Gavin B.

Song of the Year 2010

Paradise Circus by Massive Attack featuring Hope Sandoval

Massive Attack's Paradise Circus was my favorite song of the past year. The song perfectly captured lingering mood of malaise that looms over these harsh and uncertain times. The song is nothing more than a 3 note riff counterpointed by a tape loop of off-rhythm clapping, but there's something sinister in the honey sweet tones of Hope Sandoval's langorous and seductive voice when she tells us, " the devil makes us sin, but we like it when we're spinning, in his grin." It's the power of Hope's understated and soulful vocal that makes a relatively simple and mundane musical idea work.

There was a legion of amateur film makers who posted their own video versions of Paradise Circus on YouTube. This skillfully edited reworking of an early Jonas Åkerlund video (embedded below) perfectly captured the frosty, paranoia inducing atmospherics of Massive Attack's dark, erotically charged song better than Massive Attack's own video release of Paradise Circus. The dreader than dread music and the surrealist aesthetic of the video reminded me of footage from a unreleased film directed by David Lynch.

Kudos to Jonas Åkerlund and YouTube member, EffexorDepot for his clever reuse of the Åkerlund video. It was my favored video of my most favored song of 2010.

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There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Passages 2010

In memory of those notable musicians who made their final curtain call in 2010



Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart) 11/15/41- 12/17/10
Avant garde rock musician, American painter, the man with
the Trout Mask Replica on his head. Inspiration to music geeks all over the world.

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Lena Horne 6/30/17- 5/9/10
Jazz singer, recorded the definitive version of Stormy Weather that
Billie Holiday claimed to be the greatest vocal performance she ever heard.

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Gregory Isaacs 7/15/1951 - 10/25/10
Reggae singer, the Cool Ruler, King of Lover's Rock, quintessential rude boy hero & outlaw musician.
Gregory released 250 new Jamaican singles in 1980, the most prolific year of his career.

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Alex Chilton 12/28/50-3/17/10
Founder & frontman for Big Star and the Box Tops. Enduring
pop music icon for five decades.

Solomon Burke 3/21/40- 10/10/10
King of Rock & Soul Recorded Cry To Me and Everbody Needs Somebody To Love

Jimmy Dean 8/10/28- 6/13/10
Country Singer, pork sausage maker & singer of Big Bad John

Doug Fieger 8/20/52- 2/14/10
The Knack frontman, Composer and singer of sugarpop anthem My Sharona

Ari Up 1/17/62- 10/20/2010
Punk rock icon, founder of the Slits & unapologetic dreadlocked wildchild

James Moody 3/26/25- 12/19/10
Jazz saxaphonist, Composer of jazz classic Moody's Mood for Love

Gary Shider 7/24/53- 6/16/10
Guitarist and member of Parliament-Funkadelic mothership

Malcom McLauren 1/22/46- 4/8/10
Punk rock provocateur, manager of Sex Pistols & Bow Wow Wow

Jay Reatard 5/1/1980- 1/13/2010
Garage rock musician

Teddy Pendergrass 3/26/50- 1/13/2010
R&B crooner lead singer for Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes,
vocalist on the sublime Philly soul classic Wake Up Everybody

Herb Ellis 8/14/21- 3/28/10
Jazz guitar stylist and innovator

Abbey Lincoln 8/6/30- 8/14/10
Jazz singer and social activist

Keith "Guru" Elam 7/17/61- 4/19/10
Rapper and member of the Gang Starr possee

Mark Linkous 9/9/62- 3/6/10
Singer/songwriter, lead of Sparklehorse

Albertina Walker 8/29/29- 10/8/10
Queen of Gospel Music

Kate McGarrigle 2/6/46- 1/18/10
Folk music icon, one-half of the McGarrigle Sisters, wife of Loudon
Wainwright, mother of musicians Rufus & Martha Wainwright

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Best of


Best of YouTube is a new periodical feature in which your faithful servant will rummage through YouTube's cabinet of musical curiosities and present his newfound obscure objects of musical desire to his horrified readership.

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Take Off Your Sunglasses- Ezra Furman & the Harpoons

Ezra Furman and the Harpoons have been around for a few years and have released two albums. I didn't know about Ezra until I stumbled across his wacky Take Off Your Sunglasses video on YouTube. He dresses like Phil Spector's long lost son and sings like Gordon Gano, the frontman for the much loved post punk band, the Violent Femmes.

Sunglasses is one of those wise-ass indie pop anthems that screams out to be played over and over again, until your friends & family are wondering which straight jacket size is the best fit for you. Take note of the ever changing frame color of Ezra's sunglasses in the video...hmmmm.... do you think there's a hidden message?



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This Is Note A Photograph (live)- Mission of Burma

This video of Mission of Burma performing at Boston's leading music showcase, the Paradise in 1980 is one of the best videos of an early live performance of MoB among the dozens of uploads I've seen floating around on the internet.

Yours truly was somewhere in the Paradise audience for the show, as I was in attendance for every one of their Boston home gigs for nearly three years. I was so enthralled with MoB, I pleaded with Roger Miller to let me play a tambourine along with the band at their live performances... he politely declined my offer. Roger plays some amazing off kilter, atonal slide guitar on this song titled This Is Not A Photograph.



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Dancing With Death- Lou Miami & the Kozmetix

For two decades Lou Miami was the dark prince of the Boston garage rock scene. Despite his reputation for dabbling in the dark arts, Lou was a perfectly charming, mild mannered gentleman when he was off stage. Lou and his band, the Kozmetix recorded a couple of underground hits; one was a scary but hilarious bondage & discipline themed cover of Lulu's classic To Sir With Love and another was a little ditty which he wrote, Fascist Lover.

I visited his Allston apartment in 1980 for an after hours party and was impressed with his leopard skin upholstered sofa and the kitschy retro decor of his apartment. Lou died in 1995 in Los Angeles of mysterious causes (ahem!) but thanks to YouTube, the dark prince has achieved a new kind of immortality. This embedded song, Dancing With Death was from one of his last recording sessions and the subject matter is apropos to his untimely death.



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__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

zachsd

Very cool. Never heard of that band but that song is pretty sweet, and the video. Definitely will be checking them out. The whole video/song seemed very Dylan-esque to me.

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Gavin B.

HAPPY NEW YEAR TO EVERYONE AT MUSIC BANTER!



Gavin B's 7 Tips for New Year's Eve Revelers:

1. Don't get too shellacked this afternoon to go out and get shellacked tonight.

2. Don't hang around public restrooms asking "Where's the party?"

3. Avoid taking LSD prior to attending a costume party

4. Don't provoke authority figures in uniform

5. Avoid casual sex while unconscious

6. If you have trouble figuring out which one of the 3 steering wheels is the right one for driving, call a cab.

7. Don't listen to the song embedded below at midnight or you may be the first suicide fatality of the New Year.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

A lot of music critics have made the Dylan comparison. From an AMG review of Ezra Furman's 1st album: There are some remarkable resemblances to Dylan in Ezra's vocal cadence, guitar playing and harmonica. But Ezra's post modern attitude is more in the tradition of indie rock wise asses like Gordon Gano of the Violent Femmes, Paul Westerberg of the Replacements, or Stephen Malkmus of Pavement.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

Welcome To 1-1-11!


A poster for an April 1966 San Francisco Blues Project gig at the Avalon Ballroom. The advertised opening act was Great Society, a band that Grace Slick sang in prior to joining the Jefferson Airplane.

My first song selection of the new year is a beautiful baroque pop song from New York City's legendary Blues Project. Steve's Song appeared on the Blues Project's only studio album Projections. The ambitious neo-classical song arrangement required the sort of technical skills and precision playing that most rock bands lacked in the mid-Sixties.



A Thumbnail History of the Blues Project

The Blues Project was formed in 1965 by Al Kooper, a young Columbia Records session player who gained a measure of notoriety for devising that bluesy organ fill heard on Bob Dylan's first folk rock single, Like A Rolling Stone. Many say that the Blues Project was the first authentic American "underground" band of the Sixties. The talented band lineup featured Danny Kalb a gifted blues guitarist, and bassist Andy Kulberg who doubled on flute. The versatile band offered an electric brew of rock, blues, folk, pop, and even some jazz, classical, and psychedelia during their brief heyday.

The Blues Project broke up in 1967 when Danny Kalb disappeared for months after a bad acid trip. Kooper who had been feuding with Kalb over Kooper's proposal to add horns to the Blues Project, vacated with band while Kalb was absent without leave. Kooper took along Blues Project second guitarist Steve Katz and formed the first (and best) edition of the highly successful pop band Blood Sweat & Tears which included a section of horn players that he originally wanted to play in the Blues Project.

In 1973 the original Blues Project lineup reunited for a highly contentious free concert in Central Park, Guitarist Danny Kalb instructed keyboardist Al Kooper to refrain from making eye contact with him on stage. Apparently Kalb hadn't fully recovered from that bad acid trip in 1967.

__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Gavin B.

New Sounds in French Pop

Today I'm presenting a trio of French pop artists on the verge of crossover success into the American indie pop market. French pop has developed a large following in Europe in the five decades since musical provocateur Serge Gainsbourg teamed up with actress Brigitte Bardot to record a series of best selling European records including Bonnie & Clyde, Comic Strip and Harley Davidson.

In 1969 Gainsbourg teamed up with his future wife Jane Birkin to record Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus... which established Gainsbourg & Birkin as the avatars of fashionable pop music everywhere, except in the United States. The heavy breathing of Birkin toward the end of the song reminded American music industry executives of somebody in the throes of enjoying consensual adult sex and the music industry mavens solidly refused to distribute Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus in United States. A few brave music retailers sold imported copies Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus under the counter. I'm told the easiest way to find a copy of Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus in 1969 was at the local porno shop. If Je T'Aime...Moi Non Plus had been released in the United States in our current pop music market of 2011, I doubt if anyone would blink an eye at the sexual content of the song.

With the rise of interest in global music & the availability of more English language music by French pop artists, French pop is poised to establish a beach-head in America after five decades on the fringe of the American music mainstream. In the space below I'm presenting three of my favorite contemporary French pop artists for your review.

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Random Recipe



Random Recipe is a quartet from the French Canadian city of Montreal fronted by two female vocalists. In addition to French pop, the band performs an eclectic array of outernational music including hip hop, jazz, folk, samba, bossa nova and trip hop. There isn't a whole lot of biographical information available on the individual members of Random Recipe. Some the videos of their live performances indicate that the band is still a work in progress still working off the rough edges of their stage act,

The song that really caught my ear was the irresistible Shipwreck in which they poach a few of the lyrics from Louis Armstrong's Wonderful World.



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The Limiñanas




Based out of Perpignan, France, the Limiñanas are composed of drummer Marie Limiñana and bassist/organist/jack-of-all-trades Lionel Limiñana, as well as a host of guest vocalists. With their combination of fuzzy organ, half-spoken/half-sung vocals, and vintage production, the band captures the sexy, ultra-hip sound of classic French pop. It would be easy to mistake this 2010 recording of Down Underground for a lost French pop single from 1968.



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Keren Ann



Singer/songwriter Keren Ann Zeidel, who records under the name Keren Ann, was born in Israel in 1974 to a Dutch-Javanese mother, and a Russian-Israeli father which makes her an unlikely candidate for French pop stardom. She currently splits her time between Paris and New York.

Keren Ann isn't exactly a newcomer to the scene. She has a large following in Europe but remains under the radar in the United States. Her French language albums La Biographie de Luka Philipsen & La Disparition, both released in 2002, are favorites of mine.

Early on Keren Ann was influenced by Joni Mitchell and was more of a folk music singer. Over the past decade she's evolved into more of French pop performer with trip-hop influences. Keren Ann along with a new generation of French pop chanteuses like Charlotte Gainsbourg & Francoiz Breut are reshaping the sound of classic French pop using electronic and trip hop production techniques.

The success of French pop singers in the United States has proven to elusive over the years. Up until recently the best of the French pop singers like Francoise Hardy, Jane Birkin, Carla Bruni, and Vanessa Paradis have recorded nearly all their music in the French language. Keren Ann was one of the first French pop singers to break the longstanding taboo against recording English language albums. In 2007 Keren Ann released the self titled Keren Ann, her first all English language album but it failed to spark widespread American interest. From my perspective, Keren Ann's English language debut wasn't nearly as good as her previous French language albums.

Last year, Charlotte Gainsbourg's first English language album IRM was near the top of many best of 2010 indie music lists. Keren Ann's earlier English language album wasn't nearly as successful. Perhaps Gainsbourg's crossover success with an English language album will create a growing awareness of other French pop singers in America. Keren Ann has a stronger singing voice and writes better songs. Many attribute Gainsbourg's new found success in the United States to the involvement of her collaborator and new musical guru, Beck, the brilliant American pop music chameleon who is the darling of indie music opinion makers everywhere.

Keren Ann's soon to be released second English language album may finally establish her career in the USA. The song below,My Name Is Trouble is an advance release song from that highly anticipated February 28th 2011 English language album release entitled 101.



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__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt

Bulldog

Love the sound of that Karen Ann lass there. Whenever someone says the term singer/songwriter, I'll fess up, all I think of are dullards with charity shop acoustic guitars who sound like any boring tripe you'd see down the pub on a music night, so I was quite surprised to find that she's quite wide of that mark. Definitely gonna be on the lookout for her album when it hits the shelves.

Gavin B.

Sister Acts

There have been quite a few successful brother acts in pop music over the years most notably the Beach Boys, the Allman Brothers Band, the Kinks and Oasis. Successful sister acts are rarer, especially in rock music. The three "sister acts" I've chosen for today's profile are more of the folk/roots music variety. My choices reflect my own appreciation for intricate chorale arrangements which I learned singing in a Catholic school children's choir until my singing voice changed into a one octave frog croak at age 13.


First Aid Kit



First Aid Kit- Tiger Mountain Peasant Song (Fleet Foxes cover)
First Aid Kit sounds very much like a roots Americana group and I was taken aback when I discovered they are in fact Swedish. The duo is comprised of sisters Johanna and Klara Söderberg, whose vocal harmonies and woodsy, folk-influenced songwriting take influence from the likes of Fleet Foxes and Joanna Newsom. Hailing from suburban Enskede Sweden, the siblings began composing songs as young teenagers in 2007. The home-recorded "Tangerine" enjoyed airplay on Swedish radio later that summer, and the debut EP Drunken Trees helped expand the girls' audience upon its release in April 2008.



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The Roches




The Roches- Hammond Song
Since the early Eighties the Roche sisters have been the gold standard of precision harmony singing. The older sisters Terre and Maggie began by busking in the streets of New York as children, singing Christmas carols to passersby. Paul Simon heard them and used the pair of girl wonders as backup singers on his album There Goes Rhymin' Simon. After there debut album flopped in the mid Seventies, Terre and Maggie debated leaving the music business.

In the late 70s, the youngest Roche sister, Suzzy joined the band and the Roches began an unorthodox career path for a folk music group. The Roches began playing some of the New York's downtown punk clubs and built a cult following and drew the interest of several record labels.

For their sophomore 1979 album, the Roches hired on King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp as producer, who was a big fan of their music. On their second album the Roches were backed by members of Television and the Patti Smith Group. Subsequently the Roches made inroads to a demographic base of younger fans who normally listened to Blondie, the Ramones and the Talking Heads.

Since their early career success the Roches have periodically gone on hiatus, or disbanded, and done solo projects but they've always reunited every few years to record again.




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The Pierces



The Pierces- Secret
The Pierces, Allison and Catherine, are a sister act from Birmingham Alabama. Like the Roches they've had crossover success with both the roots Americana and the adult alternative music scenes. In 1999 The Pierces were marketed as a country group but they languished in Nashville for lack support from their label, Sony. Their 2000 debut album bombed and many less determined musicians would have called it a career, after Sony promptly dismissed the Pierces from the label.

Instead of breaking up, in the mid 2000s Allison and Catherine moved to New York took day jobs and reinvented themselves as darker, edgier group and built a following among indie music fans. Even if they haven't become international mega stars the Pieces have developed as solid fan base and they've quit their day jobs to become a very successful headline act at smaller club venues.



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__________________
There are two types of music: the first type is the blues and the second type is all the other stuff.
Townes Van Zandt