i'm not going to act like i'm mr. blues guy. all i know about
howlin' wolf are facts. the same stuff you would read on his wiki page. i don't even own a howlin' wolf record. but i came across
"smokestack lightnin' (dogshit version)" out there in the ethers, and i gotta say a fell into a four day trance trying to get my head around why this song is so compelling. what i came up with was this: the modal melody, the repeating pattern became a bit of a playable mantra in my head, and i would find myself beating it out on stuff for weeks after the trance. it goes a little somethin' like this:
boomp boomp CRASH!
boynie bown bu nunna nunna nuh, nuh-nuh, nuh-nuh-nuh-nuh
buh nunnuh buh nunna nuh, buh nuh, buh nuh. (repeat often)
and then the recording. i love the distortion. i love the max-outs. i love the solos. i love the chord change. anyhoo, i think it's pretty much perfect the way it is, though i feel like i'm going to have a hard time programming this into a set.
cti records put out a couple of
nina simone records at the end of the seventies, and from all that i've read, she didn't really love these recordings. shame, because there were some great moments on them, all coated in that brilliant cti fm radio sheen. this is her version of randy newman's
"baltimore", and i think with the bluesy skank and thick strings, it's the perfect compliment to a melancholy vibe. randy newman's a weird dude, a songwriting relic, really, but like harry nillson (who did a great record of only newman's songs) his songs are oddly engaging, like little mysteries that you have to listen to frequently just to take it all in.
this is a demo version of
"everybody knows this is nowhere", classic
neil young. it has a similar vibe to "baltimore", a dissatisfaction with location. the grass is always greener. or something.
if i had it to do over, i probably would have taken this song off. this is
pale saints, a band i've been yammering on about for years. as a former drummer, i always like odd time signatures and the weird things you do to fill them up. it's later 4ad stuff, so enough said about that, but it's aged pretty well, considering it's now nearly fifteen years old. anyway, this is
"hunted", off the flesh balloon ep. when you thing about it, that's kind of a gross name for a record. i really like the sound of the snare drum in this record, especially when they blast it with the reverb gun in the fade out.
i could write a whole lot about
low, but it's well covered ground, and by much better scribes than i. this is
"hands" off of the transmission ep, and it's good as hell. this song in particular, is a bit of a jam, as far as low are concerned. listen for the dripping water in the quiet parts. maybe it's just clever recording, but my favorite low tracks always sound as if their instruments are capable... no, insistent upon making a whole lotta unruly fucking noise, the type that feels like you got the wind knocked outta ya, and it takes all the power and concentration superhero musicians low can muster up to keep them tame and quiet.
and because we had talked about it in the past, i then included
low's cover of
"long long long", which, by now, is just as awesome as you hoped it would be.
you run into the risk of painting yourself into a corner by putting on back-to-back low tracks on a mix cd, and it takes a pro like myself to get yourself out. here i used
rub n' tug's
"sea men", which is a slow balearic boogie monster, created to sound as if it came out and tore shit up on the white island back in '82. rub n' tug are eric duncan and thomas bullock, a former wicked sound system guy and all around professional head. a couple of years back they put out a compilation on the eskimo label that was truly the business, and included linda law's "all the night", a track that hasn't left my dj bag in a long time.
"aht uh mi hed" is some of that classy
shuggie otis shit, one of the first songs to utilize electronic drums, even though they sound like they came from the old organ that sat out at my grandparents. shuggie really should have been more famous. i really wish he would have joined the stones. my cousin used to be in a band named "shuggie". ah well.
i listened to
"in a beautiful place in the country by
boards of canada a million times before i heard lyrics. of course, it's just the same thing over and over, but i think it's funny that i can listen to a song dozens of times, and then one day, i hear something completely unexpected later on. usually, it's just a little bass pattern or a flange on a guitar solo, not something as obvious as human speech (vocoded though it may be), but still, it's the little discoveries that keep you coming back. that's why reviewing stuff off of one listen is damn near pointless.
i was walking the dog the other night, and
"it's alright ma (i'm only bleeding)" came on the ol' ipod. i let the dog off leash and sat in the park and really listened to what
billy preston brings to it, and now i've gotta give it to him because in my mind, it's his song now. it was a drag when he passed this year, and as these things often happen, i listened to a lot more of it because of it. the man was awesome on keys. and to help prove it, i included a demo version of
"dig it by
the beatles, from the really good quality "as nature intended" bootleg. preston's little vamps are great. we all know little minutes of this edited into the final "let it be" release, but this is a nice full version not commercially released.
and because it has to end sooner or later, i chose sooner and finished this off with
"saguaro" by
a small, good thing. this is off of their em:t release. they had some really good records on the soleilmoon label (outta portland!) and have lots of previous recordings under the o yuki conjuate name, frequently on staalplaat. ambient high-lonesome cinemascapes with samplers. spooky, but comforting, a small, good thing live up to their name, and it makes a pretty good way to end a mix. oh crap, it ends horribly. that's the risk you run when making itunes mixes.
