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Tuesday, May 27th, 2008
 The Apostropher has posted volume 6 of his funk mix and it's good stuff. I've only listened to the first six tracks so far but what I've heard makes me happy.
This is kind of interesting: I was listening to it in the car this morning and just not getting any response to it at all, which surprised me since I had really been digging it last night. But then I went to the gym, turned it on and immediately started grooving. The difference seems to be whether I am standing or sitting down -- when I was sitting in my car I could not really move my legs, which seems to be a vital component of digging this music. The portion of "Crumbs off the table" where it's mostly the drums playing, with Lee* singing and an occasional strummed chord, is excellent and hypnotic. "Flunky for your love" is fantastic except the ending, which gets progressively weaker as it goes on longer. (If memory serves -- there was a weak ending on one of the early tracks, I think it was this one.) Update: Curs'd memory! It is not "Flunky for your love" that ends weakly but "I'm comin' home" -- a song which, while danceable, is not nearly in "Flunky"'s league of greatness. It's built around one riff, and not a powerful one enough to support the whole song. And that ending just blows -- you end up waiting for it to be over already.
 * It's just a coincidence, but a nice one: I find it difficult to say "Laura Lee" without thinking "Lorelei". What a great name for a singer.
posted morning of May 27th, 2008: 2 responses
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Thursday, May 29th, 2008
...Is the bass line of "Got to do it right". And well, there are a lot of seriously great bass lines on the record -- that one just stood out for me this morning.
Ways to respond to rhythm in music
 I want to think some more about this idea that I can't enjoy Funk unless I am able to shake my bootie... I was listening to Danko and Helm playing "Caldonia" this morning and I was loving it, digging the rhythm -- but my response to the rhythm was just to nod my head, tap the beat with my wrist. I mean I think I probably would have danced if I hadn't been driving; but there wasn't any urgent demand to. So what's the distinction between Blues and Funk that's driving this? I could totally also just be seizing on a single experience and trying to generalize from it in an invalid way -- this is a pretty common pattern with me.
 On the topic of involuntary responses to music -- I find it impossible when listening to "Caldonia", not to sing along with the lines "Caldonia! Caldonia!/ What make your big head so hard?" That is running through my head all morning now.
posted morning of May 29th, 2008: Respond
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Saturday, May 31st, 2008
 My mix tape of happy music is now online -- an hour of tunes with the common factor being that they all lift my spirits when I listen to them. ("Easy Listening"?) Download the mp3's here: Feel Alright mix. Track listing and some notes below the fold. Let me know how you like it!
(...Damn, I knew I was going to do something wrong with the metadata. If you add these files to iTunes, they will go in the wrong order. You can, if you wish to, correct the order by highlighting all of the songs, choosing "Get info (ctrl-I)", and deleting the "disk # of #" fields. ...Okay, I think this is fixed now... But if you add them into iTunes and the order looks wrong, well you know what to do.)
 Track Listing
- Robyn Hitchcock & the Electric Trams: mic check/"The Museum of Sex" -- Concert at Arts Theatre, London, 5/18/08 (a date close to my heart)
- Merle Travis: "Blue Smoke" (1960?)
- Fletcher Henderson & his Orchestra: "King Porter Stomp" (1932)
- Luther Strong: "Hog-Eyed Man" (1937)
- Clarence Samuels: "Boogie-Woogie Blues"
- Pachacamac: "Arpay" (2006)
- The Band with Muddy Waters: "Caldonia" (1978)
- Jelly Roll Morton & the Red Hot Peppers: "Little Lawrence" (1930)
- The Carver Boys: "Sleeping Lula" (1937)
- Rick Danko and Levon Helm: "Ophelia" -- Concert in Eugene, Oregon, January '83
- Natalie MacMaster: selections from "The Fiddling Ladies" (1999)
- The New Riders of the Purple Sage: "It's Alright With Me" (1973)
- Dixieland Jug Blowers: "Boodle-am-Shake" (1926)
- Jimmy McGriff: "A Thing to Come By" (1969)
- Old & In the Way: "Jerry's Breakdown" -- Concert at Sonoma Fairgrounds, 11/4/73
- Abrew's Portuguese Instrumental Trio: "Cabo Verdranos Peca Nove" (1931)
- Delmore Bros.: "Kentucky Mountains"
- Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: "Black Mountain Rag" (1972)
- Robyn Hitchcock: "Alright, Yeah" (1996)
Notes
I open and close this mix with Hitchcock, just like I did my last one. I'm happy with this, I'll probably do it on my next mix as well. (After all, I mean he is the Alpha and the Omega.) The "Electric Trams" are (I believe) a nonce group, I've never heard of them other than this concert. Personnel include Hitchcock regulars Kimberley Rew and Morris Windsor. The mic check at the beginning of "The Museum of Sex" was sort of what made me start building this mix. The Luther Strong and Carver Boys tracks are from a collection of early recordings from Kentucky that my parents gave me for my birthday (thanks!) -- if you like it be sure to check out the Luther Strong recordings archived at Juneberry. (Juneberry is also the source of the Jelly Roll Morton and Dixieland Jug Blowers tracks.) There's also some more recent folk-music type recordings here, and blurring over from folk-music into rock and roll. Enjoy!
↻...done
posted afternoon of May 31st, 2008: 3 responses
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Sunday, June first, 2008
So more songs on the Feel Alright mix tape than I would have expected, turn out to be fun to play along with, even for a group with talents as strictly limited as myself, Bob and Greg -- we were listening to it this afternoon and of course the fast jazz is just nice for listening, and of course the rock-ish tunes like "Ophelia" and "Caldonia" and "It's Alright With Me" were easy to play along with -- but there were a couple of surprises too, like "Arpay" which Greg and I did pretty nicely I thought -- a harmonica and pan pipes have something in common -- and "Boogie-Woogie Blues"; and we all jammed pretty nicely on "The Museum of Sex". We also did some nice stuff on our own, without the tape -- great version of "Ophelia" after we stopped listening, "Dock of the Bay" with this weird-but-appealing sort of accidental key change on the break, "Mr. Spaceman".
posted evening of June first, 2008: 2 responses
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Monday, June 23rd, 2008
NickS, mix-tape-maker extraordinaire, is now blogging about music -- his first post was up on Saturday. His blog: Before You Listen.
(Hm, and I realize now I have been blogging about mix tapes for a year now and never posted about the ones I got from NickS, back in 2005 IIRC. They really gave me a new approach to thinking about music, viz. thinking about how songs might sound on a tape together.)
posted evening of June 23rd, 2008: Respond
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Thursday, July 24th, 2008
I want to start putting together a mix tape of love songs. Seems like the right thing to do right now. Now it would be really easy to put together such a tape using only Robyn Hitchcock tunes but I don't want to roll that way... I think I will include "I Feel Beautiful" and either "Arms of Love" or "Heaven". (So many choices! My first thought was to open the mix with "Birds in Perspex" and end it with "Ride".) Anyway: time to start thinking about non-Hitchcock love songs...
posted evening of July 24th, 2008: Respond
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Tuesday, July 29th, 2008
 80 more minutes of good funk are now available from the Apostropher. Check it out -- I will listen and report more soon. This tape features nobody I'm familiar with... (So why am I calling it "good"? -- I've learned to trust Apo's ear in these matters. There will probably be like one clunker on the tape but the other 77 minutes will more than make up for it.)
OK... downloaded, burned, got it on the stereo. Not sure about Betty Davis but Nils Landgren is all right by me. The instrumentation is exactly like it should be. "Let me run into your lonely heart" sounds kind of like a faint echo of "House Party" -- I like it but after the high energy of that last song, it's not making much of an impact on my consciousness. Now Cold Blood is picking it back up, and in an ideal way -- this is much different from the previous tracks. The opening instrumental is really nice and when the vocals come in, they really take me away. "Baby I Love You" is my new favorite track on this compilation... Yep, and "Never No Time to Burn" is pretty fantastic too. If "Let me run into your lonely heart" turns out to be the clunker track -- well, that would make this the best Unfunkked disk yet, possibly excluding #3 which I seem to remember liking really hugely. ...This stuff is just all great... ...And yes, Betty Davis is great too. The opening track didn't really grab me but the final track really made me move.
posted morning of July 29th, 2008: 3 responses
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Wednesday, October 15th, 2008
 This time with politics -- Unfunkked 8: That Ain't Gravy, Lady is available for download. (Also the Apostropher has archived volumes 1 - 7 in one place together, along with "Don't Bogart that Groove" and "Apomerica.")
I'm listening to the first track right now and swinging.
Update (as of track 5): The mix is really smooth and consistent -- transitions from song to song make sense. Shake your bootie, baby. Update (as of track 10): Listening to this tape is highly recommended as an alternative to watching the debate. Way better use of your mind. I want you to know, exactly how I feel. Update (as of track 17): This tape saves the best for last. I have never heard of the Lafayette Afro Rock Band before just now. My mind has been expanded. (Some more Lafayette tunes are available at Dr. Okeh's FORREALHEADZ blog.)
posted evening of October 15th, 2008: 2 responses
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Saturday, January 17th, 2009
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Apostropher's got some tunes up for celebrating the inaugural. (2 more days! Bye-bye, Bush! Hope you get what's coming to you!)
posted evening of January 17th, 2009: Respond
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Tuesday, March third, 2009
A fegmaniac recommended this mix tape the other day -- I was intrigued by the mention of Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus, and thought I'd check it out. Well I'm back to report: it's all right, and you ought to take a listen. Most of the songs are standards; some of performances are highly unconventional. I was really taken aback at the opening of Musee Mecanique's performance of "I Ain't Got No Home In This World Anymore" -- the pipe organ seemed totally counter to the spirit of that song. But by the end it had won me over. There are interesting shades of meaning in experiencing that political song as a purely æsthetic phenomenon -- a truly beautiful one. The haunting vocal in Headlights' "Come All Ye Fair and Tender Ladies" is going to stay with me for a while. Some of the straight "folk music" performances are not as interesting, but they serve nicely to leaven the weirdness of the other tracks.
posted morning of March third, 2009: Respond
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