Now my foolish boat is leaning,
Broken lovelorn on your rocks,
For you sing, ‘Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow ….’
O my heart, my heart shies from the sorrow.
To one who will sing no more.
Now my foolish boat is leaning,
Broken lovelorn on your rocks,
For you sing, ‘Touch me not, touch me not, come back tomorrow ….’
O my heart, my heart shies from the sorrow.
To one who will sing no more.
Comments Off on Carl’s Tuesday Musics: “Song to the Siren,” This Mortal Coil, for David Patrick Roscoe (1966-2013)
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by Carl Wilson
The Chicago-rooted, New York-resident, Montreal-affiliated, beautiful-music-making Matana Roberts was in Toronto at the Music Gallery last weekend, playing solo alto saxophone. She chatted with the crowd about a lot of things (“I’m a talker,” she warned early on), but at one point spoke of how her heart was with the people of Calgary, especially after experiencing how devastating a flood can be after last year’s hurricane in NY. Later in the show she repeated, “Sound heals. Sound heals. Sound heals.” So with that in mind, listen to the torrents of incredible tones she generates in this video made in Kensington Gardens in London a couple of years ago, and think about inundation, immersion, and recovery.
Filed under carl wilson, events, music, Tuesday Musics
by Carl Wilson
After a superb show by Joshua Abrams’ Natural Information Society last night, preceded by a fantastic time-traversing folk-song one-man-machine performance by Martin Arnold, someone in conversation mentioned this Nina Simone performance at the 1976 Montreux Jazz Festival of the Morris Albert song that was at that point a completely ubiquitous, world-shrouding hit. The original ironic punk cover version? Perhaps, but so much more. Over the course of playing it, Simone attacks the song satirically and aggressively, tries to get the audience to sing along, and yet also turns schmaltz to bouillabaisse. There’s nothing like it.
Filed under music, Tuesday Musics
by Carl Wilson
Back story: This recent piece on The National (which marked my debut as the new Slate music critic) sparked some conversation with friends about the liberating feeling of saying “yes, I suppose it’s good, but I have no use for it.” Which then led to the flipside sentiment: “Yes, I suppose it’s shitty, but I DON’T CARE I LOVE IT.” One conversationalist in tones of great shame brought up Carly Simon (who?). When I hear Carly Simon, I can think only of “You’re So Vain” (great!), “Anticipation” (meh) and “Nobody Does It Better” (horrifying crap), so I asked for further evidence to bring to trial. Someone immediately brought up this Chic-era Nile Rodgers (he’s on the new Daft Punk album, guys) production. Then I found the Paradise Garage remix by disco deity Larry Levan, and … if for no other reason, Carly Simon, we think you can stay.
Comments Off on Carl’s Tuesday Musics: Carly Simon, “Why” (Paradise Garage Remix)
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Hollywood special-effects magician Ray Harryhausen died this week at 93, recalling an era of cinematic creatures that were not just built out of zeroes and ones and were at once cheesier and more captivating because of it. Harryhausen in his turn was inspired by the original King Kong movie, with its stop-motion animation by Willis H. O’Brien.
In the song above, Daniel Johnston retells the tale of Kong, O’Brien and Harryhausen in an a capella recitation vaguely smelling of the blues. In the version below, Tom Waits pays tribute to Johnston but also fulfills the song’s potential by bringing the full blues ape-stank, just as R.H. built upon W.H.O’B.
When I was a kid I thought King Kong was pretty much the saddest movie ever, so I preferred the later Mighty Joe Young, which O’Brien also designed, but which gives the ape a happy ending.
Filed under carl wilson, movies, music, Tuesday Musics
by Carl Wilson
Often on an occasion such as the traditional international day for workers and against exploitation, I would opt for something reflective and inspiring. But having just returned to the confinement of an office after a couple of great weeks of travel and release, while moving through a part of the world that’s been deeply railroaded by the politics of austerity and precarity, I have resolved instead, after careful consideration of the alternatives, to say FUCK IT.
Comments Off on Carl’s Tuesday Musics on Wednesday for May Day: Extreme Noise Terror, “Work For Never”
Filed under music, Tuesday Musics
by Carl Wilson
I was fortunate enough this weekend to be present at the revival of Double Double Land in Toronto’s “Talking Songs” series, in which people play recordings for other people and talk about them, featuring a special guest – the independent intellectual, anthologist, vintage 78s collector and “Fonotopia” DJ/podcaster, Ian Nagoski, who regaled us with the sounds and stories of Indian classical singers with disreputable pasts, Lemko-American bands, Carpathian “hillbillies” and the parallels between bluegrass and polka (both urban adaptations of mountain stringband music), the Okeh laughing record (though he didn’t mention the great Tex Avery cartoon that uses it as soundtrack to its second half), canary breeding as a form of musical composition, and much more.
Much beyond collecting for collecting’s sake, Nagoski’s fascination with non-English-language (aka “ethnic” at the time) records made in the U.S. before the Second World War serves him as a lens on ignored or suppressed histories of America, non-canonical views of musical development (in which it doesn’t all culminate in rock) and the confidence games of the American dream.
On that last theme, one person he didn’t play but alluded to is Marika Papagika, a great singer of many styles, including what we today would refer to as rebetika (or often “rembetika” in English). She was a Greek immigrant to New York who, with her husband Costas, made many successful recordings and opened up a nightclub nearby where the Port Authority is today – until they lost it all in the stock-market crash of 1929, just a year after the song above was shellacked. The emotional detail of her singing is spellbinding.
Nagoski has played an important role in reintroducing her to modern (and non-Greek) audiences, by including her music on his compilations Black Mirror: Reflections in Global Musics (1918-1954) and To What Strange Place:The Music Of The Ottoman-American Diaspora (1916-1929) and finally a collection entirely of Papagika songs, The Further the Flame the Worse It Burns Me. The one he’s rhapsodized over the most is below, the even-more-plaintive Smyrneïko Minore, which the Kronos Quartet heard on Black Mirror and arranged and performed it in concert.
Comments Off on Carl’s Tuesday Musics: “Zmirneikos Balos” and others by Marika Papagika (1928)
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by Carl Wilson
Michelle McAdorey was one of the first Toronto artists I ever wrote about, after moving here; I’m very pleased that she has new music out (and reportedly more to come) and that she’s performing again, beginning with a Wavelength show this Thursday (with Iceland’s Valgeir Sigurðsson and Toronto’s Prince Nifty). This song is so pretty it’s almost hard to listen to. You start holding your breath, knowing something is going to break.
Comments Off on Carl’s Tuesday Musics: Michelle McAdorey, “Line Across My Heart” (2013)
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