Just my type. She begins:
On a 12x12" surface, Erich Fromm could have fit at least thirty strong excerpts from "The…
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I also picked this one up at Boomerangs. At the time, I knew nothing about Melanie Safka. Looking at the front cover, I must have immediately thought, hmm… psychedelic hippie music, or something like that. I also noticed that it was released by Buddah Records who I was familiar with for their work with Captain Beefheart and Rodriguez. Turning to the back, I was intrigued by Melanie's liner notes, which pretty much told me that this chick is crazy.
Willie Nelson's Phases and Stages was released one year prior to Wainwright's Unrequited and takes a somewhat similar artistic approach. It is clearly a concept album with two distinct, but closely related, sides.
I chanced upon this album while browsing the dusty racks at Boomerangs, the new consignment shop on Brunswick, and I was immediately moved by the cover art. On the front, we see Willie Nelson, all red-lit and intent, fretting his guitar. On the back, another shot of Willie, much less forgiving. We focus on the lines around his common eyes, the strange shape of his…
I started with Loudon Wainwright's Unrequited. Though the front cover shows Wainwright looking positively pained, a tear streaming down his forlorn face, the back cover is a completely different story: all shits and giggles, which perfectly complements the live nature of the album's second side. Who knows what Loudon was crying about? Maybe he simply preferred live performances over studio work. I share the feeling.
I purchased this album at Tunes in Hoboken, New Jersey. I was torn between it and two other Wainwright albums: I'm Alright and T Shirt. All three were in…
Though earlier in the day I had entertained ideas of soaring through the cold night, piercing hearts from here to Williamsburg and back, when it came time to make my move, I could only sit there, alone, still and quiet and entirely comfortable on my warm, orange couch.
Instead of taking the train out to Brooklyn for Lights' special Valentine's Day show, I kept still inside my old, crooked apartment and listened to many, many records. It felt fine. It felt good.
Here's what I listened to.
It’s a bad idea to gin up expectations, but two concerts this week at Town Hall in New York City are worth the risk. Each commemorates Thelonious Monk’s big-band concert at the same Town Hall on Feb. 28, 1959—exactly 50 years ago—but in very different ways. This Thursday, Feb. 26, Charles Tolliver leads a 10-piece band on a straightforward (if that word can describe anything related to Monk) re-creation of the concert. The next night, Feb. 27, Jason Moran leads an octet on a bold re-conceptualization of the event, a sort of post-modern audio-video collage that aims to capture the spirit of…
I have a little space heater that I keep in my kitchen because the kitchen is where it's coldest. The wind whips against our old apartment building and rattles the old windows and sets the sparrows and the starlings fluttering into my thin walls where they've made their nests. If there was ever any insulation in those thin walls, it must be long gone.
I don't know what to do about these birds. I knock on the walls where I hear their noise, hoping to scare them away. Sometimes I bark like a dog. They are like Newark Avenue's homeless, curling themselves up into dark shadows at…
During a recent e-mail exchange with Music Direct's Josh Bizar, the topic turned to record cleaning. Josh shared with me his "Secret Record Cleaning Method."
Josh Bizar's Secret Record Cleaning Method
1. Buy a VPI 16.5.
2. Buy a simple record cleaning fluid.
3. Clamp a record on the cleaning machine.
4. Set platter in motion.
5. Apply about 12-15 drops of fluid and spread it around with a good (clean!) record brush.
6. Stop the platter and let the fluid sit there for a minute or so to loosen debris.
7. Scrub the LP on 1/4 of the record surface at…
If you visit our News Desk, you'll find my announcement of Michael Fremer's latest DVD, It's A Vinyl World, After All. While Michael offers an entertaining look into the world of vinyl manufacturing and provides tons of valuable information on record collecting, handling, cleaning, and storage, I did have one minor criticism:
Mikey does ramble. Fortunately, the dude is charming as all get-out. While the scenes at the Pallas and RTI record-pressing plants are scripted, the scenes shot in Mikey's home are clearly off the cuff. He stutters, he stumbles, he makes mistakes (then…
The “Monk at Town Hall” tribute-concerts on Thursday and Friday night (which I previewed in my last blog) were as riveting as I’d expected—in the case of Charles Tolliver’s re-creation of Monk’s 1959 concert, much more so. Tolliver transcribed the original concert off the Monk LP, assembled a top-notch 10-piece band to play the parts, and conducted the score with precision except to let the hornmen improvise their solos. It’s a risky enterprise to invite comparison to a classic (cf. Gus Van Sant’s shot-by-shot remake of Psycho), but Tolliver roared into the ring and more than held his own. It…
Among the many compelling jazz pianists still around, Ran Blake may be the oddest (and the most unjustly, though understandably, obscure). He can’t swing for more than a few bars; he tends to change keys at random intervals; for this reason, he usually plays solo, figuring that few musicians have the patience for his quirks (though some of his best albums—The Short Life of Barbara Monk, Suffield Gothic, That Certain Feeling, and Masters from Different Worlds—were collaborative efforts, involving such established artists as Steve Lacy, Clifford Jordan, and Houston Person). Yet there’s magic in…