I'm going to start doing intermittent @mcc style "What I'm listening to today" type toots. I've really enjoyed her recommendations and writeups, and I want more of that kind of thing.
What I'm listening to today: "Let's Pretend" by Labi Siffree (pronounced "Labby Siff-re").
This is fundamentally a protest song, but it's protesting basically everything. It was released 50 years ago, but still feels pretty relevant today.
I've been getting more into funk and soul lately, and this is a track that's really stuck with me.
Labi Siffre is an amazing musician and lyricist, and this song really shows his talents. He's also a gay Black man who lived in a three-way relationship for decades.
If you've listened to much rap, you've heard his music, because it's been extensively sampled. But I think his original work is brilliant on its own merits, full of lush production and great solos.
What I'm listening to today: "Do It Good" by Bill Withers.
This is a deep cut that closes out the A side of his first album. I really like the improvised in the studio energy of this track; the jazzy drumming; and the vocal style that's almost edging into rap territory.
And that "Mr. Jones, Booker T." he mentions in the middle? Yep, that's the frontman of Booker T. and the MGs, who produced it & played guitar and keyboards.
What I'm listening to today: "No Anesthesia" by Stone.
Stone was a successful, short-lived, highly influential Finnish thrash band. This is the title track from their second album, an absolutely epic ten-minute thrash ripper.
None of their albums got significant distribution outside Finland, making them nearly unknown outside their home country, and their music is still difficult to find. They had the chops and timing to ride the same wave that pushed acts like Metallica into the mainstream, but I guess they didn't have the management or label to take advantage.
CW: BDSM
What I'm listening to today: "Contaminant PCB" by Contagion.
This album is a thick slab of early 90s EBM by a relatively unknown band, even by the standards of the niche genre. This kind of raw & in your face industrial is definitely my jam.
What I'm listening to today: Rage Against The Machine - First Public Performance Full Concert (HQ)
This is a fixed-camera video of Rage's first concert, in 1991. For a show that happened before the first album was even cut, performed a few months after recording their first demo, everything is remarkably well-formed. These are some of the Rage songs you already know -- even a nascent version of Killing in the Name, which wouldn't get a complete release for five years -- and they absolutely rock. Rage had the chops from day one. What an amazing thing to just wander across these dudes playing at a college, right as they were on the cusp of superstardom.
What I'm listening to today: "Dead Meat" by Bolder Damn.
This is the closing track from this nigh unheard-of underground Ft. Lauderdale heavy psych garage rock band, and it's an absolutely epic banger.
There's not much info about them, and they vanished without a trace. The little info I've found is that this whole album was recorded live in studio, which tracks.
Fortunately, the album has seen two modern-day CD rereleases, so it's not as impossible to find as it could be.
What I'm listening to today: "Parents" by Budgie.
This is the absolutely incredible song from their third album, Never Turn Your Back on a Friend, which closes the album out and makes up a quarter of its total runtime.
I love the guitar solo on this song so, so much. Just an incredibly sweet guitar tone, great phrasing, really tells a story. Just phenomenal.
Budgie was another of those really influential bands that never made it big.
> Burke Shelley has said that the band's name came from the fact that he, "loved the idea of playing noisy, heavy rock, but calling ourselves after something diametrically opposed to that".
What I'm listening to today: "The Feast" by Noorvik.
An absolutely epic instrumental prog metal banger from this German band. Fifteen minutes really lets this thing breathe its hypnotic, heavy, multilayered Thing straight into your brainholes.
I have no idea how this got onto my Bandcamp wishlist, but I'm glad it did.
What I'm listening to today: "Jams from the 80's: Recreated on Synthesizers"
This is just a delightful, super satisfying video of someone covering 80s synthpop songs on the same models of synths used to originally make them. Highly recommended.
What I was listening to last night: "Songs From Under the Floorboard - OFTS Teaser #1 and Much MUCH More"
This is the archived copy of the weekly post-punk/darkwave/synthwave/sometimes edging into industrial show that airs locally here on XRAY FM; it's one of my favorites, and I try to listen every week. They're all good, but last night's was notably great, especially the second half.
Seriously, I had three songs /in a row/ that made me instantly add the albums to my Bandcamp wish list. It was a really good show last night.
The DJ that hosts this also organizes Out From the Shadows, a local festival of this kind of music. Alas, this year will be the last, and I'm still feeling like going to concerts is a bad idea.
What I'm listening to today: "Harvey Danger - Wine, Women & Song (Demo)."
Remember Harvey Danger? They did that one song? This is another song, also by them.
This song was originally released on the "Sometimes You Have to Work on Christmas (Sometimes)" EP, then rerecorded for the "Little by Little" album. I first heard it while rummaging through a friend's music library in 2006, in an album called "SXSW 2005 Showcasing Artists," a MP3-only promotional release of artists who played that festival.
The album version of the song is okay, but the demo is Great. The performance on the demo is perfect: great emotion, great phrasing, clever lyrics. Without drums, it's driven by the rhythm of the piano and melody of the vocals, not quite ballad, but not really a Rock Song either. The only real Production here is a bit of reverb on the piano. The minimalism really emphasizes the vocal performance, which has great tone and emotion. Just a fantastic take, absolutely nailed it.
Here's the album version. In my estimation, it's worse in every way other than /maybe/ raw recording quality. And that's a big maybe; the demo sounds great to my ears.
The changes to lyrics are minor, but mostly unnecessary, and they make phrasing really awkward in some places, like "we had nothing left to say to each other."
I don't like the weird vocal intonation in a bunch of places, like "car" / "far"; "department" / "apartment."
There's more Stuff. More guitar, more effects on the vocals, more drums. There's less Raw, less emotion, less feeling. The demo is lightning in a bottle, the album version is slick and all wrong.
What I'm listening to today: "The Panacea - Mortal Sin."
This is a fantastic drum & bass song. Takes a bit to get going, then cranks the intensity to the max.
This is a pretty rare track from Panacea, I first heard it on the Ad Noiseam label sampler/retrospective. I miss that label, they put out a ton of great stuff.
What I'm listening to today: "Bloodywood - Rakshak."
This is a pretty bangin Indian folk-nu-metal crossover album. I'm really enjoying hearing some new takes on the genre as metal expands and mutates and becomes a more diverse & inclusive genre in the 21st century; this has a lot of that goodness.
Music post containing discussion of accident / severe injury
What I'm listening to today: "The D.O.C. - Return of da Livin' Dead."
The D.O.C. was a very promising Texas rapper, who nearly died in a car crash six months after his first album. The crash crushed his larynx and severely damaged his voice, but he went ahead and released two more albums. This is off the first, which is a pretty odd artifact. It's uneven and has some very weird stuff, but this song is amazing. It's experimental and grimy and hits super hard. His voice is an evil rasp that works perfectly in this context, and the lyricism and flow are astonishing, even before you realize how hard he must have worked to do it. It's a completely unique sound, and I love it.
https://hip-hopthegoldenera.bandcamp.com/track/return-of-da-livin-dead
What I'm listening to today: "Depeche Mode 1982-03-30 Rainbow Club, Oberkorn, Luxembourg (HQ video)."
The quality of this short live set from 1982 set has to be seen to be believed. It's a pro level recording, with multiple angles and audio right off the soundboard. It looks and sounds *incredible*, and captures a strange and important transitional era of the band. Vince Clarke had left, and the band was in the process of recording their second album (A Broken Frame) as a trio. And even though Alan Wilder was in the band (and performing with them here), he didn't participate on ABF, even though it wouldn't be released until the end of the year.
ABF is a terrific gem, one of my favorites, and this is a rare, uncommonly clear look into its era.
This live set also has another connection to the band: it was shot in Oberkorn; around a month later, the B-side of "The Meaning of Love" was a song called "Oberkorn (It's a Small Town)," which was written by Martin Gore as the opening track for the tour this show is from.
I treasure when I find a historical live set with fantastic quality like this. Really going to miss that in the impending post-YouTube era.
"What I'm listening to today" posts to resume shortly.
Since February is Black History Month, I'm going to endeavor to share a song by a Black musician I love, every weekday, for the entire month.
What I'm listening to today: "Martha and the Vandellas - Heat Wave."
An absolute classic, this song is an early example of the popular Motown sound and helped catapult the band -- and the label -- to fame. Heat Wave was an enormous hit, reaching #1 on the Billboard R&B charts and staying there for over a month.
It's far from a deep cut, but it's one of my very favorite Motown songs, and its feel-good vibe feels perfect for a Friday.
What I'm listening to today: "Cybotron - Cosmic Cars."
This is the second single from Cybotron. Along with their first single, Alleys of your Mind, the duo of Juan Atkins and Richard Davis created and defined the early techno sound. Techno music is pretty white these days, but... it came from Detroit in the late 70s and early 80s, of course it was created by Black artists. They were both influenced heavily by Kraftwerk and Parliament-Funkadelic, and both are readily apparent.
One can trace back a lot of the decline of Detroit directly to racism. Extensive redlining meant that 80% of all home deeds had restrictive covenants preventing their sale to non-whites by 1940. In the postwar era, this meant that returning white veterans could use the G.I. Bill to buy new homes, but Black veterans could not. The structural inequality and white flight decimated the tax base and set the city up for failure.
What I'm listening to today: "Black Death - The Hunger."
This is a deep cut from the 1984 self-titled debut of Black Death, a band you’ve probably never heard of. Hailing from Cleveland, they were the first all-Black heavy metal group. While they were active from the late 70s through the late 80s, this is the only album they recorded during that period.
The band was reformed in 2014 as Black Death Resurrected and a different lineup, and released a second album in 2015.
Like a lot of smaller 1980s metal bands, the sound quality leaves something to be desired, but their musicianship shines through -- as you might expect for a band that had been together for around 7 years at the time they recorded this.
What I'm listening to today: "Cab Calloway - St. James Infirmary Blues."
Cab Calloway recorded a ton of different versions of this folk blues standard, and this is a real good one, originally recorded for a Betty Boop cartoon. I’d prefer to see the man himself, rather than the animated version, but this is the only version I can find with this specific recording that I love. Calloway was prominently featured in a few Betty Boop cartoons.
He was a pioneer: The Minnie the Moocher single was the first record by a Black musician to sell a million copies. He was the first Black American to have a nationally syndicated radio show -- in the 1930s. A consummate musician and entertainer for six decades. What an absolute treasure he was.