Sunday, April 04, 2004
I bought a cd yesterday by a girl named Nellie McKay and it was mainly because of five songs. I'm not quite sure if I like the entire album, but I really like the five songs because they are just her nice voice accompanied by piano, bass, and drums. You can't really go wrong with that combination and I kind of wish I had gone to see her live earlier this week because I'm guessing she probably played with this sparse accompaniment which I love. She's only nineteen so I'm curious to hear what she does in the future. She already writes some deceptively sweet songs which go on to reveal some tart lyrics. The reason I even bring this up is to be able to discuss someone I only discovered last year and her name is Blossom Dearie. I guess she's been making records since the fifties and she is still playing to this day. The work that I like the most by her also just involves voice, piano, bass, and drums. She has a very distinctive voice, "girly" you might say. There is something incredibly sexy about that voice as well. Listen to her sing "Tea For Two" or "Someone To Watch Over Me" and I think you can't help but be moved. Let those languid notes hit an icy heart and surely it will melt.
I also bought the Franz Ferdinand record. This was something I wanted to hate based solely on all the hype they've been receiving lately. I was pleasantly surprised to hear some nice, jagged post-punk guitar work which was funky as well. Since the band is Scottish I immediately thought of bands like Orange Juice and Fire Engines and the Postcard record label from the early eighties. The way some critics wrote about Franz Ferdinand you'd think it was music that had never been heard before and this is part of what I hate about a lot of music criticism. Hyperbole is bad enough, but then you top it off with no sense of history. I like to think of it as "the Great Men" theory of criticism. Some critics have this pantheon of musicians which they revere and everything else falls by the wayside. This week, I believe, will be the tenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain committing suicide and I'm sure plenty will be written about it. Maybe it is because I saw Nirvana coming up( I remember their first single coming out, I remember them opening up for Tad at Bogart's in Long Beach) that I don't believe that they changed music. They were a really good band and I enjoyed seeing them live and hearing Nevermind, but I refuse to put them on a pedestal like some choose to do. They were one brick in a long and wide road. They didn't change music, but rather changed what type of music started to sell to the masses. "Punk Rock" became the new commodity. Nirvana deserves praise, but there was a lot of good music coming out in the early nineties and by and large many critics forget that and simply focus on Nirvana as the only thing that mattered.
After what I just wrote above I'm going to be a little bit of a hypocrite here and state that Serge Gainsbourg's "Melody" is the greatest song I've ever heard. What I want to say is that I'm just really digging that song right now. I was driving around in my car last night playing it really loud and it just sounded incredible. You know when it sounds so good that certain notes send chills up and down your spine. I saw the movie THE DREAMERS a few weeks ago and the last few days I've been inspired to make an alternative soundtrack for it. Of course "Melody" makes an appearance on my soundtrack. The movie takes place around some of the events that occurred in Paris in 1968 and I've been trying to use songs from that period give or take a few years, but I'm thinking of dropping that idea and just using any song from any time period that fits the spirit of the film. Forgoing my current criteria for inclusion, Stereolab's song "K-Stars" would be just perfect.
Speaking of Stereolab, my only plans for the week are to go see Electrelane at Spaceland on Friday. They sort of have that Kraut-Rock sound going on which reminds me of early Stereolab amongst other things.
I also bought the Franz Ferdinand record. This was something I wanted to hate based solely on all the hype they've been receiving lately. I was pleasantly surprised to hear some nice, jagged post-punk guitar work which was funky as well. Since the band is Scottish I immediately thought of bands like Orange Juice and Fire Engines and the Postcard record label from the early eighties. The way some critics wrote about Franz Ferdinand you'd think it was music that had never been heard before and this is part of what I hate about a lot of music criticism. Hyperbole is bad enough, but then you top it off with no sense of history. I like to think of it as "the Great Men" theory of criticism. Some critics have this pantheon of musicians which they revere and everything else falls by the wayside. This week, I believe, will be the tenth anniversary of Kurt Cobain committing suicide and I'm sure plenty will be written about it. Maybe it is because I saw Nirvana coming up( I remember their first single coming out, I remember them opening up for Tad at Bogart's in Long Beach) that I don't believe that they changed music. They were a really good band and I enjoyed seeing them live and hearing Nevermind, but I refuse to put them on a pedestal like some choose to do. They were one brick in a long and wide road. They didn't change music, but rather changed what type of music started to sell to the masses. "Punk Rock" became the new commodity. Nirvana deserves praise, but there was a lot of good music coming out in the early nineties and by and large many critics forget that and simply focus on Nirvana as the only thing that mattered.
After what I just wrote above I'm going to be a little bit of a hypocrite here and state that Serge Gainsbourg's "Melody" is the greatest song I've ever heard. What I want to say is that I'm just really digging that song right now. I was driving around in my car last night playing it really loud and it just sounded incredible. You know when it sounds so good that certain notes send chills up and down your spine. I saw the movie THE DREAMERS a few weeks ago and the last few days I've been inspired to make an alternative soundtrack for it. Of course "Melody" makes an appearance on my soundtrack. The movie takes place around some of the events that occurred in Paris in 1968 and I've been trying to use songs from that period give or take a few years, but I'm thinking of dropping that idea and just using any song from any time period that fits the spirit of the film. Forgoing my current criteria for inclusion, Stereolab's song "K-Stars" would be just perfect.
Speaking of Stereolab, my only plans for the week are to go see Electrelane at Spaceland on Friday. They sort of have that Kraut-Rock sound going on which reminds me of early Stereolab amongst other things.
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