I love the simplicity of this:



Finally, finally, after about 3 years of waiting, Antony and the Johnsons will be releasing an EP on Oct 7 entitled Another World. To celebrate the release, Antony is playing two US concerts, one in LA and one in Harlem, with full orchestration co-arranged by the brilliant Nico Muhly. Those dates are here. There will also be two dates in the UK. Antony's next full length, The Crying Light, will apparently be released on January 21, 2009.

If you somehow missed I Am A Bird Now, which won the Mercury Prize for Best Album of 2005, do yourself a favor and grab a copy. Or if you aren't in the mournful mood, you can check out Antony's flawless vocal contributions to Hercules and Love Affair's self titled album. This should get you up and dancing:



And if you wanna hear Antony singing "Knockin' On Heaven's Door," click here.

The Grindhouse Film Festival returns to LA's New Beverly Cinema TONIGHT (Tuesday) with two more mindblowing films from the glory days of the grindhouses and drive-ins. For this special event we'll have an incredible Linda Blair double-feature from the 80's with rare 35mm prints of SAVAGE STREETS (1984) and CHAINED HEAT (1983). We expect to have a couple of special guests in attendance, and we'll also be celebrating the recent release of SAVAGE STREETS as a 2-disc special edition DVD by BCI Eclipse.


The event starts at 7:30pm, and admission for the two features plus a reel of rare exploitation trailers and our world-famous free raffle is still only $8.


For additional information and schedules for upcoming events, visit our MySpace page at
www.myspace.com/grindhouse.


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Tuesday • September 30th, 2008

NEW BEVERLY CINEMA
7165 Beverly Boulevard
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 938-4038
Admission: $8

7:30pm
SAVAGE STREETS (1984)
Directed by Danny Steinmann
Starring Linda Blair, John Vernon, Robert Dryer, Sal Landi, Johnny Venocur, Scott Mayer, Debra Blee and Linnea Quigley

10:00pm
CHAINED HEAT (1983)
Directed by Paul Nicholas
Starring Linda Blair, John Vernon, Sybil Danning, Tamara Dobson, Stella Stevens, Henry Silva, Edy Williams and Jennifer Ashley

25 years ago the timeless album Duck Rock by Malcolm McLaren was released on Island Records in the US and on Charisma in the UK. The album, which featured the two big hits "Buffalo Gals" and "Double Dutch" and mixed various styles of world music -- most notably hip-hop and African -- still sounds as fresh today as it did upon its release in 1983. And while British impresario Malcolm McLaren, who was perhaps best known then and now as the former manager of the Sex Pistols, is credited as the album's creator or main artist, that was not technically the case. The maverick McLaren was really more of a hands-on executive producer with a knack for unearthing new trends before they broke and repackaging them for public consumption. (For this intuitive gift McLaren has been alternately criticized for exploitation and praised for discovery.)

Sure McLaren sings or kinda raps throughout Duck Rock (like when he does the talkover in "Double Dutch") and he is credited as "producer" along with Trevor Horn. In fact, it was Horn (post Buggles/pre Art of Noise) who actually did much more of the music production, perfectly melding together divergent styles and sounds that included South American and downhome Americana roots. But the real stars of Duck Rock were the many many vocalists and instrumentalists whose talents McLaren mined (and didn't always give full or fair credit to) from Africa's Mahlathini and the Mahotella Queens to NYC's World's Famous Supreme Team. WFST's radio show, including its call-in segments, was sampled and mixed throughout the album ("Do ya scratchin'? What is it"), with the single (and video) of "Buffalo Gals" being highly instrumental in spreading hip-hop, which was still a culture in its infancy at the time, worldwide. The video for "Buffalo Gals" as well as videos for the album tracks "Double Dutch" and "Duck For the Oyster" all appear below.

The End of the Golden Age

On this day (September 30) in 1962 CBS radio broadcast the final episodes of Suspense and Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and the Golden Age of Radio came to a close. 

 

Beginnings

Radio Drama (also frequently referred to as Old Time Radio or OTR) really began in the 1920s. Before that, there was audio theater which consisted of plays performed for radio broadcast. It wasn't until August 3, 1922 at the Schenectady, New York station WGY that the in-house actors, The WGY Players, broadcast a performance that augmented the drama with music and sound effects, creating a vivid aural tapestry. The result was a worldwide explosion in what was an instantly popular new art form. Within months there were radio dramas being produced across the USA, as well as in Canada, Ceylon, France, Germany, India, Japan, and the UK.



Radio Drama's Adolescence

In 1934, the anthology series Lights Out debuted and exploited many of radio's unique qualities to massive success. The program was penned by Wyllis Cooper and aired at midnight. Cooper employed stream of conscious monologues, multiple first-person narrators and internal monologues which were at odds with the characters' spoken dialog. It's most often remembered, however, for its gruesome and explicit sound effects which attempted to suggest joints being ripped from sockets, skin being eviscerated, heads being decapitated and other depictions of violence that would still be pushing the envelope, even on modern cable television programs.

On hearing the eponymous debut by the British contemporary folkies  Eighteenth Day of May, one would be harp-pressed to claim that it was not recorded during the classic era of British Folk-Rock. American flautist/vocalist, Alison Brice, Swedish multi-instrumentalist Richard Olsen and their British cohorts have crafted a bright slab of pastoral folksong, including a nod to their legendary forefathers, Pentangle, with their cover of Bert Jansch's Deed I Do.

As was the case with releases by Pentangle nearly 40 years earlier, Eighteenth Day of May is a mixed bag. A few of the songs lag a bit and the overall air is fairly edgeless, but the ensemble playing and forward drive is often quite beautiful and evocative of that classic generation that first folded their electric guitars and vintage amps into the rich history of traditional British folksong.

I won't claim that you will replace your Fairport Convention or Incredible String Band's marker in the CD rack with this album, but at clearance pricing, there is certainly enough sublimity to justify the expense, and then some.

Alternative hip-hop duo dan le sac Vs. Scroobius Pip is made up of, respectively, musician and producer Dan Stephens and emcee/vocalist David Meads, left to right in opposite photo. The duo arrived triumphantly on the UK music scene last year with their breakout debut hit single "Thou Shalt Always Kill," which became an instant hit.

Packed with wit and sly observations on British pop culture, it topped the XFM and BBC radio charts and won high praise in countless media outlets, including the Guardian UK, which called the track the "underground anthem" of 2007 and the NME, which proclaimed it "The Track of the Year" -- and this despite the fact that the song mocks the same UK music mag in its ever satirical lyrics. Since the runaway success of "Thou Shalt Always Kill" as both a single and a video (see clip below), the talented duo have kept very busy. They've toured back home as well as performing at festivals on both sides of the Atlantic, including at the Glastonbury, Leeds, and Reading festivals in England and at both Coachella and SxSW in the States this year. 

They've also been busy recording and releasing a series of follow-up singles, including "Letter from God to Man," "Beat That My Heart Skipped," and "Look For The Woman."  They have also just released their debut album this month, Angles, which includes all of their singles, released in the US on Sage Francis' Strange Famous label (available at Amoeba). 

The pair are currently on their first US tour in support of this debut album, with Cali dates including tomorrow in LA at Echo (Tuesday Sept 30th) and Wednesday in San Francisco at Cafe du Nord (Oct 1st).

A co-worker expressed the opinion while listening to Malo’s first album  that perhaps the worst thing for both Malo and Santana were the Santana brothers themselves. The need for Carlos and Jorge to ruin the groove set by the rhythm section with a guitar solo plagued each band as time went on. Their audience loved it but soon it became formulaic and an instant cliché for Chicano bands for years to come. But when the style was fresh, everyone around the world wanted to sound like them, including the artists themselves who originally influenced the Chicano sound. Notice how many artists, including Miles Davis, The Rolling Stones, The Fania All-Stars and The Isley Brothers, started to sound like Santana, Malo & El Chicano at one point or another.

Malo’s self-titled album came out in 1972. By then, Carlos was world famous and jamming with the likes of John McLaughlin and Miles Davis. Malo came out of two San Francisco bands-- The Malibus and Naked Lunch (named after the infamous William Burroughs book). There were a few differences between Malo and Santana. For one, Malo had a horn section, giving them that Chicago/Blood Sweat & Tears sound. The other difference is that along with the jams, they had songs. Songs like "Café" and "Pana" are still the blueprints of Chicano Rock today, from the house band at Rick’s Burgers in Alhambra to Carlos Santana's multi-Grammy award winning Supernatural. Like most Chicano bands, Malo was a mixed race band and a hodgepodge of both Latin and Anglo influences. You can hear flashes of Miles Davis In A Silent Way on "Just Say Goodbye" and Joe Bataan’s influence on "Nena."

The “breakthrough” album is something most critically acclaimed artists have to contend with. It’s the pressure to get to that elusive “next level.” Sometimes the pressure comes from outside sources, such as the record label or management. Other times it’s self-induced. It’s the desire to grow out of the confines of one’s fan base in order to seek a larger audience. Perhaps the move is purely artistic, to grow into a new sound or a new image, damn the loyalists and critics!

Lila Downs’ latest release, Shake Away, is just that. It is an attempt to go beyond the confines of a cult following. It is her chance to shed her past image as the token Mexican Diva and perhaps become a household Diva. Out of the sixteen songs on the album, more than half are in English, which should make her songs more accessible to a non-Spanish speaking audience. 

That should make songs such as "Little Man," a Mexican Banda song (the style of which usually has most Americanos groaning) made easily digestible with English lyrics and a guitar solo. It is an “every person” song of the working immigrant, just trying to get by like everyone else. But the problem with the songs is that it lacks the spice, the flavor, and the balls for one to care about the immigrant that does the jobs that no one wants to do. The same problem exists within "Minimum Wage," a song about the trials and tribulations of immigrants in the U.S. by way of Loretta Lynn. It’s a down home country vibe that’s awkward at best, with the message getting lost on the train to Nashville. These two songs feel like Lila is both trying too hard and trying too much. Another sign of that is her version of "Black Magic Woman," a duet with pop singer Raul Mídon. Upon first listen I could almost hear the music executives saying:

Sleater-Kinney's "You're No Rock n Roll Fun" is such a perfect rock song! And the video is hottness. 

A long time ago, I read that this song was inspired in part by Elliott Smith, who tended to be withdrawn and commonly wanted to sit in the corner and hear one song over and over again at parties, lost in thought. It was supposed to be an affectionate calling out of sorts. Either way, the song's a blast.

The 2009 nominations for induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum were announced this week. Nine artists were chosen, though only five will be inducted in next year’s ceremonies.

Jeff Beck
Chic
Wanda Jackson
Little Anthony and the Imperials
Metallica
Run-D.M.C.
the Stooges
War
Bobby Womack

Ballots will be sent to more than 500 voters, most of whom are music industry executives and Hall of Fame members. The new inductees for the 24th Annual Induction Ceremony will be announced in January 2009. The ceremony will be held on April 4 at historic Public Hall in Cleveland, Ohio, the museum’s home, instead of at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York where 21 of the previous 23 events have taken place. To be eligible for nomination into the Rock Hall, an artist must have released its first single or album at least 25 years prior to the year of nomination.

Also, for the first time ever, tickets to the ceremony will be made available to the public.

I’ve never quite figured out what the criteria is for being elected to the Rock Hall of Fame. Personally, I still can’t believe that the Zombies or T-Rex or Tom Waits or MC5 or the Beastie Boys or Quincy Jones aren’t in the hall. What the hell, I might as well add Dr. John, Tim Buckley, Robert Wyatt/Soft Machine, Tim Hardin, Brigitte Fontaine, John Fahey, Pentangle, Jimmy Ricks and the Ravens, Tommy James, Television, Nico, Gabor Szabo, Richard and Mimi Farina, einstuerzende neubauten, Young Marble Giants, Pearls Before Swine, Pere Ubu, Link Wray, James Blood Ulmer, Throbbing Gristle, Sandy Bull, Derek Bailey, Tiny Grimes, Can, Nina Simone, Exuma, Lenny Breau, Sonny Sharrock…

I'm sure I'm not the only one who is pumped about the upcoming Bob Dylan Bootleg Series release. This one, Tell Tale Signs, will be volume 8 and is a two cd compilation of rare and unreleased tracks from 1989-2006. There's even gonna be a super special Dylanphile edition that contains 13 extra tracks, a 7" single and a book about Dylan's singles from all over the world. Crazy! 

Anyway, thanks to my sweet friend Greg, my attention has been turned to one of the tracks from this upcoming release, an alternate version of the song "Mississippi" from Love and Theft. This song was originally recorded in an entirely different version for Time Out of Mind, but was cut from that album and eventually redone again for Love and Theft. Time Out of Mind is my favorite of Dylan's more recent albums, and it's kinda known to have been trimmed of what many claimed were its best tracks.

This unreleased version of "Mississippi" makes the song totally new again. It's incredible: stark and straightforward, making an already great song even better. This version gives the track and especially its hard-edged lyrics a rough majesty that was missing from the ultra-smooth Nashville-ized album version. It will be exciting to hear even more of these tracks on this new release in a few weeks! Tell Tale Signs comes out Oct 7 and in the meantime I'll be pulling out my more recently released Dylan albums and giving 'em a whirl in preparation.

These are the sort of weeks that I live for. There are so many new releases out this week that are getting me excited. This week could easily leave me content for the rest of the year. I am very much looking forward to a new EP from Antony & the Johnsons in a couple of weeks and the new Bloc Party next month, but it is really all about this week. There has to be something out this week that you will at least fall in love with a little bit. There are big new albums by Mogwai, Jenny Lewis, Brightblack Morning Light, Kings of Leon, and TV on the Radio. These guys have all been around before and are pretty consistent with their albums. If you like these bands you will probably like their new albums. The new TV on the Radio is awesome, and there are also some very exciting debut albums out this week. I have been absolutely obsessed with this Friendly Fires album for a month now. It is so good. I have been listening to it almost every day at work for the past couple of weeks. I think I love it as much as I love that Teenagers album from a couple of months ago. And by the way, I still love that Teenagers album. It just grows on me more every month and I think it is brilliant. Please listen to it and you will see. More on the Friendly Fires later. The Tough Alliance get their U.S. debut on Modular, New Chance. I also love this album. I just talked about their Swedish label mates, Air France, last week. They are also from Gothenberg, Sweden. It is a super fun electronic pop album. And there are two great albums out on Fat Cat this week-- very different albums. There is the debut album from Ten Kens. I really liked this album when I first heard it a couple of weeks ago, but it was not until early this week that I realized just how much I like it. It is more intense than the Friendly Fires and Tough Alliance -- it sounds like Sonic Youth a bit. It reminds me of something that I have heard before but also sounds like something completely new and unique. I can't quite put my finger on what exactly it sounds like, but it is comfortably familiar. And I finally have decided to get into classical music this week with the new Max Richter. It might not be you typical classical release but it is classical none the less.

Alright... the winner, thus far, in the Los Angleles neighborhoods blog poll is Morningside Circle. I know you probably thought I forgot all about it but what happened was my camera was broken and I just got it back from the store. You can still vote for whatever neighborhood you want and I'll tackle it in a timely fashion. Just go here to vote for Los Angeles Neighborhoods or here for L.A. County Communities.

So Morningside Circle. If you're a resident of Morningside Circle, let me know. For the most-voted-for neighborhood, it sure was hard to find out anything online. Wikipedia doesn't have an entry (despite having one for just about every other neighborhood in the city) and I found next-to-nothing online.

I knew it was somewhere in the vast South Central area so I asked South Angelenos Kirk Gee and Big Nick Nickerson and they weren't really sure where it was but Nick thought it was by Manchester... which turned out to be right. I checked the city clerk records (Court File: 01-1874). According to a motion introduced in 2002:

     "the Eighth District Empowerment Congress has been working aggressively on the "Naming
     Neighborhoods Project" to identify and appropriately name the unique communities found within its 
     membership area. Frequently, the diverse and dynamic characteristics of the individual
     neighborhoods are cast aside as an entire area of the City of Los Angeles is deemed "South 
     Central." By properly identifying the existing communities throughout the area, the Empowerment
     Congress members have sought to instill a feeling of community pride and foster a greater sense  
     of community empowerment."

Amoeba Music and Phil Blankenship are proud to present some of our film favorites at Los Angeles’ last full-time revival movie theater. See movies the way they're meant to be seen - on the big screen and with an audience!

 

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Saturday September 27

Sylvester Stallone in

the arm wrestling / truck driving classic

Over The Top

1987, 93 min

New Beverly Cinema
7165 W Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Midnight, $7

 

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October
October 4 Hard To Kill
(Steven Seagal is Mason Storm. Mason Storm is... Hard To Kill!)
October 18 All Night Horror Show!
(100% Movie Mania! New Bev Fundraiser! 12 Hours Of Movies, Fun & ?? Argento & Fulci, Mysterious Forces & Sorority Sisters, Flying Piranha & Hungry Zombies, plus the scariest of them all - Teen Pregnancy! 8 films plus trailers, shorts & more! Full schedule & advance tickets up soon!)
October 25 The Wraith
(If you've done nothing wrong, you've got nothing to fear!)

 

November
November 1 Alien Nation
(Prepare Yourself for the 20th Anniversary!)
November 8 The Stepfather
(Daddy's Home and He's Not Very Happy!)
November 22 Waxwork
(20 Anniversary! More fun than a barrel of mummies!)
November 29 Berry Gordy's The Last Dragon
(Now, when I say, "Who's da mastah?" you say, "Sho'nuff!")

The feel of rock and roll would have been a hell of a lot different without the input of New Orleans musicians, and at the top of that class was drummer Earl Palmer. He provided the distinctive backbeat for the seminal sound of rock starting with the likes of Fats Domino and Little Richard and Eddie Cochran. Earl Palmer died last Friday in his home in Banning after a long illness. He was 83.

Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2000, Palmer played on thousands of rock, jazz and pop music sessions, as well as on countless movie, television and commercial scores. In the late fifties and early sixties he played on such rock classic singles as Fats Domino’s “I’m Walkin” and “Walking to New Orleans,” Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti" and "Long Tall Sally," Ritchie Valens' “Donna” and "La Bamba," Sam Cooke's "You Send Me," Eddie Cochran’s “Summertime Blues” and "I Hear You Knockin"' by Smiley Lewis. Legendary producer Phil Spector used him to build his Wall of Sound on such songs as “You've Lost That Lovin' Feelin'” by the Righteous Brothers and Ike and Tina Turner's “River Deep, Mountain High.” Palmer’s work was rarely off the charts for two decades.

Palmer left New Orleans for Los Angeles in 1957 to work for Aladdin Records. His career as a session drummer included work with a who’s who of 20th century musical icons: Frank Sinatra, Rick Nelson, Ray Charles, Bobby Day, Don and Dewey, Jan and Dean, Larry Williams, Gene McDaniels, Bobby Darin, Dick Dale, Tim Hardin, Tom Waits, Tim Buckley, Roy Brown, Neil Diamond, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duane Eddy, Sceamin' Jay Hawkins, Barbara Streisand, Taj Mahal, David Axelrod, the Beachboys, Elvis Costello, Everly Brothers, the Mama and the Papas, the Monkees, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, Johnny Otis, Thurston Harris, The Byrds, Marvin Gaye and Lloyd Price, just to name a very few. Not to mention the fact he recorded with practically every great New Orleans musician who ever tracked a song to vinyl, like Professor Longhair, Huey Piano Smith, Doctor John, James Booker, Dave Batholomew and Lee Allen.

Armenia - Independence Day



Latvia - Miķeļi

Orthodox Christianity - New Year's Day

Catholicism - Feast Days of St. Adomnan of Iona, St. Thecla and Padre Pio of Pietrelcina



Japan (Shinto) - Autumnal Equinox (秋分の日/Shūbun no hi)

  
Saudi Arabia - National Day



Bisexuals (and their supporters) - Celebrate Bisexuality Day



Puerto Rico - Grito de Lares

A few days ago I was in the Amoeba Buyer's office when I noticed a retail bag with the artwork from the new Calexico album, Carried To Dust on it. It is the artwork of one of my favorite artists, Victor Gastelum, who I have written about in the past. After I stopped gawking at the bag and remarking how cool it was, I noticed there was something familiar about it. I went on with my work and didn’t think much of it after that.

Saturday was the opening of Victor’s new show, Xacto Mundo, at Overtones Gallery in Venice. I went to the opening party and it was really fun and nostalgic. I saw many old friends from back in the early 90’s from Long Beach & San Pedro, most that I hadn’t seen in a quite some time. After reminiscing about old times with that crew, I looked at that same piece, now framed and on the wall of the gallery. Then it hit me. It made me love the new artwork for Carried To Dust even more.

I took some shots of Victor’s pieces. Unfortunately, my crappy photography skills do not do the artwork justice, so go check it out yourself.

Continue reading

Guitar Games

The first installment in the Guitar Hero series was released in 2005. The developers at Harmonix were obviously inspired by 1998’s Konami’s GuitarFreaks, in which players also use a guitar-shaped controller with colored fret buttons on the neck and a pick lever to score points playing along to rock music. That game never took off on the level of Guitar Hero though, partly because GuitarFreaks required players to shred along to the likes of Mutsuhiko Izumi, 桜井 敏郎,  小野秀幸, 前田尚紀 and Jimmy Weckl (né ジミー・ウェックル), who composed songs especially for the game. Guitar Hero's innovation was including 47 AOR songs by the likes of the Ramones, Deep Purple, umlaut-abusers Blue Öyster Cult and Motörhead -- songs that, whatever you think of them, are seared into your brain if you've ever drank a Mountain Dew, rode in a Z-28, watched a television commercial or shopped at Amoeba. That means even if you've heard "More Than a Feeling" 603,501 times more than you ever wanted, you'll have no problem playing along.

In 2006, RedOctane (the manufacturers of the guitar controllers) was purchased by Activision and Harmonix was bought by MTV. In 2007 Harmonix released, through Electronic Arts, Rock Band -- basically an expanded version of Guitar Hero which added other instruments, another innovation inspired by Konami’s games of the previous decade which followed up GuitarFreaks with DrumFreaks and KeyboardFreaks.

In celebration of 50 years of its Hot 100 chart, music industry’s Billboard Magazine has collected its Billboard Hot 100 All-Time Top Songs. The list collects the top 100 songs from August 1958 through July 2008 -- and the songs' slots are allotted based on their actual performance on the weekly chart, with an inverse point system figuring into the ranking (i.e. weeks at No. 1 earn greater value than weeks at No. 100).

Lists of the greatest this, or best that, or most influential whatever always irk the crap out of me, though I am perpetually intrigued. Is Citizen Kane or Gone with the Wind the greatest film of all time? I don’t know, but an evening on the couch with some popcorn and a beer watching the Big Lebowski is a hell of a lot more fun. Is Jimmy Stewart the greatest movie star of all time? Of course not, it has to be Cary Grant or maybe Humphrey Bogart, at least that’s what I think, but according to the experts, I am wrong.

Anyway, Drum Roll please … the Number One Single of all time …
Chubby Checker’s “The Twist.”

Now I have to admit I was somewhat stunned to see “The Twist” up there up on top, all by itself. But then again, "The Twist" is the only song ever to go to #1 on two separate chart runs. The first time was on Sept. 19, 1960 for one week, but after Chubby Checker made an appearance on The Ed Sullivan Show in late 1961, “The Twist” once again hit the spot, this time for two weeks starting on Jan. 13, 1962. It also set a record for the most weeks, 39, on the Hot 100 by a number one song, a record it held until UB40's “Red Red Wine” lasted 40 weeks in 1988.

According to an AP report this morning (Sept. 20), a plane crash in South Carolina carrying six people has left four of them -- two crew and two passengers, all unidentified in the report, dead and two passengers, drummer Travis Barker (Blink 182/Transplants) and DJ AM, "critically injured" in the Learjet crash late last night. The plane, just about to take off, went off the runway and crashed on a nearby road.

According to the AP report, "Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Kathleen Bergen says the plane carrying six people was departing shortly before midnight Friday when air traffic controllers reporting seeing sparks. She says the plane went off the runway and crashed on a nearby road. Hospital spokeswoman Beth Frits says Barker and DJ AM, whose real name is Adam Goldstein, were transported to a burn center in Augusta, Ga. Federal officials say two crew members and two passengers have been killed."

 

John Vanderslice is one of the Bay Area's most well known and most beloved musicians. He is also the proud owner of one of the few remaining all-analog studios, Tiny Telephone. John's a Barsuk recording artist and his most recent album is entitled Emerald City. He also happens to be one of my favorite people I've had the pleasure of meeting during my tenure at Amoeba. You can check out a sweet performance/interview with John from 2007 here on the Amoeba website, and you can also check out an mp3 of his song "White Dove" right here. Read on for our interview:


Miss Ess: How did your passion for music develop when you were young?

John Vanderslice: My mom forced me into piano lessons when I was 6. God, I hated them!! Of course, years later, when I had absorbed some theory and could play a bit of piano I thanked my mom for starting me out. From there, it was a lot easier to move to piano and voice.

ME: I took piano from six as well and had much the same experience, minus the great success you’ve gone on to! When was the moment you realized you could make creating music your life and livelihood?

JV: After I started Tiny Telephone and we got a few clients, I realized that the combination of the studio and my touring income would allow me to leave my job (I was a bartender at Chez Panisse, a fantastic to place to work).
 
ME: What have you been listening to lately? Whose songs resonate with you?

                                        Ameoba Music Berkeley  Hip-Hop Top Five  09:19:08

1)  Michael Franti & Spearhead All Rebel Rockers   
     (Amer-I Can/Unity One/Anti)

2)  Diplo Top Ranking Santogold (Mad Decent)

3)  The Game LAX (Geffen/Interscope)

4) Young Jeezy The Recession (Def Jam)

5)  eLZhi The Preface (Fat Beats)

The number one selling album at the Berkeley store this week is from the Bay Area's very own veteran political musician Michael Franti and his group Spearhead. Recorded in Kingston, Jamaica and produced by Sly and Robbie, this brand new full length titled All Rebel Rockers is the anticipated follow-up to the acclaimed Yell Fire!, released two years ago on Anti. This new album may not possess that same sense of urgency as its predecessor and hence, takes a little longer to get into, but All Rebel Rockers is still a very good album. (Yell Fire! is a hard one to top because it was so powerful a release.) Naturally, with Sly & Robbie at the controls, it has more of a reggae feel than the other genres it incorporates (mainly hip-hop and soul). 

                                                        Oakland Rap Top Ten 1990

01) Too $hort / "The Ghetto"
02) Richie Rich / "Don't Do It"
03) Mhisani / "Y.O.U.T.H."
04) 415 / "Groupie"
05) Mac Mill / "Dangler"

06) D-Loc / "Ace In The Hole"
07) Digital Underground / "The Way We Swing"
08) 2 Bigg MC / "He's the King of Hype"
09) Freddy B / "Why"
10) MC Valentine, K-Cloud & Crew / "Have You Seen Her?"

Digging in the Bay Area archives today I came across this Oakland Rap Top Ten chart from eighteen years ago. The list is a subjective singles/songs based chart that I had originally tallied based on a combination of artists I was writing about at the time for my Bay Area column in Source magazine and on radio airplay on the weekly Sunday hip-hop radio show (Hip Hop Slam) I did at the time. The show, on KALX 90.7FM, was co-hosted along with G-Spot (now heard on KPFA late Saturday nights) in addition to, invariably, a ton of guests (a great many of them Bay Area) rolling through the Berkeley studios each week, including all of the artists in this top ten. Note that back circa 1990, DJs and writers generally used the word "rap" to describe these artists rather than "hip-hop," even though it was recognized as a part of hip-hop.

Dwarf planets are objects with sufficient mass to assume a roughly spherical shape but yet too small to get picked for the starting lineup in the solar tee-ball match. There are currently four planets designated as dwarf planets. Before 2006 they were also known as minor planets, planetoids and (my favorite) subplanets.

  

Although there are currently only four designated dwarf planets, there are at least 41 known objects which may qualify when we get around to it. And when the Kuiper belt is fully-explored, there may turn out to be another 200. Beyond that there may be another 2000 subplanets in our solar system.
Ceres is named after the Roman goddess of cereals (a word which is itself derived from her name) and motherly love. She was both the sister and wife of Jupiter. Her worship was adopted by the Romans in 496 BCE, during a particularly severe famine. Her followers were mostly plebes who controlled the grain game in antiquity. For some reason, their rites included tying burning sticks to fox's tails.

The original name for the planetoid was Ceres Ferdinandea but that got shot down as not everyone was so keen on brown-nosing Spanish royalty. The dwarf planet is the smallest of the currently designated subplanets. It was actually discovered way back in 1801 by Giuseppie Piazzi who wrote, "since its movement is so slow and rather uniform, it has occurred to me several times that it might be something better than a comet." Even further back, Johann Elert Bode, in 1768, had suggested that there may be a planet between Mars and Earth. And lo, Ceres is situated within the asteroid belt. It's actually the largest  object in the belt --making up a third of the belt's mass. Its surface is made up of water ice (more than the total amount of water found on Earth), carbonate and clay. The weather on Ceres isn't that bad, reaching -38 degrees Celsius, which is warmer than some Midwestern winters I've experienced.

I love it when musicians write something new in response to another artist's song. One great artist inspiring another is what makes the world go round, in a way, and it's fun to find examples of artists reacting to one another's work.

One of the more famous examples of this is "Sweet Home Alabama," Lynyrd Skynyrd's 1974 response to Neil Young's earlier songs slamming stereotypical Southern racism, "Southern Man" and "Alabama." Neil apparently loved it when he heard his name in the track, as the bands were friendly:

"Well I heard Mr Young sing about it
Well I heard old Neil put her down
Well I hope Neil Young will remember
Southern Man don't need him around anyhow..."


 
 

Apparently Neil Young is extremely inspiring, because the other song that springs to mind as being written in response to a great song is Joni Mitchell's "The Circle Game," which she wrote for Neil after hearing his "Sugar Mountain." Both songs are about growing older and youth slipping by. The two songwriters met back in 1964, the same year 19 year old Neil wrote "Sugar Mountain," which contains the line "You can't be 20/on Sugar Mountain." Joni's response in "The Circle Game": "So the years spin by and now the boy is twenty/ Though his dreams have lost some grandeur coming true/There'll be new dreams, maybe better dreams and plenty/Before the last revolving year is through."

My love for Sweden just continues to grow this year. I really might need to go move there. I will wait and see how this election turns out first. I am keeping my fingers crossed and I just know election day is going to be a crazy exciting day. I am putting some faith in the American people that they will see how crazy this Palin lady is... So hopefully I will stay in this country, but Sweden might be the place to go if I need to. The music there just keeps impressing me. Air France from Gothenburg, Sweden have just put out a new EP called "No Way Down." It is on the label Sincerely Yours, which also put out the great album by The Tough Alliance. The Tough Alliance is getting some domestic love soon and will hopefully reach a wider audience. Gothenburg is the home of many of my recent favorites -- in addition to The Tough Alliance and Air France, Jens Lekman, Studio, The Electric Pop Group, and Love Is All live there. I might just have to investigate all the other bands from Gothenburg that I have not heard yet. My new favorite band might just be hiding in there, waiting for me to finally discover.

This new Air France EP is brilliant, but it is not the kind of album that will hit you in the face right away. It is sort of mellow and pretty. In their very short Wikipedia description they are described as "post-rave bliss, beach foam pop, and balearic disco." I might have to update this definition a bit, but it does sort of make sense. It reminds me of some of the tracks on the Studio album. You need to turn the songs up a bit to fully experience them. Headphones are always best for this type of music, or the privacy of your own car if you live in Los Angeles. The songs make you feel like you are floating or dreaming. Albums like these should really be used for therapy. This EP includes six short songs. They will satisfy me for a bit but I know I will want more soon. A complete album will hopefully not be that far away. The album is sort of a combination of an Orb or Future Sound of London album combined with some band like Saint Etienne or The Pale Saints. Some of the songs are just instrumental dancey mellow tracks while others are British 90's pop kind of songs over more dancey beats. Don't be surprised to hear some bird sounds and random samples throughout the album. This is what probably makes it sound a bit beach like, but not day time surf style beachy -- more like the beach music you would hear at sunset or in the middle of the night.

It's crazy what a little nostalgia can do sometimes:


After reading the list of the Gayest Albums of All Time, according to Out Magazine, I realized I hadn't listened to Tori Amos in about 10 years, so I dragged out my old Little Earthquakes CD, ripped it onto my controversial I-Pod and went out for a stroll down my street, feeling a bit blue.

Within about 2 seconds of hearing "Crucify" I was feeling giddy, taken back to another time and place, but also hearing the songs in a new light since it'd been so long. Little Earthquakes is an incredible record. Between the raw lyrics and the acoustic piano, when it came out in 1992 it was like nothing else of its time. I feel like it sliced through all the other overblown stuff out there (like Michael Jackson and Guns N Roses), utterly idiosyncratic, and then managed to float alone above it all. I don't know how I'd forgotten how delicious a record it is. Walking down the street with Tori whispering and crooning in my ear, simultaneously brutally honest and seductive, the entire timbre of my day changed. It's that kind of album.

I remember reading Tori was influenced by Joni Mitchell's Blue, and now, years later, having become a fan of that record as well, I can really see what she meant. Both Little Earthquakes and Blue are extraordinarily confessional, sincere and frank. And favorites of mine.

           

Since they formed 28 years ago, UK group Chumbawumba may have released a ton of music covering many styles (and under various band lineups) but it is their 1997 breakout hit single "Tubthumping" (video above) with its infectious chorus ("I get knocked down/But I get up again") that they will probably always be best known for, even though it was atypical of all the other music that this anarchist band had recorded. Regardless, this single was unavoidable on the radio eleven years ago when it was a hit both in Britain and around the world. It went to #2 on the UK pop charts and #6 in the USA in 1997.

Anyway, for some reason this song and its infectious chorus popped into my head the other day and refused to leave. I kept humming its refrain over and over - I get knocked down/But I get up again/You're never going to/Keep me down -- so much so that I had to go back to re-listen to it, to so see if it stood the test of time, if it sounded as good as I remembered first time around back in '97. And having just listened to it again now, I gotta say that, while it is still a really good pop song, that it doesn't really stand the test of time to these ears. Maybe I just heard it one too many times back in '97.

In my research I did learn that the song was not only a single and album (Tubthumper) track for the band but that it has been included on several compilations, including on a volume of the phenomenally popular Now That's What I Call Music pop-hit compilation series, and also on eight movie soundtracks including Home Alone 3, In God's Hands, Senseless, Air Bud 2, Dirty Work, Varsity Blues, and Joe Somebody. Additionally, it's been featured in several video games, including EA Sports' World Cup 98, Konami's Dance Dance Revolution 2ndMIX in 1999, and in Nintendo's Donkey Konga in 2004.

Amoeba Music and Phil Blankenship are proud to present some of our film favorites at Los Angeles’ last full-time revival movie theater. See movies the way they're meant to be seen - on the big screen and with an audience!

 

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Saturday September 20

25th Anniversary!

Michael Mann's

The Keep

1983, 96 min

New Beverly Cinema
7165 W Beverly Blvd
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Midnight, $7

One of the greatest things about living in the Bay Area, for me anyway, is the free Hardly Strictly Bluegrass Festival that happens the first weekend of every October in Golden Gate Park, thanks to rich guy and roots music fan Warren Hellman, who pays for the whole thing. Here's a good article from a couple of years back that was in the Chronicle about just what Mr. Hellman is doing.


At the festival over the years I've seen Willie Nelson, Emmylou Harris, Steve Earle, Gillian Welch and David Rawlings, and so many more, including Dolly Parton, which was literally one of the highlights of my life! Even if it's freezing outside, thousands of people gather in the park to hear the music.


This year's festival takes place Oct 3/4/5 and is lining up to be as strong as always, with seasoned performers such as Hazel Dickens, Robert Plant and Alison Krauss, Asleep at the Wheel, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Guy Clark, and Richard Thompson and newcomers like Bonnie Prince Billy, Iron & Wine, Pegi Young and...MC Hammer!? (Well, they do call it "Hardly Strictly!") You can check out the schedule right here. It really is not to be missed. Did I mention that it's all FREE?!