search

<i>Genuine Electric Latin Love Machine</i>

This album was obviously named after me.

Richard Hayman's Genuine Electric Latin Love Machine was released in 1969 and features many persuasive favorites, including "The Look of Love" and "The Girl from Ipanema," all electronically rendered using the groundbreaking Moog synthesizer.

Inside the gloriously thick gatefold, we find Hayman's essay, "The Moog Synthesizer: An Arranger's Delight." He writes:

No other instrument known today is capable of producing so many diversified sounds that can be so completely wild and yet so completely controlled….

The…

 

<i>Darkness on the Edge of Town</i>

It's a very tough call, but Darkness may be my favorite Springsteen album. See him there, looking so damn ready to prove it all night.

Have you ever wondered just whose house he's standing in?

That wallpaper and those blinds might belong to any grandmother in New Jersey. For years, in fact, I was certain that this photo was actually shot in my grandmother's house in Newark. In fact, the image was captured by photographer Frank Stefanko, in Stefanko's Haddonfield home.

I remember heading into the old Tower Records on East 4th, and picking up a copy of…

 

<i>Elvis</i>

I purchased this album, simply titled Elvis, at the ARChive of Contemporary Music's winter record fair. This album immediately followed his RCA Victor debut, Elvis Presley. Both were released in 1957 and both went gold. By the end of the year, I suppose he was so successful that a single name was enough. My copy is a 50th anniversary reissue special.

Scotty Moore plays guitar; Shorty Long is on the piano; Bill Black's got the bass; DJ Fontana is behind the kit; and the Jordanaires sing backup. Highlights include "Rip It Up," "Love Me," "Long Tall Sally," and "When My Blue Moon…

 

<i>Stop! I'm Free Again</i>

There's a strange similarity between La Lupe and Melanie. They are both clearly passionate, to say the least. I've read that La Lupe's live shows had that certain danger to them that only the greatest rock performances can manage. On stage, her hands went wild like pigeons exploding into the summer sky: Lupe would poke at her face, tug at her clothes, and throw her shoes into the crowd.

Though she gained much fame in the 1960s as Tito Puente's vocalist and would become the first Latin singer to pack the house at Madison Square Garden, she would later be seen as something of a…

 

<i>Affectionately Melanie</i>

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.

Just my type. She begins:

On a 12x12" surface, Erich Fromm could have fit at least thirty strong excerpts from "The…

 

<i>Phases and Stages</i>

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>Unrequited</i>

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…

 

No Lights on Valentine's Day

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.

 

Tolliver & Moran Do Monk at Town Hall

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>"Happiness won't leave me alone," says the bird in his nest.</i>

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…

 

Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement