"Don't blame me, I voted for Cindy Sheehan"

The ever-witty TBogg sums up the latest distraction all too perfectly:

...the endless harping on what she knew and when she knew it is exactly the distraction that previous party in power wants.

By Monday, people will believe that Pelosi herself was doing the waterboarding and only then will Republicans admit that it is torture.

The US government engaged in torture, period, and all the weasel words and blame-shifting don't obscure that basic point one bit, unless you are deliberately choosing not to hear it. I am willing to see Nancy Pelosi investigated for her complicity on the issue only after Cheney, Bush, Rumsfeld, Woo, Bybee, Ashcroft, Gonzales, et al are securely behind bars. Let us keep our priorities straight, shall we?

UPDATE: Let's not pretend we don't all know exactly why they did this is the first place.

UPDATE AGAIN: The Rude Pundit raises a very good point: this is the CIA we're talking about.

Oh and Barack, I don't know what the hell you think you are doing, but I suggest you stop and remember why exactly you are where you are now. The mandate you have is not a mandate to keep the likes of Richard Cohen happy. Get a grip. Thank you.

Now you're talking

This is what we should do. Stop paying our credit cards. Demand a cap of 10% interest, and don't pay one penny to the credit card companies until Congress gets up off their lazy corrupt asses and passes a law making it illegal for anyone, credit card companies included, to charge anyone more than 10% interest on any loan, charge, or other financial transaction bearing interest.

Want a big laugh? The Republicans keep saying the Democrats are "socialists." The Democrats are closer to being made-men in the mob than to being socialists. Socialists actually do something for the people once in awhile, instead of just shoveling all the money into the coffers of the corporations.

Full rant here. Hat tip to Avedon at The Sideshow.

Pulled back and forth toys

I noticed a lot of bloggers have been having fun making xtranormal movies, usually by putting idiotic wingnut manifestos in the mouths of these cute/creepy animated characters.

I thought I'd try something a little different. So, here is a dramatization of the lyrics of two songs by The Blame, "Wagons And Boys" and "Let Me Plant One On You". Tell me what you think.

Dance me very tenderly and dance me very long

Our final video of the Conspiracy Of Beards' April trip to New York shows the boys belting their hearts out on "Dance Me To The End Of Love" and ruling the dance floor at a loft party in Williamsburg in the wee wee hours. Special thanks to Allison for wielding the video camera while Neo was busy singing.

Read about it here.

That's why you want to be there

Daryl Henline leads a quintet of Beards in the backyard of Brooklyn's Stain Bar in an exquisite small-group arrangement of Leonard Cohen's immortal "Suzanne".

Read about it here.

Those were the reasons and that was New York

The Conspiracy Of Beards singing "Chelsea Hotel #2" on the PATH train back to New York after they appeared at WFMU in Jersey City. Video shot on the fly by J Neo Marvin, who says it was pretty noisy, which is why it took a couple of lines for everybody to get going. At the end you can hear the conductor berate him for filming the moment: "You can't take pictures here!" Party-pooper.

Read more about it here.

What America really wants and most politicians are too scared to support

Elizabeth Kucinich lays down the law



Can we get this bill passed, like, yesterday, already?

Seen Your Video: Tinariwen: Live In London

This is one case where you are better off watching all the extras before you get to the main feature. To get the full impact of this rocking little band from the north of Africa, you need to know exactly where they're coming from, which makes the bonus mini-documentaries and interview footage essential.

Tinariwen and their sternly charismatic leader Ibrahim Ag Alhabib are inseparable from the Tuareg people from which they come, a group of nomads with an ancient culture whose territory crosses the borders of Algeria, Mali, and Niger as they cling fiercely to their own independent identity. The damage left behind by colonialism is clear: when the territory called "French West Africa" was carved into various independent nations, the borders were drawn with little or no regard for the ancestral lands of all the different ethnic groups of the region. (And this is no isolated case: the nation called "Iraq" was created in a similar fashion by England drawing arbitrary lines on a map, leaving the Kurds in a similar position to the Tuaregs, for instance.) So the French leave, and an oddly-shaped nation called "Mali" is established, stretching from the Niger River where the ancient "Mali Empire" was centered, clear up to a broad swath of the Sahara, where the Tuareg population lives.

So the question comes up: what is a nation? What is a national identity? Is it ethnicity? Is it a shared philosophy? Is it an alliance between peoples for mutual advancement and benefit? Or is it just a piece of real estate to be ruled by the strongest strongman who can hold it? Sorry, folks, you're on your own and good luck answering those questions; your old European conquerors have washed their hands of you. Here, have some foreign aid. Hope it gets to the right places. (And thanks for the natural resources, we'll be sure the general gets his payment.) Oh, I see that corruption and war are plaguing your people. Well, it must be proof of your innate primitive depravity. Surely we, your former Great White Fathers, couldn't have had anything to do with this mess, could we? And so it goes, the whole sordid story of third world struggle. It's a big subject, worth more thought and debate than this little blog post can contain by itself...

The young displaced Tuaregs that grew up to form Tinariwen, while directly affected by this state of affairs, grew up with more immediate concerns. Driven from his home after his father was assassinated by the Malian army in 1963, Ibrahim eventually found himself on his own doing odd jobs and trying to survive in Algeria, ultimately, along with a whole generation of stateless, exiled young Tuaregs like him, going to Libya for military training as part of Moammar Khadafy's campaign to support the Tuareg insurrection in Mali. Ah yes, Khadafy. Benevolent supporter of liberation struggles or petty imperialist puppet-master in his own right? You decide.

It would all be just another story of the endless cycle of ethnic wars in the third world, if not for Ibrahim's chance encounter with an Arab musician in Algeria who teaches him guitar, eventually selling him his instrument. The young guerilla and his comrades spend their downtime during the civil war brewing tea in the desert while they jam and write new songs that build on their traditional music with lyrics that address their own experience and express the feelings and views of their community. Something powerful grows out of these little sessions: a loose-knit band evolves, recording their own low-fi cassettes that spread like wildfire among the Tuareg people, capturing and feeding their spirits and communicating them to others. After the conflict is resolved, the music lives on. Tinariwen's guitars have an impact that reaches farther than their guns ever did. Eventually an English record producer named Justin Adams makes the trek out to the desert to put together their first studio recording, and the band becomes an international cult sensation.

The music itself is hypnotic and thrilling, slightly reminiscent of the bluesy droning sounds of Ali Farka Toure, only with a strong Berber influence that shows in the more Arabic-flavored melody lines. A whole fleet of electric guitars, a marvelously extroverted left-handed bassist, and one phenomenal hand drummer holding down the beat. On most songs, two or three band members (including a spry old man and a beatific woman) clap hands, sing backups, and break into spontaneous dances when they are moved to do so.

Various members take turns singing and playing lead guitar, but every time Ibrahim steps forward, the charisma level rises. His voice is just that much more deep and magnetic, and his guitar is just that much more biting. He comes across not as a domineering boss, but as first among equals, the guy with the X factor that everyone else looks up to. And with his wild mane of hair and his wry, haunted expression that tells you he's seen things you don't even want to ask him about, he cannot help but be the focal point. Yet he also has an air of quiet, centered dignity, like a warrior who has found a better way to defend and represent his community. Now when people hear the word "Tuareg", instead of thinking of some marginal group of oppressed desert rebels (or going "huh"?), thousands more of them will think of a band with a percolating, prickly groove that they can't get out of their heads. And while that won't solve the problems of the world by itself, it's a step in the right direction towards reveling in the amazing things human beings in faraway corners of the world can do. Once insurgents, Tinariwen are now diplomats. Buy their records and make them some money.

You need a mess of help to stand alone

If you have a curiosity about the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson, you've probably heard the name Jack Rieley before. Rieley had a brief fling as manager, collaborator and creative consultant for the troubled band in the early 70s, and gets both the credit and the blame for attempting to upgrade their image for the post-hippie counterculture, shepherding the group through three albums, Surf's Up, So Tough/Carl And The Passions, and Holland. Surf's Up was far and away the best of the three, while the other two were messy but interesting, and all three were the last attempt by the band at creating something weighty and relevant before settling into the tug-of-war between safe nostalgia and drug-drenched naivete that followed. (The former, represented by Mike Love, winning out while Brian Wilson eventually triumphed as a solo artist basically paying tribute to his own illustrious past. Sadly, his two brilliant brothers didn't last long enough to savor the moment. Oh, what Carl would have done with the reconstructed Smile album!)

Anyway, Rieley has not been served well by history. His contributions have been belittled as superficial manipulations of a clueless band, shallow gestures to ingratiate them with the political Zeitgeist of the day. Well, there might be some truth to that, but reading his own words on the preserved mailing list exchanges below, one gets another picture: one of a true fan, perhaps one of the most passionate Beach Boys fans ever, who had the guts to convince them, for at least a few years, that they had more to offer than they had been giving, and it was time for them to take the role as one of the great bands of the rock era that was alive and relevant to the time they were in here and now. Maybe that was a ludicrous idea. Considering Mike Love's response to Rieley's challenge was to pen "Student Demonstration Time", maybe this band was too square a peg for such a round hole. But Love also managed to come up with "Don't Go Near The Water" (a good song that's hit the Ear Candle Radio playlist more than once), and "California Saga" has its moments too. (For me as a kid hearing these records and knowing zilch about what went on behind the scenes, it seemed perfectly appropriate for the sun-and-surf-loving Beach Boys to be writing about ecology...still does, really.) Certainly, the group was on to something that could have gone further, if they had had the courage to see it through. The failure of the Rieley era sealed the fate of the Beach Boys and Brian Wilson even more surely than the capsizing of the Smile project.

If anything, Rieley's greatest gift to the band was his strong support and cultivation of Carl Wilson: appointing him the band's musical director, helping him write songs (the three they co-wrote are some of the best things the band ever did in the 70s), and enlisting his help to finish the work that Brian could not; it was Carl Wilson and Jack Rieley that made the song "Surf's Up" happen, and "Surf's Up" is to the Beach Boys what "A Day In The Life" was to the Beatles: a huge once-in-a-lifetime achievement that stands outside the rest of their catalog. So if Rieley had done nothing but sifted through the Smile tapes and goaded the Beach Boys into making something presentable out of "Surf's Up", that would be enough.

But Rieley is the forgotten man in the Beach Boys story, and his own silence has contributed to that. That, and his own lyrics for songs by all three Wilson brothers, which aimed for Van Dyke Parks surrealism, sometimes piled on the metaphors to the point of sounding creaky and overwrought on songs like "Steamboat". But we don't come to the Beach Boys for lyrics, do we? Rieley's lyrics, for all their hippie-babble tendencies, were eminently singable (and never as embarrassing as Mike Love's efforts). "Feel Flows", a virtual Carl Wilson solo recording (aside from Charles Lloyd's sax and flute overdubs), turns Rieley's word salad into something truly cosmic, and is the best thing either of them ever did.

Here is a rare opportunity to get a bit of the story in the elusive Rieley's own words. For a brief while, he contributed some thoughts and memories to an online Beach Boys mailing list, and it's interesting to read the story from his perspective. Jack Rieley is nothing if not highly opinionated, and gushes with praise for anyone with the last name Wilson and does not hide his disdain for the other members of the band. He doesn't go into it much here, but another factor in the equation was Rieley's sexuality. Being openly gay while Mike Love made no bones about his homophobia was never going to bode well for a long-term business and creative relationship with such a conflicted and dysfunctional family-based rock band. (Meanwhile, Davis has insisted while watching live Beach Boys footage that Mike Love is totally gay himself based on his dancing...so there may be some defensive closet-case projection involved. I have also read that Love gay-baited Sean O'Hagan of the High Llamas when he tried to collaborate with the Beach Boys years later; clearly Love's got some issues) Rieley did the smart thing and moved on, and since then, while book after book on the troubled Brian and his relatives/bandmates has come out over the years, he has kept his own counsel. But here, he spills his guts ever so briefly, and we get another side of the story:

Jack Rieley, Part 1

Jack Rieley, Part 2

It's worth a read, as is the O'Hagan story, which provides a portrait of how fiercely committed to lameness the Beach Boys became by the '90s, as O'Hagan points the finger at producer Joe Thomas (an ex-wrestler and "adult contemporary" label owner who worked with both the group and Brian Wilson solo) as a specialist in "right-wing country artists" who was given control because Brian's wife liked him. Apparently, you can't blame Mike Love for every wrong move the band makes, tempting as it is. Oddly, Bruce Johnston comes across much better here than in Rieley's account.

Key Rieley quote (trying to explain why the Beach Boys could not achieve the critical credibility and commercial success that the Beatles did):

The Beatles were focused, strategic, professional and well led during the years of their mounting ascendancy in critical and commercial acclaim. John Lennon and Paul McCartney, the creators, spoke the same "line" as did George Harrison and Ringo Starr. There was true career direction, which the group followed carefully.

During that same period The Beach Boys were divided, unprofessional and horrendously led. Brian Wilson, the creator, had the respect of his brothers but not of the others in his band nor of their manager. The brothers spoke one "line" while Love, Jardine, an emerging Johnston and Murry Wilson spouted another. There was no career direction to speak of and chaos reigned.

A thought-provoking explanation of why some bands "work" and some don't. It's food for thought, monsters.

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: April 2009

The recently passed country legend Porter Wagoner tops this month's charts with his haunting, almost-psychedelic ballad of empathy for the mentally ill. Neo used to watch the Porter Wagoner TV show as a child (for those of you who don't know, this was the guy who discovered Dolly Parton) and he says, frankly, he didn't know he had one like this in him. We found this song on a compilation of some of (the late) Lux Interior and Ivy Rorshach's favorite songs; those Cramps had impeccable taste. (Again, while we're on the subject: Ivy, when you recover from your grief, we would love to hear you do a solo album of Link Wray-style instrumentals. We'd play it constantly!)

Other new acquisitions rear their heads on this month's chart. When our pal Matthew Grasso came to stay with us recently, he brought another CD of his music we hadn't heard before, and this piece by one of his instructors at the SF Conservatory Of Music stood out; it's a neat little piece which Matthew executes with his usual subtlety and skill. We also have a classic from the jive-talking jazz wizard Slim Gaillard, the hard-to-find first single by New Zealand's romantic Verlaines, and a great extended comedy routine from Eddie Izzard where he illustrates a very important point: Never. Heckle. Eddie. Izzard.

Of course, longtime Ear Candle Radio listeners know how much we love Arthur Lee, and this month we're happy to see him represented, not only by a coolly sinister track from Forever Changes, but by some of his lesser-known later gems: a long, delicious acid-guitar freakout from Love and a bouncy, crunchy philosophical ballad from his first solo album. Another one of our heroes, Yoko Ono, contributes a blasting punk-thrash anti-war number with Sean Lennon on guitar; an old friend, Angel Corpus-Christi, covers Robert De Niro and banters with Alan Vega; MC5 tear the roof off with one of our favorite Fred Sonic Smith songs; and Lavel Moore gives us a heartfelt statement from the newest installment of the Eccentric Soul Series. This volume, The Young Disciples, compiles records made by an East St. Louis youth organization that reached out to at-risk youth in the ghetto four decades ago by teaching them music and coaching them to make passionate soul records. We sure could use more programs like that today!

As always, it's our listeners and their feedback that keep us enthusiastic about our radio station. Thank you all, and keep listening!

1. Porter Wagoner - The Rubber Room - The Rubber Room
2. Arthur Lee - Everybody's Gotta Live - Vindicator
3. Slim Gaillard - Chicken Rhythm - Vout For Voutoreenees
4. Matthew Grasso - Raguette (Bogdanovic) - Music For The Extended 7-String Guitar
5. Love - Love Is More Than Words (or Better Late Than Never) - Out Here
6. Brian Eno & John Cale - Spinning Away - Wrong Way Up
7. Yoko Ono/IMA - Warzone - Rising
8. Eleventh Dream Day - The Raft - El Moodio
9. The Pastels - Kitted Out - Truckload Of Trouble
10. Bush Tetras - Funky (Instrumental) - Boom in the Night
11. The Verlaines - Death and the Maiden - Juvenilia
12. The Rutles - Blue Suede Schubert - The Rutles
13. MC5 - Over And Over - The Big Bang! Best Of The MC5
14. Love - A House Is Not A Motel - Forever Changes
15. LaVel Moore - The World Is Changing - Eccentric Soul: The Young Disciples
16. Eddie Izzard - Great Escape - Dress To Kill
17. Angel Corpus Christi - Theme From Taxi Driver/NY NY - I Love New York
18. Robert Wyatt - Gharbzadegi - Old Rottenhat
19. The Music Magicians - Convertibles And Headbands - The American Song-poem Anthology: Do You Know The Difference Between Big Wood And Brush
20. The Minutemen - Mr. Robot's Holy Orders - Double Nickels on the Dime

Like a farting watchdog

T Rex sums up the way I've felt about newspapers for most of my adult life here. Mainstream print media may be an endangered species for a number of reasons, but until I can open a newspaper without being exposed to mediocre writing, bogus wisdom, false perspective, toxic mendacity and outright stupidity, I'm going to have an awfully hard time shedding too many tears.

My prediction is that we will probably have several very large papers shut down as the big corporations decide that this is not a lucrative business to be in anymore. What I wish for in the aftermath is to see those journalists who are actually dedicated to their craft and their ethics banding together to create smaller, independent, hard-hitting, truth-seeking publications of their own to fill the gap, perhaps hiring some of the stunning writers you can find on our blogroll over the right of this page for their editorial sections. Hey, let me dream if I want to.

Seen Your Video: The Howlin' Wolf Story

As a genre, blues has its limitations. One of the most formulaic musical forms ever invented, 95% of the songs have the same chord progression, for crying out loud. Go to a bar on "blues night" and it's all cliches, solos, and bravado, fine for drinking beer to, but don't expect to have your heart moved or your mind blown. And dear God, if you're at a party and someone suggests a blues jam, it's probably time to go home. For the most part, blues is more an ingredient that spices up other musical forms (jazz, soul, folk, rock, psychedelia, West African music, zydeco, even country and punk) than a music you can spend much quality time on in its own right. (I'm practically inviting a flame war here; this blog needs more comments anyway! Bring it on!)

[UPDATE: OK, I must clarify. In that paragraph, I'm mostly talking about "blues" as it is played today by too many lazy people. Please read on...]

And yet...

There are so many great visionaries who have made the blues their life's work, found their voices there, and created whole worlds within those limitations. Charley Patton, Robert Johnson, John Lee Hooker, I can listen to those guys all day. Bessie Smith, of course, was a goddess, as was Memphis Minnie. Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson II made some killer records throughout their careers, though other stuff by them I have to admit I respect more than enjoy. But there's one artist out there who I love without reservation: Howlin' Wolf.

Wolf, born Chester Burnett, had the best band (especially guitarist and longtime foil Hubert Sumlin, who spewed out snappy, economical, biting riffs that spoke more in a few choice twangs than other guitarists could do in their solos), the best songs (by both himself and Willie Dixon), an arresting growl of a voice (without him, Captain Beefheart and Tom Waits would have sounded very different), and a huge personality abundant with power, dread, rage and humor. But despite all the pleasure I've gotten from his records over the years, I started this movie knowing very little about the man himself.

We get lots of performance footage, with Wolf belting out his songs in that voice and pulling some wild stage antics like licking his instruments (harmonica and guitar), bugging out his eyes, and scowling and pointing his finger like an angry hellfire-and-brimstone preacher, all while sitting in a chair and not looking the least bit sedentary. (Too bad he didn't have more cameras pointing at him in his younger years, when he could really let go; we have to rely on eyewitness accounts for that.) Wolf took his role as a showman seriously, working hard to keep the audience excited. At the same time, when he stops the clowning, narrows his eyes, and points that finger at the audience, you can feel the sting of the reprimand as surely as if you were the character he's singing to in the song.

We are taken back to the childhood of young Chester Burnett, a poor black kid in rural Mississippi from a broken home, shuffled from relative to relative, scared of wolves (which led to him getting his famous nickname), and discontented with the lot of a 15 cent a day cotton picker in the segregated South. A more interesting alternative shows up in the form of an itinerant guitar player (none other than the great Charley Patton himself) who stirs the kid's love of music. When Chester comes of age, he has been living with his father, a kind-hearted man who gives in to his son's request for a guitar of his own. He strikes out to make his fortune and starts playing dodgy juke joints in the area, including a stint where he and Robert Johnson perform as a duo...

Gotta stop here. My jaw dropped at this point. Howlin' Wolf and Robert Johnson, performing together? How amazing must that have been, these two electrifying young artists throwing down together in front of an audience? Of course, being the Deep South in the 1930s, no one filmed or recorded this; the people we now think of as revered American cultural icons were regarded as nothing but n*****s, hardly worthy of attention. What a crime.

Anyway, our hero is paying his dues, receiving his baptism by fire in these rough backwoods venues, until he decides that Memphis is the place to go. We get our first inkling of the enterprising side of the Wolf; he not only establishes himself as a busy local musician, but he also gets himself a regular radio gig. One thing that impresses over and over in this movie is what a serious work ethic Wolf had. Earlier we are told that as a child his mother threw him out because he wouldn't work in the fields; one could conclude from this that he was a lazy adolescent, but looking at how hard he worked all his life, one gets the impression that he was too smart to allow himself to be exploited as a second-class citizen performing cheap labor. Wolf wasn't an explicitly political artist, mostly singing about personal conflict, emotional turmoil, and (especially) the wondrous pleasures of the flesh, but you get the impression that black pride was an innate thing with him. And it was that pride that sustained him and brought him his success.

In Memphis, this larger-than-life artist started to get some real attention. We get a nice cameo from Paul Burlison of Johnny Burnette's Rock & Roll Trio telling us how he met Wolf at the radio station where their respective bands performed, and we see how it was the power of music that helped break the barriers of the segregated South in the 50s and 60s; despite the system, they were peers digging each other's sound. (Peter Guralnik's book Sweet Soul Music is full of stories like this. An essential history book. Go get it.) The catalyst that propelled Wolf into the next phase of his life was the legendary Sam Phillips (long before Elvis, Jerry Lee, Johnny, or Carl), who recorded Wolf's first record, the haunting, eerie "Moanin' At Midnight", which instigated a bidding war that was won by Chess Records in Chicago. Wolf, proud man that he is, moves to Chicago not by train or thumb, but drives there himself with $4000 in his pocket.

In Chicago, Wolf has a long career full of steady gigs and hit records, eventually crossing over to the white rock audience curious about the original versions of the songs they've heard the Rolling Stones, Doors, Cream, and others do. And young Hubert Sumlin is there for the whole thing. Now an affable old man, Sumlin is here to talk about his imposing, no-nonsense mentor: "If you said something to him, you had better be right, and you'd better say it right." Meanwhile, Wolf's two daughters talk about him as a father and a husband to their mother, and we see another side to the guy: a sweet, open-hearted man who adored his wife and kids. The daughters make a point of saying that there was no contradiction between the stable family man and the wild man on the stage: "That was just his spirit coming out." The jilted (and jilting) lover in so many of his songs must have been drawn from his younger years.

Again, pride, resilience and self-improvement are a recurring theme here. (Functionally illiterate as a youth, he eventually put himself through school in his fifties, where he learned to read and write, got a GED, and went on to study accounting. For a man his age, this was no small achievement, and testifies to his incredible drive.) We see Wolf at the Newport Folk Festival at one point, heckled by a drunken Son House, one of his old musical mentors gone to seed and coming off as a pathetic old man. Wolf delivers a blistering speech at House for wasting his life and his gifts that must have made him feel six inches tall. "He didn't take no mess", another associate recalls.

Late in the movie and in his life, we are told of Chester Burnett's reunion with his mother. It does not go well. His mother was a fiercely devout Baptist and never forgave her son for playing "Devil's music", throwing the money he gave her on the ground with contempt, and leaving her heartbroken son to drive away in tears. Shortly after, when Wolf cries out "Please write my mama/Tell her the shape I'm in/Tell her to pray for me/Forgive me for my sins" in one of his last great songs, "Goin' Down Slow" (which also references the illness that killed him in the end) we realize how poignant that lyric must have been to him, despite Willie Dixon's somewhat goofy spoken-word interjections in the same song.

Dixon is strangely absent in this story, and it's hard to fathom why. A powerful figure at Chess Records, Dixon played bass and, most importantly, was a gifted songwriter who penned great tunes for many of his fellow Chess artists, including Wolf. From all accounts I've seen, there was a lot of tension between the two men; Wolf didn't feel he needed anyone else to write songs for him, and even detested at least one of the songs Dixon gave him, "Wang Dang Doodle". (A great song, actually, a surreal, crazy downhome scenario worthy of Bo Diddley) I'd have liked to see some light cast on the fractious Wolf/Dixon working relationship, but even though the DVD includes a bonus feature on the infamous Howlin' Wolf/Muddy Waters rivalry, we get nothing on the subject here. I do think the guy who gave us "Little Red Rooster" deserves some recognition here.

Otherwise, I have no complaints. It has been a pleasure to make the acquaintance of Mr. Howlin' Wolf via this movie. I come away with admiration for his heart and strength along with the music I've always loved.

The word is out

Hope we see you there.

For all my old Rough Trade friends

A BBC documentary on the history of Rough Trade. Worth watching.

Updated impressions after viewing 80% of the show:

Nothing at all about the US branch of Rough Trade, which is a pity, as both the San Francisco shop and the American label had a huge impact in their own right. The Grant Ave. and later, the 6th St. Rough Trade deserves their own documentary; wonder if it will ever be made. Steve Montgomery, who we see an awful lot of in the beginning here, was more or less forcibly ousted by the San Francisco Rough Trade, which reorganized itself as a collective until the UK parent company imposed a management structure on them later; it's a fascinating story that deserves to be told. (And then, there's the German Rough Trade, the only branch of the company which never went bankrupt...and yes, as a former Rough Trade Deutschland recording artist I have a personal interest in learning more about them, obviously)

My, Geoff Travis certainly becomes elusive when any financial issues come up.

In retrospect, it's highly amusing when the company goes into a big dramatic identity crisis over Scritti Politti's "The Sweetest Girl": "Oh my God, we're betraying our vision by putting out a slick pop record!" If you listen to that song now, it sounds like an outtake from Rock Bottom more than anything, which is no surprise since Robert Wyatt himself played keyboards on the single. Later, of course, Scritti Politti moved into serious helium-voiced 80s cheese with semiotic pretensions, but at this stage, they hardly sounded like commercial pop at all. Funny.

Liked seeing Mayo Thompson and Shirley O'Loughlin and others give their take on the history. And what a great bunch of footage of the Raincoats, Fall, Wyatt, Stiff Little Fingers and more. Oh yeah, and the Smiths too. (At the time they came out, I was more appreciative of their role as Rough Trade's cash cow than their actual music, but looking at them now, I have to admit they really were a dynamic little band for a while.)

Conspiracy Of Beards: New York Diary, Pt. 3

Today's earworm: the la-da-da-da chorus from "A Singer Must Die". Bursts from the throat and rolls off the tongue like honey.

The street crazies in New York are louder, scarier, and way more entertaining than the ones you find in San Francisco. This morning, a youngish black man with blazing, enraged eyes and a receding hairline was running around, pounding on restaurant windows, bellowing something about Obama, and marching into the street on red lights. (Striding purposefully into oncoming traffic is something all New Yorkers do well, but this guy was a master.) I expect to spot him again soon as a token black pundit on Fox News making a special guest appearance on the Glenn Beck show.

Yesterday, on the Bowery, a disshevelled, wide-eyed fifty-something white man was communing intensely with his headphones, stomping briskly through the crowd, and providing edgy, enthusiastic running commentary: "These guys! Were GENIUSES! Back then they made MUSIC! Not like this TECHNO PUSSY SHIT you hear now!" He would take breaks from his tirade to leer at all the hot, sharp-dressed New York women who wisely gave him a wide berth, then he'd resume his riveting rock criticism. Maybe Christopher Stigliano was visiting New York this weekend too.

A conversation I had more than once this weekend: "So, you're an all male choir, you don't have any instruments, and you only do Leonard Cohen songs?" "Yeah, that's right." "And that's it? You guys don't do anything else?" "Well, it's good to have a focus, don't you think?"

Actually, there was a moment yesterday that broke the instrument barrier. Deron, our most extroverted member, the one who throws his head back, contorts his face and visibly feels every second of every song with the utmost intensity (if you've seen the Beards, you know who I'm talking about) is also an ace harmonica player, and there is a trio arrangement of "Stories From The Street" which employs two voices backed by Deron blowing a humungous chromatic bass harmonica. One day I hope to see this performed for myself; unfortunately, this was the opening number while we were all sequestered in a tiny (literally) green room behind the stage at the Bowery Poetry Club last evening, so I have only experienced the audio so far.

The Bowery Poetry Club felt tiny after the Highline Ballroom, a long narrow corridor of a venue with a busy little deli up front and a bar and seats in the back room and paintings of great New York poets on the wall above the bar. The set was exciting, possibly the best performance of the weekend; the audience up close, noisy, and engaged. We pulled off the best version of "The Window" yet. David Bentley's solo vocal is tear-jerkingly beautiful on this song, one of Cohen's most cosmic, universe-embracing spiritual pieces ever; I am in awe when we do this one.

For the second time that day, we did "Bird On The Wire", two rows of dudes swaying like happy drunks with our arms around each other's shoulders. It seemed like every baritone singer was singing a slightly different part, but this time, rather than straining to figure out what was correct I just threw my voice in the mix and relied on my sense of harmony. Turns out, according to Tom, one of the wise elder Beards, this is the appropriate approach to this song: the more somebody tries to tighten up the arrangement, the more divergent versions are created, which then end up all being sung at once. But why argue with success, when all this disagreement results in such a mighty sound? Other songs benefit well from precision; "Bird" is magnificent "midnight choir" chaos.

Larry and his cousin converged at the bar the same time I did, and Larry bought us all a round of Guinnesses. Generous. And delicious. As we all gathered to plan how we would all get to the loft party that night, Sloan, one of our bass singers who was leaving and wouldn't be joining us there, passed me by and cryptically shouted, "Arrange memories!"

"What's that now?"

"Arrange 'Memories'! That song we were talking about!"

"Oh yeah! Thanks!" I kind of like the way I misheard it, though. "Arrange memories." That is what I'm doing right now in this Chelsea internet ice cream parlor, actually.

Larry's cousin led the way to the L train, walking faster than anyone I have ever tried to keep up with, and I always thought I walked pretty fast. If I lived here, I would no doubt be getting an aerobic workout every day of my life. When we got to the Bedford Ave. station in Brooklyn, he steered us to Driggs Pizza, where we had some real New York style slices. Now I like some of our local pies, and am especially loyal to our good friends at Eagle Pizza on Taraval (a really friendly, funny, and down-to-earth couple who make some of the best food in San Francisco), but Brooklyn pizza is a category all its own that must be experienced.

On to the party. Williamsburg is going through the sort of transition that SF went through during the original dot-com boom, where live-work spaces moved from being a raw pioneer experience for arty types seeking cheap living and freedom to being a status symbol for the upwardly mobile, ("the hedge fund managers are pushing the artists out now", we were told) but the transition is not fully complete, and you can still find cool, progressive, artistic young people living in well-furnished storage-locker-like digs in highrises that look foreboding on the outside and teem with life on the inside.

The party was a maelstrom of noisy, shouting conversation with faint sounds of Beirut coming off of a laptop. (I always liked Beirut OK, but I was curious as to who actually listens to them. Now I know.) The acoustics were so live, and sound carried so well, that everybody kept talking louder to hear their own conversation. Some of the younger, more hippie-ish Beards were arguing strongly that we should all perform with our shoes off, but the sound of breaking glass quickly put a damper on any such notion. I milled around, drinking Cabernet and locating pockets of interesting conversation while we waited for Daryl and his wife and adorably trouble-seeking two year old son to show up.

The woman hosting the party came up to some of us. "I think it's about time you guys got started."

"OK, but we're still waiting for our director."

"He's not here yet? OK..."

"You'll recognize him when you see him. He's a bit shorter, wears glasses and a mustache, and radiates an aura of calm authority."

"Well, I hope he gets here soon." In another corner, Ruben had already seized the reins and was putting a set list together in case we had to go it alone. Happily, in came Daryl and family in the nick of time and we assembled. I recruited Tim's (a Beard bass and excellent vocal arranger) sister Allison to videotape us as we performed. Thanks, Allison!

It was a loose, fun singing session; now all the pressure was off and it was time to just indulge in the fun that we all got into this thing for. Several party guests called out requests for great songs we have never done like "Tonight Will Be Fine" and "Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye". There's plenty more material for us to do in the future! As usual, everybody loves "Hallelujah". That song touches something deep in people; even atheists and agnostics relate to the theme of just opening your heart to the universe and singing "Hallelujah"; no explanation or justification necessary. It's nothing more or less than all our humanity coming out, rejoicing that, in spite of everything and no matter what your circumstance, it's such a goddamn gift to be alive.

That may be the central message, if there is any, of Leonard Cohen's mission: a deep, ecstatic, yet clear-eyed inquiry on what it means to be alive. Even when he has written and recorded songs like "Dress Rehearsal Rag" or "Seems So Long Ago, Nancy" that confront with terrifying empathy how it feels to be driven to suicide, every word and note from a Leonard Cohen song is full of the sheer wonder of life. And if that sounds corny to you, you have some growing up to do.

Anyhow, after our set, the party changed its tone, and suddenly the music got louder and more rhythmic as Beards and other guests went wild, break-dancing and ecstatically throwing one another around the room. As I was just saying, here it is: the wonder of life.

I have been on enough tours in my time to know full well how reality has a tendency to bash you on the head with a hammer once you get back home and return to your regular routine, but I feel regenerated by the last few days, and have a strong intention to stay that way. Next week, we will be seeing Field Commander Cohen himself in person in Oakland, so I know this feeling will not be passing quite so quickly.

Now, a long shuttle ride, a longer flight, and a reunion with my girl await. Your correspondent is signing off for now. Cheers.

Conspiracy Of Beards: New York Diary, Pt. 2

The Stain Bar is a cozy little joint a block away from the Grand St. subway station in Brooklyn. On this night, they had a special on mulled wine, which was nice for the throat before singing. The courtyard is decorated with a giant sculpture of a quarter, with George Washington's profile fashioned from what appears to be old auto parts. To the left, various artists (or is it one artist with many moods?) have contributed to a graffiti mural (which may still be a work in progress) with fire-breathing monster men, sultry mermaids and more. The room itself is full of comfortable couches you can sink into. Behind the bar is a turntable on which the bartenders spin old vinyl by the Rolling Stones, Otis Redding, and Lou Reed.

Gradually, the place began filling with people: Beard friends, relatives, and sweethearts; and, most gratifyingly, strangers who showed up because they read about it in the listings. There was a good write-up in the AM Metro that helped bring the people in, though Daryl was disappointed that the writer used all of his least favorite interview quotes in the piece. That's a Murphy's Law of journalism one should always allow for: they will always end up using your worst quotes, so be as brilliant as you can to journalists (without trying too hard...that can bring on the lameness if you're not careful). With L. Cohen on tour right now, excitement about his work is running high, which makes it a good time for the Beards to be on the road.

We did a full set, including some smaller group pieces like "Suzanne", the arrangement of which was changed again, just before the show. (And what an arrangement it is, a quintet with Daryl himself as lead tenor and staggered wordless harmonies that actually sound like boats rolling along the river!) We also laid out while various small groupings did "In My Secret Life" (my first time hearing this) and "Don't Go Home With Your Hard-On", a supremely ridiculous, rollicking potboiler from Death Of A Ladies' Man, Leonard's ill-fated, lush & lusty Phil Spector collaboration. Later after our set I brought up the over-the-top doo-wop ode to adolescent hormones, "Memories", my favorite song from that same album which is currently in rotation on Ear Candle Radio (there's also a very sparse voice/piano version by the Extra Glenns on their Martial Arts Weekend CD which we've played in the past) and was told more than once "You should do an arrangement! You can get some help from some of the others if you need it!" to which I said, "that'd be fun, maybe a ways down the road, when I feel ready." It would certainly bring down the house to have the Beards do THAT one.

Other than my dissatisfaction with my part on "First We Take Manhattan" (I'm switching from the low baritone part to the high one; there may more guts in my voice in that range, I think), the set went swimmingly. We had our first successful live version of "Land Of Plenty", and I think we're all feeling like we got over a big hump there. It was a sweet evening, and the subway got me back to Chelsea like a charm. Then my darling rang my cell phone just as I opened the door to my room. Perfect.

Woke up early this morning and jumped on the southbound E train to keep my promise to check out Ground Zero and videotape what's there now. What's there is a well blocked off construction site surrounded by blue fences and barbed wire to keep out the snoopers, while cranes diligently raise and lower themselves and cement trucks pass through the security entrance. The area is dotted with camera-wielding tourists, myself included, all seeking some sort of epiphany. Across Liberty St. is a museum devoted to 9/11, but the walking tour did not fit today's tight schedule. But being present there did conjure up the same "is that all there is?" feeling that ends Wim Wenders' Land Of Plenty, which I can now draw from my memory banks when the choir performs the title song. At least the scene hasn't been turned into a grotesque monument to patriotic kitsch yet. Overall impression: New York has moved on, thank you very much. And if you're gonna just stand there gawking, you might as well come in and buy some memorabilia already.

On to the Highline Ballroom, where the boys have an afternoon show. A nice mid-sized rock club it is too, perhaps analogous to Slim's in SF. (Maybe a bit smaller than the Great American Music Hall.) We share the bill with Peter Whitehead, a former Beard doing a solo set playing folkish music with instruments he created and built himself like a 10-string sort of guitar-mandolin hybrid. We performed two sets, served by a good sound system, which compelled us to lean towards subtlety. I did my best to blend and not stick out. There were some beautiful moments.

The audience was seated at tables, a bit polite at first, cheering and whooping by the end. (Do I need to tell you how good that feels?) They went wild for "Hallelujah". Of course, who doesn't love "Hallelujah"? I really appreciate that in our arrangement, we sing "do ya" and not "do you" in the first verse, unlike most interpreters of the song. (Jeff Buckley, please rise up from the grave so that you may receive your well-deserved spanking!) [UPDATE: Leonard himself sang "you" at the Paramount on April 15! I still prefer "ya", though.]

Next on today's busy agenda: the Bowery Poetry Club, followed rapidly by a loft party in Brooklyn. Zounds! I should know these songs pretty well by the time the night is over.

Conspiracy Of Beards: New York Diary, Pt. 1

I read Cat's Cradle in its entirety on yesterday's flight to New York and spent the remaining hour daydreaming ominously about Ice-Nine while passing over what I think was Lake Huron. If you read the book, you'll know what I mean.

My fellow newbie-Beard Larry stepped up to say hello on the same flight. Later, my seatmate, a middle-aged woman traveling with her husband and her mother, asked me if my friend and I were traveling to New York on business. No, I replied, I'm in a choir called the Conspiracy Of Beards. "What a name!", she exclaimed. "Yeah, we're a men's chorus who do Leonard Cohen songs." Her mother, who looked to be in her 70s, lit up. "That's so great!" Leonard crosses all age boundaries.

We convened at the 14th St. PATH station and took the train to WFMU in Jersey City, where we did a live-on-the-radio spot on Billy Jam's show. I remember Billy Jam from the Bay Area where he was a hip-hop DJ on the radio back in the 80s. He's still playing hip-hop, but he also has crazy men's choirs belting it out live in the studio, or at least this one. The station was a homey little hipster haven full of astonishing oil paintings of famous villains like Donald Rumsfeld, Osama bin Laden, and Phil Spector; great kitschy old album covers; back issues of zines like Roctober, XLR8R and Motorbooty; and (buried somewhere deep in their library) some of our label's Content Providers and X-tal CDs. Call 'em up and request them sometime.

Much stretching of limbs and limbering of voices in the green room as we warmed up by doing vocal imitations of the Asteroids game in the room, then did lots of songs before our director Daryl Henline showed up and put us through our paces. Daryl is great at kicking your ass and putting you at ease in the same moment, a true example of leadership. There is a version of "The Window" we do that is arranged for octet and solo voice, with the rest of the group bursting in on the choruses. In rehearsal, it was exquisite.

Time to go on. We strolled upstairs into the performance room while Billy and his assistant watched from the other side of a window. We rolled through "First We Take Manhattan", hit a snag when "So Long Marianne" morphed into "The Window" in the first few bars, and got our groove back with "Famous Blue Raincoat", "If It Be Your Will", "A Singer Must Die", and the amazingly arranged (kudos to Ruben Fonseca for this...various choir members write arrangements for the group, each with his own style...it makes for fun and challenging singing) "Is This What You Wanted?" I really think the Beards need to do a good studio recording of that last one. It's a hit, man!

It's amazing to be part of this THING that happens when the hard work pays off and this diverse group of imperfect voices suddenly meshes into a powerful musical force. I was a fan of the Beards before I joined, and I am a fan now. It's a thrill to be here doing this.

On the PATH train back to New York, the boys collected in one end of the car and sang "Chelsea Hotel #2". I grabbed the camera and shot a crude movie of us performing, until the conductor yelled at me, "Hey you! Didntcha HEAR ME! You can't take pictures on the train! Put it away or I'll call a cop!" Fortunately the song was already over. I think I caught an awesome moment. Hooray for spontaneity.

This evening, it's off to the Stain Bar in Brooklyn, where we will be doing our first live show of the weekend. I think it's going to be great; WFMU was the perfect warmup. Wish me luck. Gotta run.

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: March 2009

What a stunning bunch of tunes this month! We added this classic Davy Graham track in memory of the recently deceased maverick British folk guitarist, and our listeners responded by kicking it up to the top spot. Elsewhere, we're proud to present loads of rare punk and post-punk vinyl from the Plugz (whose album, Electrify Me, was one of the first independently released full-length punk albums of the L.A. scene; Tito Larriva's performance here is stunning, railing against complacency in the verses and softly whispering "No, no, no" between power chord assaults on the chorus), the Slits (whose definitive take on "Man Next Door" is extremely hard to find), Snatch (Judy Nylon and Patti Palladin collaborating here with Brian Eno on a rare B-side inspired by '70s Euro-terrorists and airplane paranoia), and Alan Vega on the fluke hit single (in France, of course) from his awesome first solo album, circa 1980.

A much more serene (and dryly funny) take on air travel is brought by Australia's mighty Cannanes in the seemingly inappropriately titled "Marching Song", while the Poison Girls show that no one can express political anger more strongly than a concerned mother on "Statement".

The Damned show up with a peculiar and catchily melodic track, "Lovely Money", which is notable for featuring a cameo performance from the Bonzo Dog Band's late mad genius Vivian Stanshall, who portrays a disgruntled London tour guide whose cheerful historical banter gradually degenerates into a nasty, incoherent drunken rant. (When he starts going off on Argentinians for no particular reason it gets a bit uncomfortable, but here at Ear Candle Radio we make the likely assumption that Viv was just being in character, playing the role of the xenophobe in "unreliable narrator" fashion rather than being one for real. Since the Damned's Captain Sensible has always been a cool cat with both humanitarian ideals and a rollicking sense of humor, and the Captain even collaborated with Crass around the time they were raging bravely against the Falklands War, we have a hunch we're right about this. We do love our Argentine friends!) A great track nonetheless; it's always good to hear Mr. Stanshall play with language like putty.

Much trancing out on this month's list also; our listeners are enjoying being taken away by Windy and Carl, Terry Riley, and the Master Musicians Of Joujouka, as well as the downhome singalong kirtans of our friend at Harbin Hot Springs, Peter B. Are our listeners on a spiritual path, or do they just have marijuana in their brains like Dillinger? Or perhaps they dropped a tab and are watching the dripping walls with Vomit Launch? Whatever the case, the fantastic soul-punk-yodeling Detroit Cobras agree, everybody's going wild.

1. Davy Graham - Blues Raga - Mojo Presents: The Quiet Revolution
2. The Plugz - Satisfied Die - Electrify Me
3. The Slits - Man Next Door - Wanna Buy a Bridge?: A Rough Trade Compilation of Singles 1977-1980
4. Peter B & Friends - Radhe Sham - Harbin Temple Kirtan
5. Windy & Carl - Lighthouse - Drawing Of Sound
6. The Detroit Cobras - Everybody's Going Wild - Baby
7. Snatch - R.A.F. - SNATCH
8. The Cannanes - Marching Song - Cannanes
9. The Wild Magnolias - (Somebody Got) Soul Soul Soul - The Wild Magnolias
10. Poison Girls - Statement - Poisonous
11. Kevin Ayers - Run, Run, Run - The Unfairground
12. Dillinger - Marijuana In My Brain - Straight To Prince Jazzbo's Head
13. Wire - Sand in My Joints - Chairs Missing
14. Vomit Launch - Dripping Walls - Mr. Spench
15. The Master Musicians Of Joujouka - Your Eyes Are Like A Cup Of Tea (Al Yunic Sharbouni Ate) - Brian Jones Presents The Pipes Of Pan At Joujouka
16. Generation X - Wild Dub - Wild Dub - Dread Meets Punk Rocker
17. The Damned - Lovely Money - Smash It Up: The Anthology 1976-1987
18. Alan Vega - Jukebox Babe - Jukebox Babe
19. Terry Riley - A rainbow in curved air - A rainbow in curved air
20. Suicide - I Remember - Suicide

Keep listening, dear friends!

Times are tough---buy some stuff!

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If you love our station, you can become a Live 365 VIP member. When VIP members tune in to our station, we get paid for the time they listen. Right now, it's enough to begin to offset our monthly fees; it would be wonderful if we got to the point where the station could pay for itself!

We have lots of music for sale on our home page. CDs by J Neo Marvin and the Content Providers and X-tal are available through our favorite distributor, CD Baby.

And we have mp3s for sale by the Experimental Bunnies and the Blame available on our Tunecore page. Come check these out. Buy your favorite songs, or buy the entire album! Remember, anything you buy, large or small, helps make it possible to bring you more of this good stuff!

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Indian classical fusion from the Nada Brahma Music Ensemble

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Erase Errata at the Bottom Of The Hill

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Here are the young men (and women), the weight on their shoulders

Our most devoted commenter Ian recommends a couple of new bands:

Where did all these new "crystal" bands come from all of a sudden? Funny how certain words catch on everywhere at the same time. I guess X-tal were ahead of the curve on this one.



This band does a terrific cover version of "Life In Vain", one of my favorite Daniel Johnston songs ever, but I couldn't find a video of that one.



And one more we've been sort of debating the worth of (personally I think they're pretty superb):



Thanks to the next generation for bringing the noise.

Seen Your Video: The Quiet American

The second film adaptation of Graham Greene's novel from 1956 was suppressed here when it came out in 2002, because producers feared to release a movie that criticized U.S. foreign policy at the time. Just thought I'd throw that in to remind us all of that wonderful time after 9/11 when we ALL were UNITED...or else.

Anyway, it's an interesting take on colonialism and Vietnam before the U.S. war, seen through the eyes of Fowler, an aging British expatriate journalist in Saigon (played by Michael Caine) as his cozy world of detachment, opium and hot sex with a pretty local woman is shaken up, first by scrutiny from the home office, then by the arrival of Pyle (Brendan Fraser), a seemingly goofy innocent American volunteer on a mission to treat trachoma outbreaks in the outlying villages. A love triangle ensues, complicated by Fowler's wife back in the UK, a devout Catholic who refuses to divorce him, vs. the girlfriend Phuong's protective sister as well as her own desire for a real future, which Pyle offers in the form of a nice suburban marriage in the richest superpower in the world during its most prosperous decade. Phuong is loyal, but she's not stupid. The movie (apparently like the novel before it) doesn't allow Phuong much of an inner life, but Do Thi Hay Yen enriches her role with some subtle acting; you can see her thinking through her situation even as she plays the "sweet Oriental flower" for the foreign men who are enthralled with her.

But it's the geopolitical story that really fascinates in this movie. France is fading as a colonial power and can no longer hold back an emerging Communist uprising, while the Americans are counting on what they call a "third force" to bring stability and independence to the country. A mysterious "General The" has emerged as an alternate revolutionary force, but where did he come from? And where is he getting his support? I'm trying to avoid spoilers here, but if you know about the history of the region, the answers are pretty obvious.

The movie is framed as a flashback after Pyle's body is found in the Mekong River. Who would wish to kill this innocent aw-shucks goofball? This is the part you have to see for yourself, 'cause I ain't telling. But when the pieces fall together, it all makes sense.

There's another performance in the movie worth mentioning: that of Fowler's friend/contact/news source Hihn, played by Tzi Ma. Through the course of the movie, we discover he is more than just the obligatory local color; in his final scene, the emotions in his face are more powerful than the shock of what we see him doing. Suddenly a minor character's whole life comes into sharp focus. Tzi Ma doesn't appear in many scenes, but that one moment should have won him an Oscar.

"It wasn't my fault! I wanted to belong!"

Just follow the link and watch the video, then come back.

Why is it that we require a comedian to give us some proper news on TV? I don't follow these cable business channels, so I missed all the shenanigans on CNBC. But it's hard to avoid this clown Jim Cramer and his show when you're channel-surfing. People put their faith in these characters, and they basically defrauded them. And Jon Stewart has been doing a bang-up job lately exposing the scam. (Who really thought he would run out of material when the Democrats took office? Not me. There is SO MUCH to expose and mock out there.)

So Cramer has been running around defending himself indignantly against this mere "comedian" who has attacked him, finding sympathetic ears with the odious likes of Joe Scarborough. But this clip stunned me. The man gets a chance to face his accuser, and what happens? He folds like an accordion. Look at him in the video. The word is ABJECT. He's kissing ass and promising to do better, like a teenager caught sneaking a cigarette in the backyard.

There is rot in the American capitalist system that this stimulus won't come close to touching. When you look at the hard times you are going through, don't forget: somebody has profited from this, and they are still doing so, and when they get caught red-handed in front of a camera, all they can do is shrug sheepishly, "oh, it's true, I'm a bad boy!" You just know every one of these slimeballs has a dominatrix on call to give them the punishment they crave, and they walk out after their appointment thinking that they have purged themselves and their conscience is clean. No, more and more of us trying to make ends meet in a sinking economy want to see some accountability, and we want to see it now. At least there are comedians who get it. Thank you Jon Stewart.

This song still says it all. We are working on new Blame material to round out our next digital release. There is so much to say, both personal and political, and we need words and music that are strong enough to describe it and speak for these times. And when the commercials for "creditreport.com" coming from the other room start to sound like the ultimate in anemic indie-rock, you know it's time to pull out the big guns and remember what the point of all this music was in the first place.

A fantasy-based economy

Tom The Dancing Bug nails it.

Seen Your Video: Land Of Plenty

A Vietnam veteran cruises through the wasteland of Los Angeles in a beat-up old van crammed full of state-of-the-art surveillance equipment. It's 2004, and the US is being bombarded with frantic news of shadowy terrorist plots about to happen and sleeper cells all over the country just biding their time until they launch an attack that will make 9/11 look like a dry run. The THREAT is IMMINENT, you see; they're all around us, and this is no time for doubt or wimpy French words like "nuance"!

Our man rolls along, gathering samples of water, shredded documents, etc. and bringing them back to his comrade, who runs a crime lab in his garage. (Richard Edson here, playing his usual role as the put-upon sidekick/brother) Something big is in the works, and these two heroes, working deep cover, intend to be the ones to stop it. One day the van driver happens to catch a man in a turban hauling boxes of borax to a chemical plant and begins tailing him; this is undoubtedly part of a plot. Soon after, the man in the turban is killed in a drive-by shooting, and now we know for sure something is up; perhaps two rival terrorist groups are working against each other. Thank God our hero is watching, getting ready to bust it all open. Great set-up for a trashy action movie, perhaps starring Bruce Willis, or even better, Chuck Norris, right? Too bad. It's a slow-paced, meditative, subtle mood piece by Wim Wenders instead, and more will be revealed. (I intend to keep the spoilers to a minimum, though. It's better if you watch it for the first time without knowing what happens.)

The deep-cover operative has a niece: the daughter of two missionaries, a guileless young Christian girl who just flew back from the West Bank where she had been demonstrating with a group of Israeli pacifists against the building of the wall separating the Jewish settlements from the Palestinian population. She's come to deliver a letter from her deceased mother to her only living relative in the States; meanwhile she takes a job in a rescue mission in LA, serving the growing homeless population. We're with this girl as she prays, e-mails her friends, worries about the world, and gives herself over to service. Your agnostic movie reviewer marvels to himself that here is a credible character exhibiting all the tenets of Christianity, but you would never find the likes of her anywhere in an ostensibly "Christian" piece of cinema like Left Behind: The Movie. Wonder why? Hmmmmm...

The plot ends up taking the two characters to Death Valley, where we find out the secret of the borax conspiracy and learn a few more things, while Wenders indulges his love of residential American desert landscapes. I'll leave it at that. See this movie for yourself.

At the end, two people in New York stand in the site of Ground Zero. One begins to complain and the other essentially says to shut up and listen. Then Leonard Cohen sings.

Other musical notes: at one point we hear what sounds like a growly modern pop-punk song with the chorus: "It's expensive being poor/because everything costs more!" The singer turns out to be T.V. Smith, formerly of seminal London punks the Adverts. Nice going, T.V. A lot of songs feature a German singer named "Thom" who is not Thom Yorke, he just sounds like him. The songs comment on the story and set the mood; Wenders is a rare filmmaker whose rock scores actually seem to belong in his movies rather than functioning as product placement.

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: February 2009

Another wide-ranging chart, honoring fallen heroes Lux Interior and Yma Sumac, juxtaposing hip-hop remixes of Bollywood with a raga from the great Ali Akbar Khan, and setting our controls for the heart of the sun with two contrasting explorations of the cosmos from Spacemen 3 and D.J. Shadow.

The Love Dogs continue to thrive with their Albert Ayler tribute, and the Interstellar Grains and A.J. In Evolution grace us with more instrumental goodness, as does Kaki King with another tangled virtuoso guitar piece. The Vivian Girls teach a new generation how to say "NO!", the Incredible String Band and Irma Thomas curl up and get romantic, and our own label is represented by one each from the Blame and the Experimental Bunnies.

Keep on tuning in as we continue to tweak the playlist! And if you show up in our top 20, get in touch so we can send you an Ear Candle Radio button!

1. Spacemen 3 - Take Me To The Other Side - Singles
2. DJ Shadow - What Does Your Soul Look Like (Part 4) - Endtroducing.....
3. The Cramps - Sunglasses After Dark - Songs The Lord Taught Us
4. Yma Sumac - Chicken Talk - Mambo
5. Various Artists - Inspector J From Delhi - Bombay The Hard Way
6. Ustad Ali Akbar Khan - Raga Chandranandan - Traditional Music of India
7. Interstellar Grains - The In Between - Interstellar Grains
8. The Vivian Girls - No - Vivian Girls
9. Paleface - There's Something About a Truck - Paleface
10. Fatal Microbes - Violence Grows - Rip It Up And Start Again: Post Punk 1978-1984
11. Burning Spear - Civilised Reggae - Social Living
12. The Love Dogs - Universal Indians - The Love Dogs
13. The Experimental Bunnies - Danger - Music For The Integrity Tone Scale
14. The Blame - Get Out! - Unreleased
15. Judy Collins - Pirate Jenny - In My Life
16. Easy Star All Stars - Us And Them - Dub Side Of The Moon
17. Kaki King - Close Your Eyes & You'll Burst Into Flames
18. Irma Thomas - Take A Look - Time Is on My Side
19. The Incredible String Band - Everything's Fine Right Now - The Incredible String Band
20. A.J. In Evolution (Aka A.J. Fritscher) - A Trip In Barcelona - A Work In Progress

While we're on the subject of Beatles

I stumbled on this brilliant article on the myth vs. reality of Yoko Ono. It didn't tell me anything factual I didn't already know, but the way the author gathers her narrative together and argues her case is stunningly thought-provoking.

What's missing here, which writer Cara Kulwicki admits freely, is any analysis of Yoko's own music. Kulwicki is a Beatles fan, not a fan of Ono's music (though she is a big fan of her activism and conceptual art), and her thrust here is to confront how misogyny works its insidious, ugly way everywhere, even in the hearts of our beloved old idealistic countercultural icons. The link she offers to another writer's critique of Yoko's own body of work is, alas, dead.

Don't let that stop you from investigating some amazing records, though. Plastic Ono Band and Approximately Infinite Universe are great places to start. The Content Providers did not cover "Kite Song" for nothing, I'll have you know.

If this is a fraud, it's a cool one

As one of those twisted freaks who considers "Revolution 9" one of my top 10 Beatles songs of all time, I had to notice this.

In one of John Lennon's final interviews, he explained how "Revolution 9" began: "The slow version of 'Revolution' on the album went on and on and on and I took the fade-out part, which is what they sometimes do with disco records now, and just layered all this stuff over it." Supposedly, this is the original 10:47 take of what became "Revolution 1" with screeching psychedelic guitar drones, shoo-be-doo-wop harmonies and John primal-screaming and panting (all the unnerving shouts and gurgles that percolate through "Revolution 9"), and a segment of the murky, highly-distorted last few minutes of the latter song/collage stuck at the end. (The bit after "take this brother, may it serve you well" always sounded like a completely separate piece recorded on cheap equipment by John & Yoko, compared with the previous six minutes of frighteningly vivid tape loops, so it's plausible that smaller bit was always intended to a part of the original "Revolution".)

BUT...is this for real? These days, some creative electronic wizards specialize in mash-ups, throwing separate songs together for copyright-infringement comedy fun; there are even dance clubs devoted to this stuff. So is this really just some seamlessly-edited Frankensteinian fantasy of lost Beatle-lore, a Piltdown Man of Merseybeat? Or is this a genuine, rejected version of a Beatles song? The main body of the song is SO similar to "Revolution 1" that I'm a tad suspicious. But I'm not sure how much I really care about the track's authenticity; at the moment, real or fake, it's become my favorite version of "Revolution".

Because I was in the mood for some Robert Wyatt

A fun interview with Robert Wyatt from 2007:



A vintage clip of the Soft Machine doing one of Kevin Ayers' finest songs (dig those cheesy psychedelic effects in black and white!):



Wyatt lip-synching "I'm A Believer" on Top Of The Pops in the 70s. If he looks pissed off, it's probably because the producers suggested that the sight of him in a wheelchair would be too upsetting for the audience. (We take no responsibility for the misspelling of the song title on the YouTube clip.)



A hypnotic live-on-video clip of "Gharbzadegi", from back before Robert quit drinking, as you can see at the beginning when he takes a hearty swig of an undetermined dark liquid while grooving to the musicians' Coltrane-esque pulse. Exquisite jazz combo and supple vocals from the great man.

Wonder what they thought

Yesterday, according to our stats, someone in Saudi Arabia tuned in to Ear Candle Radio for one hour and fifty-nine minutes.

We'd like to imagine it was a housebound woman getting a little culture in while her husband was away. Or perhaps an oppressed Filipina housekeeper taking a well-deserved break.

Or was it our buddy Glenn, on a working ESL-teaching vacation away from the Emirates?

Whoever it was, do stop in again any time.

I've heard there was a secret chord

For reasons that will soon become apparent, I have been immersing myself in the work of Leonard Cohen lately. It's a pleasure to delve deeply into the catalog of one of the great masters of songwriting. We can all learn a lot from the way he shapes a melody line and turns a phrase.

Some of the things I've found poking around on the Internets:

Here is a fascinating interview from the 90s, where Cohen describes his writing process at great length. Some songwriters just blurt it out in complete, spontaneous bursts of pure inspiration, while others ruminate, rewrite, cut, edit, question, and analyze. Leonard Cohen, of course, is famously in the second category, and it's good to read in detail how his mind works.

I found this as well: Leonard Cohen and Sonny Rollins together doing "Who By Fire" on the Jools Holland show. This is so many kinds of awesome. Check it out:



UPDATE: Subject line changed from "The little Jew who wrote the Bible" (a lyric from "The Future") because we decided some people who weren't familiar with the song might misinterpret our intent and get bent out of shape.

There's nothin' on the radio when you're dead

Very sorry to report that Lux Interior died today. We just happened to have put several early Cramps tracks on our current playlist, including a horrific/hilarious run-through of "I Was A Teenage Werewolf" that figures prominently in our "in the studio" set.

I once ran into Lux and Ivy on Haight St. in the 80s. (They had just come out of a comic book store...how perfect is that?) As you might expect from their wild, deranged stage act, they were very sweet, friendly and seemingly a bit shy in real life. I can't say I followed the Cramps in recent years; I always thought they made a terrible mistake in the 80s when they got a bass player instead of another guitarist. But I will always love that band, and now they're gone.

I feel sad for Ivy. Not only has she lost a husband, creative partner, and best friend, but her musical genius no longer has the perfect outlet. I hope she keeps playing guitar in some context; that mighty twang is too righteous to be silenced for long.

UPDATE:

Just what you need when you're down in the dumps. (Hey! Our first embedded video! Look out, we may start doing this all the time now!)

Ear Candle Radio's Top 20: January 2009

As we yank up bits of our old playlist by the roots and water the new one, our charts reflect the transition with a mixture of old and new.

Tino's Sunday Dub tops the charts at last after throbbing on our station for a year.. "I want to make a record." "Everyone want to make a record!" We also get healthy showings from old favorites like Beat Of The Traps, the Bonzos, Curtis Mayfield, Public Image, and Fuxa.

Some of the newest additions connected with you this time, including some longtime and new friends. The Love Dogs, an early-80s Santa Cruz band featuring saxman/conceptual artist Jeff Grubic (who once showed up at UCSC in the best Halloween costume ever...covered in pots and pans and other clattering objects: "What are you supposed to be?" "I'm NOISE!"), Small Nambas and Riot Of Perfume founder Taani Lee, and future drummer for Cracker (and many others) Joey Peters. They hit #14 this month with a fantastic version of Albert Ayler's "Universal Indians". Thanks to Taani for sending this our way.

A new set of acquaintances are the Mod-Est Lads, an extremely silly parody band who love the Bonzo Dog Band almost as much as we do and figured we'd appreciate their consummate silliness. And they were right: the cautionary tale "Birthday Suit" is creeping up the charts at #20.

Elsewhere, one of Neo's favorite cartoonists from his childhood, the late great Walt Kelly, shows up here, bellowing out the theme from the Pogo musical (did you know they made a Pogo musical?) with copious gusto. Suicide weighs in with a dread benediction to the youth, Jon Langford rocks up a Gertrude Stein poem, forgotten San Francisco band the People remind us that they were the ones who had the hit with that great Zombies song, and Mike Heron leads a Who/Small Faces/Velvet Underground/Incredible String Band supergroup on an energetic song about love being the best dessert there is (or something like that).

Closer to home are a couple of our own artists: the Experimental Bunnies with a languid piece from the new album Biology And Physics and J Neo Marvin And the Content Providers with "Take Me By Surprise" ("convince me there's a better future") from the What Is Truth? album. We also get the original version of one of the cover songs from that same CD, the pulsing, dripping-with-sleaze "Slow Drain", courtesy of Mink DeVille.

We are editing our DJ segments bit by bit to entertain and enlighten you. We've already gotten some feedback for our "in the studio" set. Some people hear the Byrds at odds in the studio and think, "I'm lucky my band gets along better than that!" We are always happy to give people a little perspective.

Keep listening!

1. Tino - Sunday Dub - Tino's Breaks Vol. 5 - DUB
2. Rod & the MSR Singers - Beat Of The Traps - The American Song-poem Anthology: Do You Know The Difference Between Big Wood And Brush
3. Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band - Rawlinson End - Let's Make Up and Be Friendly
4. Tall Dwarfs - Rorschach - Weeville
5. Jon Langford - Butter Song - Skull Orchard
6. Curtis Mayfield - Other Side Of Town - Curtis [Remastered]
7. J Neo Marvin and The Content Providers - Take Me By Surprise - What Is Truth?
8. Fuxa - Cheree (Richard Formby mix) - Fuxa Commits Suicide
9. Arthur Lee - Everybody's Gotta Live - Vindicator
10. Public Image Limited - Lou Reed, Pts 1 and 2 (Where Are You?) - Commercial Zone
11. The Dirtbombs - Indivisible - We Have You Surrounded
12. The Soft Boys - There's Nobody Like You - Underwater Moonlight
13. The Experimental Bunnies - Ready For Your Instructions - Biology And Physics
14. The Love Dogs - Universal Indians - The Love Dogs
15. People - I Love You - Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970
16. Walt Kelly And Others - Go-Go Pogo - Songs Of The Pogo
17. Mink DeVille - Slow Drain - Le Chat Bleu Expanded Edition
18. Mike Heron - Warm Heart Pastry - Smiling Men With Bad Reputations
19. Suicide - Child, It's A New World - American Supreme
20. The Mod-Est Lads - Birthday Suit - Let's Get Clecky!

Seen Your Video: CSNY Deja Vu

Odd to finally see this in 2009, after the outgoing president has NOT been impeached and none of the people responsible for the Iraq fiasco or any other well-documented Bush administration crimes have been held accountable in any way (and the war in Iraq is not over yet, and now we show every sign of escalating our well-intentioned disaster in Afghanistan). Now we have a new administration presiding over a ruined economy, a corrupted society, and a population bombarded with years of deranged, disingenuous propaganda to the point where many of them have no clue why they are so angry, but if you question their reality they will kick your teeth in for flag and family. No wonder "hope" is the buzzword so many have clung to during this last election; what else have we got? We are still screwed, and it won't change overnight.

So let's go on a nostalgia trip, all the way back to 2006. The old folk-rock institution Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young has already scheduled a reunion tour when Neil Young spontaneously gets a bug up his butt about the Bush administration, the war, and the hapless US media, and quickly bashes out a new album of songs reflecting the state of the union. Living With War may, in retrospect, have been a tipping point for the country, an inflammatory protest album wrapped in patriotic rhetoric and compassion for soldiers and their families, veering between outright sentimentality and righteous anger. It was an immediate work of musical journalism framed in terms that average Americans could relate to. Urban cynics like myself might have been more drawn to something like Mudhoney's Under A Billion Suns, but it was Young's album, with its blaring trumpets, anthemic choruses, and closing cover of "America The Beautiful" that spoke to the so-called heartland and may have been just enough to open a few minds. (We are treated to some nice footage of the 100 voice choir being recorded for the album.)

Anyway, with an urgent new album in the can, Young goes back to his old bandmates and lays down the law: the tour is now the "Freedom Of Speech Tour", performing songs from Living With War augmented only with material that is relevant to the war-crazed USA of 2006. Crosby, Stills and Nash quickly go along with the plan and we're off. Right away we see who's in charge. At one point, Crosby admits that CSNY is a benevolent dictatorship with Neil Young as dictator, not because he bosses the others around, but because he's the one who has the good ideas and knows how to see a plan through.

The pruning of their back catalog actually serves the other three songwriters well because their protest songs have aged far better than most of their love songs, which often reek of self-indulgent male hippie pomposity, or pointless, nonsensical gibberish like "Helplessly Hoping". Mostly, we get a very smart reimagining of their repertoire, drawing on the other members' solo material as well to find the best, most relevant stuff like the little-heard "What Are Their Names", a highlight of Crosby's odd, meandering post-psychedelic solo debut which is rearranged here as an a capella audience participation game. (The idea of finding out where the goons in power live in order to "ride right over this afternoon and give them a piece of my mind" never fails to charm me, all the more in this decade because...well, isn't that precisely what Cindy Sheehan was trying to do in the first place?)

But a tour in and of itself is not enough to reach this fragmented country (plus there are many people who would never shell out $200-300 to see a rock show...I certainly wouldn't), so Young, or his cinematic alter-ego "Bernard Shakey", plans a film right from the start, recruiting war correspondent Mike Cerre to serve as the tour's "embedded reporter", riding in their van and, most pertinently, interviewing audience members. These sequences are crucial to the movie, keeping it from being a mere "follow a bunch of superstars on the road" wankfest. We see a lot of people there who clearly needed something like this just to reassure them that they're not insane traitors for seeing things the way they do. We see some who are very politically articulate and others who are just into hippie nostalgia. And of course, we get plenty of people who completely lose their shit because don't they understand, the Muslims all wanna kill us! Then there are the odd ones, like a guy who identifies himself as a "conservative Republican from Tennessee" who is elated with the show because he is also against the war and highly critical of the Bush administration. Welcome to the real world, pal. Baby steps, baby steps...

The big confrontation, and a centerpiece of the movie, happens at a gig in Atlanta on a day that one of the Bush administration's many nebulous "terror alerts" has been in effect all day. Cerre takes us to a local radio station where a pair of morning show cretins who call themselves "The Regular Guys" are ranting about how unfair and egotistical it is for celebrities to have the audacity to try to influence their audiences. (Not that the "Regular Guys" are local celebrities intending to influence their audience; oh no, they're just regular guys after all.)

All this sets us up for a classic Dylan-At-Newport moment when the band breaks into Young's blunt singalong, "Let's Impeach The President". (There's a hilarious scene earlier in the movie where a TV reporter actually asks Young, "You have a new song called 'Let's Impeach The President'. What's it about?") The audience explodes in cheers and boos, until the boo-ers, unable to sway the others to boo with them, stage a mass walkout. Cerre catches them in the lobby and captures their venting: "They have no right!" "You shouldn't criticize the government because they're smarter than you." "He has a lot of nerve to say he's for the troops and then do that kinda crap!" One particularly scary redneck who seems to have little black holes for eyes says of Neil Young, "Ah'd lahk to kick his teeth in, 'cause he's a stupid sumbitch!" Hey, if y'all wanted to pay for an overpriced show by some washed-up old 60s rock stars who won't challenge your world view, you should have saved your money for the next Stones tour.

Not that ticket prices aren't a valid issue. Why did the shows cost so much? The movie kind of glosses over that a bit. These were big shows, with projections and props, but why can't the punters get that for under $100 at most? There's no indication that the shows were benefits, which would have been appropriate. I can only think that, well, Crosby and Stills both have expensive medical needs (Crosby and his new liver, Stills and his cancer) and musicians don't have health insurance. Nevertheless, I do see a blind spot for our heroes here.

After the Atlanta blowout, the tour continues, and Cerre takes us to meet various Iraq War veterans to get their take on the story. We meet a young singer-songwriter Marine named Josh Hisle who started out as a gung-ho metal dude in a uniform, proud of his involvement with the initial "liberation" of the country and overthrow of the government, but after being repeatedly sent back to continue participating in the occupation (where they were locked in a stalemate of "go out, take casualties, come back") ended up questioning what the whole point was. Accordingly, his songwriting changed, addressing what he was seeing and feeling out there. Here we are introduced to Neil Young's Living With War website, where musicians are encouraged to send links to their own songs that deal with the issues and charts are compiled. (Somehow this managed to happen without Ear Candle Productions ever hearing about it; we intend to make up for lost time and participate in this project which is still going.) Hisle ends up topping the chart with one of his songs, and Cerre introduces him to Neil, leading to a very nice scene of the two of them playing guitars together. (What is that weird little miniature guitar Neil is playing?) When they talk afterward, you get a sense that Neil Young really wants to connect with veterans and relate to their experience. Later, CSNY are performing the Living With War track "Shock And Awe" and we watch Hisle stock-still, arms folded, staring straight ahead with haunted eyes as the music takes him back to the horrors he lived through.

We also meet a group called Vets4Vets (not to be confused with other groups or websites by that name), who specialize in counseling for the new generation of traumatized veterans from the current messy wars. When Davis and I were spending a lot of time on the local open mike scene, we got to know a few Vietnam vets who were deeply scarred by their experience, and when Bush got his war, I could only think about all the kids who were going to come back as damaged as the guys we'd met. A few of those who returned had the vision to start this support group, and it's good to spend some time with them in the movie.

Other veterans deal with what went on in different ways. Many have gone into politics, in order to do something about the kind of policies which created the bogus war that they fought in. Stephen Stills is shown spending his days off on the tour campaigning for 14 Iraq War veterans running for office as Democrats. It's an interesting karmic twist for Stills, who went through a bizarre period of cocaine-induced psychosis at one point where he imagined that he himself was a Vietnam vet.

I actually was surprised to find Stills rather likable in this movie; he comes off as good-humored, irreverent, and politically astute. Unfortunately, the poor guy's voice has been badly damaged by years of drug abuse, not to mention the cancer treatments he was undergoing at the time of the tour, which also bloated him to the point where he is as huge as Crosby here. On his Buffalo Springfield hit, "For What It's Worth", you hear him struggling to get the vocals out, though he gets in a great moment on the final chorus when he lets out a rough, loud scream. ("OK, maybe I can't sing pretty now, but here's an AARRRRGHHH you can feel!") Stills carries himself off with bullish pride (refusing to let a roadie help him back up when he falls down in the middle of a guitar solo) and the strong support of his bandmates. (Nice to see a band who don't make fun of each other's weaknesses onstage.) His guitar playing certainly hasn't suffered (more elaborate and note-riddled than Young's, which makes for a good contrast), but Stills' voice problems have a definite impact on a group whose main trademark was their harmonies.

Nash, meanwhile, doesn't seem to be able to hit the high notes he used to, so I noticed that many of the harmony parts on the old songs have been completely rearranged, with Young joining in on the group vocals more than he did when he originally joined the band. His voice, of course, is as weird and unique as ever, but at this late date, it is also by far the strongest. As a result, what Jimi Hendrix famously referred to as "twinkling western sky music" takes on a decidedly rougher hue now. The intense, lurching physicality of Young's guitar playing dominates the music here, turning a bouncy little pop song like Nash's "Military Madness" into a real foot-stomper and transforming the instrumental section of Crosby's "Deja Vu" into something reminiscent of the first Television album. (I kid you not.)

But in spite of all this, it's not really a music documentary at all. The musical sections are more a support system for a documentary of the state of America just a few years ago. Even if you don't care much for Crosby, Stills and Nash or even Young, this is well worth seeing just for the people you meet, the stories told, and the spectacle of a group of aging stars daring to go out on a limb and take a risk in order to do something more relevant than an oldies show for baby boomers.