Slumberlord
The video for the rather inevitable
Triumph the Insult Comic Dog single is out now, and it's mostly rather pedestrian or, at best, mildy amusing jokes ("Yo
Pink, is that your hair or a tattoo?/ I didn't know Supercuts had a drive through"). Ok, maybe I just like seeing Pink taken down a notch because she has a mysterious degree of indie cred. Late in the song, however, after jabs at a series of predictable targets, Triumph does get in a rather amusing lick (no pun intended) at
Philip Glass, telling him he's not immune and should "write a song with a fucking tune." Well, I was surprised, anyway.
I bought my copy of
Keith Jarrett’s “Solo Concerts: Bremen-Lausanne” for a dollar or so at a public radio fundraiser a year and a half ago. The following message is written on marker on the inside of the three-LP box:
Xmas 75
Charlotte + Al,
To turn you on to the most perfect music I’ve experienced
love
Sharon
The record’s final resting place in a bargain bin with
Gordon Lightfoot and
Pat Benatar might suggest that Sharon’s attempts to “turn on” Charlotte and Al failed. But it did take almost 27 years for the record to make its way there, so it could have been loved (and well cared-for) for almost three decades before drifting out with the estate sale tide.
I scoffed at Sharon’s message when I first bought the record, but I’ve come to agree with her. If Jarrett doesn’t make perfect music, he comes damn close, pulling sonic threads out of his piano like so much effortlessly spun silk.
The record has slowly but surely climbed to #10 on my best albums list, and I wouldn’t be surprised if it went even higher than that. It will have a hard time dislodging
Wu-Tang at #8, though.
RogerMexico is my blbird ID. Me no hablo espanol...:
[nachoski] de donde eres
[rogermexico] Chicago
[nachoski] gustas del techno ?
[rogermexico] un poco
[nachoski] minimal ???
[nachoski] dubby ?
[rogermexico] si como Pole
[nachoski] ricardo villalobos
[rogermexico] si me gusto Alcachofa
[nachoski] aja , yo toco su musica aca
[nachoski] y pronto el 20 de dicembre tocaremos juntos aca en santiago
[rogermexico] excelente
[nachoski] tueres musico alla
[rogermexico] no comprenda "tueres"
[rogermexico] no traduzca
[nachoski] you are dj or electronic musician
[rogermexico] no, aprecie apenas
[nachoski] que musica te gusta en el estilo techno
[nachoski] haces musica ?
[rogermexico] no realice
[nachoski] ok
[nachoski] te gusta richie hawtin
[rogermexico] no oiga mucho
[rogermexico] las cosas buenas oídas
"Diamond in back, sunroof top/
Digging the scene with a gangster lean"
I've heard these lyrics for years but I never really knew why they came up so often or what they meant. Recently I bought
Ludacris' "Chicken -N- Beer" which includes a track called "Diamond in the Back." The refrain is "Diamond in the back, sunroof top/ Digging the scene with a gangster lean" and I
knew I had heard the words before. Ludacris gives songwriting credits to a
William DeVaughn. So it's essentially a "cover" (rare in hip-hop).
I thought about it for a while and realized that the same words appear in a song
Massive Attack did, "Be Thankful For What You Got" which is the proper name of DeVaughn's song. Earlier than that the words "digging the scene with a gangster lean" appear on a track from
NWA's "Straight Outta Compton" (I think it's an
Eazy-E verse).
It turns out that "Be Thankful For What You Got" was a number one R&B and number four pop hit in 1974. The phrase has since turned up in a number of '90s records (by
Master P and
Outkast to name a few). So what does it mean?
A little research explains things; a "gangster lean" is when you drive a car and put your right arm on the center armrest, your left arm at the top of the steering wheel, and sit so your head is almost under the rearview mirror. The point of DeVaughn's song (and several of the covers/adaptations) was that it didn't matter what kind of car you had - what mattered was how you drove it.
And now you know the rest of the story.
I've developed a new habit when record shopping - in addition to everything else I buy, I try to find one used/bargain item ($5 or less) that I know absolutely nothing about and choose purely on the album title, sleeve, song titles, or on a whim. I've found that my tastes can become a bit narrow within the confines of the
AMG/
ILX/
SOP spectrum, which is a wide spectrum but still has limitations.
This week I bought a funky/smooth jazz record by
The Players' Association.
Sparks - "Lil' Beethoven"
An album that went under the radar last year, "Lil' Beethoven" is an interesting trip. "The Rhythm Thief" begins by actually stealing the album's groove - there's rhythm here, but it's supplied mainly by ever-present strings punctuated by an occasional orchestral bass drum hit. There's surely a classical influence on this rock group, but not like the
Wagnerian swell of a
Godspeed You Black Emperor! or the mannered flourishes on a
Beatles album. This is swirling, relentless repetition, with more in common theoretically with house music than
Mozart.
Lyrically, this album is a collection of bad jokes - "How Do I Get to Carnegie Hall?" is an old one, of course. "What Are All These Bands So Angry About?" is a rather dated attack on angsty bands. "Suburban Homeboy" and "Your Call Is Very Important to Us, Please Hold" are equally cliched criticisms of would-be gangster crackers and being put on hold, respectively.
So this album is basically a de-grooved, repetitive album with bad jokes... and yet it's quite good. All of the above tracks (to varying degrees) work despite (or perhaps because of) the bad jokes, sung in such odd phrasings, and the repetition can be truly beautiful - like on "My Baby's Taking Me Home" in which the title is repeated endlessly throughout. It's the phrasing that makes it work; ma-(drop an octave)babystakinme-(drop again)
home. The orchestration is all built around this and it's glorious music.
Nothing compares to the album's best track, though; "Ride 'Em Cowboy." Essentially a whole bunch of stupid jokes condensed into a very funny big joke, it includes lines like "from 411, to 911/ from DYI, to DUI." But just transcribing the lyrics doesn't do it justice - definitely worth seeking out and hearing.
