art is the new religion

Where Is My Mind?

One of my favorite radio stations here in Austin is KGSR 107.1FM.  The station isn't exactly cutting edge, but it has a strong personality and plays a good mix of Texas music, alt-country, old school Americana, a fair amount of singer-songwriters and some new music here and there.  If you don't mind hearing a roots music or classic rock hero at least once in every set, it offers up a pretty nice variety.

It also still employs many of the same DJs since I first moved to Austin over a decade ago.  Apparently there are not that many reasons to leave a prime DJ gig at the station, which is why I was really impressed when my friend Andy Langer took over the evening slot a few months ago.  Now when I hop in my car between 6pm and 10pm, I hear my friend's voice introducing the songs, bringing a fresh perspective and some brand new music during the last 20 minutes of his shift.  I have a lot of respect for Andy's dedication to music, and, yeah, I also appreciate that he actually updates his "jock blog".

This shuffling of shifts apparently led veteran content manager and on-air host Jody Denberg to create a new Sunday morning program, and I caught a bit of the second edition this past weekend.  I was actually stuck in traffic on 26th Street, watching hundreds of marathon runners jog south down San Jacinto Blvd. (it would have been nice for the city to re-route us, or at least put up some signs) and I heard three songs in Jody's set:

• Yoav - "Where Is My Mind"
• Chris Whitley & Jeff Lang - "The Road Leads Down" 
• Shawn Colvin - "Wild Country"

Any day I can turn on the radio and hear the late genius Chris Whitley is a good day, and this song is beautiful.  It was also a rare treat to hear an unreleased mp3 of Shawn Colvin covering one of Whitley's songs, handed over to Denberg courtesy of the album's producer.  And I was really intrigued by an artist name Yoav covering Pixies' "Where Is My Mind".  His version is warm and atmospheric, almost meditative.  It gives you a chance to really listen to the lyrics, and the orchestration added for me a gravity I hadn't heard before.

Yoav's cover of "Where Is My Mind" from http://krissy.vox.com/

Unfortunately, when I checked out the rest of Yoav's music, I really didn't like any of it, despite his bombastic description as "Beck meets Buckley meets Bjork".  Not so much, if you ask me.

So, the point of this post is not to encourage you to go out and listen to Yoav, because you could live a long and meaningful life without ever hearing his original music.  I'm not really recommending his stuff beyond this one cover.  The point is to thank the responsible and discerning DJs of the world for playing the good songs, for giving an unreleased rarity its little turn in the spotlight, and for letting us hear some new stuff so we can decide for ourselves if we like it.  Listening to the radio doesn't have to be painful, it can be interesting.  Thanks KGSR for giving me a reason to tune in.

• Buy Pixies' Surfer Rosa from Amazon, or just download the mp3 of Pixies' "Where Is My Mind". 
• If for some reason you do like Yoav, you can download his version of "Where Is My Mind?".  He's playing on KCRW's "Morning Becomes Eclectic tomorrow, Wednesday, February 19th, and he plays in San Francisco Thursday night at none other than the glorious Hotel Utah.

Louder Than Love

I'd like to celebrate today by sharing one of my biggest crushes with you - early Soundgarden.  This band was a downright obsession for me for many years - my devotion even survived when one of my least favorite songs of theirs, "Black Hole Sun", brought them to mainstream stardom.

Today we're going way back to their second album, Louder Than Love, released in 1989 - HOLY CATS that was almost 20 years ago.

...

I just had a moment, sorry.

Anyway, here's the video for "Loud Love".  Chris Cornell was my dream crush, with his dark, flowing locks, screamy rage, and handsome mug.  I remember really loving this duct-taped shorts with stompy-boots look:

If that was too much for you, here's a much kinder and gentler look at a first crush.  I stole this video from my friend Alaina's blog.  It was animated by Julia Pott as her final film at Kingston University.  The animation is wonderful.

Happy Valentine's Day, everyone!

• Buy Soundgarden's Louder Than Love from Amazon. It has one of the greatest album covers of all time.

Dschinghis Khan & Diamond Dave

On a lighter note from yesterday, here are two things that have amused me over the past 24 hours.

Will the Real Diamond Dave Please Stand Up?
Every once in a while after I write something here I'll be contacted by someone who's related to what I wrote about.  I wrote about Wainy Days and someone from My Damn Channel commented, I wrote about the CBC and someone affiliated with the station commented, Ottmar Liebert commented, and so forth.  I find this really fun and gratifying, and I'm always curious who I might hear from next.

You might recall I wrote about Diamond Dave, aka David Lee Roth, last week.  I also happened to update my Twitter page with the following:

"Discussing the differences of DLR-era Van Halen vs. the Hagar years via IM with my friend Chris in Ann Arbor."

For those of you not familiar with Twitter, it's a super simple application that lets you send very short updates to your friends telling them what you're doing.  The updates can be as mundane as "I just got back from dance class - yay!" and therefore usually not very interesting to people who don't know you.

Which is why I was delighted and amused to get this email notification in my inbox yesterday:

Clearly this is one of my friends or acquaintances having some fun with a fake account, but the Twitter notification still made me smile. 

Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha - Hey!
The other thing that made me laugh was something I ran across while working this morning.  Did you know there's such a genre as historical-themed disco?

Dschinghis Khan's Wikipedia entry says the German pop group disbanded in the 80's but "has enjoyed a recent resurgence in popularity on the Internet due to the discovery of a video of them performing their hit song 'Moskau.'"  Thanks, Wikipedia, for pointing out that pretty much everyone with an internet connection has already seen this video besides me.  Well, I saw the video for the first time this morning, and it totally brightened my day and inspired an impromptu dance party here.

Ha ha ha ha ha - hey!

A Not So Happy Birthday

I've been a little bit down today and didn't think I'd feel like posting, but then I thought about the music-related memories I have of my Dad and realized that writing about them could be a cool way to celebrate his birthday.

My strongest music-related memories with him are associated with the drives our family used to take once or twice a year from San Antonio to Tyler, Texas, to visit both sets of grandparents and often some aunts, uncles and cousins.  This drive always took at least six or seven hours, an eternity when you're six, seven, eight years old.  There was a distinct routine to these trips:  if I'd eaten pancakes at breakfast my motion sickness would guarantee they made a second appearance a short distance down the road, my Mom always brought a pillow with a crisp pillowcase for our miniature schnauzer Heidi to lay on in the front seat with her, and my Dad always commenced the trip by warbling out an enthusiastic rendition of Willie Nelson's "On The Road Again".  I don't recall us having many cassette tapes around for these trips - I seem to remember listening to the radio - so he might have done this a cappella, resulting in my brother and I saying "Oh Daaaaad" in response to his utter silliness.

Another song we were somehow guaranteed to hear on these trips - and sing along to - was Eddie Rabbitt's "Drivin' My Life Away".  It was a number one hit in the early to mid-80's, so it was never hard to find it on the radio.  Not only was this clearly a road trip song, but the lyrics, as I misunderstood them, seemed a miraculously appropriate soundtrack for our drive, especially if we heard it on the second half of the trip and it was raining.  Because what I heard Eddie singing was:

"Oh the windshield wipers, flappin' out of Temple

keepin' perfect rhythm with the song on the radio"

As you can see from the map, we drove right through Temple, Texas, to get to Tyler.  That Eddie Rabbitt - how did he know??  It wasn't until years later that I realized what Eddie was really singing was:  "Oh the windshield wipers, slappin' out a tempo".

One of the best music memories I had with my Dad happened when I fell in love with a song on the radio during one of these trips and didn't know who sang it.  I was hugely into unicorns and pegasus(es?) when I was little and would bring stuffed animals on the road trips with me.  For some reason, my unicorn and pegasus stuffed animals were really inspired to fly around to this one song. When I told my Dad about this, instead of rolling his eyes and laughing at me (like you probably just did), he sprang into action on a mission to find out who sang the song for me.  I remember going into a store or two and standing there with my Dad, trying to explain what I heard to the sales clerks, of course to no avail because my musical vocabulary was rather limited at around five years old.

Quick aside -- whenever we parked the car to go into a store, my dad and I never walked across the parking lot together.  No, he always insisted I hold his hand and skip across the parking lot with him.  Of course, I loved this.

The mystery of the song was finally solved when we drove the extra bit to Longview, Texas, to visit my Uncle's family.  My cousins Julia and Susan were much older than me, probably in their late teens, and totally gorgeous and cool as far as I was concerned.  They listened to my plea and instantly knew what the song was: "Time" by the Alan Parsons Project.

Thank you Dad for your enduring silliness, and for always taking my whims, questions and ideas seriously.  Thinking of you on your birthday.

Oscar T. (1934-1986)

I Found the Simple Life, Ain't So Simple

A few of my friends have a real obsession with David Lee Roth's vocal acrobatics, and I too have a fond place in my heart for DLR-era Van Halen, starting with a dance recital I performed to the song "Jump" when I was 9 years old.

Diamond Dave might be best known for his ebullience and off-the-charts stage presence, but the truth is he is a remarkable vocalist.  Case in point, my friend Chad shared his mp3 with me yesterday (it's making the rounds, originally found on Chunklet Radio) -- it's just the vocal track from the song "Runnin' With The Devil".  You'll hear some long pauses here, but you'll also be able to appreciate Roth's vocal style unencumbered, in all its glory:

Runnin' With The Devil from http://krissy.vox.com/

YOU try to make some of those sounds.  Go ahead, try it.

Here's a live performance of the song from around 1984, courtesy of YouTube.  Notice that DLR is rocking a white hoodie with black bears on it, with a tank top that appears to have been fashioned hastily out of an abandoned volleyball net.  You don't have to be Tim Gunn to know that he makes it work:

For more video and vocal styling fun, please visit my friend Anil Dash's blog to read his multi-part series on the genius of Snoop Dogg's video for "Sensual Seduction".  Bonus:  You'll learn the difference between vocoder, talkbox and Auto-Tune.

• Buy the "Runnin' With The Devil (Album Version)" mp3 from Amazon, or really you ought to own the album Van Halen because it's a classic from start to finish.
  

Bright Moments (In the Key of W)

Talking about The Mars Volta's alien chaos yesterday got me thinking about music that sends me out of my mind in an enjoyable way.  That, and seeing one of their band members with more than one horn slung around his neck, reminded me how much I love Rahsaan Roland Kirk.

A favorite college professor of mine played Kirk's "The Inflated Tear" in class one weekday afternoon, and 45 of my dormant synapses fired all at once and opened up an entirely new section of my brain.  It's one of those musical moments that changed me.

Kirk was a multi-instrumentalist in the genre of black classical music (a.k.a. jazz) who went blind at an early age due to medical mistreatment and lived a short but vivid life, dying in 1977 at the age of 41.  When I say he was a multi-instrumentalist, I mean that tenor sax was his main instrument and he'd also play sax and flute - all at once - and sometimes with his mouth and nose at the same time.

Witness:

You know someone's a serious horn player when they've developed multiple bellows-like air pockets in their cheeks and across the entire span of their neck.  Kirk was a master of circular breathing, enabling him to play continuous notes without having to stop to inhale.  He worked with Mingus, Quincy Jones and many of the great players of his time, but he stuck so steadfastly to his own vision that he inevitably flew under the radar.

Kirk lived on another plane and just wasn't bound by our rules and limitations.

That was a cover of "I Say A Little Prayer" - recognize it?  (Bonus: he often covered Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine").

I think one might be able to discover the meaning of life by listening to enough Rahsaan Roland Kirk.  Seriously.  He made a great deal of his music, and life decisions, based on dreams he had.  If he dreamed a sound, he'd wake up the next day and create it.  If he couldn't find the right instrument, he'd make one.  He changed his name based on dreams.  He made his dreams real.  And he lived his life looking for bright moments:

"Now, we would like to think of some very beautiful Bright Moments. You know   what I mean?
  Bright Moments . . . .
  Bright Moments is like . . . eating your last pork chop in London, England,   because you ain't gonna get no more . . . cooked from home.
  Bright Moments is like being with your favorite love and you're all sharing   the same ice cream dish.
  And you get mad when she gets the last drop.
  And you have to take her in your arms and get it the other way.
  Bright Moments.
  That's too heavy for most of you all because you all don't know about that kind   of love.
  The love you all have been taught about is the love in those magazines.
  And I am fortunate that I didn't have to look at magazines.
  Bright Moments.
  Bright Moments is like seeing something that you ain't ever seen in your life   and you don't have to see it but you know how it looks.
  Bright Moments is like hearing some music that ain't nobody else heard, and   if they heard it they wouldn't even recognize that they heard it because they   been hearing it all their life but they nutted on it, so when you hear it and   you start popping your feet and jumping up and down they get mad because you're   enjoying yourself but those are bright moments that they can't share with you   because they don't know even how to go about listening to what you're listening   to and when you try to tell them about it they don't know a damn thing about   what you're talking about!
  Is there any other Bright Moments before we proceed on?
  Testify! . . . .
  Bright Moments.
  Bright Moments.
  Bright Moments is like having brothers and sisters and sisterettes and brotherettes   like you all here listening to us."     -- Rahsaan Roland Kirk

In fact, when I get to heaven, or the afterlife, or in the unlikely event that I do someday have a hallucinogenic drug trip, I'm going to The Great American Music Hall to see Rahsaan Roland Kirk perform.  Or maybe he'll come perform in my dreams.  The Mars Volta can open up the show.

• Download "The Inflated Tear (LP Version)" mp3 from Amazon, or buy the boxed set Dog Years In The Fourth Ring, which I own and recommend.  John Kruth published a biography of Kirk titled Bright Moments in 2001, which I'm adding to my reading list.