Forget the Flaming Lips and the Easy Star All Star-Dub Band versions of Dark Side of the Moon, this is far better. A fellow by the name of Brad Smith recreated the most famous Pink Floyd album in 8-bit using Famitracker, sound rendered with NSFplug. It sounds like Kraftwerk covering Pink Floyd! You can download the entire album here.
Bonus: The above clip is one of the all-time greatest Pink Floyd moments, the original band performing Astronomy Domine on a TV program called Look of the Week. Dig the classical music critic! What a tool.
Dangerous Minds pal, Chris Campion sent me this link to an unusual J-pop music video by Ai Otsuka with this message: “I’d probably far more impressed with Lady Gaga if she had a video that started with shit falling from the sky and a Rodney Alcala lookalike jiving next to a urinal.” He’s got a point, you know.
Skip Spence wore many a hat—drummer for the original Jefferson Airplane, founding member of the very underrated Moby Grape and madman running through the fields to record his solo opus Oar. Released in 1969 on Columbia Records, Oar features Spence on all tracks playing each and every instrument himself. This is quite a feat considering the songs sound like a full band playing together in a room rather than a slew of overdubs, and even more noteworthy is that just a few days prior to the sessions, he went off the deep end threatening fellow Grape Jerry Miller with an axe before retreating to Nashville to blow off some steam and record his masterpiece. Though the album came and went without a trace, rumored to be one of Columbia’s lowest sellers ever, Oar has come full circle with its own tribute album and many modern artists citing Spence and Oar as an influence.
One such fan is Beck Hansen, who has recently been assembling musicians to cover long lost albums in a single day. The recording process is documented and the finished songs are posted on to his website under the Record Club guise. Record Club featured songs from Oar redone by Hansen and his friends Feist, Wilco, Jamie Lidell and heavyweight drummer extraordinaire James Gadson. Check out their take on War in Peace to hear Wilco’s Nels Cline take you to unknown heights of guitar solo bliss. Of course, us LA natives know that Cline isn’t necessarily Wilco’s, but one of the fiercest guitarists LA has ever known!
The next three installments (Tender Prey, The Good Son, Henry’s Dream) in Mute’s superbly remastered Nick Cave series came out yesterday and I’m pleased to report that they’re done to the extremely high standards established by the first batch. Each 2-disc set comes with a remastered stereo CD and a DVD-A with a choice of DTS or Dobly 5:1 surround mixes, as well as a PCM stereo version. There are ample B-sides, music videos and each set features the continuing, multi-part documentary by Iain Forsyth and Jane Pollard called Do You Love Me (Like I Love You) chronicling the recording of each album.
They sound fucking amazing. Tender Prey sounds especially good, with the surround versions offering total immersion in the Bad Seeds awe-inspiring swagger. Every Nick Cave album is an audiophile’s dream, but the Bad Seeds become a locomotive force of nature when experienced in these new surround versions. They sound so good, so like you’re right there in the studio with them, that it’s nothing short of exhilarating to listen to these albums at a high volume. When City of Refuge kicks in, it’s like being hit by an enraged Mack truck. My neighbors probably hate me.
The Good Son, one of my personal favorites, also unfolds remarkably in the airier surround mix. You can really hear how delicately the piano keys are being struck in The Ship Song and how hard the the xylophone is being pounded in The Weeping Song. The strings sound great and the drums really snap. It’s a great musical experience, nothing more, nothing less. These are albums that were meant to be listened to as complete song cycles and that’s how I consumed them. I highly recommend watching the docs before sinking into the album. Taken this way, it really builds anticipation for the music. The music does not disappoint.
In conclusion, now that there are seven of these sets, I’ve been listening to a lot of Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds lately. I’ve owned these albums for years, I bought them when they originally came out, but as is typical, I’d listen to each for a while, then put it away, a year later the next one comes out, I’d listen to that one for a while, then I’d shelve it, etc, etc. With a solo career going back 26 years at this point, to hear all of them again, so masterfully refurbished, and so fresh sounding, I’m struck by the fact that only Nick Cave, of all of the major artists to emerge during the 1980s, has the back catalog to really deserve this kind of respect and archival treatment. Truly, Cave should be seen as one of the all time great artists of the rock era and these sets make a convincing case for that, indeed.
I’ll say it one more time: Mute really do the finest reissues of any label I can think of. You’d have to go to the recent Neil Young Archives Vol. 1 (reviewed by me here) to find an equivalent to what they’re doing here (Depeche Mode got the same treatment a few years back). Each set is a fantastic consumer value. As the compact disc format dies, Mute are still giving punters an actual reason to return to the record store. Good for their business and good for the fans, too.
I’m afraid this will haunt my dreams for weeks to come. Vader Abraham (!) makes me imagine a hippified Dr. Gene Scott. My deepest apologies to all who view this.
I’m a non-practicing Atheist type of Jew with a specific distaste for this particular holiday but even I cannot resist a Passover mix that includes Joy Division, The Velvet Underground and other non-trad delights. Don’t forget to smear lamb’s blood on your doorway and watch out for falling frogs and locusts ! I’ll find the Afikoman before you do !
Richard Tucker, “The Kiddush”
Darondo, “Let My People Go”
Socalled, “The Four Questions”
Moe Jaffe & Henry Tobias, “Passover Time on the Range”
G-d Is My Co-Pilot, “Dayenu”
Steven Bernstein, “Manishtana” (vs. The Wonder Kids)
Bas Sheva, “Caravan”
Joy Division, “Passover”
Rabbi Kahn, “Your Passover Seder” vs. Flying Lotus
Harold Stern, “Jewish Cowboy”
The Carter Family, “On My Way To Canaan’s Land”
Charles Mingus, “Freedom”
Nina Simone, “I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel To Be Free”
Gershon Kingsley, “What Does It Take (The Ten Plagues)”
Socalled, “Dayenu”
Egyptian Lover, “Egypt, Egypt” vs. The Malavsky Family
Ray Barretto, “Exodus”
Benjamin Lapidus, “Las Cuatro Preguntas”
Ray Charles, “Where Can I Go?”
James Harman Band, “The Four Questions”
The Velvet Underground, “I’m Set Free”
Roosevelt Charles, “Let My People Go”
...but my family has some deep country roots - I’m distantly related to Cowboy Copas (a Grand Ol Opry vet, who died in the plane crash with Patsy Cline), and my grandparents were Dust Bowl refugees, transplanted Texans who lived in the not-yet Silicon Valley, and country music was always playing in their house, a double-wide mobile home on the edge of some fruit orchards in San Jose, which seemed mostly rural then.
They had “Sunday Morning Coming Down” painted on the tire cover on the back of their Econoline van, in tribute to Johnny Cash, who they considered to be a Great American (he was). For relatively successful and somewhat urbane ex-hillbillies like them, Ernest Tubb was like a crazy old uncle that you love but are slightly embarrassed by, because he was just a little *too* country, and reminded them a little too much of the hard life they worked so hard to escape.
I’m embarrassed to say that I’d never heard of Leon Rhodes before tonight, because it’s obvious he’s one of the greatest guitarists to ever draw breath, but I’d say these two clips make a persuasive argument that the Texas Troubadours, at least around this era, were far more in line with the sophisticated Bob Wills/Western swing branch of country (jazz for honkies, essentially) than the humorous, podunk novelty tunes Tubb is more commonly associated with (rightly or wrongly). Rhodes’ delayed guitar effects, combined with his jazzy runs, makes me imagine Jerry Garcia, zonked on Owsley somewhere circa ‘66, catching this on television and exclaiming “oh, wow, man!”. And those green hats? Decidedly psychedelic.
I gasped out loud when the background singers first appeared in the below clip. Not to mention Willie Nelson. Copas again : “Ah, the casual elegance of a thirty-something Willie Nelson: wardrobe by J.C. Penney, hair by Brylcreem, and talent bursting at the seams.” Great stuff !
(!) makes me imagine a hippified 
(a Grand Ol Opry vet, who died in the plane crash with Patsy Cline), and my grandparents were Dust Bowl refugees, transplanted Texans who lived in the not-yet Silicon Valley, and country music was always playing in their house, a double-wide mobile home on the edge of some fruit orchards in San Jose, which seemed mostly rural then.