Brink Music

R.I.P. Lou Reed

2013-10-27T23:35:00.003-04:00

I don't have any particular insight into Lou or the Velvet Underground. Others with closer associations and deeper feelings will surely say things more relevant and moving. I just keep thinking back to when I first heard "Ocean" and "Heroin" and the profound impression those tracks made on me. I wish there were going to be more. Good travels Lou, you'll be missed.

Dream Shake, "Dream Shake"; Ethereal Familiarity

2013-10-08T21:29:00.000-04:00

Everything that's old is new again and that can be a good thing, especially when it has an original twist. Dream Shake's self-titled debut reminds me a little of The Jesus & Mary Chain and sometimes Lush while remaining original throughout. The music has a very dreamy quality mixed with old school rhythms and guitar which add an undercurrent of punk that occasionally breaks the surface. It's a good album and imminently listenable for almost any mood. This is the sort of album that for some will become like a friend and a tether to the period in one's life where they first heard and loved it. It sits with you, it resonates, and it feels familiar at the first listen, while sharing unrealized depth with subsequent plays.

It also has a fun and offbeat side that's more to do with the artist that the music, though it does manifest in the lyrics. All of the songs are named for female characters in media and pop culture. It might be an added bit of fun to try to figure out or debate with your friends which characters the songs are named for. "Buffy" is an obvious gimme and I'll go out on a limb and guess that both "Deanna" and "Beverly" came from "Star Trek: The Next Generation".

As concept albums go, this offering from James Nee, Dream Shake's prime mover, is pretty original and more fun than most. It also allows him to write about things he cares about without apology and without having to wedge them into some tortured multi-movement or act structure. It's a good, chill listen with a party game built in. It's also an interesting reflection of our increasingly media-centric culture. I listened to it straight through twice, which I seldom do, and have gone back to it and thought about it repeatedly since. The album is out today on the Frenchkiss label and you can preview some of Nee's work, including "Buffy" here. If you like breezy male vocals and alternately ethereal and bright, driving guitars, I recommend it. 4 out of 5 Whatevers.

For a little extra fun please login or follow this blog and comment with your guesses about which characters the songs are named for.

Crowd Source Criticism and Trent Reznor

2013-09-11T21:11:00.000-04:00

About a week ago I heard a promo for NPR’s All things Considered which advertised an upcoming interview with Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails. I enjoyed the on-air portion but it left me wanting more. Fortunately they posted the long form here. Maybe it's just because I'm a music nerd but I thought the best parts were left out of the broadcast edit. For instance he talked about what I've begun referring to as "crowd-source criticism".

Trent Reznor

Reznor said, "I think we live in very dangerous times right now... with the Internet and the feedback loop you can get from people who somehow feel their fingers are connected to an impulse — first second of hearing something, I need to write some reaction that gets blasted out to the world." It's essentially what I'm doing right now; critiquing an interview that, in part, discusses a critique. Is my criticism more valid because of my past credentials or is the reporter more valid because she works for NPR? Do you need to have credentials other than the support of the crowd? It seems not, but a lot of snarky and ugly stuff does get pushed to the surface when the crowd is the only determiner of quality.

I started in the small press, which was the internet for people born before 1980. When I started we had trouble getting press passes and were looked down upon by publicists and “real” journalists. I actually found that small press (I wrote a lot for regional entertainment papers) had a harder time getting treated as members of the press than did my community college newspaper. I found this terribly frustrating at times, especially when I would see an interview with a major act that I hadn’t been able to get. In one instance in particular the publicist for a punk rock icon said I could interview his guitar player if I wanted, but the icon himself was interviewed by a major publication that did a truly awful job. Having that experience, I’m interested in what makes criticism or commentary worthwhile. Snark, unfortunately, gets a lot of eyeballs these days, but there is also a lot of truly poor journalism on the websites and in the pages of major media outlets.

When Reznor lamented, "I could spend a lot of time being frustrated about one aspect of the press, which is what low qualifications are required to become a quote-unquote journalist these days.", I wanted to hear more of that discussion. Unfortunately the journalist didn’t dig as deeply as I would have liked. This was also within a couple of days of AP making, at least to Nine Inch Nails fans, a huge attribution mistake regarding Johnny Cash’s cover of the NIN song “Hurt”. Perhaps the NPR interview was conducted before that story broke and broadcast later, but it was a wonderful coincidence that this happened at AP, an organization that should have the best qualifications and processes, within days of Reznor challenging the threshold of journalistic qualification.

I hope someone does another Reznor interview soon and really sounds him out with regard to what is journalism and what is criticism and how it is different from what we do on Facebook and other social media sites. Is crowd-source criticism more or less legitimate if it lacks journalistic credentials? Those are topics I'd love to hear discussed in detail.

Sons of Bill - Joey's Arm

2013-08-31T12:49:00.000-04:00

"Joey's Arm" is elegantly clean and direct like the best of country ballads. For such ballads to succeed they need emotional power carried through the voice and something to say. Clearly James Wilson's melodically gruff sound carries that off in spades and is pushed further by the harmonies with his brother Sam. The lyrics may not be quite as obvious in their part, but what they capture about the New South is the stark and often muffled pain of building a life there, especially in the rural areas. When I first heard this it was like a punch in the chest from my own childhood in Southwestern Virginia. They're saying something.
Sons of Bill is a 5 piece rock/country band with two full length albums out, and a third on the way which is being produced by David Lowery (Cracker, Camper Van Beethoven). They have performed this tune acoustically several times for different public radio stations and it was on the website of WHRO in Norfolk that I first found them (I was unable to embed the performance here but you can find it about halfway down the page from the link above). This version is from a public radio performance in their home town of Charlottesville on WNRN. Both are worth checking out. I found the instrumentation on the NRN version to be better recorded but felt the vocals hit a higher emotional register on the HRO version. They're all over YouTube, you can of course buy the albums, and check them out at http://sonsofbill.com/ .

Retard River (Banjo Hip Hop - Newgrass/Bluegrass) from Down Under

2011-03-22T00:01:00.000-04:00

Dylan O'Donnell is a talented multi-instrumentalist from Byron Bay, Australia. Pretty much any genre seems to be within reach for Dylan using just about any stringed instrument. And oh yeah, he makes a pretty good video using just an i-phone. Check out his YouTube channel. There's lots of cool stuff there. Among the influences he sites for this one are Gangsta Grass. They're pretty cool as well but while they're pretty good bluegrass musicians and lay down a good Gangsta rhyme, I think Dylan takes the genre way further as a composer.

Banjo Heavy Metal (Hick Metal)

2011-03-22T00:00:00.001-04:00

More Dylan O'Donnell, this time taking a whack at metal.

Jake Shimabukuro, Bohemian Rhapsody

2011-01-30T17:42:00.002-05:00

Here's a little something a friend found on NPR's site. It's Jake Shimabukuro playing "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the ukulele. It's good. I don't really need to say anymore.

Ramona Falls - 'I Say Fever'

2010-12-31T02:30:00.001-05:00

"I Say Fever" is one of my favorite videos in a very long time. To be fair, I rarely see videos anymore, but even when I do I rarely enjoy or take much note of them. This is definitely noteworthy. When I first saw it early in the year I focused pretty strictly on the music and just let the images sort of go by without attaching any context or looking for any meaning. Of course it was so visually interesting that I watched it several more times, paying attention to the story as well as the subtleties of the art. On all levels I find it thoroughly enjoyable. I'd be remiss if I didn't credit Mitchell Bratton of Pleasure Void for bringing it to my attention via a post of his own.
Ramona Falls , named for a waterfall near Mt. Hood in Oregon, is another project of Brent Knopf of Menomena. Menomena is hardly a side project. That three piece came first and just released their fourth album, Mines. But with four years without a release from Menomena, you can't really say that the Ramona Falls album Intuit (2009) was a side project either. Rather the projects exist independently while at the same time seeming to inform one another. Nor is Ramona Falls fairly characterized as a solo project. While it's true that Ramona Falls is the product of Knopf's vision and solo songwriting he seized upon the opportunity to bring 35 guest musicians into the studio in order to bring the album to life. It is an excellent effort that both stands on it's own and shares a sensibility with Menomena.

Nero and The Plebians

2010-12-18T02:31:00.002-05:00

This is about 10 years old and is a side project from Jon Boone of Pleasure Void and the Tellers. Jon put it up on Facebook earlier this year and I wanted to spread it around. He has a terrific You Tube Channel under the name Nero 54 AD that contains many performances from his iluustrious career as well as many others he encountered along the way. The artists run the gamut from young amateurs all the way up to polished professionals on the verge of a breakout, and they're sometimes the same groups at differeent moments in time. Some of it feels a lot like traditional rock, some of it sounds contemporary (although it didn't when recorded) and some of it, like this one, is still wonderfully outside the mainstream. It really is a gem of a repository of truly underground music from the late 80s through the 90s. The quality of the video and audio are not always the best but there is a lot of good and unique stuff. It's fun to pick through and find the real treasures like this one. I'd say it's PG 13 if that's a concern. Nero & the Plebians, "Masterplan"

Check This Out...Again

2010-12-18T02:09:00.000-05:00

I was working on my book in my office earlier when one of my kids pulled The Pixies' Bossa nova off the CD shelf and asked me to pop it in. That was two hours ago and I'm still spinning it. When I first got this album as a new or pre-release in 1990 (I think), I fell in love with it. I remember playing "Is She Weird" over and over to the point that there may have been the serious possibility of my roommates kicking me out. I just ran it about ten times in a row again; almost drove my wife out of the room.

Over the years I didn't exactly forget about it, but there's just so much music that it slipped out of my personal Top-However-Many. What a shame. I feel like I've cheated me of this great album for all these years.

Bossanova has so much to offer. The lyrics are quirky, thoughtful, and somehow say the things you wanted to say but didn't know you wanted to. The music is variably sparse and lush in all the right places and mixes a range of influences that are recognizable but clearly appropriated to a higher purpose. The album also clearly presages so much of the alternative movement that followed within the next couple of years after its release; presages but in most cases overshadows in musical quality, emotive power, and intellectual depth. It's hard to name more than a couple of other albums that have held up this well over the years.

I don't know how this classic has eluded my MP3 player for so long but I'll remedy that shortly. Join me, won't you?

Why Rockabilly Matters To Me

2010-03-28T14:16:00.003-04:00

I grew up and got interested in music in the 1970’s while growing up in the Blue Ridge mountains of Virginia. Certainly there was country music and bluegrass everywhere but my parents weren’t into that sort of thing so it never really entered my world as a kid. I found music through an older cousin and kids at school. My early rock heroes were Kiss, AC/DC and other popular hard rock acts; the acts so big that you couldn’t miss them. They were my default rock.

By the time I was 7 or 8 I had my first acoustic guitar. I learned to play not by songs and tab as is so common now, but by reading music and practicing scales and progressively more difficult pieces as you would learn any classical instrument. I practiced dutifully every day and the adults in my life began to catch on that I was sincerely interested in music and tried to support my interest. They didn’t buy the albums I wanted of course but rather my parents, neighbors, and aunts and uncles treated me to an eclectic collection of 70’s pop. I had Earth Wind & Fire, The Eagles, Leif Garrett, The BeeGees, Anne Margaret, Chicago and other music that interested me slightly to not at all. I also had a couple of Kiss records I bought with a 20 I found in a parking lot.

Is it any wonder, having mastered Jingle Bells and Mary Had A Little Lamb on the guitar and having this record collection, that I began to lose the musical interest that had once burned so brightly? Even the harder rock that I was exposed to was wearing thin. By that point Kiss and Aerosmith were everywhere, otherwise I wouldn’t have heard them since I had no real avenues to find music beyond other kids and the radio. The rock that had been so cool before was getting old and starting to sound the same. I didn’t know it at the time but what I was hearing was the sound of manufactured pop rock and even at that young age I wanted more. It was about this time that I was practicing Elvis’ Love Me Tender (or more accurately the folk song Aura Lee--same thing) on my guitar. My Dad noticed that I liked it better than the other tunes I was working on and that made a difference in my life.

Dad was an over-the-road truck driver who’d been a teenager in rural Missouri in the mid-1950s. Every summer he’d pick a couple of weeks that didn’t interfere with baseball season and take me on the road with him. I saw most of the country this way. As I was working on Love Me Tender in 1978 or ‘79 that time of year rolled around again. Over the next couple of weeks Dad played a lot of Elvis for me on the truck’s 8 track. I knew who Elvis was because Dad had always had the albums at home and of course the King had passed just a couple of years before and his movies still ran on television almost every Saturday afternoon in my hometown. I mostly knew Fat Elvis and Gospel Elvis and didn’t care for either.

On this trip however, we got pretty deep into the old stuff which I warmed up to a little. That led my Dad to introduce to more of the stuff from his teenage years. Over a couple of weeks I got Young Elvis but also to my lasting joy the likes of Johnny Horton, The Johnny Burnette Trio, Chuck Berry, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Bill Haley and the Comets, and the immortal Buddy Holly. All of this music was new to me but it had something more than novelty. There was an energy to it that I hadn’t encountered. It felt more genuine than anything else I had been exposed to. I wasn’t thinking then in terms of rebellion or teen angst or any of the other ways we describe the motivations of rock music. It just felt free and real and I was hooked.

Throughout my own musical evolution I’ve sought out those feelings of sincerity and independent spirit. I appreciate the technical skill but it’s the expression of individuality and the sense of an artist going their own way regardless of what may be expected of them that draws me the most. It’s not so much rebellion as personal Declarations of Independence and they can be found in almost any kind of music.

I got this from my Dad. I never thought of him as a rebel and he never seemed to get what I was all about in my teens or even my twenties. Now that he’s in his seventies I realize that not only is he still a rebel but he’s probably the single biggest influence in my own rebellions. I see now, though our musical tastes have diverged a bit, that we’re more alike than I ever admitted as a younger man and that I have followed in his footsteps with remarkable precision and ended up in a place where I feel pretty good about myself. I love my Dad and I’m grateful for who he helped me become. And that’s why Rockabilly matters to me.

Book Review: "The Dave Grohl Story" by Jeff Apter

2010-03-04T00:27:00.000-05:00

"The Dave Grohl Story" by Jeff Apter traces the life and career of the Foo Fighters frontman and former Nirvana drummer from his childhood through 2005. The book is filled with details of Grohl's professional and private life as a rock star , but these details, even the more obscure ones, are not the book's strength. The real power of the story comes from Grohl's early experiences as a fledgling musician coming of age in the DC hardcore scene and beyond. From the first gigs as a suburban punk in Northern Virginia to early indie tours of Europe and the downward spiral of the band Scream that led Grohl to Nirvana, Apter tells a compelling and relatable story.

The bulk of the book deals with this pre-world famous Dave Grohl. The author uses the experiences of others and Grohl's own statements to give the reader a sense of Grohl's character and personality that informs the musicians better known escapades and challenges later in life. Grohl's tendency to avoid delivering bad news and his habit of going against the grain establish patterns repeated throughout the story. Apter does an excellent job of illustrtaing these. The author also expertly conveys Grohl's passion for music.

The book moves at an excellent pace and is an easy read throughout the first two thirds or so but bogs down late and the more laudatory tone of this latter portion contrasts uncomfortably with the more academic and engrossing earlier chapters. It falls especially short in the comparisons that Apter draws to other contemporary groups. These are unnecessary and come across more as a fan talking down other bands to elevate his own favorite.

Aside from this one criticism, which relates to the smaller portion of the work, this is a very good book for Grohl fans, rock music enthusiasts, and fans of of well-written biographies. I recommend it.

Carolina Chocolate Drops

2010-03-02T01:56:00.003-05:00

I think I'm a little late on this one, so very quickly let me say that I can remember and count on one hand the number of times a band has dropped my jaw like this. In over 400 live shows and who knows how many singles and review copies I've hardly ever been blown away like this and never has it happened with a recorded rather than live performance. What a beautiful mix of styles and just first rate talent to create something truly original and at the same time familiar and welcoming. I typically don't care for covers of songs and wasn't a fan of the original "Hit 'em Up Style". This is so far beyond what the original ever aspired to be that I think it's safe to say that the Carolina Chocolate Drops have permanently and irrevocably hi-jacked this tune as their own. Nobody else deserves it anymore. Wow.