Funny, I can read the label on that tear gas canister.

mark bettaman

Today marks the end of an era at the Times, with Mark Bittman announcing the conclusion of his weekly column, The Minimalist. Can I say I have read and cooked over 700 columns worth of his work? No. And I can't even say that Bittman taught me how to cook (I mean, I have a mother and a grandmother, y'know?). And well, he hasn't taught me anything about LaMonte Young or Steve Reich, minimalists both.

But did he offer a new perspective on consumption choices? Did he help me understand the process of cooking and eating? Did he encourage me to stop buying things like cake mix, packaged granola and salad dressing in a bottle and instead DIY? Did his columns and cookbook allow me to experiment with things at the vegetable stand that I had never risked buying before? Did I make a white bean soup with collards and brisket just last night out of his Minimalist Cookbook? And did a casual discussion at a bar with a woman about --of all the recipes in the world-- parsley cream sauce, lead me on a new life adventure? Unequivocally yes.

(Incidentally, his parsley cream sauce recipe is one of the few disasters.)

new jams

Pazz & Jop Ballot

Funny, a month on I would have failed a pop quiz if you had asked me what it was I wound up voting for in the 2010 Pazz & Jop Album's Poll. Regretted forgetting about Erykah Badu, Robyn, Motor City Drum Ensemble, and The Crystal Ark single but am grateful to have somehow made it through the year without remembering Kanye or "Fuck You."

But I'm pretty pleased with how my singles ballot came out, with only four of the ten garnering another vote (#1, 7, 9 and 10). I know the trend is that thousands of singles get only one vote for them, yet it's still satisfying to shine a light on some of the new music that got to me this year. Then again, it's also weird to realize that some of my respected peers posted zero (or like, four) singles.

1	Try to Find Me, "Get to My Baby (TBD Extension)" Golf Channel
2	Bubble Club, "Violet Morning Moon (Dr. Dunks Remix)" Bubble Club
3	Mim Suleiman, "Nyuli" Running Back
4	Tiago, "Rider (COS/MES Remix)" Ene Japan
5	Mick, "Macho Brother (DJ Nozaki's Macho Break Mix)" 10 Inches of Pleasure
6	Entro Senestre, "La Caccia" Wt
7	Oneohtrix Point Never, "Returnal" Editions Mego
8	Crue-L Grand Orchestra, "(You Are) More Than Paradise (Theo Parrish Long Version 1)" Crue-L
9	Midnight Magic, "Beam Me Up (Jacques Renault Remix)" Permanent Vacation
10	Justin Bieber, "U Smile (800% Slower by Shamantis)" Mp3

arthur's landing feature

In the Friday edition of the Wall Street Journal, I wrote a feature about Arthur's Landing, an eclectic collective of musicians like former Modern Lover Ernie Brooks, minimalist composer Elodie Lauten, trombonist Peter Zummo, and others who continue to perform the music of their dearly departed friend and colleague Arthur Russell, nearly two decades after his death.

A year ago...

A year ago, I was walking down my street when a plywood wall from a construction site fell and struck me on the side of the head. I blacked out but didn't fall down. When I could finally see straight, I staggered home and soon wound up in the emergency room. What was worse was what followed: the realization that my head was not okay. There was the awful sensation of my brain being shaken. Music and noise were overwhelming. I could only board the subway with earplugs in, and standing in a public space became traumatizing. Concerts were completely out of the question. I could barely get out of my house without being seized by fear at the unfiltered sensorial data that would soon assault me.

What was worse was the sudden struggle to write. Words and ideas now remained cloaked behind curtains, deep underwater, submerged under shadows, far from my searching fingers. I would commence writing a sentence and by the time I typed the period, I would have no idea what the beginning had been. And when I did write, I missed deadlines by days or weeks. What once flowed like water was now more like chipping at compacted ice, the process itself flailed from hours into days. It was a fraught time, my future as fuzzy and dim as my thoughts. The fear that I would never be able to write again was a palpable one. How can the head assess its own state? What examining thought can determine that the thought process has returned to its original state?

I wasn't recovering. My paranoia deepened, I was reminded every day that the only thing I believed that I possessed, my head and my thoughts, were no longer mine. Only when I went to see specialists did I learn that a physical trauma to the head means that all of the brain's energies go towards physical repair, rather than psychic maintenance. Meaning that emotional issues from the past, long tamped down by the head, are suddenly loosed. Thoughts and feelings that I had been able to push away for decades were now undeniable. What inmates had once been locked away were now roaming free.

Slowly, my faculties returned. Or rather, I became comfortable with this compromised state and began to accept it as the new normalcy. How I was in 2009 was forever lost to me. In no uncertain terms, last year was the scariest year of my life and I'm grateful just to have the chance to keep fighting.

print bedia

Starting this week, and alternating weeks with my cohort and near-twin Andy B., I am doing concert listings for the Wall Street Journal. In this week's edition, I highlighted folks like Peter Gordon's Love of Life Orchestra, Optimo, and Lee Fields.

Nu Grooves in Brooklyn

In this week's Village Voice, I wrote a profile on the uptick in dance music labels in New York City. Shouts went out to Blackdisco, Wurst, Deconstruct Music, and others, but I focused on three growing in Brooklyn: W.T. Records, Long Island Electrical Systems, and Golf Channel. All are worth investigating, and each release varies greatly from one to the next.

2010

I filed my Pazz & Jop right before Christmas, but can't recall what wound up on there right now. Instead, I recall what didn't make it there. Where to end, where to begin:

VA: Concentration mix CD
With the demise of his Lovefingers mp3 site, Andrew Hogge goes it one better, putting together this breezy, chilled-out mix that finds middle ground between Italian soundtracks, acid-folk, pre-Buckingham/Nicks Fleetwood Mac, French psychedelia, and Balearic house, all of the tracks here Shazam befuddlers.
Dr. Dunks "No P's" (Dolly Parton Edit)
Edward Larry Gordon: Celestial Vibration (reissue)
Virgo 2LP (reissue)

Riley: Grandma's Roadhouse LP (reissue)
Chicken neck and skillet grease country-rock from 1971, dug up by the same feller who found those old Karen Dalton reels and Kris Kristofferson's publishing demos. For my imminent country music residency at the Ace Hotel, this will be in my bag no doubt.
Noveller: Desert Fires

Kreidler: "Impressions D'Afrique"

Malvoeaux: "Targets"

Dadawah: Wadadasow LP
This crucial reissue of an early Ras Michael session kicked off the Dug Out label. All of the singles done so far have varied in terms of the Jamaican spectrum (mighty dancehall, deep Black Ark cuts), but not in quality. Mesmeric, tranced-out drum thunder.
Protect-U: "Double Rainbow"
Motor City Drum Ensemble: Raw Cuts

COS/MES: "Chaosexotica"

Indignant Senility: Plays Wagner
Dark ambient tape project that turns Wagner into GAS, with all the attendant vinyl crackle and analog hiss. For gray mornings and drunken night auditions only.
Anthony Moore/ARP: Freakways
T++: Wireless
Bob Holroyd "African Drug (Four Tet remix)"

Gala Drop: Overcoat Heat/ Sea Power & Change: s/t
Portugal's Tiago came out me from more angles than any other producer of the moment. James Murphy packed his "Motorcycles" track in his DJ bag and even put out his latest single. I myself dropped his earlier single "Coaster" when DJing on Governor's Island as fitting opener for Tiago's band Gala Drop. And as the year ends, I'm listening to his slow-mo EP as Sea Power & Change on repeat.
Efdemin: Chicago
Avey Tare: "Lucky 1"
Welcome Stranger: "Brolene" ("Jolene" edit)

Backwoods: "Blue Moon"
Cost-prohibitive though it may be to convert the yen, the amount of killer nu-disco and house music coming out of Japan right now makes it worth the rate. Mick's "Macho Brother" made my P&J singles list, but I enjoyed Backwoods and COS/MES deeply as well.
Ray Mang feat. Lady Kier: "Bulletproof"
Claremont 56 (beach-house label)
Prins Thomas: s/t

captain betaheart

My best friend in high school received a cassette from my future best friend in high school, a pink-magenta looking thing with the most grotesque cover imaginable: a man in a top hat topped with a shuttlecock, a fish head pressed against his own face. It had stared out at me before, in the writings of Lester Bangs, on every single one of those "Top __ Albums Ever," but even in listening to Trout Mask Replica, there was simply no path into such wilderness. I didn't get it. Listened to it time and time again, and it was wholly alien, hieroglyphic, off-putting, brusque, obtuse. And when there was a moment of clarity in it, it was strangely...hysterical.

It was the humor of the music that served as portal into the world of Don Van Vliet and Captain Beefheart, of Drumbo and The Magic Band. Lines like: "I run on laser beans"; "I took off my pants 'n felt free/ The breeze blowin' up me 'n up the canyon/ Far as the eye could see"; "A squid eating dough out of a polyethylene bag is fast 'n' bulbous, got me?"; the prank phone call vocals of "The Blimp"; the stoned chit-chat with neighbors at the end of "Hair Pie: Bake 1"; the tape rewinds amid the grunts of "China Pig," through such funny moments, they let me enter into TMR finally.

From there, I became of aware of what made the Captain so revered. That play of words, of images, of outré music (delta blues, free verse and free jazz, feedback), it was that childlike sense of making 'sense' that has stuck with me. With a bit of sugar, the spikes could be digested, too. There's still a rush to be had when the procession of horns finally enters the room on "Hair Pie: Bake 1" or when all the disparate fragments of "Ella Guru" come together via that one looooong drum roll of Drumbo, all cohering into an explosive, cartoonish, wide-eyed chorus.

When I was still in high school, under the spell of Richard Meltzer's insouciant and stoned essays from Gulcher, one of my first writing efforts was about how Trout Mask Replica was the first hip-hop album, citing as evidence the way Arrested Development dressed, the amount of skits embedded in the album, that the music was deemed "phat." In later years, I had the supreme honor of being involved in the putting together of Revenant's Grow Fins box set. Even with the unpacking of mythology, the deflating of said "Blimp" that the book inside revealed (like the atrocious conditions under which TMR was recorded) couldn't help but give me another level of appreciation for what the Captain did, good or ill. And today, I feel similarly to my former-editor Chuck Eddy, who laments in his recent obit, "he barely seems like he's in the music's DNA at all."

Lord knows, he remains in mine though. Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band initiated me into such a sound world and --almost twenty years on-- I've been stuck in it ever since. It's not unlike the end of "Old Fart at Play," as once inside this music, all else can be understood: "The old fart inside was now breathin' freely/ From his perfume bottle atomizer air bulb invention/ His excited eyes from within the dark interior glazed/ and watered in appreciation of his thoughtful preparation..."

Never mind that I haven't been able to sit through all four sides of Trout Mask Replica since the end of my pot-smoking days. Or that upon hearing the news this morning of the Captain's departure from God's Golfball, I am reaching for the albums that surround TMR first: the tough garage of Safe as Milk, the maligned psychedelia of Strictly Personal, the soulful, radio-play maneuvering of Clear Spot and bittersweet moments like "Her Eyes Are a Blue Million Miles."

Soon enough, I'll get to the sugar and spikes of "Dirty Blue Gene" and "Making Love to a Vampire With a Monkey on My Knee," the free-jazz farewell of "Light Reflects Off the Oceands of the Moon." And as I move deeper towards those first  memories of my love of music, I'll no doubt turn to gaze into the glassy eyes of that trout mask itself one last time.

Spin Year-End

Some blurbs for Spin's End of Year round-up:

Neil Young: Le Noise

Gorillaz: Plastic Beach

No Age: Everything in Between

Beach House: Teen Dream

Eden and John's East River String Band

I hung out with Eden Brower and John Heneghan of the East River String Band last week and wrote this piece about them for the Wall Street Journal. Tone-wise, it's one of my favorites, if I do say so myself. Enjoy.

texas jams

A few things items I copped when in visiting Texas:


Level 42: "Something About You" b/w "Coup D'Etat"


Katie Kissoon: "You're My Number One"


ZZ Top: "It's Only Love" 7"


Fatback: "You're My Candy Sweet" b/w "King Tim III"
Widely considered to be the first recorded rap.


Commodores: Movin' On (for "Cebu" alone)


James Gang: Yer Album

thanksgiving leftovers

The turkey-eating holiday means a visit to the parents' retirement house, which also means a chance to re-visit the archives (i.e., the small corner of a back closet where the records are kept). There was no room left in my digestive tract, but there was a bit of space in the rollerbag, so I packed up a few old albums I hadn't heard in nearly ten years now:

Beastie Boys: "She's On It" 12"
Ugh, the sight of Ad-Rock's chunky, pale legs (with the sock half-off) and Mike D's hairy-ass legs still makes my stomach queasy.

Stereolab: Refried Ectoplasm (Switched On Volume 2)
Here's hoping the 90s revival brings back a massive re-appraisal of le Groop. Think this is going to spur me to start digging out the myriad seven inches I've tucked away somewheres...

Will Rigby: Sidekick Phenomenon
Bought this from Ira Kaplan when Yo La Tengo played at Tacoland in...1994, was it? The cover of Hank Williams' "Setting the Woods on Fire" is a stone-cold classic.

Sun Ra: Astro Black
Perhaps the most influential musician for me back in my Texas days. A beaming Mr. Ra against a backdrop of black stars makes me smile as well, but I'm crestfallen to realize that skronk has not aged well for me at all. Find myself going to his more percussive, twinkling jazz miniatures more than the sprawling space-noise numbers.

Pink Floyd: Meddle and Atom Heart Mother
Listening to these two albums back-to-back makes me lament bands' inability to realize ambitious epics along the lines of these title tracks, reminding me of my unfulfilled wish that Boards of Canada make a 15-minute track. But in pulling out my copy of AHM, I realized that a snarky Sound Exchange clerk had used the plastic bag for my own private-pressed LP, circling my name and labeling me "local rock star." Guess such frustrations made me into the rock critic that I am today.

betalessi

Been sweet to see the tolerable hivemind side of the internet, as the Alessi Brothers' "Seabird" flew back around on posts and re-posts --courtesy of the LCD Soundsystem/ Hot Chip collaboration-- and folks hopped aboard its back. Or re-boarded the yacht rock yacht they had gotten off of after Michael McDonald did that Grizzly Bear thing. But will the hivemind get to this? 

Samamidon

My feature on Sam Amidon ran yesterday at the Wall Street Journal. Have a read. A favorite insight of Amidon's that came up in the article but didn't appear in the piece is this:

When we go and listen to field recordings of folk songs in this day and age, you’re often listening to a recording from the 70s of someone still playing the banjo in Kentucky. By definition, that person is an outsider by that point. If he’s still playing old-time fiddle up in the mountains in the 70s it meant you hadn’t gotten a television, that things had passed you by. you’re still an outlier. The trajectory of field recordings in the 20^th century. The ones from the 1920s, the technical quality of playing is really high, everything is enthused, it’s quite professional, almost. Whereas the stuff from later on gets really strange. They’re recording someone in their house and his teeth are falling out, a baby is crying in the background, he forgets half the words…there’s a really eccentric quality to those recordings.

atx

Since I had a dream last night that I was DJing before the Royal Trux reunion show, now's as good a time as any to mention that I wrote the liner notes for the reissue of Thank You, originally released in 1995. Seeing as how much I have enjoyed re-living the pleasures of Drag City's own recent repressing of Cats and Dogs, it was an honor to be able to chat with Jennifer Herrema about that time.

The Trux greatly influenced my post-high school listening habits, for better or ill, and it's a pity to see how Pitchfork recently pulled their loathsome revisionist history to write them out of the 1990s. But my fandom was tested when they pulled through Austin in the early 90s. Rather than get a set of the dreamy/ druggy songs of Cats & Dogs, we were instead subjected to one of the biggest Fuck You  performances ever encountered. Haggerty decided he was John Cale's European Son, scratching up a violin over a drum machine mixed twice as loud, all while Herrema slinked to and fro, singing incoherently and looking like she was liable to murder anyone who gazed upon her.

And then, less than six months on, there was a promo cassette of Thank You making the rounds, the Trux turned into a boogie rock band. It was confusing, to say the least, but it was fun to talk to Jennifer and relive that time with a woman who scared the living shit out of me that night.

betadom

All the film world loves the lovers at the Criterion Collection for continually unearthing movie classics, but they've really done humanity a favor with the first domestic release of Nobuhiko Obayashi's WTF masterstroke House in the United States. Language continually fails when it comes to unpacking this one, so I'll just say that the wholly innocuous first three minutes of the film are more egghead-scrambling than the last thirty years of cinema, and that that is just the tip of the iceberg. Unfortunately, the DVD doesn't have Obayashi's commercial work of that era. Not to be missed is this commercial, featuring Charles Bronson and the Japanese Nat King Cole:

wfmu record fair fare

I have successfully avoided record fairs for a dozen years now, after overhearing a conversation with Byron Coley about his sausage diet (wish that was a euphemism for something). But this year, too many friends had tables at the record fair, so I suffered the slings and arrows of hearing grown men cite "I Just Wasn't Made For These Times" as excuse for why he can't leave his mother's spare bedroom.

I did find these tracks though: