03.07.09
Shonen Knife — Brown Mushrooms
02.23.09
How To Understand Jazz Music
I wrote this article years ago for a website that is unfortunately now offline. Luckily, I had a back-up copy in my archives. It will probably seem a very simplistic explanation to a serious jazz lover, yet I think it might be a good start for a person who knows nothing about jazz and is interested in dipping his toe in the water. Hope to post a few other “lost essays” from that website in the future, as the fresh content seems to be decreasing lately here at the Spiddlement office while we work on a few unrelated projects.
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How To Understand Jazz Music
For much of my life, I was needlessly intimidated by jazz music. A lot of people who come from a pop music background are. I mean, I liked jazz music a lot, thought it sounded great, but I never understood it.
Whenever I would see a live jazz band playing in the park, it was easy to enjoy the groove and notice the proficiency of the musicians. But what kind of structure were they using? It certainly wasn’t the “verse-chorus-verse” structure of pop tunes like “Wouldn’t It Be Nice” and “Be My Baby”, or even the Tin Pan Alley structure of early pop and show tunes like “Come Fly With Me” and “‘Til There Was You”.
Sometimes I heard songs that I recognized played by jazz bands, songs like “Night and Day”, “Stella By Starlight”, “Georgia On My Mind”, or “Midnight At The Oasis”. I could relate to the great melodies, but was amazed at the way the players would totally deconstruct these songs and create new interpretations on the spot. How the heck did they do that? I finally decided that I would try to solve the mystery of jazz music.
02.21.09
Miho Hatori — “Barracuda”
02.01.09
Clifford Brown, “Easy Living”
I learned the adjective for “easy” today at my Japanese lesson, and found myself singing this song for some reason.
Living definitely is easy when you’re in love with the things you do.
01.31.09
Paul McCartney, “Pretty Little Head” video
This is a gem from McCartney’s underrated 1986 Press To Play album. It was playing in a dream I had the other night.
I was surprised to find that there was a video, which I had never seen before today, for the song. This video mix is slightly different than the album version.
01.13.09
Marianne Faithfull, Hold On, Hold On (live)
Marianne Faithfull live on “De Laatste Show” TV1 Belgium with the great song “Hold On, Hold On”, Dec. 2, 2008.
This song was also appears on Marianne’s new album Easy Come, Easy Go.
01.11.09
The Raveonettes, “Whip It On” EP (record review)
REVIEW: The Raveonettes, Whip It On (2002)
When I decided last year to start writing record reviews, I kind of admitted to myself that I could never imagine writing a bad review. If I didn’t like a record, I would simply ignore it.
My reasoning was that I have read so many horrible reviews of records that totally changed my life. For every bad review, there’s always plenty of people who absolutely love a record. Why not shine light on something I dig, rather than putting down something? Not only that, but I have actually bought records based on bad reviews — just to see if the criticisms were valid, and also I sometimes find missteps to be more interesting to listen to than the boringness of sonic perfection.
Along comes the Whip It On EP by The Raveonettes. Believe it or not, I impulse bought this EP back in 2002 when it first came out, based on some buzz I had read about the band. I remember listening to it and thinking, “Hmmm… I just don’t get what’s so great about this band. They’re OK at best.” It was one of those CDs that you find yourself unintentionally turning off. And then later going, “Oh yeah, I was supposed to be listening to that. Let’s try again.” This cycle continued, each time with me getting bored/annoyed quickly, until somehow the EP just disappeared — I think I took it in a stack to the used CD shop.
Since then, I had happily forgotten that The Raveonettes ever existed. Then, recently, I saw their name popping up again in the music press (more buzz). Somehow, the memory of the Whip It On EP was dislodged from behind some cobwebs in my mind, and I tried to remember why I hadn’t liked the EP. “Maybe it was really good after all,” I thought, “Besides, my musical tastes have greatly expanded since 2002. Maybe I should give that one another shot.”
“Wasted Days and Wasted Nights”, Freddy Fender
Spiddlement accidentally discovered this song a week or so ago. And it seems to just keep popping up in our bookmarks, as if it wants to be shared. OK, we give up. Also, we like Freddy Fender’s voice.
