Some Links to Musical Thoughts and Delights

We stumble across the coolest things across the internet. For example, ever wonder just what you might have been handed as you entered the door for a concert in 1929 by Louis Armstrong? Here's a blog with a scan of the program from June 29, 1929 at the Graystone Garden in Detroit. And when you're done being impressed with that, check out some of the other cool things on this blog - it's a great way to see the more day to day role jazz played in the olden days.

We are all in favor of people talking about music, and discovering new ways to hear things (or a way to find something in it for the first time). This takes you to a conversation between a jazz expert and a jazz neophyte, discussing the things going on in a particular Ella Fitzgerald track. There's a whole mess of interesting stuff on the NPR jazz blog itself.

This next link is only peripherally about music - it's from Eric Ambel's enjoyable blog, knuckleheadnyc. Ambel has played guitar over the years with Steve Earle, the Del Lords, and Joan Jett, among many other stalwarts, and has produced more than his share of good records. This little tale of how he became a Yankees fan, and of how he enjoyed their World Series victory, may annoy those who reflexively hate all things about that New York team, but it's really a sweet story about the fun of baseball fandom.

Mac to Return to St. Louis - Ian McLagan Will Play In Euclid Records

Mark your calendars for Tuesday, Nov. 24 (two days before Thanksgiving, just in case you didn't realize that was coming up, too). Rock legend Ian McLagan, whose keyboard skills were a prominent part of the Small Faces and the Faces back in the 70s, who has played with the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Billy Bragg, and lots more, and who has led varying editions of his own Bump Band for 30 years, will be in St. Louis and performing a rare solo show right here in Euclid Records before playing at Off Broadway later that night.

Our show will be at 3 pm, and we'll be telling you more about it in the next couple weeks, but for now, we thought you'd like to see McLagan and the Bump Band as they appeared on Late Night with David Letterman just this past June.



For more info on McLagan, check out his excellent website.

Albums of My Life - 1994 - The Bottle Rockets "The Brooklyn Side"

by Steve Pick

The 2009 version of the Bottle Rockets are just about as great a live rock band as you'll find anywhere on the planet. Back in 1994, they were a bit more hit and miss on stage (though they could reach masterful heights on a good night), but they were busy recording some of their most iconic songs. The Brooklyn Side contains eight great songs the band is still performing after all these years, more than on any other of their records.

Brian Henneman was and is the front-man for the Bottle Rockets, but he's never been the only songwriter in the band. No matter the source of the material, however, Henneman has always shaped it into something that sounds distinctive - his love of Neil Young, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and John Prine, among others has helped him create a blend of southern country-based rock that carries a hard-edged kick while always giving a nod in the direction of pop hooks. (Henneman would, in fact, the next year contribute quite a few of his trademark hooks to Wilco's debut album, A.M.)

The Brooklyn Side was the second album by the Bottle Rockets, a reconstituted version of the 1980s St. Louis band Chicken Truck. Henneman was the front man and lead guitarist (nowadays, he shares that guitar duty with the sizzling John Horton, giving the band one of the best one-two punches on that instrument you can find). Mark Ortmann was (and is) back in the drum chair, and Tom Parr returned to rhythm guitar duties. The bassist was new, Tom Ray replacing Parr's brother Bob.

I saw Chicken Truck at least as often as I saw Uncle Tupelo back in those pre-fame days for these local favorites. There were times they walked on water in that little basement bar at the original Cicero's. But that band never had the money to really go in and record a great record. I'm not saying producer Eric Ambel was given an unlimited budget from East Side Digital (a label then not much longer for the world; the album has since been reissued by Atlantic). But, he did give these songs the dynamic punch they deserved, as the band took what had been a collection of crowd pleasers from their live shows and turned them into a coherent and powerful album.

The Brooklyn Side tackles issues of social class without ever coming off as a polemic. "Welfare Music," the astounding opening cut, puts a human face on what was at the time being called "welfare queens," the poor single parent women trying to raise a family and subsist on the pittance given by the government. It also has one of the earliest musical attacks on Rush Limbaugh, something nobody expected to be as timely fifteen years down the line as it was when it was first released. Musically, the song is a masterful sing-a-long, with a folky vibe that can easily be punched up into a rock powerhouse.

Then there's "Thousand Dollar Car," a song which has suffered only from inflationary pressures which makes younger listeners question the thought that any automobile could ever have been sold for so little. But, it is a perfect example of the Henneman wit - "Might as well take your thousand dollars / and set fire to it" or "1000 dollar car's life was through / About 50,000 miles 'fore it got to you." (It occurs to me that I'm possibly making a typical assumption that Henneman wrote these lyrics - I can't find my physical copy of the CD, and the internet doesn't have writing credits for this album, which is unusual - I know that Tom and Bob Parr, Ortmann, and Scott Taylor - a high school English teacher of members of the band - have written songs, too.) It's funny, but also connects us to the lower classes - only the poor would ever buy a car that cheap, even though it's going to cost them more than a more expensive car would in the long run.

"Radar Gun," which goes back to the Chicken Truck days, is a roaring anthem sung from the point of view of a sadistic cop giving tickets; "Sunday Sports" is the tale of a man with few joys in life going for what he can which manages to sound pathetic and yet sympathetic at the same time; "I'll Be Coming Around" and "I Want to Come Home" are fairly conventional thematically - the former is about a guy who wants to have an affair, and the latter about a guy who wants to be forgiven for having one - but are among the most delightfully catchy songs of the last 20 years. And "Gravity Fails" is a stunning masterpiece of Henneman hookishness wedded to lyrics of desperation to hold on to the woman who grounds him.

As with most albums of the time, The Brooklyn Side goes on about ten minutes longer than it could, but the best material is so strong that the lesser songs just seem like a brief break from perfection. It's probably too early to tell if Lean Forward, the band's latest album, is as close to greatness as The Brooklyn Side, but despite all the good work they've done in the fifteen years between them, it's these two albums which strike me as the Bottle Rockets' one-two punch.

Euclid Records Feature in New Goldmine

Goldmine


This was published in the brand new issue of Goldmine, and all copyright belongs to them, 2009. We think it's a cool thing you might want to see.

Stuff That Jack Likes, Volume 3

A new weekly posting of the stuff that Euclid's own Jackieboy likes...

1. Cold Cave - Love Comes Close. This comes out tomorrow on Matador Records. Think synth-pop and Stephin Merritt-like vocals. I am very excited:



2. Check out the video for Fanfarlo's "The Walls Are Coming Down" over at The Guardian UK website. This is the second single from their new album Reservoir. Maybe for fans of Beirut and The Arcade Fire. I dig.

3. Wes Anderson wants to make a movie in space!

4. Announcements of new records for 2010 by Spoon, High Places, Yeasayer, Midlake, LCD Soundsystem, and Hot Chip. Looks like it's going to be a great year already!

Water/Wood

I could get used to this gig, you know? A few times a year, I open my inbox and find this magical invitation from Eddie Silva at the Saint Louis Symphony Orchestra, in which I get free tickets and free drinks. Sweet. My ordinary existence of jazz clubs and indie dives just got so much more swank. As I ponder which friend I’m going to ask to accompany me for the evening this time around, it occurs to me that I have become a fan of the SLSO. And I don’t mean that ironically, like only on Facebook (where I am a fan, actually—it helps me keep an eye on their upcoming events), but in real life as well.

Here’s where I experience a bit of a disconnect, though. I don’t know all that much about classical music—not nearly as much as I know about contemporary music, anyway—and so I always feel like I’m experiencing the music in a much different way. With punk rock, I know the whole history of it all, the albums, the personalities, the scenes and how they interconnect. I can do that with jazz, too, right? I mean, that whole scene has only been around for less than a hundred years now, and with a little effort you can acquaint yourself with both the music and the historical context. With classical music, I have none of that—no context and no ground to stand on. Now, I have discovered that this is, actually, a very good thing. It means that I can approach the music with a fresh perspective. With classical music, I can listen with a thirsty ear; with everything else, let’s just say that it's sometimes tough to check the hipster pretensions and jazz snobbery at the door.

The program for the evening was all modern composers, which is just fine by me--I love it when the SLSO takes a walk on the wild side. Works by Stravinsky and Bartok bookended two pieces by contemporary Chinese composers Tan Dun and Bright Sheng. The two middle pieces by the Chinese composers featured percussionist Colin Currie on marimba and on various esoteric percussion instruments including, well, two big bowls of water. I love watching drummers perform--they are so embodied, there's a entirely different physical quality about them. Add to this the novelty of watching someone slap, patter and splash around in bowls of water, while accompanied by full orchestra, and then manipulate sound by submerging cowbells, wooden bowls and small gongs while pounding them with open hands or mallets, well, you've got my total attention. I don't mean to diminish the Tan Dun piece by only commenting on the fantastical aspects of the performance; the various water sounds were integral to the composition. The organic sounds produced by the water and wood were grounding, while the overtones produced when Currie drew a violin bow over an oddly shaped metal percussion instrument added jarring harmonic contrast.

The Bright Sheng composition, Colors of Crimson, was for marimba, and once again I was drawn in by the earthy wooden tones, as well as the four mallets-in-just-two-hands technique that floors me every time I see it. While it was likely not intended, there was something about the rhythmic drive of this piece (and the actual tone of the marimba itself) that evoked the sounds of African Shona Mbira music that seeped into my consciousness so many years ago while listening to those fabulous Nonesuch Explorer albums.

The final piece was The Miraculous Mandarin Suite, by Bela Bartok, reworked from an earlier aborted ballet (the single performance of this ballet was so controversial that it was never played again). I've never seen the SLSO play so loudly or intensely. I walked out of the hall afterwards thinking that I had surely just seen the symphonic equivalent of a Led Zepplin stadium show in the 1970's. I turned to my friend and said, "They rocked the f*** out on the Bartok." I grinned and said, "And that's as articulate as I can get on that one." Later, as I ran into Eddie in the parking lot, on the way to Triumph for a post show drink, he said, "Wow, they really rocked the Bartok tonight, didn't they?" Glad someone else heard it that way, too.

Postscript: Colin Currie was wandering around backstage in between performances in a Joy Division t-shirt. How cool is that?

Check out other blogger's perspectives on this performance:
Chris at Confluence City
Julie at gatewaygroupies
Amy at A Chase After Wind
Tony at Tony Renner, Artist

Cover Me - The Politically Incorrect Album Cover

by Joe Schwab

While returning to St. Louis from the WFMU Record Fair in New York City last week I decided to break up the boredom of the Ohio interstate system with a couple stops at the antique malls along the route. Normally I can't recommend these malls as great places to find records (unless Andy Williams is your cup of tea) but oddball titles do pop up from time to time. Now, I'm not going to say anything disparaging about the fine people of Ohio, our friends to the East, but I do tend to find a number of...um, how should I put this, politically incorrect records. So, here we go, this weeks finds are "heap big fun" and very "rucky finds'.

First we have Billy Thunderbird and the Chieftones, a lounge band with Billy on guitar (he's the Indian of the group) and his cohorts dressed up in full head dress'.




Next is Arnie and Chise, another lounge act from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida with their album "Rotsa Ruck". Hot guitar player Arnie jams while Chise (who signs the record "I'm made in Japan") sings and plays congas. They certainly like to play up their East meets West image on their covers. Somewhere I have another Arnie and Chise record which I'll make sure to post once I dig it out.