Forget What You're Reading....What Are You LISTENING To???

[Appppplication]

Soma is an amazing song.  

 

it's definitely sad that era of music is ove. They were an amazing breath of fresh air in the 90s.

 

James Iha's latest solo album (from 2012 I think) seems to have some good songs on it. And I think he actually wrote Soma. I heard one track from his 2012 release the other day and it was really good. 

Edited March 22, 2015 by Appppplication

[1Q84]

I think I might have called "Soma" my "favorite song of all time"  in 1995 or 1996. Saw SP in concert in 1997...it was delayed because of the whole situation with Jimmy and the death of Jonathan Melvoin. Still, Matt Walker was a pretty excellent replacement drummer for that tour... I remember Billy used a mic stand to smash one of the stage lights, which immediately burst into flame. Sophomoric? Sure...but it was entertaining and hilarious.

 

Yeah, I'm not ashamed to admit that I still put on '90s SP from time to time. Some tracks from Gish hold up well too -- "I Am One," "Rhinoceros," "Crush" etc.

 

It's really too bad they've (well, he's) become a bit of a mockery of themselves these days. Machina was a travesty, and their subsequent work has just been self-serving, with occasional glimmers of "good."

 

Actually, Rhinoceros is my all-time favorite song by SP. Cannot beat that mid-song breakdown and solo.

 

I'm a pretty big Machina apologist, especially considering how amazing Machina II was. Man, things would be very different right now if we had II as the official release in place of the original. 

 

Yes it's definitely sad. They were an amazing breath of fresh air. James Iha's latest solo album (from 2012 I think) seems to have some good songs on it. And I think he actually wrote Soma. I heard one track from his 2012 release the other day and it was really good. 

 

I was so disappointed with Iha's 2012 solo album since his 2008 one was SO AMAZING. I love that album from front to back. Maybe the schmaltzy country pop thing just doesn't age well...

[Appppplication]

I randomly landed on the James Iha song Who Knows Where, and I enjoyed the song. But I'm not really into alt-country, which may explain why I've never heard his early album. I used to really enjoy Ryan Adams though around 2002.

 

Yes, Rhinoceros is an amazing song!

[Dr. Old Bill]

She knows and she knows and she knows...

 

Bah. I'm feeling all nostalgic now. Actually Siamese Dream introduced me to the mellotron (used most prominently on "Spaceboy"), which became one of my favorite instruments. I eventually got heavy into progressive rock in the late '90s, which is largely saturated with mellotron passages. I was doing a recording session back in 2003, and it turned out that the studio actually had a mellotron in storage. I downright insisted that they bring it out so that I could use it on a track or two (frankly I just wanted a chance to play the damn thing), but they categorically refused, saying it was impossible to keep in tune, and was basically junk. I reluctantly let it go. Eventually I found a quality VST instrument version of a mellotron (basically samples) a few years ago that I was able to use on a couple of tracks, but it's really not the same.

 

Appppppp: I didn't know Iha wrote "Soma." In fact, I was under the impression that Billy wrote and played pretty much everything on the album other than drums...but those alt-rock accounts were often quite exaggerated.

 

 

ETA: I should mention, in case you don't know, that the mellotron was an instrument created in the '60s that basically featured keyboard keys attached to tape loops of strings, flutes, chorales etc. It was intended to be an early "sampler" but turned out to have a unique sound all its own. The company has actually started making them again in recent years (much higher quality, from what I gather), but the vintage ones went out of production some time in the 70s. You can't hear an early song by say, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Moody Blues, Gentle Giant etc. without hearing a mellotron in full drone...

Edited March 22, 2015 by Wyatt's Torch

[Appppplication]

Yeah Iha wrote them, but I'm sure Billy had a hand in them. Iha says in an interview that he wrote them. I also read a Billy interview where he was kind of trashing those two songs as a way to trash Iha's contribution, and then Billy goes on to make it clear that he was the most important song writer in the band and the most responsible for the success of the band. But such a rant seems to me to also be some kind of acknowledgment of the strength of those two songs Iha wrote. 

[1Q84]

She knows and she knows and she knows...

 

Bah. I'm feeling all nostalgic now. Actually Siamese Dream introduced me to the mellotron (used most prominently on "Spaceboy"), which became one of my favorite instruments. I eventually got heavy into progressive rock in the late '90s, which is largely saturated with mellotron passages. I was doing a recording session back in 2003, and it turned out that the studio actually had a mellotron in storage. I downright insisted that they bring it out so that I could use it on a track or two (frankly I just wanted a chance to play the damn thing), but they categorically refused, saying it was impossible to keep in tune, and was basically junk. I reluctantly let it go. Eventually I found a quality VST instrument version of a mellotron (basically samples) a few years ago that I was able to use on a couple of tracks, but it's really not the same.

 

Appppppp: I didn't know Iha wrote "Soma." In fact, I was under the impression that Billy wrote and played pretty much everything on the album other than drums...but those alt-rock accounts were often quite exaggerated.

 

 

ETA: I should mention, in case you don't know, that the mellotron was an instrument created in the '60s that basically featured keyboard keys attached to tape loops of strings, flutes, chorales etc. It was intended to be an early "sampler" but turned out to have a unique sound all its own. The company has actually started making them again in recent years (much higher quality, from what I gather), but the vintage ones went out of production some time in the 70s. You can't hear an early song by say, Yes, King Crimson, Genesis, Moody Blues, Gentle Giant etc. without hearing a mellotron in full drone...

 

Indeed, Iha is severely underrated (I will maintain to my death that his b-side Go is fucking fantastic!). As Appp mentioned, he co-wrote Soma but also Mayonaise, and I Am One.

 

Mellotron was used extensively on MCIS too, wasn't it? Another piece of alt-rock trivia: Trent Reznor purchased Lennon's old mellotron and used it on Broken, Fragile and Manson's Anti-Christ Superstar.

 

Super cool that you got to (almost?) tool around with one!

[Appppplication]

https://youtu.be/SdDeHERT6sA

 

 

Here's a link to a really good, but long, interview with Billy Corgan by Matt Pinfield of Mtv 120 Minutes. It's really good if you have the time. 

Edited March 23, 2015 by Appppplication

[greenmt]

Bill Evans makes the waiting easier.  

[__________________________]

I'm grateful for all the new music suggestions.  Around the house, we've been listening to the Clash (my kid, who's 9, has picked up on London Calling) and Tuneyards, and new records by Mary J. Blige and Joshua Redman and D'Angelo.  In the car, I've been listening to Ulysses on (30!) CDs.

I mostly listen to oldish music - special interest in jazz.  Nineteenth century Americanists might be interested in one that John Zorn put out last year, On Leaves of Grass.  It's instrumental but captures the wild expansiveness and yearning of Whitman, and like Whitman, Zorn is good at the jarring turn that shakes the reader / listener back into consciousness.  NB: the CD package is illustrated with pictures of leaves and flowers from Emily Dickinson's herbarium book.

 

Digging Black Messiah.  I'll have to check out Zorn's and Redman's new records -- thanks for the recommendations!  I used to work in a library and I remember, the summer after I had taken a seminar on Ulysses, checking out a copy of that audiobook to a student while I was coming up to work on part of a cataloging project at the circulation desk and just shaking my head in awe that such a thing even exists... how's that working out for you?

 

Anyone been listening to To Pimp A Butterfly?

[pannpann]

Anyone been listening to To Pimp A Butterfly?

 

Yes yes yes!

[1Q84]

https://youtu.be/SdDeHERT6sA

 

 

Here's a link to a really good, but long, interview with Billy Corgan by Matt Pinfield of Mtv 120 Minutes. It's really good if you have the time. 

 

Thanks for this! Saving it for after thesis is due. Then I'll crack open a bottle and spend some quality time with my favorite megalomaniacal, aging rockstar!

[greenmt]

Digging Black Messiah.  I'll have to check out Zorn's and Redman's new records -- thanks for the recommendations!  I used to work in a library and I remember, the summer after I had taken a seminar on Ulysses, checking out a copy of that audiobook to a student while I was coming up to work on part of a cataloging project at the circulation desk and just shaking my head in awe that such a thing even exists... how's that working out for you?

 

Anyone been listening to To Pimp A Butterfly?

 

It's surprisingly soothing in the car... maybe because the landscape rises up and passes by as Bloom's thoughts do.  The reader is terrific.  My parents were Dubliners, and hearing the words aloud, you glean the variety of mini-dialects Joyce gathered together.  I also didn't quite get, when I read it, how funny it is, and in a particularly Irish way.  Whenever a group of men get together, they start bursting each other's little bubbles of self-satisfaction, as much by what they don't say as what they do.  It's led me to think a bit about a subtopic of research, for later on: Joyce is so erudite that it seems people overlook how integral the humor is... at least I did.

The Joshua Redman is called something like Trios Live.  It ends with a fun rendition of Led Zeppelin's The Ocean, which is of course in a weird time signature, and so was secretly waiting for a jazz interpretation.  

[Appppplication]

Thanks for this! Saving it for after thesis is due. Then I'll crack open a bottle and spend some quality time with my favorite megalomaniacal, aging rockstar!

 

You're welcome. It's really good. he goes through every song from Gish and Siamese Dream and talks about how it came about. Including the James Iha writing controversy.

[__________________________]

It's surprisingly soothing in the car... maybe because the landscape rises up and passes by as Bloom's thoughts do.  The reader is terrific.  My parents were Dubliners, and hearing the words aloud, you glean the variety of mini-dialects Joyce gathered together.  I also didn't quite get, when I read it, how funny it is, and in a particularly Irish way.  Whenever a group of men get together, they start bursting each other's little bubbles of self-satisfaction, as much by what they don't say as what they do.  It's led me to think a bit about a subtopic of research, for later on: Joyce is so erudite that it seems people overlook how integral the humor is... at least I did.

The Joshua Redman is called something like Trios Live.  It ends with a fun rendition of Led Zeppelin's The Ocean, which is of course in a weird time signature, and so was secretly waiting for a jazz interpretation.  

I thought Ulysses was hilarious when I read it -- there are so many poop jokes and... Buck Mulligan!  And getting drunk in a maternity ward!  Leo Bloom wiping his ass!  Leo and the dom!  Oh well.  I guess I can imagine that a good reader could make the humor come out more; the main thing I have trouble imagining are the parts like Sirens.  Penelope I could imagine being done in some breathless narrative along the lines of Beckett's Not I.  Dammit, now I kind of want to check out the audiobook version, haha.  Because now that I think of it, I read a lot of that book out loud to myself.  There are so many little funny sounds.

 

New Redman sounds cool, I haven't listened to him in years so I'll have to check that out.  Big fan of his dad though, I bump Ear of the Behearer in the car every now and again... I've also been revisiting the classics like the Eric Dolphy Quintet's In Europe album and late Ellington. 

[greenmt]

I thought Ulysses was hilarious when I read it -- there are so many poop jokes and... Buck Mulligan!  And getting drunk in a maternity ward!  Leo Bloom wiping his ass!  Leo and the dom!  Oh well.  I guess I can imagine that a good reader could make the humor come out more; the main thing I have trouble imagining are the parts like Sirens.  Penelope I could imagine being done in some breathless narrative along the lines of Beckett's Not I.  Dammit, now I kind of want to check out the audiobook version, haha.  Because now that I think of it, I read a lot of that book out loud to myself.  There are so many little funny sounds.

 

New Redman sounds cool, I haven't listened to him in years so I'll have to check that out.  Big fan of his dad though, I bump Ear of the Behearer in the car every now and again... I've also been revisiting the classics like the Eric Dolphy Quintet's In Europe album and late Ellington. 

 

I haven't really thought this through.  It's more a matter of impressions, arising out of the variety of voices, from AE to streetvendors, perfectly rendered.  But I think the thing I'm interested in digging into is what the different kinds of humor tell us about the people and their collective situation.  There are funny episodes.  But, for example, Buck Mulligan's Ballad of Joking Jesus made me laugh out loud, like the British student, but Stephen's response tells you that he's a ham, a one trick pony.  Stephen's humor is abstruse, kind of hard to untangle, the ultimate dyspeptic university student.  Simon Dedalus's spluttering insults keep everyone at a distance.  The newspapermens' humor is broad and cutting, slapsticky, because their business is so cutthroat.  The students' is physical / scatalogical.  Bloom thinks snarky thoughts, then silently apologizes for them, or leaves them half-finished.  When Joyce brings these different groups together, you get pathos, as when the newspapermen mock gentle Bloom walking away, being mimicked by the delivery boys.  As Joyce takes you around the geography of Dublin, he represents not just its visual / tangible 1904 self, but also the variety of its musical life (in the snippets of jingles, popular songs, and operas that pop up), the accents and dictions, and the jokes.  Sound is what has been on my mind, anyway, lately, and I agree: sound is a big part of what he's up to.

[1Q84]

Was very saddened to hear Mitchell was hospitalized yesterday. Light a candle, sing a song, send some good thoughts to Joni!

 

[greenmt]

Lucinda Williams, getting better as she ages, like the best of them.  

[Dr. Old Bill]

Just got the new Coliseum album yesterday, and really like it. They've retained their punk sensibilities, but it's a very mature album that tackles some pertinent contemporary issues.