Eunice Kathleen Waymon AKA Nina Simone was one of the greatest American musicians to have ever lived. Only one of her albums ever made the Billboard Top 40 in the US.

For a quick-and-dirty demonstration of just how influential Nina Simone was to the music world, here is an abbreviated list of musicians who have covered her songs or cited her as an influence: Mary J. Blige, Lauryn Hill, Alicia Keys, Timbaland, Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Jeff Buckley, Aretha Franklin, Roberta Flack, Cat Stevens, The Animals, Muse, Cat Power, Feist, Marilyn Manson, David Bowie and John Lennon.

Nina Simone’s music is unclassifiable, running the gamut from jazz, soul, & classical, gospel and pop. She herself disliked the term “jazz” and preferred to describe her sound as “black classical”. Frequently though, the arrangements would be sparse, allowing her voice to be the centerpiece. And what a voice. Her range was from alto to tenor, causing many a first-time listener to mistakenly think they were hearing a man’s voice coming from the hi-fi.

Listening to her music today, in the year 2010 it is astonishing how fresh it sounds, how unmolested by the passage of time. Think of your favorite Musician Who Defined A Generation – Chuck Berry, Bob Dylan, Kurt Cobain – listen to their music and you instantly get a sense of context. Nightclubs of the 1950’s. Shirtless hippies. Seattle. Now listen to a Nina Simone record, any record. With the exception of perhaps the transcendent “Why? (The King of Love is Dead)”, her tribute to the slain Dr. Martin Luther King, Simone’s music sounds as timeless and alien today as it ever has. Her arresting voice effortlessly transversing the decades, forcing you to stop whatever you’re doing and listen.

Here are a few of her songs that I feel are essential.

“Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood”
Delicate piano and restrained strings anchor this mournful ballad about “a soul whose intentions are good.” The whole song is basically an apology, a plaintive plea for forgiveness which, though brief – it clocks in at just under three minutes – says all that could ever need to be said about regret.

“Strange Fruit”
Originally recorded by Billie Holiday, Nina takes what by all rights should be an untouchable classic and somehow manages to reinvent it entirely, resulting in a cover that’s not “better” but just so staggeringly alien. This is one of those songs that features such minimal piano that she could have sung it acapella and it would have lost none of its impact. The song is about the lynching of blacks in the south, and the fact that something so breathtakingly beautiful could have been born from a reaction to something so shameful and ugly is one of the things that gives me faith in humanity.

“Mississippi Goddam”
Frustrated by the racism and inequality she witnessed in the US, Nina Simone would eventually relocate permanently to France. Her protest song “Mississippi Goddam” distills her feelings on the subject of institutionalized hatred and was in fact banned in several southern states – ostensibly because of the swear word in the title. This is the live version from the 1963 record Nina Simone in Concert.

“Sinnerman”
Although originally a traditional American spiritual (author unknown) this is considered the definitive version. “Sinnerman” has also been covered by Peter Tosh, Gregory Isaacs, Sinead O’Connor, Three Dog Night and Goldfinger, and sampled by Talib Kweli, Kanye West, Timbaland and Felix da Housecat. With all due respect to these talented artists – and Kanye West – their versions are crap. “Sinnerman” by Nina Simone is, simply put, ten minutes of absolute musical perfection. “Sinnerman” is not a slow build to ecstasy, it is a volcanic eruption. “Sinnerman” is a frenzy of handclaps and cymbals and all 88 piano keys. “Sinnerman” is a desperate cry to God, to the Devil, to Humankind itself. “Sinnerman” is one woman’s voice, amplified to engulf the whole world. “Sinnerman” deserves to be ranked as one of our species greatest achievements.

Tanlines – New Flowers

Contemporary Sound and Video

Neon Indian – 6669 (I Don’t Know If You Know)

No Acid Regrets

Washed Out – Belong

Atlantic Sea Spray

Beach Fossils – Daydream

Brooklyn Underwater

Delorean – Deli

Where The Go! Team should have gone

Boy Crisis – Fountain of Youth

Liger Beat

Glasser – Apply

New Hypnosis

The Legends – You Won

Do you like The Mary Onettes?

Joker – Digidesign

S3M TRACKIN’

Ennio Morricone is one of only a very few examples of a true living legend. But while everyone knows him for his Sergio Leone film scores, few Americans realize that those were just part of a massive catalog of musical output. In fact, the prolific Italian composer is proficient in multiple genres including classical, jazz and pop.

Ennio Morricone’s arrangements are stirring, powerful things, splendidly evocative. It is no accident that Quentin Tarantino keeps pinching such gems as “Titoli Di Testa” and “L’Arena” for some of the most epic moments in his films. But anyone unfamiliar with Morricone’s other work is missing out on such wonders as the superhero psychedelia conjured up for Danger: Diabolik the clangy claustrophobia found in Un Uomo Da Rispettare and the acid jazz weirdness of Gli Occhi Freddi Della Paura.

Of course it is for good reason that his scores for the 1960’s Spaghetti Westerns are Morricone’s best-known work. It is easy, today to forget how unique, how bizarre those early compositions were. Before A Fistful of Dollars in 1964, Western film scores simply didn’t have any Jew’s harp or whistle solos, not to mention the virtuoso guitar of Alessandro Alessandroni. Now, of course, it is nearly impossible to think of a Western without such things.

Take “L’Estasi Dell’Oro” for example, the infamous piece from The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly. What is going on there? A soft but nervous piano skitters past, followed by a solemn string section that is soon overrun by the rest of the orchestra and an operatic solo female vocal. The whole thing culminates in a grand crescendo that employs cascading trumpets and pounding timpani, all the while somehow managing not to sound overdone. It is baroque, divine madness of the rarest kind.

Ennio Morricone – L’Estasi Dell’Oro

Examining “Il Triello” we find a pastoral symphony beset upon by a wailing chorus of vocals and brass. And when the ominous guitar begins to strum, we understand the storm can be held off, but not forever. The calm is refreshing, if only because we know that the torrent of horns and voices are bound to return, crushing us with their insistence. Brushed cymbals and funerial piano give way to marching-band drums and ecstatic orchestral stabs as the chorus welcomes the fallen into its arms.

Ennio Morricone – Il Triello

Finally, “Titoli Di Testa” from Navaho Joe. From its initial hair-raising scream to its ultimate reverberating echo, it is an exercise in exuberant excess. Even after repeated listens I cannot help but be unnerved by its sheer majesty. The shouting warriors give way to the cleanest, most crisp guitar ever plucked by man, and the drums call down the fury of a power I cannot begin to comprehend. Trade a thousand souls to a thousand devils, and you still would not have the supernatural power of Ennio Morricone.

Ennio Morricone – Titoli Di Testa

Special thanks to Brakhage at The Dinosaur Gardens, who has put together a marvelous mixtape of Morricone music available for download. http://www.dinosaurgardens.com/archives/401

Five (actually 6) songs I have been listening to for I don’t know how long. Each has at least one total standards-wrecking ass part in them, so I suppose that is the common thread here. I often think that if I pull out the songs with the melodies that really matter to me, I’ll be able to quantize a high-level view of my actual taste in music. Maybe that’s bullshit but:

Sophie Rimheden feat Annika Holmberg – Can You Save Me (Mt. Ventoux Remix)

I first heard this song early last year on the excellent Sackaros mix, put together by the always solid Johan Agebjörn. For the longest time I wrongly thought that this astral disco jammer was sung by Sally Shapiro, who Johan provides incredible italo backing tracks for. Turns out it’s Annika Holmberg, who I know shit all about, but who sounds like a beautifully fragile and breathless doll. I have danced after midnight to this track more times than anybody.

Bag Raiders – Shooting Stars

A couple of guys from Sydney making music with terrific soul. There’s a surge in Aussie synth that’s softer than the aggressive French sound that dominated for a few years there. Dudes like The Presets tried to make harsher electro make sense down under, and I never thought it worked that well. But there’s something bold about how Bag Raiders play up what is practically a slow-jam sensitivity into a big and bright hand-clapper. If you’re feeling this you might also like this Ted and Francis mix.

Radioclit – Secousse (Crookers Spino Mix)

This beast was on the Buraka Som Sistema mixtape, which led up to their outstanding Black Diamond LP. I’ve gotta say that this is the most massive leg-killing banger I’ve heard in like 5 years. I don’t know. I can’t remember listening to anything that got me this hype in forever, and the close second is another Crookers mix, so maybe I should give it up to those guys instead of Radioclit? Fidget House has its problems and for all of my misgivings about Crookers, there’s kind of no denying this shit for me.

For a treat try skipping to 1:55 on the video below and then click play on this track. Be sure to turn the video volume down too (classic as it is).

La Roux – Bulletproof (Zinc Remix)

La Roux will probably become a big deal. Who knows really? She’s compelling as a character, anyway, and her pop is pretty modern. I’d heard her stuff in lots of mixes but didn’t know it was her until Adam mentioned it. Then I happened to find some mixes of Bulletproof which I didn’t think much of until this one came on in the car during an alone morning on the way to the gym and when the bottom dropped out about a minute in the air around me seemed to compress. It’s a carbon fiber production — dense without the heavy.

Gang Gang Dance – House Jam

I was going to write a whole post about these guys but I can’t bring myself to do it. A lot of their shit is just too free for me. But fuck if Saint Dymphna isn’t an outstanding time. That album is a stack of new ideas, cut through with considered yet incredibly natural gestures. Anyway I’m putting this song up here because it’s like a sonic play for me. The first 3:00 set a richly layered stage for the next 16 seconds of spare, plaintive construction. And then you get 18 seconds of real, body-rending drama.

“Will clouds carry my tears to you?” Fuck man I’m dying! BTW I make a point of playing this song at most House Jams.

Starkey – Spacewalk

I had this post planned before I heard this song so it’s a bonus, and a fine way to end up. Starkey tends towards the Wonkier side of Dubstep, though I don’t know that this is particularly asynchronistic in the same way as his other stuff. It’s the last track on his LP (Ephemeral Exhibits), and it’s a mesmerizer. There’s a lot of what feels like angry pathos here, where you’re sort of resigned to the way things are but haven’t forgotten your frustration at your own sadness. But there’s redemption too, in the promise of progress through life, and the possibility of finding human communion.

This song makes me think about how when you take God out of everything you can replace him with Space.

If you’ve never heard of Antarctia, there’s probably a very good reason. Formed in New York, the band were together just long enough to release an EP in 1998 and their only full-length in 1999. They would break up less than a year later.

Each release was named after its length; 21:03 and 81:03 respectively. The music contained within those cheekily-titled discs has been decribed as dream pop, atmospheric pop, shoegaze, and while all of those categories might be said to apply, none of them does so completely.

Do you remember arriving at a party, and being outside the house and hearing the music playing from within? You know it’s loud, because you can hear it out on the street, but heard from without it is muffled, tamped down, flattened out. Mono. And even if it’s punk rock or hip hop, when heard from outside the house, it sounds warm and gentle. Because all the layers of drywall or wood or brick have transformed it into something else, something new. Something special, only for those out on the perimeter.

That’s what Antartica sounds like. That strange music at the edge of a party. It’s what I imagine one would hear at the event horizon of a black hole, if only sound could travel in space.

81:03 opens with a track entitled “Absence” which brings to mind cheery 1980’s snyth pop for about 40 seconds, until Eric Richter’s voice pushes through the mix and one is forcibly reminded of Kevin Shield’s similar struggle against the wailing of his own guitar. As with My Bloody Valentine, one needn’t try too hard to make out exactly the words being sung. The human voice is not the intended focal point, but another color in the band’s vast palette.

The nine minute epic “Hallucinus” weds brooding keyboards with crisp guitar and spastic handclaps, while frozen seas shimmer and ghosts bemoan their condition. The band’s name is fitting. Indeed, their sound was being described as “glacial” and “otherworldly” before anyone outside of Iceland had heard of Sigur Rós. And while I won’t pile on the hyperbole of “God crying tears of gold in Heaven” perhaps it wouldn’t be too much to imagine Jesus getting just a little misty-eyed.

Obvious references and forebearers include Pink Floyd, New Order, Joy Division. But unlike any of those bands – well except maybe Joy Division – Antartica lived such a brief life, an eyeblink in the music world, that they were lost before they were ever really found. Their tracks covered by the unforgiving snowfall of an inhospitable world.

Bands like Antarctica are the reason I write about music. To brush away some of that snow and uncover something magnificent and worth sharing.

(81:03 is still in print and can be found online at the usual outlets.)

Antarctica – Absence

Antarctica – Hallucinus

These dudes are on some star-dense shit. Broadly, the songs below are Dubstep. They’re all built on those deep and fat wah-wah noises I love so much, which give each track its own anxiety-driven cadence. I often feel like the world is about to shatter and cascade down around me when I listen to this shit, which is rewarding because my life is still intact when the songs end, and in this way I can manufacture relief.

My understanding is that this stuff is not bass-weight-meditative in the way that really brainy Dubstep can be, but is instead made to be listened to aggressively and angrily, with drugs in your body and a headbutt-thickened skull if you’re a particularly hard sort of person (which I am not, but my limbic system knows what’s up).

Anyway here are the tracks. I hope they stress you the fuck out.

Caspa & Rusko – Bread Get Bun

I think this sounds like the crisis of a football firm, fighting for fun.

I first heard these dudes on their Fabriclive 37 mix, which was mostly tracks by them, plus some hard-nosed hits from 2007 by Coki, D1, Distance, etc. It seems that serious fans of this stuff actually dislike the direction C&R are taking with this and their other recently released tracks. They think it’s fucking up Dubstep and ruining their lives but really they’re just being precious dicks. This genre is young! Let it mutate and diverge!

DZ – Down

This is a track that is set to alienate from the start. It strips you of any melodic expectations you brought along, punches you in the face, and then drops you into a motherfucking SPACE JAIL full of subwoofers and broken pianos and the smell of engines.

When I was a kid I used to have a recurring dream every time I slept in front of this stone fireplace at my grandparents’ house. In this dream, I was small and grey and trapped in a huge windowless room, dwarfed by giant red and blue pistons that fired regularly, stamping from ceiling to floor, while faceless red and blue men patrolled the place. The pistons were powered by a steaming, organic energy — something familiar and dirty, like coal or oil — which made their threat more comprehensible and inevitable. It was the kind of dream that hollows you until you’re bottomed out, and it used to frighten me so completely that I would let the pistons crush me to death everytime I had it, knowing that dying in my dream would wake me up.

Something in “Down” helps me compartmentalize and own that sense of helplessness. It makes me feel powerful and determined and in control.

DZ is from Vancouver, which is pretty tight. I don’t know what the scene is like there but it’s a long way from the dirt of England where Dubstep is growing so violently. I ripped this from the end of the Jokers of the Scene NLLR mix that came out last year (which is excellent), so it includes an extra sample at the beginning, but I kind of like it that way.

Oh and:

The Count & Sinden – Stinging Nettle

I posted this one elsewhere a while ago, and these guys aren’t really known for making thick tracks like this lately, but I still feel like “Stinging Nettle” is an incredibly heavy monster. This song is more alarming than the others: it uses the wah-wah as a siren, and builds quickly towards a faster stepping, more dance-compelling beat. I sort of can’t believe these guys also made “Beeper”.

“We learned more from a three-minute record baby
than we ever learned in school.”

It’s amazing to me that, Springsteen circa 1984 set the basis for some of my favorite music ever, even though I didn’t really give Born In The USA props until I was in my early twenties. He’s directly influenced most of the artists in this Rock N’ Roll Means Well series, and his was one of my favorite shows ever. Shortly after returning from Vietnam in 2007 I sneaked in to see him play at the Oracle Arena in Oakland during the Magic tour, and it was, AH-HEM, amazing.

The biggest surprise by far was him busting into “No Surrender” early into the set. This 1984 song about busting out, hitting the road, and seeing what was outside your small town (and was also about Steven Van Zandt leaving the E-Street Band) continues to inspire artists around the world.

Bruce Springsteen: “No Surrender”

Needless to say, I lost my shit when he played that song. It was, simply, goosebump-inducing incredible. Here’s an acoustic version done in France 15 years after the song came out for an Amnesty International concert:

Still the same effect. Born In the USA may have been the greatest album of the 1980’s.

Note: This is the second installment in a weekly series entitled Rock & Roll Means Well, which was also the name of a 2008 tour embarked upon by The Hold Steady and Drive-By Truckers. I’m going to try and focus on current American music done that, I dunno, belongs together.

If you were walking down the street and saw these dudes, you would know that they were in a band. A rock band. Maybe a rock band for the kids. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it?

The Gaslight Anthem are a band, and really all I know about them is that they’re from New Jersey. I admit, “The Gaslight Anthem” is a stupid band name, and I would have never even bothered listening to them if it weren’t for the insistence of a friend of mine that I would like them. This comes after a night last November where I rocked my ass off (for the second night in a row, mind you) to Drive-By Truckers and The Hold Steady over in San Francisco, and she was there to know what I really might like.

Still, I put it off and it wasn’t until an evening in December, a week before Christmas, stuck in traffic on Interstate 80 heading west over Donner Pass in the snow and waiting to put the chains on the car that I read an article in The Onion exalting their most recent record The ‘59 Sound in their year end best-of list. Simply, it said they fell somewhere between Against Me! and some dude named Bruce Springsteen. I guess I had to give this a listen.

Simply put, at first I was torn as to if I should like this band or not. They have a shitty-ass emo band name, borrow liberally from the Boss, using his characters and referencing his songs, and sometimes comes off more as The Killers without the keyboards. I was so torn, but I could not deny that these songs are catchy as shit, but also catchy in the sense that 2001-era Jimmy Eat World songs were catchy. Is this a guilty pleasure or am I just guilty?

Fuck it. I am a fan. At least, I like The ‘59 Sound, and if you’re on the fence and you believe in critical acclaim (especially haters like Pitchfork who gave this record a 8.6/10.0), redemption, The Boss, a “high and lonesome sound,” punk bands who grow up and listen to older records, and rock and roll music that is catchy and good and makes you want to go to shows, push your way up front, jump up and down, and singalong, that’s what The Gaslight Anthem do.

I haven’t seen Sandy and Johnny, or Mary
I heard they got married, might of had a couple babies
And traded their memories, for Fairview and Makers
And never play no pinball, or get up pass the breakers.

But not me, pretty baby
We still love Tom Petty songs
And driving old men crazy

The Gaslight Anthem: Even Cowgirls Get The Blues

“Even Cowgirls Get The Blues” may be a bit of a bait and switch with this band, but this is the song I think of the most. The way Brian Fallon belts out the line “Can I get a witness pretty baby?” shows the urgency, immediacy, and sincerity that the Gaslight Anthem bring to their kind of music.

It may be for the kids, but that doesn’t mean it has to suck.

Got lit and played racquetball this morning with Rod. It was the highest quality gameplay I’d ever brought. I’m a touch player and I was fucking feeling it, and I got a couple of games on Rod, who is an excellent player.

Anyway Rod and I get to talking between a point and he mentions this dude Ed. I’d played doubles with this guy a week before, and he seemed like any older dude in his 60’s, except he was sort of extra-scraggly-looking, and he was wearing a weed t-shirt. The shirt had a big leaf on it and seemed common enough, but I noticed that the back had some text like, “Hereditary Genes – Highly Concentrated THC”. At the time I remember thinking, “I wonder if this guy is some hot shot pot grower.”

Rod told me that I was right. Ed is the “Guru of Ganja”, and has written dozens of books on the subject. I’m going to try to hang out with him I think. Or maybe I’ll just lay my mellow bones down with my contemporaries.

After playing, I wandered down to the locker room in that hazy daze of endorphins and other joy, and I started listening to Alborosie. I’m not a huge reggae head, but I love this guy’s steez. He was born in Sicily and moved to Kingston Town really young, and he’s a huge part of the modern Jamaican scene. This video is pretty informative.

Here’re two of his biggest jams.

Alborosie – Herbalist

This was the one that got me at first. It’s got the kind of pacing that makes you sit deeper in your seat and touch your chin to your chest.

Alborosie – Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner

I’ve seriously put this shit on at like 20 dinner parties and no one has called bullshit on me yet, because it’s a truly unfadeable hit.

There’s something about Alborosie that makes his stuff way more compelling to me than most other reggae. I’ve been getting the Reggae One Drop Anthem comps for the last few years and there’s some great stuff there too, but a lot of it pales. Give this shit a shot, as nastily sober as you wanna be. And while you’re at it fuck a badman bloodclot.

Note: This is the first in a weekly series entitled Rock & Roll Means Well, which was also the name of a 2008 tour embarked upon by The Hold Steady and Drive-By Truckers. I’m going to try and focus on current American music done that, I dunno, belongs together.

This is also the first in an attempt to post an MP3 a week. I hope this works.

First, I should get something out of the way:

MIKE COOLEY IS A FUCKING GENIUS.

There, I’ve said it. I’ve thought about that line a million times, anytime one of his songs comes on my iPod shuffle as I’m riding up Broadway in Oakland, anytime he took the microphone on the two shows I saw last November at the Fillmore in San Francisco, and anytime I put on his playlist I’ve made of all the Cooley Drive-By Truckers songs…it just, fucking, works.

I’ve always kind of liked the Drive-By Truckers. I first heard them sometime around 2001 when a guy I’d met through his blog put a song of theirs, the ultra-fine “One Of These Days” (from DBT’s 1999 album Pizza Deliverance) on a mix CD that I ended up with as part of some weblog community thing. I honestly forget how we met, but me and Armando hung out a couple time around North Carolina as a I traveled around.

Anyways. I ended up putting the song on a mix CD I made called The Russian River: Songs For Rural Driving around the same time. I used to have a delivery route that I took up to Sonoma County in California every Wednesday, and the music matched the backroads landscape that I saw every week.

I had started to get into country music, American rock & roll, and, well, stuff that was old. Before that I had been rooted in current indie pop and indie rock releases, and before that I liked the punkier offerings the 1990’s had to offer. This was different, and “One Of These Days” fit right in.

I kept after Drive-By Truckers, putting each additional release on my iPod, loving some songs, being ho-hum about others, and then they booked a tour with my new favorite band, The Hold Steady, and they called that tour Rock & Roll Means Well.

I went to both shows in San Francisco, but the first one had DBT headlining, and then I realized why I LOVED some songs and thought others were OK: Mike Cooley. I guess I knew there were different singers and songwriters in the band, but it wasn’t until I saw the live show that I knew who sang all, and I mean all, of my very favorite songs. “Carl Perkin’s Caddilac,” (a favorite of mine on my monthly Honky-Tonk DJ set), “Lisa’s Birthday,” the kind of funny but super real “Bob,” “Gravity’s Gone, “Zip City,” “Women Without Whiskey,” “72 (This Highway’s Mean),” and “Shut Up And Get On The Plane” from Southern Rock Opera, “Marry Me,” “Three Dimes Down,” and “Self-Destructive Zones” all from Brighter Than Creation’s Dark. It was all Cooley. All his storytelling songwriting genius and I instantly realized that I liked, loved, Drive-By Truckers even more than I thought.

So, how to pick a song, one song to feature. Last night, riding up Broadway on my 1976 Schwinn, coming back from a good air hockey tournament and even better Belgian ales, “A Ghost To Most” from 2008’s excellent Brighter Than Creation’s Dark came on my little green iPod shuffle and I started singing along. It felt good. It felt GREAT, I slowed up a bit to let the song finish before I got home, riding past Kaye’s, the Kragen, the Burger King, singing aloud:

Drive-By Truckers: A Ghost To Most:

Baby every bone in my body’s gone to jumping
like they’re gonna come through my skin.
If they could get along without the rest of me, it wouldn’t matter if they did
But skeletons ain’t got nowhere to stick their money
nobody makes britches that size
and besides you’re a ghost to most before they notice
that you ever had a hair or a hide

Fucking tops. It’s a powerful song, it’s a song that I get, and it’s a song, like most of Cooley’ songs, that tells a story. I encourage you to seek out all of the songs mention above, and hopefully you’ll get some of the magic that I do.

This post was longer than I’d wanted it to be, but fuck it. Check in next Monday for another MP3.