Erik's Random 10

I am going to break the rules this week. Rather than talk about song 1, I am selecting song 8. Why? Because the great Peter Brotzmann, saxophonist in the free jazz quartet Last Exit, as well as innumerable other projects is playing this week in Austin and I am freaking pumped. Anyone in Austin needs to see this. You won't see anything else like it in your life.

Last Exit was a particularly interesting free jazz band. Featuring Brotzmann on sax, Sonny Sharrock on guitar, Bill Laswell on bass, and Ronald Shannon Jackson on drums, this supergroup (if such music can really be called a supergroup) combined the noise of free jazz with an amazing blues rhythm. Jackson is the one who really held that band together. He could put down some nasty beats behind all the craziness going on. Sharrock was a jawdropping guitarist who died far too young in the early 90s. Check out his amazing album Ask the Ages. Laswell has become known as a producer and has drifted into some new agey crap but has done some pretty fantastic work in his time. What a band!

1. Vince Bell, The Fair
2. Christy McWilson, Serpentine River
3. Vampire Weekend, Bryn
4. Mande Music, Bala
5. Count Basie Orchestra, Doggin' Around
6. Jimmy Martin, Widow Maker
7. Marvin Gaye, Come Get to This
8. Last Exit, Pig Cheese
9. Tom Waits, Black Wings
10. Sufjan Stevens, The Dress Looks Nice On You

Erik's Random 10

An interesting 10 this week. Any of these songs I would be happy to write something about.

Orgone is a leading band in the neo-funk/soul scene. At their best, I think they are very very good. In particular, the tracks with Fanny Franklin singing, such as "I Get Lifted" are really first rate. Bands like Orgone are breathing new life into a great musical tradition that had faded in recent decades.

I will say though that I place the songs with Franklin singing and the songs without vocals into 2 separate categories. When she sings, I am totally into it. On the many instrumental tracks, my attention wanders. A lot of bands that reach back into the glories of 60s and 70s danceable music are prone to a lot of instrumental numbers. I blame the hippies. Everyone is looking for some kind of jam-esque music I guess. Orgone seems to be no exception. But I find the vocals to be absolutely vital to this kind of music, especially when you have a real talent behind the mic. The occasional instrumental track is fine to set off the vocal numbers, but 1/2 instrumental? Not so interesting unless there is something really interesting happening, such as in creative jazz. Orgone always puts down a good groove, but groove alone is not always that riveting to me.

Either way, I do recommend their album The Killion Floor.

1. Orgone, I Get Lifted
2. Walk Don't Run, El Garage de Gina Monster
3. Pink Floyd, Echoes
4. Michael Shreve, Tell Me Everything
5. Wayne Hancock, Miller, Jack, and Mad Dog
6. Duke Ellington & His Orchestra, East St. Louis Toodle-Oo
7. The Freight Hoppers, Nobody's Business
8. Son House, Son's Blues
9. Tom Waits, Rains On Me
10. Merle Haggard, I'll Be A Hero (When I Strike)

Erik's Random 10

Calm seems to be a pretty good Japanese band that mixes traditional Japanese sounds with modern dance music. Truth be told, I've only listened to it once or twice. I just got it from a collection entitled "The Very Best of the Far East." This and other similar collections are really fantastic sets, providing you with 2 or 3 CDs worth of interesting music from an area for about $5. You can get them on Amazon and I'd recommend them as an intro to both traditional and modern sounds of the world.

1. Calm, Long Way Long Time
2. The Meat Purveyors, Car Crash
3. Eyvind Kang, The Eternity
4. Drive-By Truckers, Birmingham
5. Norman Blake, The Rights of Man Hornpipe
6. Frank Jenkins, Home Sweet Home
7. Flute Solo off the album "Folk Music of Ethiopia
8. Richard Thompson, Should I Betray?
9. R.B. Morris, The Ballad of Thunder Road
10. Elvis Costello, Crawling to the USA

Erik's Random 10

I guess this means I am back on the blog full time. It's like meth. I just can't break the habit.

I can't say enough about the awesomeness of Hazel Dickens. This West Virginia bluegrass singer was not only a pioneering female in this most misogynist music form, but she also has sung some of the most heart-wrenching political songs ever. She left West Virginia for Washington DC as a young girl. She joined a band with the folk singer Alice Gerard and they produced some fantastic albums (I'd recommend the collection Pioneering Women of Bluegrass, one of the 5 best bluegrass albums ever produced). In the late 1970s and 1980s, Dickens then put out a series of fantastic solo albums that combined political songs about coal mining ("Little Lenaldo," "Coal Tattoo") and women's rights ("Don't Put Her Down, You Put Her There") with more traditional bluegrass topics about heartbreak and loss. "Don't Bother to Cry" is one of those more traditional numbers. I also recommend the collection from her solo work on Rounder, A Few Old Memories. Those are 20 great songs on that album, let me tell you.

Some of you might remember her from the John Sayles film Matewan, where she sang at the funeral. She was singing in the old-time style which some have trouble listening to, but it's definitely from the heart. Her recorded work has a much more contemporary style though.

Dickens is older now and doesn't perform much. It has been several years since she put out an album. I suppose that I probably won't ever get the chance to see her. But she is absolutely amazing.

1. Hazel Dickens, Don't Bother to Cry
2. John Hartford, Gum Tree Canoe
3. Frank Sinatra, When Your Lover Has Gone
4. Tom Russell, La Frontera
5. Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time, Heartbreak Hurricane
6. The Kevins, Soft Words
7. The Magnetic Fields, Parades Go By
9. IIIrd Tyme Out, Dim Lights, Thick Smoke
10. Waylon Jennings, It's Not Supposed to Be That Way

Erik's Random 10

It's not as if we haven't talked about Bill Frisell on this blog before. What's interesting about "The Gallows" and the Quartet album the song comes off of is the way this particular band handles rhythm. It is made up of Frisell on guitar, Ron Miles on trumpet, Curtis Fowlkes on trombone, and Evyind Kang on violin. No traditional rhythm instruments. But each musician adapted to create very strong rhythms off their instruments. There's just not a lot of music out there with a trombone soloing over a violin rhythm. And this kind of creativity gets to the genius of Frisell.

1. Bill Frisell, The Gallows
2. Townes Van Zandt, Brand New Companion
3. Merle Haggard, Everybody's Had the Blues
4. George Jones, Still Doin' Time
5. Jelly Roll Morton & His Red Hot Peppers, Grandpa's Spells
6. The Gourds, Blood of the Ram
7. Sonny Sharrock & Nicky Skopelitis, The Pyre
8. Matthew Shipp, Patmos
9. Bonnie Prince Billy, I Send My Love To You
10. John Lee Hooker, I Can't Quit You Baby

Erik's Random 10

I love Fiona Apple's smoky voice and vocal sensibility. Her latest album, Extraordinary Machine, I thought was an excellent rock and roll album. She's actually been around for a pretty long time now--time really flies. If you've read this far, it's clear that I have nothing interesting to say here, except to recommend the album. Also, I particularly like this mix of 10 songs. Unlike most of these, it's actually a good and relatively complete selection of the kind of music I listen to. A little indie rock, the occasional 70s rock or punk album, some good jazz, a good bit of country, and a smattering of world and classical music.

1. Fiona Apple, Window
2. The Clash, Lost in the Supermarket
3. Bill Frisell, Hello Nellie
4. Butch Hancock, Boxcars
5. The Postal Service, The District Sleeps Alone Tonight
6. Yo Yo Ma and the Silk Road Ensemble, Mohini (Enchantment)
7. Charles Mingus, Mood Indigo
8. George Jones, He Stopped Loving Her Today
9. Charles Ives, The Unanswered Question, New York Philharmonic, Leonard Bernstein, conductor
10. Glenn Ohrlin, Fair Lady of the Plains

Erik's Random 10

The Osborne Brothers are the kind of band that is the antidote to my frequent complaining about the bastardization of bluegrass. To recap my opinion on bluegrass, we've seen two negative phenomenon. First, hippies have taken it over and turned it into jam music. Second, people like Ricky Skaggs have tried to turn it corporate. The Osborne Brothers never went down either of those roads. They were open to change and kept their music contemporary and popular. They have the highest selling recording in bluegrass history, "Rocky Top," which became the unofficial University of Tennessee fight song. That's pretty annoying in its own right (see the techno versions of the song played in the UT Bookstore) but it's hardly the band's fault. Bluegrass is a great form of American music but it's essence is so often lost with the American public who claim to be fans.

1. The Osborne Brothers, We Could
2. Dry Branch Fire Squad, Midnight on the Stormy Deep
3. Orchestra Baobab, Foire Internationale
4. Derek Bailey, Saturday Dance, Part 5
5. Stevie Wonder, You and I
6. Mark Dresser/Fred Frith/Ikue Mori, Pocket
7. Mike Patton, Ford Mustang
8. BR 5-49, Play That Fast Thing (One More Time)
9. Beck, E-Pro
10. Edgar Varese, Octandre II, Orchestre National de France, Kent Nagano, cond.

Erik's Random 10

"New Sad" is off of Marc Ribot's fascinating Rootless Cosmopolitans album, released in 1990. An early Ribot classic, it combines his own compositions with interesting covers of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps," "Mood Indigo," and "The Wind Cries Mary." "New Sad" is a trio piece that sort of splits the difference between the soulful playing of the Cuban albums and the experimental work that so often dominates his albums. With Don Byron on clarinet and Melvin Gibbs also on guitar, "New Sad" is one of the quieter and more interesting songs on this underappreciated gem of an album.

1. Marc Ribot, New Sad
2. Brownie Ford, Don't Let the Deal Go Down
3. Naked City, Obeah Man
4. Nail Kesova, Hor Bakma Sen Topraga
5. Duke Ellington, Toot Toot Tootie Toot
6. Frederick Soegaard, Track 4 from Multiverse
7. Larry Cordle & Lonesome Standard Time, Can't Let Go
8. Sly and the Family Stone, Africa Talks To You
9. Television, Mars
10. Frank Zappa, Sweet Leilani

Erik's Random 10

"Evita's Lullaby" comes off Alejandro Escovedo's most recent album, The Boxing Mirror. As a whole, the album hasn't worn that well on me. John Cale's production sense is not always the best. Escovedo was flattered that Cale, one of his heroes, would want to work with him. That's cool except that Cale overproduced the album, making each song sound like the work of some different 70s icon rather than like Escovedo.

That said, there are three really fantastic songs on the album. "Dear Head on the Wall," "Arizona," and "Evita's Lullaby." Escovedo has recorded several songs about his father but this is the first about his mother. It's a touching song. I was happy it was the song I had to talk about today.

1. Alejandro Escovedo, Evita's Lullaby
2. Greg Brown, So Hard
3. Leonard Cohen, Love Calls You By Your Name
4. Charlie Poole, Goodbye Sweet Liza Jane
5. Bob Willis, Dinah
6. Merle Haggard, Stay a Little Longer
7. Caitlin Cary, What Will You Do
8. The Allman Brothers, Mountain Jam
9. Mi & L'au, Merry Go Round
10. Sun Kil Moon, Somewhere (Version 2)

Erik's Random 10

I've long thought of the 1980s and early 1990s as a weak point in the creative jazz movement. The greatness of the 60s through mid 70s had long since passed. People were making some interesting music but to me it pales both to the earlier material and to the really great stuff that has come out in the last 15 years. One good band through this relatively weak period was The Jazz Passengers. Not the most experimental of groups, this relatively large band was made up at different times of people such as Marc Ribot on guitar, Roy Nathanson on sax, and Curtis Fowlkes on trombone. This tune comes off Plain Old Joe. They put together a nice sound that both pushes the envelope and remains within the recognized traditions of jazz. It's a band I haven't thought about in some time, but now I'm going to go back and listen to their albums that I have.

1. Jazz Passengers, Blues for Helen
2. Waylon Jennings, Honky Tonk Woman
3. Ali Akbar Khan & Asha Bhosle, Sadra
4. Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys, My Long Skinny Lanky Sarah Jane
5. Stevie Wonder, Big Brother
6. Curtis Mayfield, Superfly
7. Bruce Hornsby, Passing Through
8. La Negra Graciana, La Guacamaya
9. Iron & Wine, Muddy Hymnal
10. Material, Out of the Dreamtime

Erik's Random 10

It's hard to know what to say about Pink Floyd at this point. Some of their albums are vastly overrated. Others are significantly underrated. "Wish You Were Here" seems about right. It's really quite good and relatively experimental for a band that was hugely popular at the time.

1. Pink Floyd, Shine On You Crazy Diamond (Parts I-IV)
2. Feist, Leisure Suite
3. Frank Zappa, A Game of Cards
4. Alejandro Escovedo, Don't Need You
5. Duke Ellington, Diminuendo and Crescendo in Blue
6. Junior Brown, Venom Wearin' Denim
7. Billie Holliday, Georgia on My Mind
8. Hooker/Marclay/Ranaldo, Part 4
9. Buddy Johnson, One of Them Good Ones
10. Tom Russell, What Do You Want

Erik's Random 10

1. Bonnie Prince Billy, God's Small Song
2. Jason Isbell, Dress Blues
3. Ginger Baker Trio, Taney Country
4. Sly & The Family Stone, There's A Riot Goin' On
5. Dave Alvin, You've Got Me
6. Bill Frisell, I Know You Care
7. John Hartford, Annual Waltz
8. Orgone, Do Your Thing
9. Larry Cordle and Lonesome Standard Time, Saturday Night Special
10. Warren Zevon, Play It All Night Long

Erik's Random 10

I love it when a song comes up that I really want to talk about!

Billy Bang is a violinist in the experimental jazz scene in New York City. A Vietnam vet, Bang struggled for years with alcohol and drug problems that resulted in part from dealing with his war experiences. Several years ago, he was approached to write an album based on those experiences. Although I understand he was originally hesitant, he agreed and the result was the fantastic 2002 album Vietnam: The Aftermath. One of the best albums from this decade in any genre, Bang makes absolutely beautiful music commemorating the experiences of himself and others. All the musicians on the album are also vets--in fact, in the liner notes their dog tag numbers are listed.

"Moments for the KIAMIA" is a slower tune dedicated to those who were killed or missing in action. It's just a wonderful song off a great album.

1. Billy Bang, Moments for the KIAMIA
2. Sonny Rollins, Sonnymoon For Two
3. Eugene Chadbourne and Evan Johns, I Cut the Wrong Man
4. Bill Frisell, Ron Carter, Paul Motian, Introduction
5. Crazy Backwards Alphabet, We Are in Control?
6. Cyro Baptista, La-Bas C'est Naturel
7. Santiago Jimenez, De Donde Has Sacado?
8. Frank Zappa, Outside Now
9. Alejandro Escovedo, Broken Bottle
10. John Zorn, Poverty

Erik's Random 10

1. Fiddlin' John Carson, Quit That Ticklin' Me
2. Old 97s, Just Like California
3. Marc Ribot, Hoddah
4. Eels, Losing Streak
5. Jazz Passengers, Little Italy
6. The Gourds, Plaid Coat
7. Frank Zappa, Don't Eat the Yellow Snow
8. The Band, This Wheel's On Fire
9. Iron & Wine/Calexico, He Lays in the Reins
10. Sonny Sharrock, Out to Launch

I don't have much to say about Fiddlin' John Carson except what Lyrad said awhile back. Plus, I'm writing from Corpus Christi and need to get exploring.

Erik's Random 10

Ginny Hawker is one of American music's great unknown singers. From Kentucky, I believe, Hawker is a great bluegrass singer in the mold of Hazel Dickens. Bluegrass music has always had a huge problem with sexism, significantly more than Nashville country has. While today there is some room for female bluegrass singers, particularly crossover artists like Alison Krauss, women like Ginny Hawker continue to practice their art of singing the songs of the southern mountains in relative obscurity. This is too bad because she is really great.

1. Ginny Hawker, The Heart That Will Never Break Again
2. Chris Knight, Run From Your Memory
3. Ray Charles, Blues Waltz
4. Prokofiev, Violin Concerto, Op. 47 (With Simplicity and Warmth), San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, Jacob Heifetz, violin
5. Johnny Cash, Reflections
6. Bonnie Prince Billy, At the Break of Day
7. The Gourds, Maria
8. Bill Frisell, Dogwood Acres
9. Tom Waits, Little Drop of Poison
10. Earl "Fatha" Hines, Please Don't Talk About Me When I'm Gone

Erik's Random 10

Like a few weeks ago when I had to talk about Mahler, today I am stuck talking about something that I know very little about: gospel music. A friend of mine sent me this Abyssinian Gospel Choir album a few years ago. I haven't listened to it much, though it has been coming up frequently on random recently. But I will say this: it is good. You know what is not good? Most current Christian music. You see, in African-American gospel music, you actually have to be good. In white Christian music, you just have to be an emoting Christian. Thus, black gospel music tends to be listenable while white gospel music tends to replicate what I see as Hell.

1. The Abyssinian Gospel Choir, I Can Call Him
2. Frank Zappa, Watermelon in Easter Hay
3. H.K. Silvey, Old Fort Smith
4. Tom Waits, Fish in the Jailhouse
5. Drive-By Truckers, Space City
6. Gary Lucas, Evangeline
7. Jason Isbell, Dress Blues
8. Modest Mouse, Truckers Atlas
9. 13th Floor Elevators, Roller Coaster
10. Arcade Fire, Ocean of Noise

Erik's Random 10

John Hartford was one of the leaders of the bluegrass hippie movement of the 1970s. Unlike so many purveyors of this (David Grisman especially), Hartford avoided turning bluegrass into stoner jam music. Rather, he broad his weird sensibility to it, creating new sounds and very new lyrical topics. He was happy to sing a song about marijuana, something Bill Monroe never would have done. But he wasn't going to have a 4 minute mandolin solo in the middle of it. It might be a little banjo song. It might be a relatively traditional arrangement. He might sing it normally or he might sing it in a weird voice. However he did it, you knew it was a John Hartford song immediately.

"Way Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie" is originally off his fabulously strange Mark Twang album, but this is off a bootleg copy of a 1983 live show. It's classic Hartford. Odd topic, odd arrangement, but also in the universe of traditional bluegrass music.

Sadly, Hartford died well before his time from cancer. I was very sad when I heard the news. What a great artist.

1. John Hartford, Way Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie
2. Tom Waits, Long Way Home
3. Dodo Marmarosa, What is This Thing Called Love
4. Jello Biafra and Mojo Nixon, Where Are We Gonna Work (When the Trees Are Gone)
5. Bob Wills, I Ain't Got Nobody
6. Eric Dolphy, Bee Vamp
7. Hacienda Brothers, No Time to Waste
8. LCD Soundsystem, Watch the Tapes
9. Billie Holliday, God Bless the Child
10. Drive-By Truckers, The Day John Henry Died

Erik's Random 10

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about the canon and classical music. While there may be a reason for a canon for music that has gone back hundreds of years, I am deeply concerned over the canonization of jazz music. The fate of people like Lester Young is the reason why. While the canonizers, such as Wynton Marsalis and the writers for the New York Times, love Young, does he make the cut? While Marsalis and the Times have a different agenda for canonization, the project is accepted by the American public because they don't want to have to think about their music and they want to know what to buy. Thus they are looking for a few great people they can impress their friends with. In classical music, that is Bach, Beethoven, and Mozart above all else. In jazz, it is the old female singers, Miles, Coltrane, Ellington, and Louis Armstrong. Lester Young is not forgotten about today, but if someone is talking to you about Young, you know they are a big jazz fan. Lester Young is not someone you bring up in polite conversation because you can safely assume that the other people don't know who he is, or at least have no sense of his music even if they have heard of him. Occasionally, you might be wrong, but then it is 2 people excluding a group of others whose jazz collection goes no further than "The Romantic Miles Davis."



1. Lester Young, All of Me
2. Bonnie Prince Billy, Careless Love
3. Mississippi John Hurt, If You Don't Want Me Baby
4. Cat Power, Colors and the Kids
5. Gillian Welch, Annabelle
6. Chris Knight, Summer of '75
7. Malo/Flynn/Ickes/Pomeroy, (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons
8. Loudon Wainwright III, The Untitled
9. Catherine Irwin, My Old Unlucky Home Far Away
10. John Zorn/Masada, Bikkurim

Erik's Random 10

Ah, John Philip Sousa. No musician has made a bigger contribution to historical American wingnuttery than Sousa (sorry Ted Nugent). I can't speak much about "The Marquette University March." I imagine it's just a fight song he got paid for. But Sousa's music was designed to stir the worst passions of Americans. The head of the Marine Band from 1880 to 1892, Sousa's music inspired Theodore Roosevelt and other American imperialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sousa actually volunteered to come out of retirement during the Spanish-American War to serve as a bandmaster but couldn't due to illness. He did however manage to rejoin the military during World War I, at the age of 63, to lead the Navy Band at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago.

Sousa's music is pretty over the top and the politics behind it quite reprehensible. Nonetheless, I manage to find it amusing at this point and I don't really flip to something else when it comes up on my random listenings. Maybe because it's three minutes of amusement rather than 60 minutes of annoyance.

1. John Philip Sousa, The Marquette University March (Detroit Concert Band, Leonard B. Smith, conductor)
2. Eels, Checkout Blues
3. Alejandro Escovedo String Quartet, Everybody Loves Me
4. Richard Thompson, The Way That It Shows
5. Ashley Hutchings, Epilogue--Died for Love
6. Ora Alexander, Sweetest Daddy in Town
7. Earl Hines and Jimmy Rushing, Changing the Blues
8. Sonny Rollins, Get Happy (Short Version)
9. Fiddlin' John Carson, In My Old Cabin Home
10. Conway Twitty, It's Only Make Believe

Erik's Random 10

Despite owning two albums, I'm still not sure what to make of Animal Collective. This seems like the kind of band I would like a lot. I have always enjoyed experimental music, with a lot of interesting noises. Just last night, I saw the Miró Quartet perform compositions by John Zorn and George Crumb, both of which were pretty mind expanding. Animal Collective is the darling of the indie world.

But I'm not sure. It's certainly interesting music. But with Animal Collective and others of its ilk, (especially Battles, who I saw recently and felt very confused by) I'm not sure if the noise adds up to anything.

Usually I figure I "get" music, even if I don't much care for it. But I can understand what's going on and why people like it. I'm not so sure with Animal Collective and these new noise-rock bands. For the first time ever, I wonder if I am too old to understand them. Is there something going on that I am not getting because of generational issues? I keep listening to them, trying to figure it out. It's become a challenge of sorts. I keep thinking that at some point, I am going to listen to an album and it's all going to come together and I will be a big fan. I'm doing that as I write this. But it hasn't happened yet.

1. Animal Collective, Daffy Duck
2. The Music of Islam, Vol. 8: Folkloric Music of Tunisia, El Guelb Ely Yehwek
3. Sufjan Stevens, The Pick-Up
4. Bill Frisell/Vernon Reid, Size 10 1/2 Sneaks
5. Antonio Vivaldi, Laudate Pueri, Ut Collocet Eum--Allegro, Ottavio Dantone, director
6. Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five, Hotter Than That
7. King Crimson, B'Boom
8. Charlie Poole, Sunset March
9. Bobby Bare, Jr., Valentine
10. Anthony Coleman, Hidden Language