From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V5 #66 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Thursday, March 10 2005 Volume 05 : Number 066 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] swap CD review [Jeff ] Re: [loud-fans] SF and Christian rock [Jeff ] Re: [loud-fans] swap CD review [cardinal007@comcast.net] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 11:22:39 -0600 From: Jeff Subject: [loud-fans] swap CD review Michael Wells sent me a nice collection called _North Shore Line: From Chicago to Milwaukee_, whose theme, clearly enough, is acts with connections to Chicago or Milwaukee (our respective hometowns). Michael seems most interested here in folky, narrative songs - not what I'm usually interested in, but it's often better in swaps to be able to hear something other than what you already know. And the man has good taste in those kind of songs. Anyway: Steve from the band Frisbie "Some Exceptions" (live) - This song's built around a circular riff that I could easily hear being adapted for a full-band arrangement...I don't know the band, so maybe it has been. Anyway, a fine track. Peter Mulvey "Shirt" - Uptempo, with light band accompaniment, but still based on acoustic picking -but I'm not sure why he didn't call this "Corduroy Shirt" to make the title a bit more distinctive. Liz Phair "Red Light Fever" - Unexpected choice - although when you think about it, Phair really is a folk singer, often prone to narrative songs...it's just she uses electric guitars often and says "fuck" a lot. This is a catchy track only slightly marred by a touch too much slickness in the production, particularly evident in the chorus harmonies. Smashing Pumpkins "Crush" - I was prepared to cringe. The thing is that Billy Corgan doesn't know how to sing. That's entirely different from "can't sing"; his problem is that he too often pushes his voice into unpleasant territory. When he lays back and fits in with a slow-burning, moody, and slightly psychedelic feel like this song, the band is actually pretty good - something I'd forgotten from their annoying, excessive, but more popular tracks. Violent Femmes "Blister in the Sun" - Everyone knows this song. The Juleps "Wild Beautiful Thing" - Kinda reminds me of the countrier moments of early Wilco, but with a bit less crunch in the rhythm guitar (here acoustic instead of the sorta Keith-ish feel of those Wilco records). Willy Porter "Cheap Wine" (live) - I like some of what Porter tries to do, but his two weaknesses are a tendency to oversing and to overplay - - he sometimes approaches that sort of annoying, busy, snappy-poppin' Ani DiFranco guitar style; and sometimes he tries to do this sort of "soulful" singing that feels overdone in context. He reins in these tendencies here, and shows that when he does so, and sings with feeling but without overdone emphaticness, he can deliver an effective song. The Freddy Jones Band "In a Daydream" (live) - Doesn't do much for me. They're solid - clearly they can play, and the second (of two) lengthy guitar solos is actually pretty effective at raising some sparks, but the song itself seems pretty slight in a (I hate to say it) kinda Dave Matthews-y way. John Belushi plays Jeopardy (Steve Dahl Show 1981) - Is exactly what it says it is. Buddy Guy "Mustang Sally" - It's yr Chicago style blues, delivered by a convincing vocalist and guitarist. I still am not fond of over-arranged blues (i.e., the lounge-blues horns and femme vocalists) but Guy's talents can't be denied. The Kinsey Report "Full Moon on Main Street" - Sorry - "updating" Chicago blues by applying brittle, almost-80s-style drum recording and a similar sort of era-appropriate guitar sound...well let's just say I'm skeptical generally about modern Chicago blues, as it tends to be lower-octane versions of just rock'n'roll - and if you're going to play just rock'n'roll, it helps to rock out. I may be a white guy in his forties, but this still bores me... Jeffrey Foucault "Tropic of Cancer" - I've heard a lot about this guy (lot of it from Michael), so I was curious to hear what he sounded like (I hadn't, because I am lame). I think his biggest strength is his weathered voice, which gives a depth to his singing. The other nice thing about this track is a subtle sort of moodiness in the production and arranging, which is somewhat rare in acoustic-guitar - -based music (Richard Buckner - see below - is also good at this). I may have to check this guy out further - but first I need to find out if he pronounces his name like the French theorist or like some guy from Chicago would say it ;) Dag Juhlin "Little Black Glasses" - You'd think missed-opportunity bittersweet songs about slightly nerdy-girl crushes would be old by now - but this one works just fine. Redbird "Lovely as the Day Is Long" - Male/female duet with acoustic guitar of this Paul Cebar song that, harmonically and melodically, evokes a sort of Broadway musical feel. But because it's just two acoustic guitars and singers, it's completely glitz-free - which makes it rather charming, if a bit slight. Steve Goodman "The Dutchman" - Goodman was, if I remember right, an underheralded exemplar of the sort of folky, sixties-seventies singer-songwriter type that people like Jackson Browne made big bank on by blanding out and applying a California gloss. Stripped of such, it's a lot more appealing - Goodman' slightly quavery voice helps here too. Richard Buckner "Ariel Ramirez" - In the larger genre-like space that Michael presents on this CD, a singer's voice is pretty important - since it becomes pretty much the main sonic focus and is what sells the lyrics (also important, but I'm too lame to spend time on them). Buckner's well-suited there - there's both a rough-hewn and a resonant quality to his voice, and that, along with the subtleties of the sound production here (some quiet piano, some odd, almost electronic atmosphere that crops up once or twice), makes him interesting - one of the folks I need to pay more attention to than I have. Wilco "Monday" - Almost everyone here has this song, right? Wilco in straightforward rock mode: they were really good at it, but I'm one who isn't disappointed that they've mostly moved on. I think Tweedy's lyrics need a slightly less accommodating and more distinctive framework. Still and all - if this kind of song is what you came to Wilco for, I can understand your being disappointed in _Yankee Hotel Foxtrot_... Thanks again to Michael for a nice entree into parts of musical world...he spared me the Rush tribute bands this time ;) - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 9 Mar 2005 11:29:03 -0600 From: Jeff Subject: Re: [loud-fans] SF and Christian rock On Tue, 8 Mar 2005 23:42:43 -0800, Matthew Weber wrote: > I find the classification a little annoying too, but I guess it makes > just as much sense to classify music by lyrical content (Christian > rock, women's music) as it does to classify it by business model > (indie rock). In any case, the distinction between musical style and > marketing category is pretty slippery these days. I'm suspicious of genre generally (accidental pun) - I hate that online databases rely on it so much (as in iTunes or on CDDB and the like). But oddly, I think "indie rock" is a genre - or at least, it's genre-like in that I don't think just any music can be marketed as "indie rock" (well, it can be - but the description doesn't stick with me) and I sometimes hear proto- indie-rock sounds in earlier acts. What I find amusing is when people clearly have checked the first box in submitting stuff to CDDB: it's "blues," and a lot of utterly non-blues records end up called "blues" for that reason. It's also fun when, say, somoene rebels against the whole genre-labeling system and claims that _Corpse-Grinding Demon in Infant Medical Trauma Ward_ by the Cannibal Goatwhore Viscera Sniffers is "children's music." - -- ...Jeff The Architectural Dance Society http://spanghew.blogspot.com ------------------------------ Date: Wed, 09 Mar 2005 23:22:00 +0000 From: cardinal007@comcast.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] swap CD review Jeffrey writes about Liz Phair: <> And thank God for both. Hmmmm -don't forget about all the nekkid and semi-nekkid pics she poses for, either. And publishes. ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V5 #66 ******************************