basement music #5!

In Basement Music #5, Richard returns for more punishment with Azed, Pedro and Tim for a reasonable discourse on songs and soundtracks in the movies.

How soundtracks shape movies, and how movies can in turn reshape timeless favourites, from "Singin' in the Rain" to Apocalypse Now. Wendy Carlos to Wes Anderson, Herbie Hancock to Henry Mancini, this show covers all the bases.

Plus the guys put their Lobo knowledge on the line in the latest installment of Stump Tim.

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The playlist:
Wendy Carlos - Suicide Scherzo
Real Estate - Beachcomber
Atlas Sound feat. Noah Lennox - Walkabout
Three Amigos - My Little Buttercup
Curtis Mayfield - Pusherman
Mark Mothersbaugh - Rachel Evans Tenenbaum (1965-2000)
Kevin Shields - City Girl
Fantomas - Experiment in Terror
Tommy Roe - Sweet Pea
Prince - Mountains
Herbie Hancock - Bringing Down the Byrds
Lobo - I'd Love You to Want Me

Three For Thursday

#1) My new favourite band; Real Estate at CMJ.

#2) My other new favourite band; Family Portrait.

#3a) The Original

#3b) The Homage

Thanks for the idea Carrie.

RP

Hocketing with the Dirty projectors

I was blown away by a video of the Brooklyn band Dirty Projectors casually playing a new song backstage. The vocal arrangement is so beautiful and complex!! Really sublime. Check it out here: LINK.

The musical trick or technique the female vocalists use in the video is called hocketing. It's where a single musical line is shared between a number of people to create an infinitely more complex and beautiful sound. You hear it everywhere from panpipe music of the Andes, to Medieval vocal Music, to the clapping patterns in flamenco. The leader of the Dirty Projectors, David Longstreth, talks about it in this video: LINK (It's a little meandering, but worth checking out).

To me, this band's insular devotion to creating new and interesting sounds gives them an air of a cult or something - in a good way! I mean, what other band would work so hard to create something so odd and beautiful? Maybe cult is the wrong word, but they do remind me of people in early 1970's who lived communally and saw their endeavors as part of a larger Utopian experiment. (There's a song on the album Bitte Orca called "Temecula Sunrise" that imagines a suburban development being taken over by an pseudo-Utopian group that lives communally). Don't they even look the part?

Girl on Girls

Lately, I've been playing the group 'Girls' around the house a lot. Terrible name (and not googleable at all), but those boys can really write catchy songs that combine early Beachboys, with Elvis Costello and the Modern lovers. Not terribly original - but I like.
My daughter Corrina fell in love with the song "Hellhole rat race" (which she calls "hellhole RETRACE" - a far better title as far as I'm concerned). She also loves the Go-betweens. What can I say, the girl has impeccable taste.

God bless the go-betweens

When Robert Forster and Grant McLennan first started putting out music as the Go-betweens in 1978, an interviewer asked them where their influences came from. They answered:
Forster: "It's that mid-Western telecaster ring. It's Bob Dylan talking to Francoise Hardy. It's bicycles and boys and also..."
McLennan: "Balloons."
It's that mix of the absurd, with the traditional and the deeply romantic that made the Go-betweens such a great band. At a time when most music sounded bombastic and over produced, their sound was bright, lyrical and full of space. They called it the "striped sunlight sound." You can hear the influence of classic NY bands in their songs - Television, Velvet Underground, Talking heads - but it's not hard to tell that their real love was pure 60's pop in the style of Credence, the Byrds, and even the Monkees (whom they loved). All that is great - but what really set them apart were their lyrics. Wow. They're literate without being pretentious, heart felt without being overly sentimental, vulnerable without being precious or twee. I'm not usually one to notice lyrics, but Forster and McLennan were brilliant lyricists.

The thing is, I kind of discovered them recently. I remember rock critics making a big fuss over them in the late 80's, particularly when they released the album "16 Lover's lane". I never really got it. To me, they sounded a little safe, even adult contemporary so I never really gave them a chance. I actually liked the somewhat similar band Crowded House way more because their harmonies were sweeter, their melodies a little catchier, and their Beatles pastiche sound more defined. What an idiot. The Go-betweens have a depth that Crowded House never came close to attaining. Like a lot of great bands, they have two strong and very different songwriters (In this respect they remind me not so much of the Beatles, but of Husker Du). Grant McLennan is the more traditional and perhaps more consistent songwriter. He wrote the songs I first fell in love with - "Devils Eye" and "Love Goes On!" (he's the Bob Mould). But Forster's songs have a sense of electricity, eccentricity and excitement that's sometimes missing in McLennan's songs (he's the Grant Hart). Lately I've been on more into Forster's songs. "Draining the pool" and "Part Company" are perfect pop songs as far as I'm concerned.

Forster and McLennan were great admirers of the downtown culture that was emerged in NYC in the late 70's, and closely followed every musical development in England. They also adored 60's trash culture, French new wave films, and campy American tv (they wanted a female drummer so they could be more like the Mod Squad). So they had all this love of cool culture when they were growing up, but they were stuck in Australia - in the small city of Brisbane yet. Because they were so far removed from everything, there is a beautiful filtering and synthesis of all these disparate elements of culture in their sound that's completely unique. Also, there is a deep romantic nostalgia semi-hidden in all their songs that's probably a direct result of the feelings of isolation the two songwriters felt. They were not included in the real cultural discussions were going on at the time. That kills me about their songs. These are the songs of two extremely bright, extremely isolated people who longed to be at a party that they weren't invited to.

basement music #4 is up!

Just in time for Hallowe'en, it's a devilishly delightful podcast with Azed, Pedro, Tim and newcomer Richard.

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Here's the playlist:

Ministry - Every Day Is Hallowe'en
Taken By Trees - My Boys
Faces - Ooh La La
The Beatles - Helter Skelter
Rolling Stones - Stop Breaking Down
The Residents - Eastern Woman
Rolling Stones - She's A Rainbow
Miles Davis - Sivad
Iron Maiden - Run to the Hills
Wire - I Am the Fly
Harry Nilsson - Me and My Arrow

Taqwacore trailer

Premieres this weekend!

basement music #3 now available!

Discussion of the whole Michael Jackson drama (or is it melodrama?), what makes a good cover song, fine tunes and finer beverages.

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basement music #3

Basement music podcast

New shows coming soon! Stay tuned!