Ah, the days when funk was a television-ready commodity:
Bonus: this Wikipedia page on P-Funk mythology will be one of the more entertaining pages you read today. (“One central concept is Maggot Brain…”) Messing with Sir Nose D’Voidoffunk is always asking for trouble.
Forgot to link to my story on Saturday’s page 1:
Calling the prevention of cheating “our highest priority,” the Texas Education Agency is tripling its number of investigators and preparing inquiries of the schools where test scores are the most suspicious.
The agency will also create an independent task force to oversee the investigations, which will begin in September. But it’s still unknown how many schools will be investigated.
“The Texas Education Agency is taking this matter very seriously,” Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley wrote in a letter to all district superintendents Friday.
This week’s MP3 Monday combines two of the most potent forces in nature: teenagers and funk music. And it contains a rare crabwalk.com-declared Must Buy Alert. For those unfamiliar, such an alert mandates that you head to your local music establishment and buy yourself the record I require.
Penalties for not making the purchase include hair loss, loss of sexual function, and instant death. As always, songs will stay on the server for one week’s time.
“All Praises/Zero Point (Reprise)” (live) by the Kashmere Stage Band. From the album Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 (2006).
Man, I’ve been waiting for this record for a couple years now. You see, in the late ’60s and early ’70s, band directors at a small number of black high schools decided to embrace the funk and soul music their students were listening to. They started creating stage bands that merged the propulsion of a good marching band, the big-band sound a large ensemble could generate, and the aforementioned black popular music.
There were a number of these stage bands, but far and away the best was the Kashmere Stage Band, at Kashmere High School in north Houston. The director, a genius named Conrad O. Johnson, was an old jazzman himself and decided that a bunch of untrained teenagers could, with work, become the tightest funk band in the world.
The Kashmere Stage Band became a dominant force in the world of band competitions. Between 1969 and 1977, the band took first place in 42 of the 46 contests it entered — despite often being the only black band competing. They toured Europe and Japan multiple times.
They also recorded eight albums, albeit in quantities small enough that the main audience didn’t extend far beyond the friends and families of band members. But enough of those LPs made their way into the used record stores of America that, in the early ’90s, the Kashmere Stage Band became a favorite of cratedigging DJs looking for funk breaks. Kashmere records were going for hundreds of dollars on eBay. (DJs know greatness when they hear it.)
Eventually, commerce and taste intersected, and the excellent folks at Now Again Records (the reissue side project of Stones Throw) have assembled Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974, a two-CD set of Kashmere Stage Band recordings. And oh my lord is it amazing.
Take a listen to the track above, “All Praises” followed by a reprise of their signature track “Zero Point,” recorded live on February 26, 1972 at the Brownswood Stage Band Festival. With no disrespect intended to Soul Brother No. 1, I doubt The JB’s were this tight in 1972. That rhythm section! (Gerald Calhoun on bass, Gerald Curvey on drums.)
“Ain’t No Sunshine” (live) by the Kashmere Stage Band. From the album Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974 (2006).
And here, have some more. I linked to Bill Withers’ live version of his song a couple months ago, but imagine your high school band being capable of this. (Recorded live at Sam Houston State University in 1972.)
It’s hard to say just how good the Kashmere Stage Band was, or how amazing its story is. Kashmere High is in a very poor part of Houston; the Houston school district nearly shut it down last year because its performance on state tests was so poor. Luckily, the liner notes of the reissue (by Egon) do an excellent job of shedding light on things. Anyway, you’ll see when you buy it, as you Must.
FYI, Conrad O. Johnson has a foundation to promote jazz in the Houston area and apparently still plays out at age 90.
“The Newborn Hippopotamus/Jazz Rock Machine” (live) by the One O’Clock Lab Band. From the album Schoolhouse Funk (2000).
This track is from the album that started my love of the stage band sound. Schoolhouse Funk was assembled by the great DJ Shadow (as was its sequel), and it compiles all sorts of great tracks from (mostly black) high school and college bands.
They’re not all great — a number of tracks are pleasingly amateurish — but a good number of them cook. (There’s a Kashmere track on there, too.) This one’s by the legendary One O’Clock Lab Band, the top jazz band at the University of North Texas in Denton. (For those who don’t know, UNT has one of largest music schools in the nation and one of the top jazz programs. Which is why so many of the rock bands out of Denton are so deliriously weird.)
Longtime crabwalk.com readers (and attendees of SXSW Interactive in 2003) may remember this track as the backing music to 20x2 movie that year. (More about that here.)
Reason No. 3,526 it’s a good thing the Internet wasn’t around when I was a kid: I totally would have tried making one of these.
The great Sanford and Son-sampling background music is “Old Man” by Masta Killa — featuring the late great Ol’ Dirty Bastard on the McDonalds love.
Interesting Pitchfork interview with Devendra Banhart, who instinct keeps telling me I should despise, but whose music I actually quite enjoy. Observations:
I don’t mean to diss on Dennis, who actually did a fine job. (And he fulfilled the Freelance Writer’s Pledge — namely, Always Get At Least Two Paychecks For Every Interview.)
While we’re talking media, here’s a perceptive Gladwell post on old media vs. blog triumphalism:
Has the level of self-regard in the blogosphere really reached such dizzying heights that it can’t acknowledge the work that traditional media does on behalf of the rest of us? Yes, the newspaper business isn’t as lucrative as it once was (although it’s still pretty lucrative). And it doesn’t seem as exciting and relevant as it once was. But newspapers continue to perform an incredibly important function as informational gatekeepers—a function, as far as I can tell, that grows more important with time, not less. Between them, for instance, the Times and the Post have literally hundreds of trained professionals whose only job it is to sift through the mountains of information that come out of the various levels of government and find what is of value and of importance to the rest of us. Where would we be without them? We’d be lost.
The comments devolve into a lot of silly chest-thumping (e.g. Doug Karr).
Why you hear so much about “media bias”:
Partisans, it turns out, don’t just arrive at different conclusions; they see entirely different worlds . In one especially telling experiment, researchers showed 144 observers six television news segments about Israel’s 1982 war with Lebanon.
Pro-Arab viewers heard 42 references that painted Israel in a positive light and 26 references that painted Israel unfavorably. Pro-Israeli viewers, who watched the very same clips, spotted 16 references that painted Israel positively and 57 references that painted Israel negatively. Both groups were certain they were right and that the other side didn’t know what it was talking about.
The tendency to see bias in the news — now the raison d’etre of much of the blogosphere — is such a reliable indicator of partisan thinking that researchers coined a term, “hostile media effect,” to describe the sincere belief among partisans that news reports are painting them in the worst possible light…
Even more curious, the hostile media effect seems to apply only to news sources that strive for balance. News reports from obviously biased sources usually draw fewer charges of bias. Partisans, it turns out, find it easier to countenance obvious propaganda than news accounts that explore both sides.
And this graf explains 95 percent of my inbox every Monday after my column runs:
People who are deeply invested in one side are quicker to spot and remember aspects of the news that hurt than they are to see aspects that help, said Richard Perloff, a Cleveland State University political communication researcher…
Ross and Perloff both found that what partisans worry about the most is the impact of the news on neutral observers. But the data suggest such worry is misplaced. Neutral observers are better than partisans at seeing flaws and virtues on both sides. Partisans, it turns out, are particularly susceptible to the general human belief that other people are susceptible to propaganda.
When, exactly, will security guards be briefed on the First Amendment? A reporter is trying to write a story on what looks like a spectacular mismanagement of money by FEMA and starts interviewing a hurricane victim in her FEMA trailer:
[Dekotha] Devall described her experience during an interview in her trailer, saying she wanted to get some help and to let others know what it’s like living there.
But during the interview, a security guard knocked on the trailer door and ordered the reporter and photographer to leave “immediately.”
“You are not allowed to be here,” the guard yelled. “Get out right now.”
As they left, the guard refused to let the reporter give Devall a business card so she could contact the newspaper later by phone.
“You will not give her a business card,” the guard said. “She’s not allowed to have that.”
When the reporter persisted, the guard ordered Devall to return to the trailer, saying the reporter was “not allowed” to talk to her.
The guard then called the police.
Later the same day, the reporter and photographer pulled off La. 70 to talk to Pansy Ardeneaux through a chain-link fence surrounding the FEMA park. Ardeneaux said she and her boyfriend had just moved into the park.
“We had to wait about two months from the time he applied for the trailer until he got it,” she said.
As Ardeneaux talked, the same security guard pulled up.
“You are not allowed to talk to these people,” the guard yelled at Ardeneaux. “Return to your trailer now.”
A clearly flustered Ardeneaux returned to her trailer.
Oh, the anger.
More on FEMA’s idiot policy, which has apparently just been reversed.
This Month In 20th-Century History:
1976 (30 years ago): Entebbe, the daring Israeli raid to rescue 100 hostages in Uganda. Later to give Anthony Hopkins some work. Entebbe was perhaps the peak of the badass-Israeli-military vibe contemporary moviegoers caught last year in Munich.
1956 (50 years ago): Nasser nationalizes the Suez Canal, which prompts the the Suez crisis — one of the first modern conflicts largely over oil (in this case, their shipping lanes) and one of the last breaths of old-style European colonialism.
1936 (70 years ago): The Spanish Civil War, likely the most important literary war of the modern era, began. A precursor to World War II, it drew enormous attention from the outside world, spurring many thousand volunteers from foreign lands, including the U.S. and Canada.
A surprising number of them were were writers, some of them of the first rank — Hemingway, Auden and Orwell, most prominently. (Go read that last link — it’s interesting.) It inspired For Whom the Bell Tolls, Homage to Catalonia, and (in part) Animal Farm. Most were on the left, as novelists tend to be, so they fought alongside the republicans, but a fair number (Evelyn Waugh, Ezra Pound) supported the Francoists.
I mention all this because I continue to be amazed at how little 20th-century history — in particular anything that didn’t directly involve the United States — gets taught in American schools. There are a ton of interesting stories out there.
Here’s my story from Sunday’s front page:
The list of schools suspected of cheating is longer than Texas education officials have reported — and those officials say they aren’t interested in tracking down the latest suspects.
A Dallas Morning News analysis has found that at least 167 unidentified schools were flagged as potential cheaters by Caveon, the company Texas hired to hunt for TAKS cheaters. That’s in addition to the 442 schools named by state officials. None of the other schools have been notified that they are on the list.
Texas Education Agency officials say they don’t know which schools they are — and they have no plans to find out.
“The only list of schools we have is the list that has been made public,” said TEA spokeswoman Suzanne Marchman. “That’s the list we plan to work with.”
Superintendents with schools that have been named have complained that the TEA hasn’t given them all the information they need to investigate Caveon’s findings. But at least they know their scores are suspicious.
“That is so grossly unfair,” said Gayle Fallon, president of the Houston Federation of Teachers. “If you’re going to accuse someone of cheating, look them in the eye and do it.”
And there was a sidebar, too.
This week’s MP3 Monday is all about punk rock. Not about the music itself, per se, but the answer to the question: “What, exactly, were they rebelling against?” After all, Johnny Rotten was famously pulled into the Sex Pistols when proto-svengali Malcolm McLaren spotted him wearing a Pink Floyd t-shirt with the words “I hate” scrawled in felt-tip pen above the logo.
In other words, it’s a gimmick to post some ’70s classic rock — particularly its most overproduced and overambitious phyla. As always, songs will stay on the server for one week’s time.
“Tiny Dancer” by Elton John. From the album Madman Across the Water (1971).
For people my age, it’s easy to think of Elton John as a punchline — as that garish old guy with the toupee, the one who only makes headlines when he hugs Eminem or sings sappy ballads at the funerals of princesses. And sure, not much of what he’s done in, say, my lifetime has been worthy of much attention. But the early Elton — that’s good stuff.
Still, I bet Johnny Rotten didn’t like it.
Here’s the song’s most recent pop-culture moment — one of the best scenes in Almost Famous, a movie I sometimes think I’m the only person who liked.
There’s also a version of Elton singing the song on The Old Grey Whistle Test.
“Go Your Own Way” by Fleetwood Mac. From the album Rumours (1977).
Honestly, I don’t have much to say about Fleetwood Mac. I find most of their stuff kinda grating — and Stevie Nicks, well, I could do without Stevie Nicks. But Lindsay Buckingham knows his way around a riff, and this is a bit of propulsive fun you’ve heard 10,000 times before.
If I remember their Behind the Music correctly, around this time, 94 of Fleetwood Mac’s 173 members were having affairs with each other behind their other’s back.
“Goodbye Stranger” by Supertramp. From the album Breakfast in America (1979).
Technically, this didn’t come out until after punk broke, but come on — this is exactly what 1977 London wanted to smash into little bits.
Supertramp was all about concept albums, falsettos, prog qua prog, and a tone best described as fey. And they dressed like a Band of Christs:
“Mr. Blue Sky” by Electric Light Orchestra. From the album Out of the Blue (1977).
The first time I ever heard of ELO was when I was about 10, reading William Poundstone’s Big Secrets — an absolutely perfect book for the young nerdy boy in your life, by the way. It had a section on backward messages in rock songs — you know, Satan’s work.
Anyway, it mentioned that an ELO song named “Eldorado” allegedly included the message: “He is the nasty one / Christ, you’re infernal / It is said we’re dead men / Everyone who has the mark will live.” (Turns out it doesn’t. See, kids, these were the things your grandparents were worried about before they had MySpace to panic over.)
Did you know William Poundstone records his dreams in a blog? Or that he has a whole weirdly fascinating web site that features too much Futura Condensed? O, sweet mystery of life.
“Industrial Military Complex Hex” by The Steve Miller Band. From the album Number 5 (1970).
I went to high school with a guy named Steve Miller. He was a year below me, and he had a band. Jokes necessarily followed.
Dallas music trivia: Steve Miller went to St. Mark’s School, the hoity-toitiest all-boys private school in the area. So did Boz Scaggs, Tommy Lee Jones, and Rhett Miller of the Old ’97s. Of those four, I’d say the Millers (unrelated, to my knowledge) fit the St. Mark’s image best. Why he’s singing about the military-industrial complex — not to mention getting the order wrong — is beyond me.
“Nobody” by The Doobie Brothers. From the album The Doobie Brothers (1971).
Heh, he said “doobie.”
Both this one and the Steve Miller Band track are taken from Meridian 1970: Protest, Sorrow, Hobos, Folk and Blues, a U.K.-only compilation of songs from that year. More about that here (“a fine compilation that represents a music scene in love with all things rootsy and Americana”).
The trailer for Who Killed The Electric Car?, a new documentary produced by Friend-of-Crabwalk (and mom-to-be!) Jessie.
Speaking of stories that should be turned into great literature: Reies Tijerina. Quite a life this man has led. Whatever you think of him (and others in the Chicano movement), it’s strange that they’ve been so forgotten — particularly in places like Texas.
A review of Tom Stoppard’s new play in The New Yorker by John Lahr. (Previously mentioned here.) He admires it in places, but is largely unimpressed, echoing the most common complaint about lesser Stoppard: “[W]e understand the plot points of their lives and their psychologies, but these function more like factors in an intellectual equation than as emotional experience.”
A Cajun vision of heaven: Fresh boudin, made by a fat man named Tiny, without leaving your car. That’s always been the troubling part, having to leave your car.
My next trip home — which is to say, my next Tour de Boudin — demands the gathering of evidence.
Update: My friend Mary (the author of the linked piece) elaborates: “The boudin is pretty good at House of Meat. But the showstopper’s the red-beans-and-rice balls. Comparable to boudin balls. Tiny rolls up his congealed lunch special from yesterday, rolls it into golf-ball-sized bundles, rolls it in flour and drops it into the deep fryer. Sure to become a new Cajun classic.” Mmmmmmmmmmm.
Great collection of Canadian war posters, from both World Wars. My favorite shows how, even at mid-century, Canada still considered itself the little beaver brother to the big British lion:
Unsupportable Theory of the Day: At some point in the next fifty years, a great novel will be written, featuring as its protagonist a specimen of phoberomys pattersoni.
For those who haven’t kept pace with advances in rodent science, Big Phob was a giant rodent that roamed the northern stretches of South America millions of years ago. Picture a guinea pig with a squirrel’s gait — but 1,500 pounds. And 10 feet long. Not counting the additional four feet of tail.
Dude rocked.
See, South America was once silly with these bizarre oversized rodents and other furry creatures straight out of the the minds of six-year-olds. Weird shit like zenarthrans and toxodons and litopternas (a.k.a. the psuedohorse). They had few natural predators, so they evolved into big fat slobs, eating grass and sunning themselves in the Andes. A good life.
Then came the Great American Interchange. That’s when North and South America — after eons apart — were finally joined together at the Panama isthmus.
The north’s big bad carnivores poured across the bridge and found all these tasty fatties ripe for the munching. And while I’d hope a 1,500-pound guinea pig could put up a fight, remember that it hadn’t had to do much but eat grass for many millennia. I can imagine why it didn’t fare well.
But seriously: There’s great drama to be mined out of this, no? It’s essentially the plot of The War of the Worlds — except it really happened and involves fewer New Jerseyans. And I’ve already got the perfect wisecracking sidekick lined up for Big Phob: his surviving cousin dinomys branickii, also known as “Count Branicki’s terrible mouse.”
If David Lynch had been born in 1875.
“This is David Lynch’s 55-second short filmed with an original Lumière camera. Forty international directors were asked to make a short film using the original Cinématographe invented by the Lumière Brothers, working under conditions similar to those of 1895. There were three rules: (1) The film could be no longer than 52 seconds; (2) no synchronized sound was permitted; and (3) no more than three takes…Remember while watching that all the effects are in-camera and there is no cutting for scenes.”
Thank heavens Kevin Smith is keeping newspapers in business.
I can’t say I’ve enjoyed any of his movies — I honestly tried three times to watch Clerks and failed each time — but I have a lot of respect for Smith. His iPod director’s commentary idea is pure genius. And in the below 19-minute video, in which he discusses his abbreviated attachment to the new Superman movie, he shows what a smart, funny, and seemingly sensible guy he is:
Here’s my column from today’s paper.
When Dan Hamermesh heard that Northwest ISD was paying rookie teachers $44,159, he was thrilled. “That’s phenomenal! In Texas? I’m happy to hear it.”
But within 30 seconds, he’d switched gears: “That’s just pathetic. Absolutely pathetic. It’s exactly wrong.”
What was he talking about? Who is Dan Hamermesh? And why does he think that well-meaning North Texas school districts are making choices that will drive promising teachers out of the profession?
I’m sticking with my recent international theme with this week’s MP3 Monday. As always, songs will stay on the server for one week’s time.
URUGUAY: La Conferencia Secreta del Toto’s Bar by Los Shakers. Originally released in 1968.
This is new territory for MP3 Monday; I’m actually posting the entire album instead of just one MP3. (It’s a zip file, about 32 megs.) I linked a few days ago to a video by Los Shakers, the preeminent ’60s band of South America, whose sound I just love. The song I linked (“Rompan Todo”) is dead-on Beatles circa 1964. But their masterpiece, never released in this country and rare everywhere, was La Conferencia Secreta del Toto’s Bar, recorded just before their breakup. If you want to continue the Fab Four metaphor, it’s their Sgt. Pepper’s, but I don’t want to make them sound like no-talent Liverpool copy machines. It mixes in the psych-pop sound of the Nuggets compilations with a sunny optimism and some inventive instrumentation — including some Afro-Uruguayan street rhythms on songs like “Candombe” that are sort of a Pet Sounds-goes-bossa-nova. Of particular note: the title track, “B.B.B.Band,” “El Pino y la Rosa,” and “Una Forma de Arco Iris.”
In case you can’t tell, I really, really like this one and highly recommend you download it. It’s apparently been forgotten by the outside world; my off-handed mention of it a while back promptly moved me to Hit No. 2 in a Google search for its name, and apparently only 17 last.fm users have a copy. Help revive it from history’s back pages!
BRAZIL: “Blues A Volonte” by Baden Powell. From the album Images On Guitar (1971).
No, not the guy who started the Boy Scouts: Baden Powell de Aquino, the Brazilian classical/bossa-nova guitarist, who here works up quite a groove.
Another classic South American album unavailable in the U.S., alas. The great scat vocalist is the French jazz singer Janine de Waleyne, a frequent Baden Powell collaborator.
ZAIRE/CONGO: “Yuda” by Dackin Dackino. From the album Afro-Rock, Vol. 1 (2001).
Another album I can’t recommend enough: a compilation of some terrific (and super obscure) Afrobeat from the 1970s. In case you thought Afrobeat was just Fela, this album will set you straight. It was compiled by a fellow named Duncan Brooker, who tracked down all the original vinyl over nearly a decade of roaming the continent. Here’s his story of how he did it, and it’s really a terrific read. I can’t say I know anything about Dackin Dackino, other than this song was apparently recorded in 1974 in what was then Zaire. And it’s pro-Mobutu, which may be suspect in retrospect.
The whole album is available on eMusic, which you really should subscribe to. So is a lot of Baden Powell.
Speaking of Fela, I found this pretty good mini-documentary on the genius himself on YouTube — produced by MTV, of all people, in 1985:
Here’s my story from Sunday’s front page — it’s more about cheating:
When he saw that six Richardson schools were on the state’s list of potential TAKS cheaters, Superintendent Jim Nelson wanted to investigate. But to do so, he needed to know how Caveon – the company that built the list – did its work.
He e-mailed state Education Commissioner Shirley Neeley, whose agency paid Caveon to do the analysis: “Commissioner, how do I get detailed information as to how Caveon reached their conclusions? All we got were the conclusions.”
He added, according to documents obtained by The Dallas Morning News : “Anger and frustration aimed at the agency is palpable. I want to help, but we must have access to their analysis.” Without those details, the Texas Education Agency is doing “nothing more than a hit and run,” he said.
Mr. Nelson and other Texas educators have tried to get the information they think they need to clear their schools’ names. But the TEA hasn’t been able to give it to them. That’s because agency officials never got the data themselves.
As a result, few, if any, thorough cheating investigations have begun – nearly two months after Caveon determined that 609 schools had suspicious test scores.
Benton’s First Rule of Journalism Synergy: The day you are asked to appear on a local television news program is always the day you have showed up to work dressed as a homeless person.
The two great Stevens of popular music — Sufjan and Ray — together at last.
Stupidest statement ever made in an interview of John Updike: This screamer from Nerve’s Will Doig:
One of the things that compels Ahmad to terrorism in this book is his hatred of America’s permissive attitude toward sex. And yet from where I stand, America seems more sexually repressed than ever. How is there such a disconnect between what he sees and what I see?
How thick would one’s blinders have to be to believe that America in 2006 is “more sexually repressed than ever”? Six inches? A foot? How ignorant of history would one have to be? Particularly if one is an editor for an Internet magazine devoted entirely to sex? Sheesh.
One of the glories of the explosion of video online is that it’s much easier to find all the exploitation films that, one day long ago, inspired young Quentin Tarantino to be a director.
My personal favorites, from a historian’s p.o.v., are the sexploitation films. They exist only to show naked and semi-naked women to the horny male masses. But they wrap that lurid purpose in a blanket of fake, finger-wagging moralism. As such, they prefigure nothing so much as contemporary daytime television.
Here are a few trailers from the 1950s and 1960s, all taken from the excellent Bedazzled. (NSFW — meaning you will spy a fairly steady stream of nipples and the occasional buttock):
And finally, a later edition of the smut-wrapped-in-fake-morals genre: from 1967, The Girl, The Body, and The Pill. “Don’t let the size of that little pill fool you — it’s like a hydrogen bomb, exploding in the face of civilization!” That Miss Barrington, she’s pretty cute!
I love Uruguay.
It’s a strange country to inspire such devotion, I imagine. But it’s sort of the Zambia of South America: small and easily overlooked; dominated by its neighbors; once prosperous, now in rougher times; and friendly as all get out. I loved my couple of days there last fall and have secret plans to buy a house in Colonia del Sacramento and go write my novels.
Which explains this link to the Uruguayan Invasion. It was musical, not military, a la the British Invasion: For one shining moment in the 1960s, Uruguayan rock bands were the class of the continent, fueling Beatlemania-style mayhem among the youth of Argentina.
The key bands were Los Shakers and Los Mockers — who pinched the styles of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, respectively. (And were, naturally, great rivals.) First, Los Shakers, whom I absolutely love:
I have a great desire to track down a copy of La Conferencia Secreta del Toto’s Bar, which is supposedly their Sgt. Pepper’s, mixing psychedelia with candombe.
Now Los Mockers:
The Uruguayan Invasion, sadly, died out in 1973 with the start of Uruguay’s military dictatorship. Dictatorships have a way of doing that to pop music. All about “Ururock” here.
Bad Timing, a weblog devoted to the making of the first feature film in Zambian history. (Zambia is, of course, my favorite sub-Saharan nation.) With the obligatory companion blog on…the making of the film about the making of the first feature film in Zambian history. So, so meta.
I’d exchanged emails with Jabbes Mvula, the director, a few weeks back. He decided he wanted to get into filmmaking after the death of his three-year-old son in 2001. So I was very sad to read that another of his children died last month. That to me is the biggest gap between a place like Zambia and the developed world: the frequency with which people bury their dead. (I wrote a story about it back in 2004.)
Right after I post an early Pink Floyd video comes word that Syd Barrett — the band’s “troubled genius” — has died.
Syd was a strange character. For those who don’t know the history, he founded the band and wrote and sang nearly all of its early songs. But thanks to a potent admixture of schizophrenia and lysergic acid diethylamide, he lost his mind. The rest of the band gently eased him out and went on to global superstardom. For the last 30-plus years, Syd’d been a crazy man living alone in Cambridge, painting abstract canvases and living off Floyd royalties.
Because he’s gone private, Syd lived on primarily as an image — inspiring tribute songs like “I Know Where Syd Barrett Lives.” Fans imagined him as a kindhearted child in need of protection, an injured songbird. His musical production consisted of only one good album and a bunch of unlistenable solo work, interspersed with occasional glimpses of sense. But from that body of work — and one extended exercise in mythmaking — developed a legend.
Here’s Joe Boyd, the band’s early promoter, on the Syd he knew; he makes the worthwhile and undernoted point that the band succeeded in part because Syd “was incredibly good looking: he had these dark eyes, and this curly black hair, and he was very, very appealing; girls loved him.”
(Today, that seems strange on a couple of levels. First, because the remaining band members post-Syd are, well, quite unattractive sorts; and second, because the post-Syd band and their fans are both so drearily self-conscious about how intellectual and profound they each are. When I was in eighth grade, liking Pink Floyd was a marker that I was a serious person, and it was the complete absence of fun post 1972 that eventually drove me away. So I really like the idea that the most “serious” of classic rock bands, the only one that would inspire Tom Stoppard plays, got an early edge because its lead singer was hot. On the other hand, it also gives his descent into crazy eyebrow-shaving fat man status in the 1970s a sort of awful resonance.)
I linked to a bunch of early Floyd videos a few months ago, and most of those links still work. But the best is this video of “Interstellar Overdrive” from the 1967 doc Tonite Let’s All Make Love in London.
Columns I have no desire to read in my local newspaper:
I realize many of you get mouth ulcers, but after a little studying on my part, I learned that only a lucky chosen few get them regularly, and sometimes, in droves. I’m one of the lucky ones, and ohhhh, I get them everywhere. I get them on my lip, behind my lip, in that little spot where your top lip meets your bottom lip, on my gums, inside my gums, on my tongue, under my tongue, on the roof of my mouth and yes, oh yes, even inside my throat on occasion.
Perhaps the most patronizing moment in early rock criticism: Pink Floyd appears on the BBC, May 14, 1967. Despite a pretty good (if poorly miked) rendition of “Astronomy Domine,” with Syd Barrett in full hippie regalia, they get savaged by the Viennese voice of establishment music, Hans Keller.
Syd and Roger Waters actually deal with the insulting questions (“Why has it all got to be so terribly loud? For me, frankly, it’s too loud. I just can’t bear it”) well, I thought. They seem rather amused.
I feel a bit guilty about all the musical love I dumped on Dallas a few weeks back. (Not that it did the Mavericks a damned bit of good in the NBA Finals.) There are, of course, other fine major metropolitan areas in the state of Texas, and they shouldn’t be ignored. As always, songs will stay on the server for one week’s time.
HOUSTON: “Beer Drinkers & Hell Raisers” by ZZ Top. Recorded live at the Rockpalast in Essen, Germany, April 19, 1980. Originally on Tres Hombres (1973).
If you’re my age, you probably remember ZZ Top most for their 1980s MTV success, which was driven by videos showing dorky guys snagging hot girls with the band’s aid. (Said aid usually involved access to the band’s car, which looked like an early production model of the PT Cruiser.)
Now, I dig their razor-synth sound in that era — but to this Southern boy, it’s the pre-beard ZZ Top that rings most true. In the 1970s, ZZ Top delivered a Texas gut-bucket boogie that had humor, propulsion, and just a smidge of menace. (They also invented Metallica’s guitar tone a solid decade before James Hetfield.) I spent a fair amount of my childhood summers in Houston, and ZZ Top seemed like the coolest thing about that deeply uncool city.
This is from a German TV performance, of which videos apparently still exist. If you want an early ZZ Top album, Tres Hombres is definitely the one to grab.
SAN ANTONIO: “Football” by Mickey & the Soul Generation. From the album Iron Leg: The Complete Mickey and the Soul Generation (2002).
Texas was a surprising funk hotbed in the early 1970s, as a number of recent reissues have shown. But perhaps the most legendary act was Mickey & the Soul Generation — a San Antonio band whose brief career of shrinkwrap-tight soul would have been completely forgotten were it not for DJ Shadow.
In his endless cratedigging, Shadow came across an old 45 of theirs (“Football” was one of the B-sides) and became obsessed. He tracked down the former members, remastered their never-released tracks, and put out this great album. Some tracks (like “Football”) sound like a garage James Brown, but others mix in a little Latin flavor.
AUSTIN: “Loss Leaders” by Spoon. From the EP Soft Effects (1997).
Spoon is, of course, not just the greatest of contemporary Texas bands; they’re in a pantheon that stretches far beyond El Paso and Beaumont. Their later triumphs have been well chronicled. But this (almost-decade-old!) EP track shows they had their aesthetic together early: the sawing guitar riff, Britt Daniel’s penchant for backup self-harmonies, and the punchy Jim Eno drums.
Soft Effects was out of print for a while, but Merge Records is set to reissue it (with Spoon’s hit-and-miss first album Telephono) on July 25.
I spent a lot of time searching through SEC filings not long ago, so this error is of particular note to me. (And the filing in question is still up.)
Frightening news from the housing markets:
As housing prices soared last year, an eye-popping 43% of first-time home buyers purchased their homes with no-money-down loans, according to a study released Tuesday by the National Association of Realtors…
The median first-time home buyer scraped together a down payment of only 2% on a $150,000 home in 2005, the NAR found…
[Dean Baker of the Center for Economic and Policy Research] and other economists are concerned that many lenders have pushed a series of creative but potentially dangerous loans to help more Americans afford a home.
That 43% number is just staggering to me.
Everything silly about 1970s masculinity, wrapped up neatly in one movie named Stunt Rock: heavy metal, stuntmen, dune buggies, car chases…and wizards!
Even better, the band in question is still around!
I’m going to guess that video director Jon Watts saw that movie before helming Jason Forrest’s “Steppin’ Off”:
In fact, I’ll more than guess it, since one of Forrest’s labelmates performed under the name Stunt Rock.
A new term for me: “cottaging.” (Definition here.)
Speaking of gay pop (as the above linked article does), I remember in seventh grade reading, in my school library, a book on the history of rock and roll. (We’re talking 1987 or thereabouts.) The book had been published around 1984, and the author was British. In a section on “The Biggest Bands of All Time,” alongside The Beatles, Led Zeppelin, and the like was an extended paean to Frankie Goes to Hollywood. I was a dumb little shit at the time, but even I thought that seemed like a reach. But I guess if you were in London in 1984, it made a sort of sense.
Here’s the famously banned video for their biggest hit, “Relax”:
FGTH is apparently still around, although sans lead singer Holly Johnson.
Finally, while I’m linking to over-the-top gay videos of the mid-1980s, I present the Village People’s “Sex Over the Phone.” (I linked to it obliquely earlier.) The truly astounding thing about this one: No matter how stuffed with homoeroticism the video is — and despite the fact it was shot in 1985, many years after America figured out these Village gentlemen may not all be heterosexual — at the 2:25 mark it completely switches gears and pretends its subject is the glory of straight phone sex. I wonder what the marketing thought behind that one was.
I’m not sure which is sadder:
1. That dead one-hit country wonder Johnny Paycheck, sometime in the 1990s, switched the capitalization of his last name to PayCheck; or
2. That his widow apparently goes by Sharon PayCheck and his son Jonathan PayCheck.
Best paragraph from his New York Times obit (not online, but by Ben Ratliff): “Though he made his first records in 1958, it was not until the mid-1970s that a movement came along that could accommodate his rowdy, jail-prone life. Suddenly, when certain country singers were marketed as Outlaws, it became acceptable for them to look like hippies and act like pirates.”
My old Toronto buddy Katherine — a person I might have tagged, mere days ago, as Friend Least Likely To Appear On A Reality Television Program(me) — is in fact appearing on such a program(me). It’s called Skooled, apparently, and features a bunch of teenagers swapping roles with a bunch of teachers. (Katherine would be of that second group.) She’s blogging about it, too. Local newspaper story here.
Happy July 4th, everybody. (Not that much actually happened on July 4, 1776.)
Week Eight of MP3 Monday is all about the DJ mix: three long sets, approaching three hours in total length. Notate bene: Normally I host MP3 Monday tracks on my own server. These are hosted elsewhere, so they (a) may last longer than the week my songs do, but also (b) may disappear at any time.
1. “Brazilian Specialist Mix” by DJ Paulão. Found at brazilica.nl. Length: 45:00.
Brazilian are drowning in their caipirinhas over their football team’s ignominious defeat at the hands of Les Bleus. One comforting thought, though — and I say this as an established francoaudiophile: The music of France will never match the music of Brazil in diversity or quality.
DJ Paulão is based in Campinas, outside São Paulo, and specializes in Brazilian music of the ’60s and ’70s: samba funk, jazz fusion, tropicália, and MPB. (Although, if this page is to believed, he also mixes in New Orleans rare groove, Ethiopian funk, Nigerian afrobeat, and [new to me] “sitar funk.” I think I’m in love.)
Anyway, this mix is an excellent intro to a bunch of Brazilian sounds. The artists, in rough order: Fagner, Tim Maia, Sergio Mendes, Marcos Valle, Joao Donato, Emilio Santiago, Di Melo, Paulo Diniz, Ed Lincolm, Tom e Dito, Etoiles, MPB4, Claudete Soares, Novos Baianos, Tom Ze, Antonio Carlos Jocafi, Jorge Ben, Tim Mais, Roberto Carlos, and Chico Science.
2. “666 Mix” by Peanut Butter Wolf. Found at stonesthrow.com. Length: 1:05:36.
Peanut Butter Wolf is the founder of Stones Throw Records, which regular crabwalk.com readers by now recognize as The Greatest Hip-Hop Label In Recorded Human History. But even dedicated hip-hop guys like to branch out now and then, and this “666 Mix” is a prime example. Recorded for a DJ set on June 6 (06/06/06), it’s all death metal, thrash metal, and affiliated genres. (Well, not all — there is a smidge of Led Zeppelin — but pretty much all.)
I’ll be honest: This stuff makes my head hurt in large quantities, but it’s remarkable how hypnotic and (dareisay) tuneful short stretches can be. The artists, in rough order: Ec8or, Black Sabbath, Death, Gutted, Ministry, Slayer, Sepultura, Chimaira, Cannibal Corpse, Morbid Angel, Cabaret Voltaire, Bruce Haack, Venom, Necrophobic, The Cure, Faust, Helltrain, Metal Church, Queensryche, Wendy Carlos, Lost Soul Project, Iron Monkey, Satyricon, The Boneless Ones, Decide, Sepulvida, Pantera, Skinny Puppy, Frontline Assembly, Front 242, Nitzer Ebb, SITD, Revolting Cocks, Clock DVA, Motley Crue, and Led Zeppelin.
3. “Madlib’s 45s Mix” by Madlib. Found at the Stones Throw podcast. Length: 1:05:00.
(FYI: Those links go to iTunes, not a direct MP3 download. This is an episode of the Stones Throw podcast, so you’ll need to dl it within iTunes.)
Madlib is (and I fear I’m alienating crabwalk.com readers with my near constant pimping of him) the genius beatmaker behind most Stones Throw albums, mixing jazz, soul, funk, breakbeat, reggae, Brazilian, and any other style of black music you can imagine into a lush groove.
This mix is of a bunch of 45s from Madlib’s neverending collection. No track listing or artist list, alas, but you’ll hear a lot of great bouncy funk, R&B, and soul.
Joshua Benton is the director of the Nieman Digital Journalism Project at Harvard University, among other things. Before that, he was a staff writer and columnist for The Dallas Morning News. (More.)
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