Before our friends showed up, I played some mellow masterpiece I thought was going to set us up in the right mood before Top Chef started and while Emma was cooking that lamb roast. Thus i played this:
I've been up for an hour and a half only, and this has been a grand morning already. The glory that is today includes splendid weather (a little cool maybe, but that soft wind is a delight), a slight drunken haze that never really turned into full-blown hangover (always a relief), good coffee, three or four cigarettes already, and playing the part of a plumber. I love my life.
Which is probably more that can be said for Vic Chesnutt, as
exemplifies. "I am a man, and I am aware of myself". A testament of a record if I ever heard one, and a beautiful one too. That raspy desperate voice is in full control, instrumentation ranges from delicate folky twangs to noisy bursts of heavy sound. Sure it doesn't make for the happiest of moments to share with an old friend like Vic, but then making jokes and laughing the day away was never an option with him - although there is a big part of wry self-deprecating irony in his work. This is a beautiful record, only slightly less so than North Star Deserter, but only just.
And now I am indulging myself to Fennesz's soon-to-be-released (april 28th I believe) new LP, Bécs. It's only a first listen, but I find it to be a slow to start affair, after which you simply drown into superb droney electronic sound from "Pallas Athene" onwards. The title track is also extraordinary. This is going to be on heavy rotation for quite some time at my place. It's already "available", don't miss it.
I probably won't be relating my further adventures in holidaymusicworld until tonight: this afternoon we're going to visit the Great Black Music exhibition at Cité de la Musique http://www.greatblackmusic.fr/ . Hopefully this will be very interesting (there was even a free concert by Femi the other day, couldn't go, was so pissed) and I'll be able to pick up a record or two, I'll keep you posted when I come back. I also need to get some more beer. We might go to the restaurant tonight.
This might not be Astral Weeks but it's very good indeed. The country-tinged soul (or soul-tinged country) fits Van's voice remarkably. A few titles may drag on some, but the closer is superb. Anyway, very good album, in my top 5 Morrison releases.
After that, I listened to a Gene Vincent EP that somehow had ended up on my computer. This EP is called Baby Blue, is from 1958, it contains four tracks which are supposed to have been featured on a soundtrack for some movie I don't know about; the first track is a rip-off his own "Be Bop A Lula", which is a good thing and better than the other three. I think you know everything you need to know about this record.
I then moved on to a Jelly Roll Morton compilation that was also on my hard drive for some reason, maybe some sp4cetiger-type "history of music" craving I might have had back in the days? Anyway, it was there, I was here, so on we went. If I were a historian, it would be a very interesting record. I'm not, and so I got bored after a while; well, not exactly bored, but impassible. As those early jazzmen tunes are available only in compilations (unless you're much older than I am), and those compilations are generally comprehensively archival, you get more or less the full package and it's too much for me when I'm only vaguely interested in the genre. I'm not into ragtime much.
Last record I heard was Roll Call (1961) by Hank Mobley. It's a very good hard bop record indeed, but not on par with Mobley's own No Room For Squares (1963), the only other release I know by him. I don't know what it is that sort of held me back for loving this one 100%, probably the choice of tunes, that sounded somewhat ordinary compared to No Rooms... Well, maybe. It's still very good, as it was a first listen, it needs more and they will be a pleasure.
And so we went to that Great Black Music exibition I linked you to earlier in the day. An occasion to listen to music differently? Anyway, I think this belongs in this ULL.
Weeeeeeell, it's partly interesting. The exhibition does put the term "GBM" into context and explains its fabrication, and the first part of the exhibition is good. You first go through a room equipped with screens that rise from the floor. Each screen is broadcasting a short documentary about one of the "lengendary" figures of Black music. Armed with a smartaudioguide that's lent to you, you can listen to the documentaries. Those vary in interest according to your own interest/knowledge in the "legend" portrayed (Aretha, Fela, Coltrane, Miles, Ray Charles, Billie, Belafonte, etc., 20 in all I think). I found two very interesting: one about the Congolese rumba player Franco (check him out! He's awesome), and another about a Cuban singer I didn't know - and whose name I shamefully don't remember right now, it will come back, I'll tell you then. A fun start.
After that, still on the first floor, you get a series of screens on a curved wall, each telling of the history of popular music in various regions of Africa (Northern , Western, Eastern, Central, South). This was the most interesting part for me, as I'm very interested in African musics and know very little about them. There is also an interactive timeline that's pretty convincing and has some more good music to listen to - and I realized I needed to listen to Linton Kwesi Johnson's Bass Culture, as the extract from it was awesome ("Inglan Is A Bitch" it was, sorry English friends).
You then go down to three more showrooms, more screens, more documentaries, each screen documenting one genre (blues, soul, rap, jazz, reggae, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-Cuban, etc.). This is when things get a bit disappointing. The documentaries are very short, and as digests go they might do their job, but frankly I didn't learn one thing from that floor, and I'm not trying to sound snobbish I swear. I'm just not the target for these very general documentaries.
More rooms allow you to play games such as dancing in front of a camera and comparing the result with what the professional dancer had showed you. Not for me.
So, in short, this is a good, fun-to-experience exhibition with loads of music to listen to, and I'd gladly take a class there - I probably will. But I wouldn't advise it to you all BEA people, as we're all music nerds on there, and don't have much to learn past the first floor.
Anyway, it was time for a glance at what the museum's shop had to offer. I discreetly bought the Frémeaux et Associés (check out that wonderful archival record company!) compilation documenting the exhibition for milady, we both pretended it was a surprise ; she discreetly bought a book about country rock for me, we both pretended it was a surprise ; we bought some cigarettes and smoked them on the way home, walking by the canal, in the cool dusky sun.
I am now going to read this book and listen to some music, and sip some white wine, and smoke some cigarettes, and just be plain happy and relaxed. See you guys, maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow.
Wow dear ULL, long time no see! Lots of listening to talk about. There's that one record I want you to know about, dear ULL, I love it but does it love me? Maybe if I write everything I'll know.
is what I listened to yesterday night while starting Country Rock by Arnaud Choutet (Le Mot et le Reste, editor). And it was avery painful moment, ULL, when I realised I didn't like it as much as I used to - nowhere nearly actually.
This record is an art-pop affair whose subtlety I still can appreciate and respect, but it has lost most of the straightforward appeal it had for me say, ten years ago. It's very inventive, very delicate and yet all this delicacy amounts to nothing when you realise in the end you didn't raise your head once from what else you were doing while listening to it. Crap. Well, I guess I still have their own Ting (1992) to fall back on, that one is awesome. I won't listen to it again, not soon anyway, for fear the same thing might happen to it that happened to GND. I WANT to love it, dear ULL.
It was time to move and the night was still young. I thought I might then retry
which I had listened to once when Charlie had shared it. I hadn't come back to this since and I didn't remember it. Well, I thought it was good clean fun. After a while, as I listened to one very meta track after another, I thought I maight have the modern Fugs right there in front of me. Bits and pieces of songs and genres, sometimes built up to sound very catchy indeed, but voluntarily ruined at the last moment otherwise it wouldn't be funny. Intriguing, almost childlike, this guy now needs less amateurish sound to work on to let his very sarcastic (or is it me? always the same problem, ULL) postmodern work gain scope. Hi there, Charlie.
I wouldn't say Omega Testing is the type of record you want to play immediately again. It's food for thought for sure, and funny enough, but I wanted something else. Am I not the ficklest human being, dear ULL? huhuhuhu. Anyway. One more Ricard and I'm go.
First listen. Loads of friends had recommended me this record, and they all felt sure I was going to love it. Well, not really actually. I mean, I surely can appreciate the fluidity of every one of these songs, and it's very well produced, but with very little diversity too. I'll relisten, but it gently started to bore me along the way. I felt I was listening to one very long song that felt too long. Something I don't get here, dear ULL? Dunno.
Today.
I woke up early because I was thrown out of bed because apparently I was snoring too much. After two warnings I got up very pissed, intending to go finish my night on the couch, when I realised it was almost 9 and I wasn't going to be able to sleep any more, I also realised my alleged snoring was actually the noise the building maid was making as she hoovered the outside corridor.
Seeking vengeance, I grabbed the first noisy thing that would come out of that "New Rips" file I have on my comp, it befell Optimo's How to Kill the DJ Part Two to carry out my vendetta. I wasn't going to be the only one to pay. We'd see.
We saw, and I paid. First, remorse made me play the record too low to harm anybody hidden behind a wall, a pillow and two Q-tips. Second, the record is bad. It's a DJ mix of the mashup type that was fashionable way back when (2004 I believe), and while it's something I can really enjoy at times, this one isn't remarkable. The beginning of this 2-discs affair is nice enough, every electronic tune flowing gently into the other, in an electroclash kind of way (some German electronics mixed with postpunk synthpop basically, there's some Depeche Mode and Soft Cell in the mix for instance). Until the mix came to Gang Of Four's "Damaged Goods", played in its entirety and followed up by The Langley School Music Project's rendition of "Good Vibrations", also played in its entirety, and then Junk Yard Band's "The Word", in its etc. All good songs for sure, but I thought, what's the point? Can I please release a DJ mix myself, just aligning random songs I like like that and leaving it for the listener to devine whatever clever greater design there is behind this accumulation? Lazy work, I say.
At this point milady was up and running and drinking all the coffee I'd brewed for myself. I made some more and lost control of both the computer and the playlist. We listened to that comp I'd offered her the day before.
It's interesting. Of course you all music lovers will probs know most of the titles on this, and the chronological arrangement ensures that the first record will contain very little besides North American tracks, the recording capacitiesbeing very rare in Africa in the 20s, or so I imagine. Still, this chrnonological arrangement helps put things into perspective, mostly when some very well-known, seldom-played tunes are put back to back. For instance, the modernity of Bo Diddley's "Bo Diddley" followed by Richard Berry's "Louie Louie" struck me as one pure blissful moment when it was abruptly followed by Armstrong's version of "Mack the Knife", absolutely not my cup of reverse minstrel. Anyway, some unknown gems in there for sure too ("No Ceara não Tem Disso Não" by Luiz Gonzaga is a highlight), and some really unnerving songs too of course (whatever version of "The Lion Sleeps Tonite", even the original - dunno if it is - gets played can never please me, and this "Mbube" by a Solomon Linda is no exception). However, any collection comprising E.T. Mensah's "All for You" is an object of value and was made by a man of fine taste.
11 o'clock already! Time for me to go, as I had an appointment for lunch with some of the very finest people on the face of Earth, after which Gargantuan meal (Tartare, the chef's selection of local cheeses, a fine Chinon, coffee, the bill please) we all went together walking through the Jardin des Tuileries, heading for Grand Palais where the Robert Mapplethorpe exhibition was. I won't analyse in depth my feelings about this exhibition, because
1. I wouldn't what to say and I am no art critic,
2. It has very little to do with you, dear ULL, although we did get to hear Patti Smith poetize and read extracts of the Bible on a Mapplethorpe video, and there was another extremely cheesy video from 1985 that looked like an artier Robert Palmer video of women very lightly dressed on top a baroque staircase and that was the highlight.
Lots of black dicks involved, too.
One joint and one beer later with one of those finest people I told you about, time to get back home and get some rest. I put this and this is still what I'm listening to right as I write to you, dear ULL.
And I find this record remarkable. The first half of the record is simply exceptional, highlights include that "Flex"/"Neon Lights"/"Arms of a Stranger" combo, in a style that I thought was extremely cohesive in spite of the varying producers involved. This has a gritty quality that somehow ends up also feeling dreamy in a way. The second half is less strong, is the record maybe a bit too long? Anyway, this is due for repeated listening in days to come.
I'll now leave you, dear ULL, to go by some beer, and maybe later tonight or tomorrow in the morning I'll explain to you why I must leave you tomorrow, maybe to never come back. Love you. XOXO
Dear ULL, this might very well be the last entry into you I perform this week. Then again it might not, but I unexpectedly have to go away to check on my little fellow who's been staying with his Grandma by the sea, and apprently she needs us to pick him up while she does an enormous amount of housework, as the house id due for renting as of Saturday.
I'll have Internet access but down there they don't listen to music very much, if I can sneak in one or two remarks about the radio music or whatever I catch on TV I will, I promise. Plus we're taking some CDs and tonight I'll be staying with my brother-in-law, who does his own music and that could be an interesting take on electroflamenco, as he's a flamenco-singing (when he's drunk mostly) Spanish anarchist. and I'll take my mp3 player just in case, as there's one day or two I might be alone in the dark.
Anyway, I still managed to listen to one more record yesterday night, and that was
about whom I know nothing, except it was hailed as one of the records of March on a French indie site I sometimes wander off in. It's a very good drone electronics, both disquieting and soothing, and whose theme is electricity. Fitting. More about it after a few more listens, know that it's very good at first listen.
Waking up today was made all the more pleasant as the first thing we put on the CD player was
out of a 5-cd boxset I purchased at the Mapplethorpe exhibition yesterday, as a gift to my fine lady, who is very much afan and we didn't have the CDs. This way she gets some music from one of her favourite artists and photogrpahs from Mapplethorpe. I'm amazed at my own cleverness. 20 euros well spent, even if yesterday's news was that we were broke again. Oh well, at least we lived the life for three days.
Anyway, dear ULL, you know this album very well already, it's the classic rockest side of NYC punk, it's marvellous, listen to it if you haven't but I know that you have.
on, which I had never listened to. And as the record was finishing, I thought about how fitting it was to finish my writing with this record when I had started with Madonna's '89 output, because I swear to God Patti sounds like Louise on this! Well, not on "People Have the Power" obviously, but listen to it again, close your eyes, don't look at the cover, and imagine Madonna singing this. Yes. Right. Now you've got it. Anyway, good record.
But that perfect ending was not going to happen, and before I leave, I virtually spinned
Thumbnail. Click to enlarge.
about which I'm not sure it'll make my 67 chart ebcause of the awesomeness of that year, still, it's a very good rawish electric blues record. Side A makes you wonder why they call him lazy, side B answers straight away with the awesome "Lonesome Highway Blues". My guess is Cymro might enjoy this.
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