Category Archives: Miscellaneous

The Best of 2013

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After careful consideration, here’s my list of top albums this year, as well as some other commentary on music happenings. Enjoy!

1. Boards of Canada, Tomorrow’s Harvest (WARP)
2. WIRE, Change Becomes Us (Pink Flag)
3. Bombino, Nomad (Nonesuch)
4. Bill Orcutt, “Twenty Five Songs” (Palialia)
5. Run the Jewels, s/t (Fools Gold)
6. Zomes, Time Was (Thrill Jockey)
7. Marisa Anderson, Mercury (Mississippi/Change)
8. Endless Boogie, Long Island (No Quarter)
9. Daughn Gibson, Me Moan (Sub Pop)
10. Anwar Sadat, Gold (Sophomore Lounge)

Honorable mention: Matmos, The Marriage of True Minds (Thrill Jockey); The Dead C., Armed Courage (Ba Da Bing!), Jovonaes, Paranoia Makes a Crazy Gift (Sophomore Lounge); Steve Gunn, Time Off (Paradise of Bachelors); Call Back the Giants, “The Marianne” (Kye); Francisco Franco, s/t (New Images); Circuit Des Yeux, Overdue (Ba Da Bing!); Jaye Jayle, Jayle Time (unreleased); Glenn Jones, My Garden State (Thrill Jockey); Van Dyke Parks, Songs Cycled (Bella Union); Richard Youngs, Summer Through My Mind (Ba Da Bing!); Nathan Salsburg, Hard for to Win and Can’t be Won (No Quarter); Mammane Sani et son Orgue, La Musique Electronique du Niger (Sahel Sounds); Cian Nugent & the Cosmos, Born with the Caul (No Quarter).

Best Shows I Attended in 2013 (that I didn’t book):
1. Cropped Out Festival, Louisville, Kentucky — highlights being Mayo Thompson performing Corky’s Debt to His Father, Borbetomagus, Endless Boogie, The Endtables, Blues Control, Bill Orcutt & Chris Corsano, Superwolf, Montag, lots more.
2. Goblin and Zombi at the Varsity Theater, Minneapolis, MN.
3. Aaron Dilloway, Darin Gray & Raw Thug, Mike Shiflet, Jonathan Wood & Lowe Sutherland at the Louisville Experimental Festival.
4. Blondie and X at the Ryman Auditorium, Nashville, TN.
5. TIE — Run the Jewels and Bombino at Forecastle; Yo La Tengo at the Brown Theater, both in Louisville.

Worst Things to Happen in 2013: The deaths of Lou Reed, Ray Price, Zbigniew Karkowski, Bernard Parmegiani, Jim Hall, Junior Murvin, Richard Coughlan, Cheb i Sabbah, Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, Chico Hamilton, Butch Warren, Philip Chevron, Wadih El Safi, Gypie Mayo, Lawrence Leighton Smith, Makoto Moroi, Isamu Jordan, Forrest, Prince Jazzbo, Jerry G. Bishop aka Svengoolie, Jackie Lomax, Mac Curtis, Jimmy Ponder, Lindsay Cooper, Pavlos Fyssas, Zulema, Tim Wright, George Duke, Willie Dunn, Zev Asher, Batile Alake, Eydie Gorme, Aube, Allen Lanier, Eyob Mekonnen, Marian McPartland, Bernard Vitet, T-Model Ford, Steve Berrios, Mike Farren, Joey Covington, Arturo Vega, Darondo, Johnny Smith, Fatai Rolling Dollar, Alastair Donaldson aka William Mysterious, Claudio Rocchi, Slim Whitman, Mary Love, Bobby “Blue” Bland, Puff Johnson, Alan Meyers, Chris Kelly, Jeff Hanneman, Cedric Brooks, Steve Martland, Ollie Mitchell, Ray Manzarek, Andy Johns, Don Blackman, Dean Drummond, Cordell Mosson, Storm Thorgerson, Chrissy Amphlett, Richie Havens, George Jones, Bobby Rogers, Alvin Lee, Peter Banks, Clive Burr, Bobby Smith, Hugh McCracken, Cecil Womack, Donald Byrd, Reg Presley, Rick Huxley, Shadow Morton, Tim Dog, Kevin Ayers, Damon Harris, Magic Slim, Cleotha Staples, Virgil Johnson, Richard Street, Nic Potter, Bobby Bennett, Steve Knight, Gregory Carroll, Leroy Bonner, Butch Morris, Patty Andrews, Ann Rabson, and probably many more that I’m forgetting. Rest in peace.

UPDATE, 12/24/2013: Rest in peace, Yusef Lateef, Diomedes Diaz, Björn J:son Lindh, Lord Infamous, David Richards, Herb Geller, and Ronnie Biggs.

UPDATE, 1/4/14: Rest in peace, David Wertman, Doe B, Benjamin Curtis, Wojciech Kilar, Jay Traynor, Al Porcino, Phil Everly, and Rita MacNeil (thanks to Alexander Campbell for informing me of her music).

WIRES.UNDER.TENSION and VISITING NURSE show CANCELLED!

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Due to events beyond our control, we regret to inform you that the WIRES.UNDER.TENSION and VISITING NURSE show scheduled for this Sunday, October 20th at The New Vintage has, sadly, been cancelled.

No word as of yet on a make-up date, but we promise you’ll be the first to know.

Louisville Label Lets Loose Nimrod Workman

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A new Louisville-based record label called Twos & Fews (run by one of our favorite Louisville people, Mr. Nathan Salsburg) lets loose its first release today, an album of archival recordings of one Nimrod Workman. We’ll let Nate tell it in his own words:

That album is of the coal miner, union activist, and traditional singer Nimrod Workman, and is entitled “I Want to Go Where Things Are Beautiful.” It’s an hour of unaccompanied ballads, lyric songs, play party pieces, and religious singing, recorded in 1982 by Mike Seeger (Pete’s half-brother) when Nimrod was 87 years old. It gives Workman (who died at 99 in 1994) his first LP in thirty years, and his first ever CD solo release.

You might have seen Nimrod at the beginning of Barbara Kopple’s “Harlan County USA,” or in Alan Lomax’s American Patchwork films “Appalachian Journey” or “Dreams & Songs of the Noble Old.” Or, like most, you have never heard of him. Well… his ain’t party music, but you might find it rewarding, challenging, and beautiful. It’s been an honor and a privilege to put this record together, and if you can bear it in these trying times to do something so anachronistic as to shell out money for music, I’d be thrilled if you’d give Nimrod Workman a chance.

For more info:

http://www.dragcity.com/catalog/records/dc379.html
http://roothogordie.wordpress.com/2008/10/14/nimrod-workman/
http://www.knoxvoice.com/arts/street-cred/better-stuff/

You can listen to some of the songs available on I Want to Go Where Things Are Beautiful at the Twos & Fews myspace site, linked above. You can (and should!) purchase the album at all finer record stores as well as online.

Some Recent, Random Compilations from Africa

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Since I was in the process of uploading some of these anyway for elsewhere, I thought I’d share some of the good compilations that have come my way this year.

Sir Victor Uwaifo, Guitar Boy Superstar 1970 – 76

First, the excellent Soundway label from the UK (which you may know from their Nigeria Special comps) released a bunch of good stuff from Sir Victor Uwaifo, on the selection entitled Guitar Boy Superstar 1970-1976. Despite the goofy title, this is a serious — and seriously awesome — set of Uwaifo’s ekassa sounds and a good overview for the newcomer (as I am) to 1970s African pop.

V/A, Nigeria Disco Funk Special: The Sound of the Underground Lagos Dancefloor 1974-79

Also in Soundway’s Nigeria Special series is the Nigeria Disco Funk Special compilation. While it’s not my favorite one in the series (that’d probably be either Nigeria Rock Special or Nigeria Special Part 1), it’s still pretty smokin’.

More to come shortly…

UPDATE, 10/30/08:


V/A, African Scream Contest

African Scream Contest is a fantastic compilation of sounds from 1970s Benin and Togo, released by the Analog Africa label (which I don’t know much about except they appear to be based in Germany). The label’s blog has a pretty interesting, though short, post about the release here: http://analogafrica.blogspot.com/2008/01/analog-africa-no3-african-scream.html. Much like the Soundway releases in this post, African Scream Contest is available on vinyl, and I’ve been playing it constantly since I picked it up a few months ago. My favorite track is probably Roger Damawuzan’s “Wait For Me,” a fantastic proto-James Brown number with sweet horns and an even sweeter guitar riff. Boss.

UPDATE, 10/31/08:

V/A, Nigeria Rock Special: Psychedelic Afro-Rock & Fuzz Funk in 1970s Nigeria

V/A, Ghana Soundz: Afro-Beat, Funk and Fusion in 70s Ghana

Some Old Fliers from Old Times

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Crown Hate Ruin Flier

Nick Hennies, one of my oldest Louisville friends and a member of the Weird Weeds (and former member of Telephone Man and Nero), recently unearthed some old fliers, some of which I “designed,” so I thought I’d share them with you, all two of my readers. The one above was, as you can see, for a show at the long-gone Ground Zero Records (when Ed had a basement for impromptu shows) by Washington, D.C.’s excellent the Crownhate Ruin and Nero. Unfortunately, Crownhate (which featured Fred Erskine from Hoover and June of 44) had to cancel as they got a flat or something on the way there, so the False Start played instead. Who were the False Start? Well they were a fucking awesome band consisting of Jesse Lebus (my best friend from high school and also the man behind the Rattlesnake Kit and Imagineagents, two fantastic but basically unheard Louisville bands), his brother Morgan (now works at Domino Records here in NYC), their half-brother Jeffrey Treitz and Sebadoh member and man-about-town Jason Lowenstein. Somehow as audacious teenagers Jesse and I got to be friends with Jake because we’d give him tapes of our intentionally-horrible cover band Leafpile (our m.o. was to “cover” songs by playing along with them, taped to air using two boomboxes in my mom’s basement), and he’d give us his Sparkalepsy tapes (get in touch, Jason! I still have that one tape you wanted).

Sevens/Sorts

This next flier I made for a show that Nick put on, but I wasn’t able to go to as I was back at Bard, beginning the second semester of my junior year. The Sevens and The Sorts were both from D.C., again. I guess it wasn’t that far for bands to get to Louisville, though some of it is some rough driving through stretches of West Virginia. Anyway the D.C.-Louisville connection probably goes back to Minor Threat playing there, so I guess it makes sense. Anyway, too bad I couldn’t make this one.

Storm and Stress (and storm!)

This last flier is from a mega-show I booked during the fall semester of my senior year, with five bands. Of course, one of the bands was Julia Schagene, which consisted of Nick, Drew Wilson and Andrew Drummond who was visiting the US from Sheffield, UK. They drove all the way from Chicago through an ice storm (taking about 20 hours for what would otherwise be a 13-hour drive) to play, and I paid them $150 (loved that college money!). The other bands were fantastic, but hampered a bit by the early snowstorm that kept attendance pretty weak. Anyway, all those names you should know. I’d be worried if you didn’t. And it was a fun time.

Update 8/16/07: Here’s the first of a few related albums for you to check out – more on the way:

Nero, s/t (1997) – anybody who calls it “the Dune Concept album” gets a slap in the face.
The Crownhate Ruin, Until the Eagle Grins (1996)
Brother JT and Vibrolux, Music for the Other Head (1995)

Idolator’s Jackin’ Pop Poll Is Up

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Best Thing of 2006, right here

Results are here and stuff. Eh. It’s nice to be asked to contribute, but as usual I really don’t understand much of what passed for “interesting” or “good” to music writers this year. I mean seriously am I the ONLY person who voted for the Dan Higgs record? That’s not right. Oh yeah, here‘s my ballot. Apologies to Bruce Loose and to James Brown (the former isn’t dead, the latter died after the deadline).

Some Random Cellphone Pictures on a Saturday Afternoon

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Kohoutek

Kohoutek at West Nile, Brooklyn – 11/10/2006

Shrimp Ducks

Shrimp Ducks

Bishops at Large

Bishops at Large at Tonic, New York – 10/27/2006

Blues Control

Blues Control at Goodbye Blue Monday, 9/19/2006

Klinger

Close Shave

I Really Wish I Could’ve Been in Chicago…

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Yow!

More Touch and Go 25th Anniversary Fest pictures here, and more to come. Jealous!

Dinosaur Jr.’s Equipment Stolen

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In the more-shitty-news department, this just came in via teh internets:

Listed below is a list of gear that was stolen out of the Dinosaur Jr trailer last night (Tuesday 8.29.06) outside of their hotel in Long Island City, NY. We would appreciate spreading the word and passing this list around in hopes of recovering their gear. Feel free to send this list to any and all band, tour and production managers, guitar freaks, touring personnel, venues, musicians and or thieves that you think could help us.

If anyone has any information about this gear, please call Brian Schwartz at 303.998.0001 or Bart Dahl at 212.777.0922. Thanks

Guitars:

1959 Fender Jazzmaster SN.. 38927.
-decal coming off. cracked headstock at top near low E peg. color black with purple/bluish sparkle coming through. adonized pick guard gold metal. tuneomatic bridge gold, tuning pegs gold.

1961-3 Fender Jazzmaster SN.. 62012.
-purple sparkle, black pickup covers. headstock repaired, a whole new piece of wood was glued on for the top part of the headstock under the tuners and up a 1/2 , along the whole top of the headstock. gold tuneomatic bridge, gold tuners

1964-5 Fender Jazzmaster SN.. L21581.
-orange, white pearl pickguard, stickers we’re all over it, original tuners.

Fender Purple Jazzmaster new SN.. R074329.
-purple sparkle with matching headstock gold adonized guard tuneomatic bridge.

Rory Gallagher Stratocaster new SN.. R25507.
-has a big gold grover tuning peg on low E

Rickenbacker 197? Fireglo Bass SN.. 4001.
-checker-board binding.

B.C. Rich Warlock Bass SN.. 4242413

Custom pedal board with custom audio electronics RS-10 foot controller, Teese RNC2 wah pedal, boss stage tuner, mute box, and cables.

Cymbals:
[1] Paiste 20″ 2002 medium
[1] Paiste 20″ giant beat
[1] Paiste 20″ 2002 crash
[2] Paiste 19″ 2002 crash
[2] Paiste 15″ 2002 sound edge top hi-hats
[1] 15″ 2002 sound edge bottom hi-hats

One Black backpack with Sony headphones, tools, etc.

I was all set to write a review of their awesome show last night at Warsaw with Mouthus and Blood on the Wall (I may still), but this definitely puts a damper on the proceedings.