as always, i'm astounded by the beauty of spring. i'm lucky enough to have to walk up a long hill covered with blossoming trees and bushes every time i come home. the smells inundate my nostrils and i'm excited to merely be experiencing it.
my window is wide open right now. it may be a little chilly to have it as far open as i do, but i like chilly to sweaty hot, which it will be in three months time - not having the luxury of air-conditioning will only increase the sweaty part.
...of course, i will have the luxury of air-conditioning between June 13th and July 17th, during which time i'll be back in the U.S. that's right, folks, i'm a-comin' home. the pretense is as such: 1) my film tour business became to expensive to implement; 2) my 5-year college reunion starts on the 15th of June (a fact which amazes me - 5 years already); 3) two of my best friends from Carleton are marrying each other on the 15th of July, thus my over-a-month stay stateside.
so, get out your agendas and pencil me in - make the trip to Indiana to visit, because i'll be going out of my mind with boredom there. and i won't be going anywhere terribly fast since my knees are still in horrible condition - i'm seeing a third doctor on Thursday for a third opinion.
doctor 1 said it was probably a torn miniscus. doctor 2 said cartilage. doctor 3? well, we'll see. i'm getting frightened by the fact that my knees don't seem to be self-healing - which is something i'd taken for granted my entire life up to now: no injuries ever seemed to last long.
le sigh.
but it's a beautiful time of the year. so i am grateful for that. plus, i haven't worn my winter coat in over a week! plus, i'm going to my 5-year reunion where i will be frustrated at not being able to join in the inevitable dozen games of ultimate frisbee that i would otherwise join in...
anyway, i'm feeling upset while simultaneously thrilled. it's hard to explain. weird.
yeah.
Taking a page from the recent bluegrass revival, the Boss is back. Assembling a group of merry musicians, Springsteen has created a boisterous album filled with rollicking tunes that roll where they should roll and swing where they should swing (and twang where they should twang).
We Shall Overcome is a collection of cover songs. Better yet, it’s a collection of cover songs of cover songs! That is to say, Springsteen decided to record an album full of songs once covered by folk singer Pete Seeger. This is such a departure from recent Springsteen work – wait, I take that back… This is such a departure from any previous Springsteen work that one can only be skeptical when first pressing play.
Inevitably, it’s hard to escape the jubilant festivity with which the album is so deeply engrained. Kicking off the album with a drumbeat and a stereotypical “1, 2, 3” shout, “Old Dan Tucker” sets the mood at fun and one can only but wonder if the momentum can be sustained. Banjo does not make frequent appearances in Springsteen’s extensive oeuvre, but here it almost takes front seat and it does so beautifully. It feels like the beginning of a good ol’ American hoe-down.
“Jesse James” comes up next laced with horns and a rollicking drive that is unstoppable. The musicians are up for the challenge of maintaining the pace, it seems. “Jesse James” leads into the slow ballad “Mrs. McGrath”, which is layered with strings and reveals the origins of traditional folk ballads – one would be hard-pressed not to identify this song as celtic in origin with its “too-rah-yay” chorus and beautifully melodic string lines.
The album’s real showpiece is the fourth track, “O Mary Don’t You Weep”. The iTunes download of the album comes with a seven-minute video of the recording of this particular song – the video reveals what one can hear in the album at large: the joy the musicians were experiencing despite the sometimes sorrowful themes being touched upon. “O Mary” has a sung chorus that wouldn’t sound out of place as a Springsteen-composed song, which only makes it evident why Springsteen felt he could cover these songs.
The hoe-down picks up again during the next track, “John Henry”; this song is where my wish of being trapped in a barn with Bruce and His Merry Band and a few dozen dancers is only made more longingly strong. Making sure to keep the pace interesting, the album slows down with “Erie Canal” next, which sports a wonderful bridge filled with horns and a New Orleans-inspired groove.
It’s hard for most to really get into a genre so blatantly country, but the soul and spirit of the music and the musicians involved only help to make it easier. “Jacob’s Ladder”, a traditional gospel-tinged ditty comes blaring out of the gates with its’ chorus of “higher and higher/we are brothers and sisters all” is infectious and laden with the soul missing from so much of today’s mainstream (or even indie) rock.
The album never really loses its’ momentum, I’m pleased to say. Covering such elementary school choir classics as “We Shall Overcome” and “Shenandoah” as well, Springsteen manages to expose the raw nostalgia embodied in decent folk music, the way only a true American artist can make it feel. Springsteen has cobbled together a collection of musicians who were destined to have a good time and the result is evident – hopefully, he’ll be able to tour with a similar band of merry folk and bring this barn-stomping music to the populace at large. It’s a good time and it’s hard to ignore.
GRADE: A
Ostensibly billed as a “festival”, Lucerna Music Bar’s “Street Beat Groove Festival” featured American hip-hop legends De la Soul as the headlining act. Also slated to appear, according to the plethora of posters adorning every street lamp and building wall in Prague, were the American hip-hop act Ohmega Watts, France’s La Cédille and Glasgow’s Da Blingz. Actually appearing were the first three, the last getting lost somewhere between Glasgow and Prague, I suppose.
The concert started off with La Cédille, a full band hip-hop group. Composed of eight members, the group tried to get a groove going and by the end had hit its stride, but that’s not saying too much.
The second group, actually artist, was Ohmega Watts, hailing from Portland, Oregon. Along for the ride were Florida’s Surreal and another MC of whom I regrettably never caught the name. I say regrettably because the third MC was a fireball, full of energy and surely a Beastie Boy who got lost on the way to the studio. The French grouped seemed decent until this collective put them to shame.
At the top of the bill and hitting the stage at the ripe hour of 11:40 p.m., De la Soul came out with a bang. This group, whose recent album The Grind Date was ignored by the mainstream but which nevertheless serves to educate the radio-play artists what real hip-hop is, had the energy and style to make an otherwise slow crowd get moving.
Admittedly, I am not terribly familiar with De la’s work outside of their first (3 Feet High and Rising) and last (the aforementioned Grind Date) albums and a few scattered singles, but my lack of depth was not important as the sheer radiance of the group infected the crowd.
With Posdnuos and Dave (Trugoy the Dove) taking the front of the stage, Maseo (Pasemaster Mase) manned the tables in the rear for much of the trios hour-plus set. Maseo came out first and started spinning for about 10 minutes before the other joined him – starting with call-and-response DJing, paying particular homage to A Tribe Called Quest. Once the full group was onstage, the ball really started rolling.
Playing the crowd as only master MCs know how, De la had people waving their hands and screaming back within minutes. Unfortunately, the energy of the crowd didn’t quite live up to their expectations, I feel. This became especially evident when the group declined to come out for an encore, since the crowd wasn’t really clamoring for it anyway. The crowd’s low energy and ADD arm-waves (they didn’t last very long) nevertheless did not stop De la from putting on a manic and intense show.
They also mixed their playlist between albums very well. Instead of focusing almost exclusively on The Grind Date, they instead included songs from across their catalogue in their medleys. Of particular note, they got “Potholes in My Lawn” out quite early and instead of saving their most famous song (“Me, Myself and I”) for their encore, they stuck it in the middle of their third medley. All three seemed to be having a good time, with smiles and laughter abundant. Their charisma, either individually or as a chemical combination, is simply so thick, it’s hard to criticize them.
At one point, during “Rock Co.Kane Flow”, they played the songs breakdown to the hilt. The point at which the song stops briefly on the album became a minute or two, each time. The trio would freeze in place and the crowd would scream their heads off until they started moving again. It was a fantastic moment of theatricality that only served to highlight their talent at working the crowd into a fever.
Their final song involved pulling almost every woman in the pit onto the stage, making it a mess of writhing bodies all bouncing in time to their raps and beats. The group left the stage to the tune of Gorillaz’ “Feel Good, Inc.”, to which they had contributed.
Alas, the crowd I think never quite lived up to their expectations, as they felt the encore calls were sufficiently lacking – and they were. The group declined an encore and the Gorillaz album was cut in favor of the house music. The lights came up and so ended one of the best concerts of my admittedly lacking concert-going life.
The only problems I had with this concert were the quite late start time and the lackluster, in hindsight, opening group.
GRADE: A-
Okay, I’m a little behind in this review as this album was released in September of last year, but it recently hit my ears in a big way, so I feel obligated to give it a mention. While Ziggy and the rest of the Marley clan have been trying to recapture the family legacy since their illustrious father’s early departure, most of the time the efforts have simply lacked the finesse and soul of Bob Marley’s work. I say this as Ziggy Marley and the Melody Maker’s Fallen Is Babylon plays, having come alphabetically after Damian Marley’s Welcome to Jamrock on my mp3 player.
So, what is it about Welcome to Jamrock? Jamaican music has moved substantially farther into electronic and/or increasingly engineered forms since the 70’s. In the past 15 years or so, we’ve seen the emergence of such Jamaican stars as Shabba Ranks (“Mr. Loverman”), Shaggy (“Mr. Boombastic”, “It Wasn’t Me”) and Sean Paul (“Shake That Thing”, the currently popular “Temperature”), but these artists have been focusing on blending Jamaican dancehall with American hip-hop – and they’ve arguably been increasingly successful.
And then came Junior Gong to blow away the dust accumulating on the same tired, deep-voiced monotone rap-MC’s that seem to be making their way across the Caribbean onto American radio. Not that this album will ever get the kind of airplay that Sean Paul’s newest is getting. And, admittedly, it starts off with a number featuring the same rap style and the same over-produced feel of anything Sean Paul has done. But the song, “Confrontation”, does have one thing going for it in that it brings in a shadow of the past, his father’s former partner (along with Peter Tosh) in the Wailers – Bunny Wailer (aka Bunny Livingstone). Throwing in that little bit of history is an indication of where Junior is about to take us, despite the lackluster start to the album.
The second song, “There for You”, is where the album finally begins to reveal that Junior Gong, rather than the more prolific Ziggy, seems to have been the true inheritor of his father’s power. It’s a slow-moving reggae groove that picks up where his father left off. The instruments are not as synthetic as other reggae albums of the past twenty years – a more organic sound has replaced the synthetic keyboard sound of, for example, Ziggy’s Fallen Is Babylon. Admittedly, the song does have a string line that is evidently synthetic, but the overall groove of the song sounds more natural and soulful than anything on Fallen.
The title track follows “There for You” and it starts off with a sample – “Out in the streets/They call it murder”. Suffice it to say, the Junior Gong’s rapping puts an end to the previous incarnations of reggae-rap hybrids. The song itself is fully reggae with only rapping on the top. The lyrics to the song reflect on Jamaican life as a whole, referencing the rich, naïve Sandals tourists to stolen elections to extreme poverty that leads to a life of crime. His father’s political spirit lives on.
Damian’s brother Stephen shows up on “All Night”, a song surely ready for club play. It amazes me, also, the extent to which the Marley siblings’ voices so closely resemble their father’s voice. “Beautiful” features a guest spot by the tragic Bobby Brown and the song itself sounds like a perfect fusion between Damian’s dancehall/reggae roots and Brown’s modern American R&B roots. Speaking of roots, The Roots’ Black Thought shows up on “Pimpa’s Paradise”, in which Stephen Marley also guest stars, capturing a theme equally prominent in both dancehall and hip-hop. Sampling his father’s “Exodus”, “Move!” is the song most likely to get your feet moving, inevitably ending with a frenzy on the dance floor.
My favorite song on the album comes near the end. Guest-starring American hip-hopper Nas, “Road to Zion” has a soulful beat with female hums underneath Damian’s soulful crooning raps. When Nas comes in, he’s ready to tackle the sad situation of the world – attacking Robert Mugabe and the Catholic Church in equal measure, amongst other lamentations about the inequality and hypocrisy of the world at large.
The album rounds out with three more songs, the first of which, “We’re Gonna Make It”, seems like it was ripped directly out of the hands of Damian’s father’s hands. “In 2 Deep” is another track destined for the dance floor. Lastly, “Khaki Suit” rounds out the album nicely with a highly produced, yet highly catchy beat.
The album itself defies expectations, switching fluidly from slow, droning hip-hop/reggae to full on reggae to full on commercially ready dancehall hip-hop a la Sean Paul (but better, in my opinion). Despite the prevalence of production on an album such as this, the instruments and mixing on this album seem more organic and alive.
I can’t help but think that if Bob Marley was still alive, he would have released an album like this years ago. This album carries Bob’s legacy into new territories and I have no doubt that he would’ve gladly welcomed the sound and experimentation to his fold. If you’re a fan of reggae, especially the late Bob Marley, and are willing to open your mind to a more hip-hop influenced sound, then you must check this album out. Check that - even if you aren’t necessarily a hip-hop fan, you ought to at least give this one a listen as it may expose you to a new and enjoyable sound.
GRADE: B+
The Flaming Lips built themselves a mountain. For me, they started the building with Transmissions from the Satellite Heart (and its accompanying odd-man-out hit She Dont Use Jelly) and its follow-up Clouds Taste Metallic; but they added an enormous amount of solid ground when they released The Soft Bulletin. They even managed to come quite close to topping that monumental album when they released its follow-up Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots. They gave themselves an enormous challenge. How can you follow two phenomenal albums? It wont be easy.
And its not. At War with the Mystics is a good album. I dont think the Lips are capable of making a bad album. Its just that Mystics simply doesnt have the gravity of The Soft Bulletin or the melody of Yoshimi. The first time I heard Mystics, I was inevitably let down as it didnt measure up. It wasnt fair to them though. I dont think either of their previous two albums were easily digested on their first listens either.
The opening salvo from Mystics is catchy. Upon first listen youll probably think The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song is a little too unconventional or even annoying to ever be a good song, much like the rest of the album. It will sink in when you realize that the song is stuck in your head, notably its yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah choruses and no no no no no no choruses. I was skeptical when I first heard the song as a single. Now I like the song a lot.
The song segues into singer and ringleader Wayne Coynes most Prince-inspired number yet Free Radicals, but its Prince filtered through the surreal a la Flaming Lips. The Sound of Failure takes us back into more familiar Lips territory as the song feels like a contemporary of Yoshimi, with its melodic chorus featuring a pronounced distorted guitar, twirls of what-sounds-like electronic flutes and a bouncy bass-line. Actually, that same distorted guitar is the most notable addition to the Lips sound on this album. My Cosmic Autumn Rebellion could have been on The Soft Bulletin except that it features the same raw guitar sound that wouldve stuck out sorely on Bulletin.
There are also a lot of bells and whistles (and sirens) on this album. It Overtakes Me is a seven-plus minute long song of three very distinct chapters and it starts with a falling siren sound. The first half sounds very much like early popular-era Lips, circa Transmissions or Clouds but the second third changes gears so drastically, its hard to place the song as the driving bass line drops out and it becomes a drawn-out harmony of voices and digitized instruments. This subsequently morphs into a beautiful acoustic guitar picking
Which segues into the next song that literally starts with a siren an ambulance siren. Mr. Ambulance Man is one of their most accessible songs on the album and it is deservedly so, as the song is beautifully composed and the mixing is perfect. Even the ambulance siren doesnt sound out of place. The production of the album is evident and many others will claim the album is over-produced, a term Im hesitant to apply to most albums, regardless of whether or not their production is transparent or not. This album has obvious production values and tweaks and bells and whistles (and sirens), but it does not detract from the experience.
All this being said, At War with the Mystics still doesnt quite hold up to its predecessors. A lot of it sounds like a retake of older Lips styles. The Lips are easily the most experimental band around today and they deserve to be commended for that. I also dont want to scare away people from this album as it takes awhile to get into, but it is nevertheless a solid album.
What the Lips have to offer is something more than most other popular bands can today: solid song-writing and an idiosyncratic appeal. Like I say about modern cinema (Even the crappiest Martin Scorsese film is better than the best Hollywood blockbuster), the same goes for music in this case Id say, even the crappiest Flaming Lips album is better than the best NOW album... Of course, I've yet to even hear a "crappy" Lips album!
GRADE: B
just as an introduction. i've decided to start reviewing a music album every week on here, to provide a little more substance to this blog.
for those of you who went to college with me, you may remember my short stint as a music reviewer for the 'Tonian.
i may at some point extend the reviews to include films or whatever i feel like, really...
so, my life's become something tiring in the past few weeks.
i started working out in early-mid-february. a few weeks into my routine, my knees started tweaking. little hurt by little hurt.
as my knees began to hurt more and more, i moved more and more into using only the fully-seated stationary bicycle available at the gym i belong to.
about three weeks ago, i decided that, with the first ultimate tournament in a week's time and my knees not feeling any better, i ought to let up on working out for awhile.
a week without exercise was difficult for me. i find that when i work out regularly, my mind is clearer and my energy levels are naturally higher. my life seems easier and more fulfilling. i stop drinking coffee and eating sugary foods. things begin to click into place.
but when i stop the routine, those things fall out of place and get filled in with their requisite replacements - back to coffee and sugary foods, more beer, etc.
i played two of the 40 minute games in Vienna in said first outdoor tournament before my right knee was hurting too much and too sore to continue.
so from that weekend i let up for another week, which brings us up to the beginning of this week. i decided to go swimming yesterday, despite my knees continued pain. it felt nice to get some exercise, but my knees came out of the workout (despite no impact) with the same, if not more, amount of pain.
the thing is, for days now, i've found it hard to remain standing for long periods of time. i get tired. i feel like the weight of my body will ultimately cause my legs to collapse from under me.
sitting upright in this chair, or any chair for that matter, inevitably causes my knees (my right knee in particular) to hurt. it's not a sharp or stabbing pain. it's just a dull, throbbing pain of constant soreness and weakness. i feel like i'm standing, even when i'm sitting.
i went to the doctor this morning, despite not having insurance yet. (it's a long story, but i'm opting for an alternative form of insurance to be started momentarily - tourist insurance, which my friend has. a friend who definitely had worse knee problems than i do now.
anyway, the doctor consulted for all of five minutes. he wants to do an x-ray and an MRI and possibly orthoscopic surgery. he thinks it might be some form of a torn miniscus. and he didn't charge me for the consultation, which is a huge benefit for a country with generous social welfare like the Czech Republic.
so... walking normally is not easy. i have to walk uphill from the metro to my apartment building.
there are times when i'm on a tram or metro, which is often since i live outside the center city, when i'm standing, weak-kneed and wishing to sit. i'm used to standing up and offering my seat to elderly passengers who enter the train, i just wish people would notice me, with my pronounced limp, and offer me their seat. i know if i had a big, obvious cast on, they'd get up. or if i had crutches, somebody'd get up. but a pronounced limp doesn't cut it, apparently. i also had an elderly man chastize me for sitting down today across from him when there was a 50 year old lady who could have the seat. i stood up but told him bluntly that i have a bad knee. he was a jerk later too, as he cut me off on my way out the door of the tram. and he was elderly.
suffice it to say, apart from my hurting knees, i'm also getting annoyed by a general disregard for others here. it's disrespectful, rude and sometimes painful, like for me. now.