A man sits contented in the grass, mumbling in the distance. Who's to say he doesn't hold the key to our lives' meaning.
donderdag 29 augustus 2019
Capsule review: Bill Callahan - Shepherd in a sheepskin vest (2019)
A man sits contented in the grass, mumbling in the distance. Who's to say he doesn't hold the key to our lives' meaning.
Capsule review: Beach boys - Friends (1968)
The Beach boys never went to college. After high school they grew up. The hard won pleasures of this music are beyond the experience of the teenage audience. Mike Love must've been otherwise occupied to let control slip out of his hands again after Wild Honey. He couldn't have written these songs.
Capsule review: Beach boys - Lei'd in Hawaii (1967, released 2017)
They sound misplaced, so they misplaced the record. The smallest a blockbuster band has ever sounded. But that's an intriguing sound too.
Capsule review: Mauro Pawlowski - Hallo, met Mauro (2004)
Give him a great idea for a commission and he delivers. These 'hold the line' messages for VisitAntwerpen are more groovy and melodic than they've any right to be. I'd call. Makes that robot voice come alive.
Capsule review: Othin spake - Live @ Archiduc (2009)
Long delayed release of 2005 concert. Supposed to be Othin Spake's debut, but shelved over technical difficulties. 15 minute 'Deity Ame' (also salvaged on the debut proper) the highlight.
dinsdag 27 augustus 2019
Capsule review: The beach boys - Smiley smile (1967)
If one album could've saved rock from self-importance. Such a joyful half hour. Come on now 'If I only had a little pad ... in Hawaii' Now that rock stars are effectively bald, tell me this album didn't see it all coming. Love that album cover too.
Capsule review: The beach boys - Smile session (1966-67, 2011 released)
The good stuff was out there. They were right not to release this. At some point you wanna strangle that guy that's been going 'Awadadoowop' for 45 minutes. Then they can arrest me. I feel Mike Love's pain.
Capsule review: The Beach boys - Pet sounds (1966)
It's that moment when the girl on the beach goes home with you and you realize you have no inner life to share. Start growing.
Moments with Mauro: Hitsville drunks - 'Before we got rich' (2007)
Early version of the Radical Slave single.
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - Summer days and summer nights (1965)
Some bands' autopilots are better than other bands' autopilots. Some come up with 'California girls'. Or even 'Let him run wild'.
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - Today! (1965)
Wonder and doubt. And some of the most beautiful ballads in the annals of pop.
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - All summer long (1964)
Everything comes together in this eternal youth classic. The high- and endpoint of their early phase as the platonic ideal of a youth band. From here on they'd have no other path but to grow up.
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - Shut down Vol 2 (1964)
Half a brilliant record ('Fun, fun, fun', 'Don'ty worry baby'), half studio debris ('Denny's drums', 'Cassius Love...'). These days there's something innocent and naïve about such brazen product creation. There was heart in it. Can we ever go back?
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - Little deuce coupe (1963)
Two weeks after their last record, the Beach Boys released their car album. Some old, 8 new songs recorded in a day. Remarkably some of it works.
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - Surfer girl (1963)
Expanding. The romance of surfing. Also cars and having your own bedromm. One question: what's a car club?
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - Surfin' U.S.A. (1963)
Toughening up. An early classic. They own this formula (surf + harmony).
Capsule review: The Beach Boys - Surfin' Safari (1962)
Sketches of the sea. Primary colors. Even Mozart made a surf album at 6.
Capsule review: Mauro Pawlowski - Nieuwzwart (2009)
A kick in the eye instrumental rock record. And poetry recitation. Mauro finds a new savage, spooked rock sound - the first to rival the Superstars - in two new partners Jeroen Stevens and Elko Blyweert. Both would feature regularly in a new and expanding family of musical collaborators which would pull him beyond dEUS.
Secret history of rock 'n' roll: Roy Acuff - The great speckled bird (1936)
Roy Acuff – The great speckled bird (1936)
The King of Country Music’s first great triumph, a quasi-devotional single that singlehandedly ushered country music out of the moribund string band and hoedown era into a new singer based format, the formidable success of ‘The great speckled bird’ and Acuff himself, as a singer, fiddler, promotor, music publisher has all but obliterated traces of a dark and troubling story at the heart of the song. A story which his former cohort, Hawaiian guitarist Clell Summery, who played a crucial role in its story, only now feels at liberty to share. ‘The payments from the estated stopped coming in,’ he explains, ‘so I’m putting the record straight.’
Hank Williams V (no actual relation), chairman of the Grand Ole Opry, admits the revelations hurt the carefully maintained reputation of the Nashville institution. ‘It’s like my [not actual] forefather Hank Williams said about my good friend [actually dead before Williams V was out of kindergarten] Roy: ‘He’s the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn’t worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God.’ Of course he never saw Garth, but still… So to hear this twisted tale. Well, the Grand Ole Opry would prefer you didn’t.’
But Summery won’t be silenced. ‘First off, people think Claxton [Roy’s middle name] was this country farmboy rube, a pure soul untainted. Hell, his family was Tennessee state senators and Baptist preachers. He was schooled. He was an intellectual. Always his nose in the books. Crowley, Blavatsky. Satanism was in his blood. He wore a cape wherever he went.’ Career prospects however weren’t so good. An early media blitz balancing farm tools on his chin fizzled out when the hype died, but he never had to shave again.
At end’s rope a deal made at the crossroads gave him heretofore unsuspected athletic prowess. Summery: ‘Claxton was not the sportive kind. At all. He was the team mascot. We mocked him, actually. Andicapped Acuff, we called him. So he disappeared for a couple of weeks, after checking out every occult book in the Maynardville library. Lo and behold, he comes back an athlete. You can imagine the stories going ‘round. I axe him what happened. He says it happened at the crossroads, Plainview and Blaine. Traded his soul for upper body strength. And calves too. Boy…’
Demonic intervention or not, Roy was soon playing for the Knoxville Smokies and was tipped for great things. Then, ‘the deal went south’, says Summery, ‘Claxton was cut loose from the spirit. Lost his body strength. They said it was a sunstroke, but come on, did ya ever heard of a baseball player dropping out over a sunstroke? It was his devil deal gone wrong.’ Roy dropped out and went into seclusion at his parents’ house. ‘I just couldn’t stand the sun anymore,’ he said, in later years conceding that he’d had a nervous breakdown in the early ‘30s. ‘Nuff said,’ says Summery, ‘he’d wavered and lost everything. But now he chose the real nightlife – being a musician.’
Managed by his father, who handled all daytime contacts, Roy became first a competent fiddler, then a remarkable singer. He joined Doc Hauer’s Medicine Show (‘He loved our product,’ says Hauer) and started playing with guitarist Jess Easterday (‘obviously a stagename,’ says Summery) and childhood friend turned Hawaiian guitarist Summery in the Tennesse Crackerjacks, then the Crazy Tennesseans. ‘We really were crazy.’ They started building a repertoire and a reputation. It was a chance encounter with a six-year-old Anton LaVey in early 1936 however that led the way to ‘The great speckled bird’, eventually his breakthrough single for ACR. ‘Anton, even at 6, had the gift of persuasion,’ continues Summery. ‘He took us under his wing. We started wearing capes again. And under his tutelage we found the philosophy underpinning our work for the Crazy Tennesseans. We started writing a country opera, a cross between the book of Job, Faust and Pygmalion, but with more Satanism.’
‘‘Speckled bird’ was supposed to be the opening song. The main character was this country rube, indoctrinated by the Jesus cult, singing God’s praises. But that was just the start of it. In this guy’s life God and Lord Satan would stage a battle for supremacy, God raining down deprivation and torment upon the man, Lord Satan sending him sweet temptations. At first the guy won’t waver, he remains loyal to his God, but why? Eventually he confronts God and learns of the cheap bet the Lords of Good and Evil have made of his life. This is how God betrays his people. And he sees the honesty and glory of Lord Satan’s path. He spits on a preacher, an autobiographic scene for Roy, surrenders his soul willingly and becomes a preacher in the Church of Satan.’
‘A new life opens for this guy: narcotics, luscious group sex and success at the stock market beyond his wildest dreams. This all takes place during the Depression, while his pious, dull wife starves herself and 9 children for fear of eating Satan’s bread. He laughs at her funeral. Meanwhile he makes enough money to fulfill his lifelong dream of going to Lourdes and piss on Mother Mary’s ghostly apparition, causing an electric short circuit which kills him. His soul descends into hellfire, singing ‘Nearer my God to thee’
Needless to say, the success of its leading song derailed Acuff. Once again his resolution wavered. ‘Success went to his head,’ says Summery, ‘All of a sudden the sex songs had to be released under an alias [the Bang boys] and were buried on the market. Claxton was doing a column for Church Weekly. He abandoned the cape and started going out in the daytime again. It was clear to me our work would never be made.’ An impartial onlooker might conclude he went over to the good side. Whatever the truth of it, the Crazy Tennesseans soon fell apart. Summery was shoved to the side, replaced by a dobro player. ‘A fucking dobro’.
What to make of all this. Summery's later comedy career ('They sold it as comedy, but I meant every word.') casts some doubts on the veracity of his claims but who's to say? Summey still wears a cape. Acuff died in 1992 and hasn’t replied to our requests for comment. ‘The great speckled bird’ – still a remarkable single, whatever its back story. But Summery’s voodoo Hawaiian guitar sure casts a sinister glow on this seemingly idealistic slice of praising the Lord.
The King of Country Music’s first great triumph, a quasi-devotional single that singlehandedly ushered country music out of the moribund string band and hoedown era into a new singer based format, the formidable success of ‘The great speckled bird’ and Acuff himself, as a singer, fiddler, promotor, music publisher has all but obliterated traces of a dark and troubling story at the heart of the song. A story which his former cohort, Hawaiian guitarist Clell Summery, who played a crucial role in its story, only now feels at liberty to share. ‘The payments from the estated stopped coming in,’ he explains, ‘so I’m putting the record straight.’
Hank Williams V (no actual relation), chairman of the Grand Ole Opry, admits the revelations hurt the carefully maintained reputation of the Nashville institution. ‘It’s like my [not actual] forefather Hank Williams said about my good friend [actually dead before Williams V was out of kindergarten] Roy: ‘He’s the biggest singer this music ever knew. You booked him and you didn’t worry about crowds. For drawing power in the South, it was Roy Acuff, then God.’ Of course he never saw Garth, but still… So to hear this twisted tale. Well, the Grand Ole Opry would prefer you didn’t.’
But Summery won’t be silenced. ‘First off, people think Claxton [Roy’s middle name] was this country farmboy rube, a pure soul untainted. Hell, his family was Tennessee state senators and Baptist preachers. He was schooled. He was an intellectual. Always his nose in the books. Crowley, Blavatsky. Satanism was in his blood. He wore a cape wherever he went.’ Career prospects however weren’t so good. An early media blitz balancing farm tools on his chin fizzled out when the hype died, but he never had to shave again.
At end’s rope a deal made at the crossroads gave him heretofore unsuspected athletic prowess. Summery: ‘Claxton was not the sportive kind. At all. He was the team mascot. We mocked him, actually. Andicapped Acuff, we called him. So he disappeared for a couple of weeks, after checking out every occult book in the Maynardville library. Lo and behold, he comes back an athlete. You can imagine the stories going ‘round. I axe him what happened. He says it happened at the crossroads, Plainview and Blaine. Traded his soul for upper body strength. And calves too. Boy…’
Demonic intervention or not, Roy was soon playing for the Knoxville Smokies and was tipped for great things. Then, ‘the deal went south’, says Summery, ‘Claxton was cut loose from the spirit. Lost his body strength. They said it was a sunstroke, but come on, did ya ever heard of a baseball player dropping out over a sunstroke? It was his devil deal gone wrong.’ Roy dropped out and went into seclusion at his parents’ house. ‘I just couldn’t stand the sun anymore,’ he said, in later years conceding that he’d had a nervous breakdown in the early ‘30s. ‘Nuff said,’ says Summery, ‘he’d wavered and lost everything. But now he chose the real nightlife – being a musician.’
The Crazy Tennesseans:
Managed by his father, who handled all daytime contacts, Roy became first a competent fiddler, then a remarkable singer. He joined Doc Hauer’s Medicine Show (‘He loved our product,’ says Hauer) and started playing with guitarist Jess Easterday (‘obviously a stagename,’ says Summery) and childhood friend turned Hawaiian guitarist Summery in the Tennesse Crackerjacks, then the Crazy Tennesseans. ‘We really were crazy.’ They started building a repertoire and a reputation. It was a chance encounter with a six-year-old Anton LaVey in early 1936 however that led the way to ‘The great speckled bird’, eventually his breakthrough single for ACR. ‘Anton, even at 6, had the gift of persuasion,’ continues Summery. ‘He took us under his wing. We started wearing capes again. And under his tutelage we found the philosophy underpinning our work for the Crazy Tennesseans. We started writing a country opera, a cross between the book of Job, Faust and Pygmalion, but with more Satanism.’
‘‘Speckled bird’ was supposed to be the opening song. The main character was this country rube, indoctrinated by the Jesus cult, singing God’s praises. But that was just the start of it. In this guy’s life God and Lord Satan would stage a battle for supremacy, God raining down deprivation and torment upon the man, Lord Satan sending him sweet temptations. At first the guy won’t waver, he remains loyal to his God, but why? Eventually he confronts God and learns of the cheap bet the Lords of Good and Evil have made of his life. This is how God betrays his people. And he sees the honesty and glory of Lord Satan’s path. He spits on a preacher, an autobiographic scene for Roy, surrenders his soul willingly and becomes a preacher in the Church of Satan.’
‘A new life opens for this guy: narcotics, luscious group sex and success at the stock market beyond his wildest dreams. This all takes place during the Depression, while his pious, dull wife starves herself and 9 children for fear of eating Satan’s bread. He laughs at her funeral. Meanwhile he makes enough money to fulfill his lifelong dream of going to Lourdes and piss on Mother Mary’s ghostly apparition, causing an electric short circuit which kills him. His soul descends into hellfire, singing ‘Nearer my God to thee’
More Satanic country music:
Needless to say, the success of its leading song derailed Acuff. Once again his resolution wavered. ‘Success went to his head,’ says Summery, ‘All of a sudden the sex songs had to be released under an alias [the Bang boys] and were buried on the market. Claxton was doing a column for Church Weekly. He abandoned the cape and started going out in the daytime again. It was clear to me our work would never be made.’ An impartial onlooker might conclude he went over to the good side. Whatever the truth of it, the Crazy Tennesseans soon fell apart. Summery was shoved to the side, replaced by a dobro player. ‘A fucking dobro’.
Clell Summery in his later career:
What to make of all this. Summery's later comedy career ('They sold it as comedy, but I meant every word.') casts some doubts on the veracity of his claims but who's to say? Summey still wears a cape. Acuff died in 1992 and hasn’t replied to our requests for comment. ‘The great speckled bird’ – still a remarkable single, whatever its back story. But Summery’s voodoo Hawaiian guitar sure casts a sinister glow on this seemingly idealistic slice of praising the Lord.
maandag 26 augustus 2019
Capsule review: Franco Battiato - Fetus (1971)
Italian popsongs and special effects. An early '70s trip through at the time cutting edge technology, and also a dreamscape. Bad dreams.
Capsule review: Fontella Bass - The best of (1964-1968, 1992 released)
Quality, if formulaic mid-60s soul. Chess as in roots. Likeable.
Capsule review: Kapotski: Kapotski international shopdrop record tracking system (2008)
Lovely spacious sound on this LP of edited highlights from two improvised concerts in 2006, Kapotski curating a line-up of guests (side A: Jean-Marie Aerts, Isolde Lasoen; side B: Mauro Pawlowski, Steven De Bruyn) who met on stage. Like walking around in a cubist painting. Abstract, but it feels good to wander around in.
zondag 25 augustus 2019
Capsule review: Lou Barlow's Sentridoh - Winning losers. A collection of home recordings (1993)
Brevity's is lo-fi's friend.
Capsule review: Sentridoh - The original losing losers (1991)
Drink in the lo-fi gestalt. 43 track of hiss and bitter tomfoolery. But I get lost in it.
Capsule review: Mauro Antonio Pawlowski - Untertanz (2008)
If Antonio is Mauro's solo avant garde manifestation, then this is his pop album. But... because of its diversity in sounds and modes, its directness, its popmusic quotatins, not because it's filled with songs. There are none. This is on an abstract plain. A cover of Big Star's 'Thirteen' so dmeented the older Alex Chilton would have approved. On the whole something of a definitive statement for Antonio.
Capsule review: Devendra Banhart - Rejoicing in the hands (2004)
Solo troubadour reimagines Tropicalia. Exotic, so candid it's frightening, alluring.
Capsule review: Band of Susans - Veil (1993)
Dark early '90s alternative rock. Tunes optional. Moods compulsory. Dark moods.
Capsule review: Possessed factory - Vol. III (2008)
Disembodied sketches, 30 in 45 minutes. They're all untitled. I would've liked to see their titles for these sketches. Or at least some signpoints. Footnotes, even. It intrigues, but I remain undecided.
Capsule review: Bum collar - Versatile styles (2006)
Club Moral as a dance band? Well, sort of. The shakes. The epileptic fit. Human rabies. More dances named after gruesome diseases. But... Yes!
Capsule review: Maurits Pauwels - 10 toppers uit Trinidad (2019)
'Ja mensen, da's muziek!' (Now that's what I call music.) Joyous Benelux Calypso. Who thinks up these schemes, let alone has the audacity to follow through? The wisdom and fooloishness of human life is here.
When Mauro left dEUS Tom Barman opined he would now concentrate on a magnum opus record. It's not like that - Mauro's going back to his ballroom band origins. The career is the magnum opus.
Capsule review: dEUS - Vantage point (2008)
In retrospect it's should've been a new band, one built on Alan Gevaert/Mauro Pawlowski grooves and Tom Barman's romantic ballads. A partnership of equals. The dEUS tag confused, not what the public had come to expect. The creators pulled in their tails and started working for the brand. Approach without preconceptions and hear a barrel full of buzzing singles.
Capsule review: The Band - The last waltz (1978)
Bloated rockstars make bloated triple live album. A betrayal of all the Band stood for. It was meant to be a new beginning, but filled themselves with such disgust they promptly quit.
Capsule review: Jack Cooper - Sandgrown (2017)
A peculiarly British topography. Shades of the Velvet Underground's 3rd.
donderdag 22 augustus 2019
Capsule review: Rose city band - Rose city band (2019)
Choogling patchouli post-Dead psychedelia is in the air. Still waiting for a real classic, but this'll do nicely in the meantime.
Capsule review: Club moral - Felix culpa (2008)
Art intellectuals lose all inhibitions. Go for primal gut feelings. It's a rotten world out there and inside of us. (Two long explorations called 'I'm a monster').
Capsule review: The Band - Northern lights, southern cross (1975)
Late career highlight. 'It makes no difference'. Probably their best, most musical album.
Capsule review: The Band - Rock of ages (1972)
Iconic careers get reduced to at most two key moments. This is not one of them. But stray a little from the musical tourist path. This is the heart of the Band. Great Allen Toussaint horn charts too, which they apparently heard on stage for the first time.
Capsule review: The Band - The Band (1969)
It just wouldn't be the same coming from a pianoteacher, a failed filmstudent and three rockers from the Canadian Squires. Mythmakers extraordinaire.
Capsule review: Thurston Moore - Rock 'n' roll consciousness (2017)
Noise master's elegant later works. Guitar noise so smooth and unabrasive you can lose yourself in it for hours.
Capsule review: Parallels - Parallels (2004)
Monguito's just as avant sequel. Tunefulness is deeply rooted in our collective subconscious. Takes determination to stray so far from it. Even for 6 minutes at a time is a concentration mindfuck. One slip and you're humming Auld Lang Syne.
Secret history of rock'n'roll: Henry 'Red' Allen & his New Yorkers - Biff'ly blues (1929)
Henry 'Red' Allen & his New Yorkers - Biff'ly blues (1929)
Trumpeter Henry Allen was only 21 when he recorded 'Biff'ly blues' for Viktor in 1929, but he'd seen it all. Born in Algiers, Louisiana -'where jazz really did came from'- across the Mississippi from New Orleans -'liars and cheats, but I like 'em'-, Allen had played in his father's band Sidney Desvigne's Southern Syncopaters ('he wasn't my father and I was a late bloomer'). They were the houseband on the Mississippi riverboat The Ladies Lair. 'We'd seen it all. Foodfights, alligators, trombones caked with chicken shit. We'd just pick'em up and play. Those audiences were fierce. Old Louisiana ladies with pen knives. One time the bassplayer didn't fall into the tune, so I look over and he hangs face down over his bass, dead. Didn't phase me. That's how we played. Our singer was a fire eater. Fat girls held up their plates of Louisiana mash.'
'Another time I was flying high in a solo. I was out of this world. I don't know how long I was going. So what if I stayed out front - it was art! All of a sudden Hutch grabs me by the collar pulling me back, so I punched him.' Another session without result.
Viktor was getting anxious about securing some product from Allen. They sent in young hotshot producer Glyn Johns. Allen admits this was a good move. 'First of all, no one produces Henry 'Red' Allen, I produce Henry 'Red' Allen. But Glyn, he was a great technician.' Johns solved the fist fight issue by placing every musician on a movable platform. An army of studio hands manned the grappling hooks which eased the musicians in and out of position for the recording. 'It was like a ballet. We didn't have to move a foot, we could just play.' Johns also eased new banjo player Will Johnson into the fold. 'Apparently records with guitars sell,' concedes Allen. Johnson takes a wonderful solo on the resulting single 'Biff'ly blues'.
Johns also played a part in one of the defining features of the record - the eerie introduction played on a vibraphone. 'No jazz band had a vibraphone. We didn't have a vibraphone. It was the platforms, see. In the studio next door the New York Symphony Orchestra was doing Tchaikovsky. Just in time for our intro they sneaked those grappling hooks into the other studio. We got hold of the vibraphone player, pulled 'im into our studio. He was still playing Tchaikovsky and then just as quickly we put 'im back. They never realised.' Allen insists it's the first use of sampling on record. Somewhere out there a Viktor LP of Tchaikovsky's music with missing vibraphone bars is fetching high prices on the collectors' market. Johns, for his part, insists it was all just a mistake in logistics.
'Biff'ly blues' was released in 1929 on a shellac 10", relegated to the b-side of throwaway 'It should be you'. 'I don't know who that was, but it wasn't me. Not that I recall.' The oldest recording of swing jazz still extant. 'I was the first,' insists Allen. 'Pops claims he was first, but where are the records? I'd like to see 'em.' Jazz historians now mostly agree Armstrong and his hot 5 band was first, but all recordings were lost in the First Great Mastertape Fire of the recording industry. Allen says critics have just been swayed by 'that sweet talker Pops, just cause he's a sweetheart and he had his own tv show. Allen never had a tv show. But my music had grit. I just played.' Play he did, including a later stint with the Louis Armstrong All-Stars. 'You take the work you can get.'
Whoever was first, the quality of 'Biff'ly blues' has never been in doubt. Seldom was the joy in the blues expressed so vividly, seemingly off-the-cuff. The band swings like a Mardi Gras funeral procession. Bittersweet. After a brief, misleadingly eerie virbaphone and banjo introduction, Allen sets out the melody. The banjo positively shreds the first solo, a series of bends, blues fills and finger taps. Then a duet between clarinet and Allen's trumpet - sweet, subtle clarinet, brash, lowtalking trumpet -, after which the trumpet takes over. Trombone follows, then gets interrupted for a final restatement of the theme. Joy triumphs over adversity, but never forgets. That's Henry 'Red' Allen.
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