Music that I have bought

[miko2]

I buy far too much music, and the sad thing is I often just listen to the radio at work, so sometimes I buy a new cd and only manage to listen to it once or twice in the next few weeks. I always listen to cds in the car, but usually just one per commute -- I don't like changing cds while I'm driving, not only is it dangerous but my cd player is annoyingly picky and often refuses to play cds because there's a speck of dust or something on them somewhere... and I tend not to listen to music at home for whatever reason.

So I buy lots of cds and carry them to work and back every day, and eventually I listen to them.

Today I made a special effort to not tune in to NPR radio, and just listen to cds instead. Partly this was because I went out yesterday and hit Silver Platters and then Half Price Books. Anyway, in no particular order, here are a bunch of cds I've picked up in the last few weeks or so:

Chris Cornell - Euphoria Morning I've been on a local rock music kick for a while, and I've been wanting to pick this up. So I got it at Half Price for around $8. The funny thing is, I've had the mp3 files on my computer for months, but haven't listened to them. Sky said it was a great cd, and it is -- very much focused on Chris's voice and songwriting. It's funny, back when the Seattle scene first broke I was impressed by Nirvana and Alice In Chains but Soundgarden didn't impress me that much -- but Chris Cornell just gets better and better every year at what he does. He's doing stuff now that Cobain and Staley never dreamed of doing.

So yeah, that's a really cool cd.

Alice In Chains This would be their last cd, from 1993. I never did pick it up until this weekend, for half price. I've *almost* picked it up numerous times, but could never bring myself to do it before. I don't know why -- it's not really as good as Dirt, but it's still a good cd with several songs that I like on it. I guess Staley and Cantrell couldn't agree on musical directions and Staley had his monumental drug habit to deal with, and so a band that I once though was the class of all the Seattle bands stumbled and faded away. But this is a good cd.

Mad Season - Above The so-called supergroup that included Layne Staley as vocalist and lyric writer. I think this was the last thing he ever did. I don't know, I liked the songs that were on the radio okay, but never felt like picking this up before. But as I said, I'm on a Northwest music kick right now, so I grabbed this (again for half price, about $6 I think). It's not a bad cd, really. I like several of the songs here. Staley wasn't a bad songwriter at all, and had a cool voice. It's kind of sad that he was such a complete loser -- I guess he spent his last years alone in his house doing drugs, would almost never answer the door or the phone even for friends, just gave in to drug abuse to the point where (according to rumour) his teeth fell out and he had abcesses covering his arms. And then of course he died, and nobody realized it for two full weeks. What a wanker.

(Although I have visions of the same thing happening to me... my friends keep calling and knocking on the door, and then someone comes in and finds me dead in front of my computer, a victim of too much online gaming, hehe. ^_^)

Something that strikes me is that Kurt Cobain and to a lesser extent Layne Staley were hugely influential on musicians that came after them (Layne more for his vocal style), and they both wrote about depression and drug addiction and death. I sometimes wonder if their lyrics seem more "real" because of their deaths... I mean, Cobain writing about depression and not caring about life, then killing himself... Staley writing about his inability to stop his drug abuse, and then letting it take over his life completely until he finally overdosed... does that give their songs more emotional impact, or is it just that the songs always had emotional impact because these guys were writing about their own lives and experiences?

In a sense it's like listening to the blues of Robert Johnson, Blind Willie Johnson, Blind Lemon Jefferson... when you know how tragic their lives were and how suddenly they died, it kind of gives their songs of sorrow an extra dimension. Or so I sometimes think.

Does the fact that Chris Cornell never killed himself or overdosed make his own lyrics about depression and death seem somehow shallower? I don't really think so... he's as good or better a writer than Cobain and Staley were. But I can't help that knowing how Cobain and Staley ended their lives gives their music some extra edge to it.

Or another way to look at it is, when as Scott Stapp of Creed, Travis Meeks of Days of the New, or Sully Erna of Godsmack (all three singers who directly imitate Layne Staley) sing of death and depression, does it ring half as true as when Staley did it?

I'd say definitely not.

Okay, on to more music:

Love That Louie: The Louie Louie Files I bought this at Silver Platters. It traces the history of the song Louie Louie, starting with the original version by Richard Berry and the Pharoahs, and then three of the songs that helped influence him when he wrote it, followed by many of the Northwest cover versions by bands like the Wailers, the Sonics, Paul Revere and the Raiders, and of course the Kingsmen, and then National covers by the likes of the Beach Boys and Otis Redding, and covers by British groups including the Kinks, and after that are songs that rewrote Louie Louie or were inspired by Louie Louie. Very interesting to listen to, but the liner notes are even more fascinating. Some of the history of the song, in a nutshell:

1. Richard Berry's version was a local hit in California.

2. Rockin' Robin Roberts and the Wailers picked up on it and it became a Northwest hit for them. This was without any radio airplay -- back then, white stations would absolutely refuse to play anything that even sounded like black r&b, and there were no black radio stations in the Northwest. So while many people in the Northwest were figuring out that this was a potential hit song, there was no way for it to get on the radio and break. Specifically, a man named Pat O'Day controlled most of the music scene in Seattle, and like many of his contemporaries he thought the song was crap, and refused to do anything with it.

The Wailers were ahead of their time in terms of forming their own music label, but they weren't quite savvy enough to realize that they could have bought the rights to the song until it was too late. By the time they tried, the label that owned it had figured out the song was gaining in popularity and refused to sell.

3. Ken Chase, a music director at the #1 rock station in Portland (KISN), hired the Kingsmen as the house band for his club, The Chase. By this point he already knew the song Louie Louie was a huge crowd favorite -- his previous house band had covered it regularly and it always got a big response. So he knew it was a potential hit waiting to happen.

Also, there was a funny story about his hiring The Kingsmen... he had to chose between them and Paul Revere and the Raiders, but the Raiders drove a hearse and drank beer and he wanted a clean-cut image for his house band, so even though the Raiders begged for the gig, he took the Kingsmen instead -- more or less a bad move, as the Raiders went on to great success while the Kingsmen barely stayed together long enough to record their one big hit.

4. In the meantime, the Kingsmen had played a couple of nights in Seaside Oregon in 1961 and on a Sunday afternoon as they were packing up their equipment, they noticed that a song called "Louie Louie" by the Wailers was getting played on the jukebox every 20 minutes, and when it did the kids who were hanging out doing homework or whatever would jump up and start dancing. It didn't take them long to realize that they needed to make this song a part of their repetoir.

5. So of course Ken Chase took them into the studio and they cut their version, which includes a famous flub where Jack Ely starts to sing too early after the guitar break. The band didn't even know they were doing the main take, and were upset when Chase told them that was it. Chase, a veteran of Jazz music, was not concerned that the recording contained a so-called mistake -- he was more interested in getting an energetic, live-feel recording, and that's what he got. The mood and feel were far more important than getting everything right. He felt he had a hit on his hands, which of course proved to be the case. But the band was pissed at him and already breaking up by the time they reached the parking lot.

6. Chase told KISN to put his song in heavy rotation -- every half hour, 24 hours a day. As soon as management found out, he was promptly fired.

7. In the meantime he'd gushed about his recording of the song the very next day to a coworker named Roger Hart, who promptly called up Paul Revere and the Raiders and told them to record the song, which they did that same week.

8. Chase's music distributor, Jerry Dennon of Jerden Records, was another guy who'd figured out years before that Louie Louie was a hit waiting to happen, because he'd been distributing records out of Portland and had noticed that one place in Seattle consistently sold a hundred records of the Wailer's Louie Louie a month with no airplay. He'd encouraged Chase to record the song, and through his contacts in the industry (all of whom thought the song was crap), he was finally able to swing a deal where one friend, Bob Levinson, would place the song on the black radio station in Boston in exchange for 100 copies of the single.

Within 24 hours of that station playing the song, the #1 white station in Boston was besieged with requests for it and gave in. The song broke big, and Jerry Dennon couldn't possibly keep up with the demand for copies, so he sold the song to Wand Records.

9. Meanwhile the version by Paul Revere and the Raiders was selling very well on the West Coast -- because of Chase's mistake at KISN, it was the Raiders version that was the big hit in Portland. Throughout California there was a war on between the two versions, and a salesman for Wand Records went from one black radio station to another (KDIA, KSOL), telling them "We can't let these white honkies from Idaho get over on our boys! We gotta push it!" At the time nobody had any idea who the Kingsmen were or that they were white, so these stations bought the idea and put the song in heavy rotation. By the time they learned the truth, it was too late.

And the rest, as they say, is history...

More stuff that I've bought recently:

Tourniquet -- Where Moth and Rust Destroy One of those thrash metal bands that I still follow. Eh, they're not bad. Right after buying this I ordered "Vanishing Lessons" which is one of their older cds that I never picked up because it didn't get very good reviews. This is one of those bands that seemed to be fading away, but in recent years has produced stuff as good as they've ever done, so now I feel a need to track down their lesser cds that I avoided the first time around. Think there's at least one studio cd I don't have yet.

Eleven - Howling Book Sky pointed this out to me... as he said it's their best cd ever, and quite ironic that they've had to self-produce it and only sell it themselves off their own website. Makes me wonder if the band will stick around much longer. By the way, these are the guys that backed Chris Cornell on his solo cd "Euphoria Morning". Y'know, with all of the big people in music who are friends and fans of the guys in Eleven, you'd think they could swing some kind of distribution deal. Maybe they're doing it this way by choice, for whatever reason? I have no idea.

Pure Joy - Carnivore Again, because Sky said something, I went and picked this up. Pure Joy is one of those bands that I've always intended to get more of, but never did until now. I *LOVE* Rusty Willoughby's song writing, especially from the first two Flop cds (their third one for some reason never really worked for me, despite being cleaner and better-produced).

Anyway Carnivore is a great cd, and no wonder -- it falls between "Unsung", the only Pure Joy cd I owned up til now, and the first Flop cd. Basically "Unsung" wsa their first cd but was not released until many years later (the producer stole the original tapes and money and vanished, but the band happened to have a backup copy). Later they released Carnivore, which was their second cd but the first to be released. Then the band broke up. Willoughby formed Flop, made three cool cds, and they broke up. After that, he reformed Pure Joy and they've continued to work together.

Pure Joy - Getz the Worm The first cd released by Pure Joy after they reformed in the late 1990's. I've only listened to it once so far... wasn't really too impressed on first listen.

I have Willoughby's solo cd on order from Amazon, and also a more recent Pure Joy cd. My advice is to never order anything directly from Amazon. Just order from one of their marketing partners... because you'll get much faster service. Every time I order from Amazon it takes them weeks and weeks to get off their asses and send me what I ordered.

Big Bad Voodoo Daddy That whole swing revival thing has long since passed by, but I never did pick up any of the groups that were involved in it. Of them all, I know that the Squirrel Nut Zippers were the first and one of the best -- but of the ones that hit it big I always liked Big Bad Voodoo Daddy. Tom has their first two cds, and now I have the first one as well... but I need the second for it's cover of the Jungle Book's "I Wanna Be Like You".

Shonen Knife - Heavy Songs 2002 release from my favorite Japanese girl garage band. Not too shabby, although my favorites will always be Happy Hour and Brand New Knife. This was a Japanese Import so I had to pay real money for it... and they have an even newer cd, Candy Rock, which has gotten some bad reviews but I'll probably have to buy that one too.

It's a wonder this band has never titled an albumn "More Songs About Bugs and Food".

Letters to Cleo - Wholesale Meats and Fish I haven't listened to this one yet, but Letters to Cleo is a cool band (I had one cd of theirs already) and this was in the $3 bin so score!

Megadeth - Countdown to Extinction I suppose I'm willing to spend $3 on a Megadeth cd. I've always liked "Rust in Peace" and Mustaine is an entertaining enough songwriter. They always have good guitar work, but they're never heavy enough for me... their sound lacks a heavy bottom end, a real crunch, so it's never felt like "heavy" heavy metal to me. Just fast.

L7 - Bricks Are Heavy Another of those cds that I've often thought of buying but always passed on before. Basically I like the song "Pretend That We're Dead". The rest of the cd never really grabbed me, although listening to it as I drove in to work today, it sounded better than I remembered.

Puffy AmiYumi - An Illustrated History I got this largely because more than one person online referred to them as the new Shonen Knife, as having picked up where Shonen Knife left off. Well, not really. Puffy AmiYumi is a very cool Japanese pop group, but that's what they are - J-Pop. Shonen Knife was never so much J-Pop as they were a very pop-oriented garage band. They always wrote their own music and played their own instruments, and that was one of the cool things about them. Puffy AmiYumi is just another managed, processed J-Pop group as far as I can tell, albeit a highly successful one who seem to be crossing over to the US market.

Anyway, is that enough rambling for one night? Now at least my friends can be sure that I'm still alive. ^_^

Oh yeah... one more thing I bought at Half Price Books... an actual book! It's a massive coffee-table type book that covers the entire history of American Roots music -- basically tracing the history and development of Country, Bluegrass, Folk, Blues, Soul, Gospel, Rock, etc. Very cool! ^_^