; the spectacular concerts often include stylistic aspects of dark cabaret and street busking. There is a powerful immigrant sensibility in the bands’ identity and music. The artists typically have roots in Eastern Europe, South America, the Mediterranean, or the Middle East, and their lyrics are a polyglot potpourri reflecting their origins and audiences. This is aggressively enjoyable music, uproarious and eminently danceable. It’s like the set list from the hottest party happening on the wrong side of town, the one you’d love to go to, if only you had someone who spoke the language to take you. Oh yeah, and this is my supreme favorite hybrid genre ever. Round of applause for anyone who can guess why and posts it in the comments!
Those readers with a keen eye on all things DC will recognize that we've been highlighting bands over the past few weeks from the roster of local label The Kora Records (upon whom BYT had a rather excellent feature this week.) A big thanks goes out to Mike Fink for putting the entire Kora/TVD mashup together--which actually continues today as we chat with Mary Lorson from The Piano Creeps:
"The Piano Creeps is a collaboration between Billy Coté, Kathy Ziegler, and myself. We started informally, just talking about it, a few years ago, but it was Billy and Kathy who really made the record happen. I was just beginning a new teaching job, in addition to dealing with some health problems, so I didn't have much free time, but Billy and Kathy would meet every Tuesday. They would construct tracks and play them for me and we'd confer and eventually the project became an album. They really did the spadework--I was just the lucky stiff who got to step in, bring a couple songs, and sing. But somehow this patchwork collection does represent all three of our rather divergent and personal zeitgeists, and I'm happy we made it."
"In our old band Madder Rose, Billy was the boss and main songwriter; after that, I put together Saint Low and was the one who made the big choices. Kathy makes her living as a session and road player, but has been in charge on all of her solo records. So I guess the interesting thing about this collaboration is that we're three opinionated people with our own styles who are rather used to creating situations where we get to be control freaks. But with this project we all really did a good job of letting go and being curious. I've made a bunch of records now, and this one developed the most organically, process-wise. It came together more the way Billy and I work on the film music, where we explore every valid idea until the piece shows itself as either work-able or not. The gigs have been a really fun extension of this ease and trust we have, so we're looking forward to getting together this month to play gigs around the Kora release of "Future Blues"."
My freshman year of college I discovered a genre of music that I immediately took a shining too. Perhaps it was the fast pace. Perhaps it was the retro feeling. Perhaps it was how strong and awesome all of the women involved seemed. Something that took my love of early punk music and mashed it up with swinging sensations of rockabilly and giving me that guilty yet oh-so-good pleasure you get from watching B horror films. Psychobilly, the musical hybrid referred to as the "bastard genre of Rock n' Roll and the forgotten offspring of Punk," has a faster tempo and a much heavier sound than rockabilly and an upright base is usually substituted in lieu of a bass guitar.
The genesis of the term "psychobilly" seems to be in dispute as some attribute it to American band the Cramps (who have in the past denied actually being a psychobilly band, just a band that put the word on their flyers to get attention) and the English band the Meteors, though it seems the majority vote is for the Cramps, at least in terms of who coined the phrase first. Psychobilly's international growth occurred in three waves. The first wave started in Britain in the early 1980s and gave rise to the Meteors, whose fans invented slam dancing- what is now a major calling card of the genre- and other influential bands such as the Guana Batz. The second wave spread to Europe and gave rise to such psychobilly greats as Mad Sin and, one of my personal favorites, the Nekromantix. The third psychobilly wave reached the United States in the 1990s and really took off, especially popular amongst Southern California's Latin community.
Modern psychobilly is known for its experimental sounds, often expanding or moving away from the traditional sounds of its predecessors. At any psychobilly show one is likely to see circle pits filled with men with their hair shaved into quiffs or pompadours, wearing creepers. Women will often have big hair and wear hot rod influenced styles in bright neon patterns like leopard or tiger prints- picture a hipper, more colorful Elvira. If you go to a show expecting a low key rockabilly time, you're in for quite the surprise. As Tiger Army frontman Nick 13 would tell you, rockabilly and psychobilly are in the same family with rockabilly being the grandfather whose portrait you occasionally see hanging in the hallway of your parent's house.
Hasidic hip hop is a fascinating musical oddity, deriving from a peculiar conflation of location and circumstances. Several of these musicians have roots in Crown Heights, a crowded Brooklyn neighborhood which is a pressure-cooker of racial tension. Rebelling against the strict musical conventions of the Orthodox Jewish lifestyle, these musicians began creating music which borrowed heavily from the predominately African-American population around them. They incorporated elements of hip hop, rap, reggae, electronica, and jam band rock into their religious liturgy. Thus was born the amusingly incongruous image of bearded Hasidic Jews in traditional garb, beatboxing and busting out mesmerizing rhymes in English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Aramaic. These artists have completely subverted the prevailing mentality of hip hop culture. Instead of singing about babes and bling, their lyrics are all about mysticism and spirituality. If there’s any allusion to romance, it’s only in the context of a love song addressed to God. Matisyahu, the principal avatar of the genre, started out as a curiosity on college radio. Since then he has achieved considerable mainstream success, including airtime on MTV and a modeling contract with Kenneth Cole. Now there's a new generation of singers hot on the heels of his success, the best of which is freestyling phenomenon Y-Love. While their brazen disregard for convention may outrage musical purists, Hasidic hip hop artists deserve praise for finding an utterly original source of inspiration in the antiquated melodies of Hasidic tradition and making them relevant to a wider audience.
Ed's Note: From loyal reader, to guest poster, to full-time contributor, please welcome to TVD Ms. Urban Gypsy who'll take the reins here this week with some rather off-kilter pairings for you to consider:
This week on TVD, we’re taking a look at some interesting examples of hybrid musical genres. What is a musical genre, anyway? Is there any reliable, rational way of classifying music into neat little categories? Music is such a pliable art form with so many influences and changing contexts that it’s impossible pin down every artist with a simple label. But genres can be useful, even if only as a system to organize albums at the record store. Some of the most interesting musical styles are created when the artist yanks together two or more radically different genres and melds them together into something totally innovative and inspired. We’d love to hear your comments on the music featured here this week. Do you agree with how we’ve described and classified this music? Did we miss one of your favorites or include someone who doesn’t deserve the mention? Let’s have some feedback!
First up on the agenda is what music writers call “freak folk,” though many of the musicians themselves prefer the term “naturalismo.” The weird dreamy music in this genre can fall anywhere along the continuum of “sweet and pleasant” to “fingernails on blackboard.” It’s rarely an easy listen, but once you’ve acquired a taste for it, you’ll wonder how you ever managed without it. When my friend Nechama first heard the voice of Joanna Newsom while listening to her ipod in a public washroom, she was so startled that she jumped up and banged her head on a metal shelf. This is a common response of first-time listeners to the eerie vocal stylings of these musicians, so consider yourself warned! If you persevere and overcome this barrier, you will enjoy the inventive use of unusual instrumentation, whimsical lyrics, and psychedelic yet folksy soundscapes this genre has to offer. The wacky postmodern flower-child lifestyle isn’t really my cup of tea, but what I love most about “freak folk” songs are the intensely poetic lyrics, often so masterful that they can stand as works of art on their own. At its best, “freak folk” transcends the sonic limits of good taste and borders on the sublime. Prepare to assail your ears and uplift your soul with these songs:
Who says we're not into diverse riddims here at TVD? Matt from Matt's Art Journey begs to differ and takes us on a bit of a tour: Crossing the Carribean First, I’d like to thank Jon for the chance to share my music favorites with everyone. Secondly, my thoughts are with the people of Texas whose lives are being impacted by Ike…most music I had listened to up until my 30’s had been from above 25 degrees North latitude. And then I met my wife Luisa who is from Colombia and I was exposed to a whole new world of sound. As a kid, Luisa memorized American lyrics not really knowing what most of the words meant. As of last Friday, Luisa is now an American citizen. Through her, I see that music reaches across borders and speaks, touches, unites.
I call this set, Crossing the Carribean, because the music selections are from select countries starting in Brazil and ending in the US.We begin with Berimbau, a bossa nova song that I found in St. Petersburg, Florida on a 33 vinyl, after a 10 year search. The short vocals near the song’s midpoint have a definite period sound of the early 1960’s. Alicia Adorada is written by Carlos Vives, a Colombian icon who is from the northern coast of Colombia. This tune is Vallenato music, which literally means ‘born in the valley’. In the days before mail delivery service in Colombia, villages along the coast would communicate through a carrier who would travel between towns delivering the news orally. Upon arrival to the neighboring village, the carrier would call out in a melody, “vallenato” to announce his presence. Fotografia is by Colombian musical legend, Juanes, and Nelly Furtado.
We head north to Jamaica and groove on the old school, roots rock reggae sounds of Party Times, Dubbing Sandra and the more recent Inchpinchers and I Love King Selassie. Dubbing Sandra brings me to a different space with the repetitive hypnotic rhythms… they seem to be suspended in time. Island hopping forward to Cuba, we hear Candela by the legendary members of the Buena Vista Social Club. This is classic Cuban song had it’s height in the 40’s. We make landfall in southern Louisiana, in what some call the northern rim of the Carribean. Like a Pot of Neckbones is a zydeco groove straight out of Southwest Louisiana. This is what you get when you musically mix the black and Creole cultures of southwestern Louisiana….listen closely for the washboard keeping time. Rounding out the night, we side step it east down interstate I-10 to New Orleans & get down with the funky groove of Galactic with “And I’m Out”. The New Orleans music scene seems to be a musical filter or focal point for the many musical styles of the Carribean.
My musical taste has always developed in a bubble, sealed off from whatever was stylish and popular among my peers. I first became conscious of this terminal uncoolness on one particular day in the fifth grade. Our teacher let us have the afternoon off for a pre-holiday party, and everyone was supposed to bring along some tunes. This posed a problem for me, as I owned none of my own. I loved music but I was ten years old and had no money to buy tapes or CDs. All I could listen to was the local radio station and whatever my father left lying around. He consumed music profligately, spending huge sums of money on rare imported albums, listening to them once or twice, and forgetting about them. This left me with a treasure trove of music way out of my age range for my personal listening pleasure. It was an outcome of this circumstance that I knew by heart the lyrics to Leonard Cohen and Ray Charles before I learned how to do long division. This fact didn’t endear me to my savvier peers, who worshipped Weird Al and the Spice Girls. Something told me my father’s castoff albums wouldn’t make the best soundtrack for a fifth-grade dance party, but I brought them anyway. I waited for a quiet moment to slip one of my cassettes into the tape player. Unfortunately, I had neglected to rewind it, and when I pressed play the tape picked up right in the middle of Elvis Presley’s “I Don’t Care If The Sun Don’t Shine.” All the fifth-graders shrieked in horror as Elvis belted out, “We’re-gonna-kiss-and-kiss-and-kiss-and-kiss-and-we’re-gonna-kiss-some-more.” I raced to switch it off, but it was too late. For the rest of the day (it felt like a year) I was shunned as the girl who ruined the whole party with the kissing song. I sat at my desk, sobbing silently into my sleeve, and my friend Dana put her arm around my shoulders. “Don’t worry,” she whispered comfortingly. “I don’t have any real music either, except for my old Barney tapes.” I would have traded my Charles Aznavour for her Barney any day. At least people knew how to pronounce his name. Close your eyes and imagine an earnest little girl with round glasses and messy braids, lying on the floor of her room with her ear pressed up against the speakers of her old-school boom box, listening to the following songs, and you’ll have a pretty accurate picture of what I was like growing up.
...and then there are the artists and bands who innately embody song-craft and tunefulness, melody and harmony, making the purposeful seem like happenstance--on each and every track on each and every LP. I simply can't sing the praises of The Posies any louder. And you should join me...
Brian Coates of The Great Northwest sits down with us for this week's First Date:
"I sat down to write a couple of paragraphs, and it was coming out all formal and technical-like. There were things that went-
"The Great Northwest records in a variety of places to force a feeling of newness with the stimulation of change. Each song is influenced by the feelings experienced in the new space, and when all are assembled as a collection it affects one who listens to travel in a cohesive trip."
It felt rudimentary and lacking in style, though it was describing the actual sentiments properly.
It was an hour before I was to submit it, so I was rushed by the desire to really get a point across the way I'd wish for one to understand it, though more elegantly.
I had a smoke and relaxed.
I realized that simply saying that the Great Northwest records to play, plays to travel, and travels to record sums it up.
Ironically, the execution of the task of writing this is EXACTLY the way we record."
I could think of three DC-based reasons why Bones and TVD would be a good fit when the Bones/TVD Prize Package was first proposed: 1. Once when I was indeed watching Bones, Agent Booth and Dr. "Bones" Brennan were actually dodging bullets in Adams Morgan which, as we know if you're a local, isn't a stretch. 2. DC's own Thievery Corporation are behind a remix of Sarah Mclachlan's 'Dirty Little Secret' on the Soundtrack and 3. ...well, they said they'd toss in a pair of Stereophonics tickets for Thursday night at the 9:30 for the grand prize winner. (That's right, TVD: looking out for your good time.)
So, we proudly present the Bones/TVD Prize Package for which there will be two, count 'em, two winners. The grand prize winner gets the Stereophonics tickets for this Thursday night (9/11), the Bones Soundtrack CD, a Bones T-Shirt, and a bunch of other, random Bones swag, rumored to contain Bones Pens and/or Bones Computer Cleaner. (Really.) The runner-up will get all the same stuff, minus the tickets. And it happens to be a pretty cool soundtrack they've assembled...So, pull yourself away from the TV a moment and leave a comment in the lil' comments box as to why you should be front and center when Kelly and the boys hit DC, OR just how much you're in love with Bones--and we'll choose a winner by Noon on Thursday.
Does anyone think for one moment that after his success with his previous combo (...name escapes me?) that Lennon would rest on his MBE-returning laurels, knock out a few radio friendly singles, and fill the rest of his first proper solo outing with well, crap? Indeed, no. In fact, just the opposite:
I had a whole post written up about the glories of 'Grace' ...but ...suffice it to say it was the proverbial game changer. Go ask Thom Yorke. Or Chris Martin, or...y'know - hell with that. Just listen (to everything BUT the singles...)
I was over at Orpheus Records the weekend before last and the inevitable was occurring since their announced closing a number of months back--the bins themselves were being broken down to be removed and sold. A coupla' kids from Richmond were up to cart the things down south for a store they're opening.
There's still plenty of vinyl in the store however and one of the guys up north for the bins who had never been to Orpheus before was flipping through the vinyl like a punker in a candy store and enthused "wow - there's so much vinyl in this place!" And Rick, Orpheus proprietor for 31 years now, replied that he should have been by 8 weeks ago if he really wanted to see vinyl in volume. And for the first time in all my visits since the going-out-of-business months, I heard a genuine sadness and resignation in Rick's tone.
In a fit of irony, I've often laughed that I chose the wrong time to be behind a music blog because my opinion of the music industry and 90% of its denizens is well, rather low. I mean, the cream should rise to the top, right? And if that's the case, scanning the Billboard Hot 100, or viewing just a half hour of the MTV Music Awards as I did last evening is enough to think that the cream ain't coming at ALL these days. Zee-ro.
The days of the career artist are entirely, completely over, although the writing has been on the wall for some time now. It's currently a singles-dominated business where personalities loom far larger than the substance of one or two measly downloaded singles. Sure, Katy Perry had the single of the summer, but does anyone want to hear a full album from Ms. Cherry Chapstick? Yep, The Ting Tings nicked a tasty Blondie riff for their straight to iPod TV commercial, but have you HEARD their full release? Of course not, it's awful. Even one time 'career artists' such as Aerosmith and The Smashing Pumpkins are themselves debuting new material on Rock Band for the Xbox360 eschewing the whole notion that they just MIGHT still have a full LP up their sleeves. Embarrassing.
Putting the needle down on the first tack and listening to the very end used to be so commonplace it hardly bears mentioning. So, this week, TVD's going to give the finger to the single and delve into what FM/Album Oriented Rock stations used to call 'deep cuts' cuz, well, they used to just as worthwhile as the 45 that heralded a new release. And they were purchased in stores, such as Rick's, that fostered creativity and community. (And we're tossing this in the name of downloaded convenience?)
I played 'Fat Bottomed Girls' and 'Bicycle Race' to death, but the rest of the record got just as much of a workout if not more, really. (Don't get me started on the poster.)
I think it bears repeating that this Friday feature, the newly re-christened 'Parting Shots' is YOUR forum, TVD reader. It's the spot where you get to talk back to us and to the world at large via ye olde internets. A mere mention of this to Ms. Urban Gypsy--she of the almost brand new Retro Kino--had my in-box almost immediately abuzz with Mp3's and:
"This has been an amazing week. Two of my biggest dreams have come true. One is making a guest appearance on TVD (thanks, Jon!) and the other is finally finishing my novel. After ten months of agony, I got my first draft printed up yesterday. Jon said I could write about what I'm into these days, and what I've got on my mind is the intersection between music and literature. At first glance, there may not seem to be much. Music requires instruments, a playback device, a venue, or a live audience. Literature requires a pen or word processor and lots of solitude. But there is more cross-pollination going on between the art forms than first meets the eye.
For myself, I can say that when I'm writing, I rely on my music collection far more than on my thesaurus. The right song at the right moment is the greatest form of inspiration a writer could hope for. It tickles the cerebrum and opens up the soul. Putting my mp3 player on shuffle and waiting to see what comes up could yield a long-buried memory, the perfect word to describe an image, an interesting name for a character, or just the right title. Music literally transports you out of your surroundings and deposits you in a different place and time, an invaluable help when constructing fictional worlds. Best of all, my headphones keep me company when I'm typing at four o'clock in the morning and my house starts making creepy noises.
Here is a mix of ten songs which run the gamut of my writing experience, from faltering beginnings to the glorious finish. Without further ado, please join me in saying goodbye to my summer of typing and welcoming me back to the real world."
In my hungry fatigue, and shopping for images, I went
