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Most of the time, the Man About MySpace is at your service to find great new bands for the sampling. Today’s blog, however, offers a tip of the cap to a phenomenal fan site, Neville Tracks. See, few families in America have put out solid music output for as many decades as the Nevilles, starting with keyboardist Art in the 1950s when New Orleans R&B was a national phenomenon. One could argue for Clan Cole (Nat & Natalie) or the Jacksons or (most legimiately) the Nevilles’ New Orleanian colleagues the Marsalises (patron Ellis teaches at Tulane and still records, and sons Wynton, Branford, Delfeayo and Jason have all released good and sometimes great recordings for the better part of 30 years), but the Nevilles pop up everywhere, from the pop to the soul to the rock to the world music charts. And there’s not just the brothers Art, Aaron, Cyril and Charles. There’s Aaron’s son Ivan, a veteran who played with Keith Richards and the Stones, a member of the current Neville Brothers band, and leader of the edgy funk band Dumpstaphunk. There’s Charmaine, Charles’ daughter, whose jazzy world-beat club act is a party wherever it alights. 
If you enjoy the Bros., try dipping into the next generation. But wait, there’s more: Art’s group The Meters added a great Big Easy vibe to straight up funk and whose early-’70s records set the blueprint for the Neville Brothers sound as well as a thousand jam-band acolytes. The Meters’ grooves, today, still sound fresh and creative. Can’t say that about a lot of the dinosaurs from funk’s heyday, enjoyable as they are to spin. Neville Tracks does its best to track the family’s in-print recordings as well as tour dates. Not an easy job after Katrina forced scattered the family throughout several states. But they persist, and so do the superfans who power this MySpace. |
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I first met Johnny Lingo off a Craigslist ad. No, not that kind of Craigslist ad: I bought a great vintage Wurlitzer 200A (think Ray Charles’ “What’d I Say”) keyboard from him, which I picked up at a Providence, RI recording studio where he was hanging out. Lingo took me around the studio and graciously demo’d all the wild and fantastic keyboards there (they had a goshdarned Mellotron!) and gave me an EP of his former band, the Lingo. They’d built some regional notoriety playing upbeat, harmonious pop–including a funny little tune about how Johnny likes your friends better than you.  Now, the keyboardist’s struck out on his own, and released an album earlier this year. Driven by the same pop ethos, Lingo influences include 1970s disco (see “Step Outside”) and 1980s alterna-pop (”Fallen Angel”), but for the most part it’s a noveau mixing of a lot of stuff. Frenetic and melodious–and a good listen. While we don’t ever like to make blanket statements that cast Billy Joel in a positive light, one thing he sang rings true: You can’t get the sound from a story in a magazine (or a blog) so don’t take our word for it: Sample four cuts on his MySpace, and if you like it, pony up the five bucks for a download. |
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The new Springsteen record is out, and it’s underwhelming. While I wonder sometimes what’s wrong with me–a lot of my Bullz-Eye colleagues love this record–it sounds as if The Boss is more like The Middle Manager: 30 years ago, in songs like “Rosalita” and “Born To Run,” Springsteen and the band would gather steam like a double-tractor-trailer huffing through the Berkshires on I-90 up the mountain, cresting at the top with a cathartic pause, and just over the top, Rosie, the record company just gave me a big adva-a-a-ance! Ooooaahhhh! The highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive! Those songs rushed downhill after their orgasmic middles, barely holding the road banging through joyous, precarious musical curves at unsafe speeds. But Bruce and Clarence always got us home safely. Nowadays, Springsteen’s music sounds nice, the chords are pleasant, the sax still wails, but he hasn’t slammed it into overdrive for a couple decades. His new songs contain stories, still, but mundane as your next door neighbor couple’s arguments (”Think about the future, baby, none of this has happened yet”) and not life-altering, on the edge stuff like leaving your wife and kids in Baltimore, jack, or “Mister State Trooper,” that was intense. Don’t get me wrong, this aging “Springsteen 2.0″ is still better than anything John Cafferty, Bonnie Jovie, Southside Johnny or the Brooklyn-born Eddie Money ever put out, even in their heyday. He knows songcraft. And he knows his limitations and works within them to create good tuneage. Maybe I’m just an old fart who’s living back in 1984, looking for an adrenaline shot that doesn’t exist. At any rate, it sent me on a MySpace Music hunt for a younger Jersey throwback, one that might be picking up the torch for us Springsteen fans who want a little more of the rough-and-tumble back. It’s still elusive. In the meanwhile, however, the search did turn up a freaking great band to check out called Wiser Time (pictured below). These Black Crowes clones (they’re named after a Crowes song) pack some serious electric-slide punch into their original songs, and in the typical New Jersey rock style, do not aspire to bookish heights of rock intelligence. Amen, brother, we could all use a little less heavy thinking and a little more git-ar distortion. With a side order of slide.
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Peter Hook—or “Hooky” as he’s known by dear fans—ye olde ancient bassist for New Order (or as of late last spring, shall we say the “defunct New Order”) has been annoying old fans with a dispute over who gets to use the band name. Or more to the point, if his old mates can use the name after Hooky picked up his bass and decided to go play in another sandbox. Ho-hum. Hooky’s a lot better off playing his bass and spearheading musical groups than he is with the social grace, apparently, because his new project, Freebass, is absolutely awesome. And where can you sneak a listen to the preview cut “I Envy Us?” His MySpace, natch, the same online outlet where he also threatened to sue the other New Order members if they continued on without him and kept the band name (yet also says at his MySpace that he’s “open to negotiation,” whatever that means). 
The shy boy? Or the coy boy? At any rate, the core members of Freebass comprise Hook, ex-Smiths bassist Andy Rourke and ex-Stone Roses/Primal Scream bassist Mani. Get the name? Freebass. Caution: If you think it’s cool, don’t even try copping the name, because one would guess his attorneys are watching for that sort of thing. Lead vocalists allegedly in the running include Charlatans’ Tim Burgess and the Stone Roses’ Ian Brown, says Pitchfork. Add that to an awesome post-Madchester garage-pop Big Beat retro sound, and at least on paper it looks pretty freakin’ awesome. |
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Ahhh, the joys of fuzzed-out garage punk. Guys paying homage to 1980s postpunk retro maniacs like Mudhoney who themselves were paying homage to 1960s do-it-yourselfers like the Sonics. While such a swirling mishmash of influences might sound complicated, it’s really not. Think lo-tech. Think basic rock. Think pre-Sgt. Pepper. It’s rock, unvarnished, and it’s awesome. Energetic hard-bashed drums, guitar with distortion turned to “11,” little if any keyboards, and no production values whatsoever. Think “Dirty Water” by the Standells. Think “Baby Please Don’t Go” by the Amboy Dukes. Think “Smells Like Teen Spirit” playing over a not-quite-tuned-in AM radio station. It adds up to The Ultra Twist, an Italian punk band not quite a year old, who features all of the above, and a little (OK, a lot) of punk attitude. The only high-tech digital artifacts detectable in the Ultra Twist’s Tracks–at least at MySpace sampling rates–is the deliberately added vinyl-like hiss and pop at the beginnings of the tracks. It’s a cheap trick, but hey, it shows the world where their priorities are, somewhere far south of Nelly Furtado’s quality control standards. And it’s good. Warning: Flag-waving Amur-kans aren’t necessarily going to agree with all their sentiments–although, scratch that: Polls indicate that even staunch patriots are parting ways with our president, and the band’s anti-Bush rant is classic punk: An instrumental punctuated by three words. Albeit three incendiary words, to some folks. Most punk fans would find it hard to disagree with The Ultra Twist’s main anthem, “No Beer No Fun,” so the band offers an opportunity for us to all set politics aside and mosh until our noses bleed, and our sinuses are finally cleared of all that Furtado. Anyway, dig the tunes and no, don’t adjust your speakers–it’s supposed to sound that nasty.
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Ben Folds used to awesome. In concert, he still is, a consummate entertainer, and MySpace-aware fans point to his October 2006 live MySpace concert–requests only, the site’s first such event of its kind–chronicled on the Live at MySpace DVD as evidence of that. But on the studio recording side, many of his fans are right to feel his songwriting has become almost too serious, his lyrics too jaded, to bear. Gone is the insouciance of the Ben Folds Five of the 1990s, the light drama of “Emaline,” the innocently poignant “Brick,” the simple chords . . . the subtle aspects of Folds that are gone and replaced–at least for the moment–with heavy-handed songs like “Bastard” and “You to Thank,” two back-to-back cuts on Songs for Silverman that sound like classic Folds pop but are so bitter and whiny that they just leave one cold.  Tim Halperin Enter Tim Halperin, a TCU student and Folds devotee. In between classes and other pressing needs that hamper the fun of dorm-dwellers (like having a television too small to read the score of the football game he and his pals are watching, chronicled in his “Life in the Dorm Room,”) this guy records whimsical piano-pop loaded with the delicious chordal curlicues we Folds fans love to hear. These low-budget productions mean that his voice, piano, and songwriting skill must carry the day in cuts like “Nice to be Free” and “Mary.” They aren’t encumbered by effects and rich sonic backgrounds behind which the singer-songwriter can hide. It’s just his voice, his piano, and very basic backing tracks. Halperin’s vocals and piano playing stand up to the test. And perhaps that is what is missing from Folds’ layered, heavily produced studio creations of today: That low-budget innocence of his 20s. Halperin’s stuff, while perfectly original in its own right, recalls the Naked Baby Photos era of the Five. Go give him a spin, and if you want his cuts on your iPod, go to his Garage Band page and download away. He claims he’ll let us know when a CD’s coming out; we’ll hold him to that. |
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Welcome to the first of a series of blog posts featuring great stuff spotted on MySpace Music. It can be good, bad, and ugly. Or, as we’re about to explain, worse.  The NFL’s investigating whether or not Pac-Man’s shield logo infringes on league trademarks. Poor Pac-Man Jones. He goes on Real Sports with Bryant Gumbel to share his side of the story–translated loosely, in a few words, “I am not really remembering what Mr. Commissioner Goodell told me about keeping my nose clean. What was it he told me, again?”–and yet he just can’t seem to hold on to the headlines to save his life, because Mike Vick’s antihero PR machine is outflanking him at every turn. But he persists. Following in the steps of pro sports miscreants-cum-rappers Jim “Punky QB” McMahon, Allen Iverson, and Ron Artest, Pac-Man’s livin’ da streetz life with his National Street League rap label, a collaboration (coll-abortion?) with producer/henchman Spoaty. The raps are about–you guessed it–spending lots of money. “I spent a hundred grand all in one night!” they sing on the almost completely mindless “Yah Nah Mean.” Just like Pac-Man allegedly did in Vegas last winter after the NBA All-Star game, when the most notorious of his myriad suspicious activities went down. Witnesses claim Pac-Man took nearly that much money into a strip club and was “making it rain,” euphemism for throwing dollar bills around. Anyway, maybe if you’re a big rap fan and someone like Pac-Man is singing about poppin’ rubber bands off bundles of $100 bills, he comes across with some sort of street cred. Unlike a lot of rappers setting their stories to a rump-thumping beat, you know for sure that Pac-Man’s living his. The music doesn’t sound very good to us, but give Pac-Man some time. If he pops a few more rubber bands and buys some serious studio time, Mariah Carey and Janet Jackson prove that throwing the best technology at a recording really can help make a big hit, no matter what you’re starting out with. Of course, if he’s making records, that means he’s not working. And if he’s not working, the Titans certainly aren’t passing out more rubber-banded bundles of Benjamins. |
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Russian-born Regina Spektor makes quirky, piano-driven music for the hipster set. She scored a minor hit this year with “Fidelity” from Begin to Hope, her fourth full-length release, but her catalog features several great songs. Where possible, I included links to a live performance or the proper video for each song (hosted by YouTube). I also included links to iTunes and/or Amazon for convenient purchase. Let’s get to know Regina Spektor. Filed under: Rock and Pop and Alternative and Rock Babes and Songs and Artists and Playlists and External Music and Get to Know Comments: None |
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Filed under: Rock and Alternative and Songs and Artists and Playlists and External Music and Get to Know Comments: 1 Comment |
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Be sure to check out my review of the recent Black Keys show at the Avalon in Hollywood, CA. Filed under: Rock and Alternative and Songs and Artists and Blues and Playlists and External Music and Get to Know Comments: 1 Comment |
