Posted 5/21/2008 02:48:00 PM by barbara flaska

Time for an art break

Check out Louis Armstrong's collages at Paris Review

(via rock confidential)

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Posted 4/04/2008 08:06:00 PM by barbara flaska

I missed reading "Considerable Sounds: The Music That Matters" when it first appeared on Duly Considered.

Here's the opener:

"Molecular Mysticism and The Music of the Spheres

The musician integrates into the social fabric, but is not of it. Art simply does not exist unassailed by social forces and the material world. One must turn inward in a process that is both personal and universal, emerging in the end outwardly via art. Music requires that it's performer be completely centered, concurrently maintaining a delicate balance between self and selfless. These concepts are not mutually exclusive. There are direct parallels between the story of the Zen Archer and the musician. One must know, exactly who and where one is in the cosmogony, have accumulated a vast array of cognitive content, and honed variety of techniques and resources. Yet the creation of art then requires abandonment of all of this to the moment. The finest musicians serve the music. The essential musician becomes the music."


DC Music Editor Benjamin New then goes on a wild solo, contemplating the zen of archery, easing into a sonic reference to "Music Matters", and creating a grand burning finale comprised of Frank Zappa, the Plastic People, Lou Reed, Vaclav Havel, and a NY show with Gary Lucas. I'd read Gary's account of that show when he first posted it and was happy to find this reference to help prove all that music is still living and breathing and echoing around in people's memories.

Considerable Sounds ... czech it out! And, gentle reader, please overlook a coupla typos in the interest of passion.

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Posted 4/04/2008 03:31:00 PM by barbara flaska

Hey, kids, what time is it?

It's time for EMP!


EMP's Pop Conference: A lot of talk about music

By Patrick MacDonald

Seattle Times music critic
Event preview

2008 Pop Conference: "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict and Change"
Thursday-April 13, Experience Music Project, Seattle Center; free (preregistration recommended: 206-770-2745 or e-mail to PopConference Registration@empsfm.org).

If writing about music is like dancing about architecture, as the old saw goes, then talking about music, at an academic level, can really be a stretch.

At Experience Music Project's annual Pop Conference, now in its seventh year, the presentations can go from fascinating and enlightening to pretentious and boring, as well as several levels in between. Sometimes you get the feeling that those who yammer endlessly about music don't really like it, don't seem to get pleasure or insight from it, but rather yearn to examine it, pull it apart, try to understand what others find in the musical experience.

Other times, you encounter a writer or scholar full of enthusiasm and ideas, one who makes listening to music richer because you understand and appreciate it better.

And the best thing about EMP's Pop Conference is that it's free. You can browse among the many offerings — some 40 sessions and panels, with more than 160 presenters reading their papers — and take 'em or leave 'em, never feeling that time or money has been wasted (and there's always the museum to explore for the general admission fee).

As with many contemporary academic pursuits, gender, politics and ethnicity are big at this year's conference. The theme is "Shake, Rattle: Music, Conflict and Change." That takes in a lot of territory. Several panels are connected to one of the museum's current exhibits, "American Sabor: Latinos in U.S. Popular Music." Hip-hop is, of course, well-represented, including a performance by Blue Scholars. Several panels deal with music in time of war.

Last year's conference resulted in the book "Listen Again: A Momentary History of Pop Music," published by Duke University Press. One fascinating aspect of the conference is that you learn how many scholars are out there in academia seriously studying pop music. (At the conference, I often hear Mick Jagger in my head, singing "It's only rock 'n' roll ... ").

For the latest information about the conference schedule, visit EMP online: www.empsfm.org/education.

Patrick MacDonald: 206-464-2312 or pmacdonald@seattletimes.com

Copyright © 2008 The Seattle Times Company

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Posted 4/04/2008 03:15:00 PM by barbara flaska

Thanks to Dave Marsh and the fine folks at www.rockrap.com, got a movie for you today ... They want to know ...

Who owns what? What is the purpose of copyright? What is the purpose of music?

Good Copy Bad Copy is a 58 minute 2007 Danish film (in English) which explores, worldwide, how corporations, lawyers, artists, DJs, and fans are using or ignoring copyright. Filming was done in the U.S., Sweden, Nigeria, Brazil, England, and Russia. It's very well made and blasts out a wild ride of ideas and music.

Watch it at http://nofilmschool.com/2008/03/seen-good-copy-bad-copy/

The cast of characters who appear in one form or another include:

The Beatles
Jay-Z
Publishers
Lawyers
NWA
George Clinton
DJs
MPAA, IFPI
Producers
Danger Mouse
Dancers
U.S. Congress


In a world where 3 billion people live on less than $2 a day, do we need a new business model or a new model for society?

Let the music play.

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Posted 3/28/2008 09:56:00 AM by barbara flaska

Funny bunny stuff, an abstract presented in full at the annual meeting of the American Musicological Society (AMS) South-Central Chapter.

“Analyzing the Rutles: The Music and Identity of the Pre-Fab Four”
Christine Boone, University of Texas at Austin.

"On March 22, 1978, NBC aired a new made-for-TV “docudrama” about a fictional 1960s British Invasion band entitled The Rutles: All You Need is Cash. The Rutles is a phony documentary about the “pre-fab four:” Ron Nasty, Dirk McQuickly, Stig O’Hara, and Barry Wom. The movie is an obvious parody of the Beatles. Every still photograph shown and almost every bit of video footage has been modeled on an actual photograph or video clip of the Beatles.


"Eric Idle, the film’s creator, said that “the Beatles and the Rutles are so
intertwined, you can’t quite tell where the legend ends and the comedy takes over.”1 It is this particular comment that will be investigated through the course of this paper. The movie features a number of songs performed by the Rutles, but each Rutles song is not based on a single Beatles song. Composer Neil Innes does not simply take Beatles songs and replace the lyrics, in the style of the popular song parodies of Weird Al Yankovich. Using John Covach’s idea of stylistic competency, I will deconstruct the musical content of two of the Rutles’ songs and unearth a web of references that work together to create a parody of the Beatles’ style. These songs work in such a way that they can be (and in one famous instance, were) easily misidentified as actual Beatles songs, thereby helping to conflate the identities of the two groups."

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Posted 3/09/2008 01:31:00 PM by barbara flaska

Here it is, at last:

The Civics of Rock: Sixties Countercultural Music and the
Transformation of the Public Sphere

(by Michael Jacob Kramer, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 2006)

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Posted 1/14/2008 01:39:00 PM by barbara flaska

Best Music Writing

(Got some? Send it to Daphne pronto!)

Hello there music writer,

I'm the editor of the Best Music Writing series, now going on its
eighth year of publishing the year's best writing on all topics music
related. I am pleased to report to you that for the 2008 edition of
the book I will be working with esteemed writer Nelson George. I look
forward to a fruitful spring of reading and consulting with him on
this project.

This year, as in every year, I am looking for brilliant features,
essays, profiles, news articles, interviews, creative non-fiction,
fiction, book reviews, long-format reviews, blog posts, journal
articles and the like on music and music culture-related topics.

I ask you to please send your own best work, work you've edited or
published, great work of your friends and colleagues, and/or work that
you have admired in passing throughout the year. You can send me email
links, hard copies of articles, whole magazines (please
paperclip/post-it the pages to read), or if need be, just the
name/title/publication title/date and I will search the piece out
myself. Feel free to mail me multiple times as you find more pieces
that you love starting right….NOW! and ending by the first week in
February at the very latest.

Email to: musicwriting@gmail.com

Mail to:

Daphne Carr/BMW07
603 West 115th Street #120
New York, NY 10025

And finally, please feel free to post this or forward this email
widely to all of your contacts in the music writing and publishing
community. I look forward to a deluge of mail from all of you in the
very near future.

Feel free to email me with any questions.

Thanks for another great year of writing,
Daphne




--
from the desk of:

Daphne Carr
Best Music Writing Series Editor
http://funboring.com/bestmusicwriting/

603 West 115th St #120
NY, NY 10025
646-591-1166
musicwriting@gmail.com

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Posted 8/26/2007 07:13:00 PM by barbara flaska

If we can't be free, at least we can be cheap

It's August, and I saw the Tour de Frank, I saw the Tour de Frank (best show of the year -- no foolin' -- entire audience gave a standing ovation after each and every tune ... it's a gas, that show, and I felt like I'd encountered old friends).

In case you can't catch Dweezil and crew live and in person this time around, here's a great long article on the Man from Utopia, Frank Zappa for your reading, viewing, and listening pleasure.

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Posted 6/19/2007 03:10:00 PM by barbara flaska

Rock & Rap Confidential, the only publication ever recommended by Rage Against the Machine, is now available free of charge via email. To subscribe, just send the email address you wish to receive it at to: rockrap@aol.com.

RRC is the only publication that reviews and promotes every type of music.

RRC, the first to oppose Tipper Gore and the music censors, remains in the forefront in the fight for musical freedom of expression.

RRC is always giving answers to the question: Just exactly why do we need the music industry?

RRC regularly challenges Bono on his bullshit.

To find out more, check out www.rockrap.com (features include The Hidden History of Rock and Rap and Musicians and Health Care).

"This is what we need, more of this!"--Joe Strummer

"The best thing to hit my mailbox"--Cameron Crowe

To subscribe, just send the email address you wish to receive it at to: rockrap@aol.com.

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Posted 5/28/2007 05:34:00 PM by barbara flaska

Comic rapper's CD stirs serious reaction
By Agustin Gurza, LA Times Staff Writer
May 26, 2007


Chingo Bling, the Tex-Mex rapper known for his cultural parodies, wasn't ready for the sobering response he got to his new album, "They Can't Deport Us All," a defiant retort to opponents of illegal immigration.

The title — emblazoned on T-shirts, bumper stickers and Chingo Bling's promotional van — triggered death threats, dirty looks and vandalism.

The van got the worst of it during a series of incidents earlier this year in Houston, where he lives. Somebody scrawled "Go Home" on the side and erased the letter "t" in "can't," thus reversing the slogan to say "They Can Deport Us All." At another point, the vehicle's front windshield was shattered by what appears to be gunshots. Then one day, the van was inexplicably towed from its legal parking spot at a roadside flea market, where it was visible to passing motorists. Earlier this month it vanished again. It was reported stolen, but hasn't been seen since.

The satirist, whose real name is Pedro Herrera III, had always been good at attracting attention to his act. But nothing like this.

"I was surprised to see it really upset people," Herrera told me this week. "It just brings to light, I guess, the feelings at the core of this debate: the fear, xenophobia, ethnocentrism and all kinds of good stuff."

I once dismissed the flamboyant rapper as a crass self-promoter who exploited Mexican cultural symbols — taco trucks, cockfights, ostrich cowboy boots — to promote himself as the Ghetto Vaquero and Tamale Kingpin.

Not that I was wrong about that. Herrera acknowledges that he invented his comedic barrio character as a way to grab the spotlight. That he did, with his "bideo" of the song "Taco Shop," a spoof of 50 Cent's hit "Candy Shop."

But Chingo Bling can no longer be dismissed as a buffoon.

The rapper boldly steps into the immigration debate on his first single off the new album, "Like This and Like That." If people were upset by the CD title-turned-battle-cry, they'll be livid when they hear the rest:



"They'll never catch us all. It'll never stop, Anytime, any corner, baby, I'mma set up shop…. The border got a fence but we got underground tunnels…. Right now, they got us cleaning up Katrina. Yo Kanye! Bush don't like Mexicans either!"



The video, viewable with some difficulty at his clunky MySpace page, reenacts scenes from a day in the life of an illegal immigrant: Sneaking across the border, getting shortchanged after a day's labor, running from a raid on a Laundromat. It dramatizes real events in the life of his father, a Mexican immigrant who fled one of those Laundromat raids with his wife and daughter, too afraid to go back for the family's clothing.

"My goal with the video was to make the illegal immigrant a hero for once," Herrera says. "We're villainized in the mainstream media as the rapist, the guy that didn't pay taxes, the guy that ran over some people drunk. Those are the stories they highlight, and it really just perpetuates all this tension."

Chingo Bling is a most unlikely martyr. Even Herrera doubted whether such a serious subject suited his clownish character. But he was inspired when he heard the vaguely ominous instrumental track offered by the new album's producer, Salih Williams, whom he calls the "Dr. Dre of Texas."

The hip-hop arrangement at first seemed too serious. "But … I thought, 'I have to address this [immigration] issue, and I guess this is the beat I'm going to do it on,' " Herrera says.

His association with Williams is one sign of Herrera's ties to Houston's black hip-hop scene. It's startling to see some of those black artists make cameo appearances on a video that is pro-immigrant, an issue that usually divides the black and Latino communities.

Herrera is taking a step forward with his new work, to be distributed under a new deal with Warner's Asylum label. And he's ready to be taken seriously.

"A lot of people tried to categorize me as 'The Mexican Weird Al,' " Herrera says. "But novelty things don't last long…. I'm going to catch a lot of people off guard. And I'm going to prove a lot of people wrong."

Chingo Bling's new album, "They Can't Deport Us All," is set for release July 3 on his Big Chile label, distributed by Asylum.

(via rockrapconfidential)

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Posted 4/02/2007 08:11:00 PM by barbara flaska

Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls is pleased to announce the dates and
location of 2007's Rock Camp for Girls.

The 2007 Camp Season will be held at Brooklyn's Urban Assembly School
of Music & Art. Directions to the school can be found on our website
(www.williemaerockcamp.org) and also on the applications.

Dates
Session 1: Monday August 6th to Friday August 10th
Session 2: Monday August 20th to Friday August 24th
Ladies Rock Camp: Friday July 6th to Sunday July 8th

For more details, visit www.williemaerockcamp.org. To download a camp
application, financial aid form, volunteer application or Ladies Rock
Camp registration form, please visit
www.williemaerockcamp.org/apply.html

Please help us spread the word! Forward this email to friends, family,
listserves, and more! Also, visit our website to download our promo
poster and hang them in your office, neighborhood, favorite coffee
shop, etc.

We can't wait to rock out with you this summer!

(via daphne brooks at girlgroup)

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Posted 3/27/2007 05:54:00 PM by barbara flaska

Remember when that gal was gonna take on the industry?

A Letter from Lester Chambers

FROM: LESTER CHAMBERS

DATE: June 30, 2000

TO: Courtney Love

Dear Ms. Love,

Just read your article "Courtney Love Does the Math" and I would like to
make you aware of my plight as a recording artist. My brothers and I
recorded over 30 albums as THE CHAMBERS BROTHERS from 1960-1977.

In 1972, we were dropped from Columbia Records after recording 6 albums
with them and until 1994 did not receive a penny in royalties because
we
were still paying on our last album, "OH MY GOD," which showed on the
books as costing over $60,000 for 5 days in the recording studio in
1972. Did you ever read a book called "HIT MEN"? The first 125 pages
deals with Clive Davis' embezzlement of artists funds on Columbia. Need
I say more.

Not only did we not get royalties, even though our hit song "TIME HAS
COME TODAY" has been used in over 30 films (COMNG HOME, PLATOON,
CASUALTIES OF WAR, ETC.) and television shows (right now ABC is using
it as their promo for next season's shows), but Columbia never paid into
our pension fund with AFTRA. We joined AFTRA in 1965, when we were the
house band on "SHINDIG" and as of 1994 had only 1 year vested into our
pension. Of course, we didn't get any medical insurance, either.

In 1994, along with Sam Moore (SAM & DAVE), Jackie Wilson's estate,
Carl Gardner (COASTERS), Bill Pinkney (DRIFTERS), Curtis Mayfield, etc., we
are suing all of the major record companies for pension embezzlement.
It has been 6 years and these companies drag us along, stalling in
releasing any documents. At last count, my wife researched that
CHAMBERS BROTHERS product is on over 125 compilation albums that we have never
received any licensing fees from.

Besides the 6 albums we did on Columbia, we recorded 5 albums with Vault
(now owned and currently on the Internet from licensing agreements from
RHINO RECORDS), 5 with Vanguard (also on the net), 2 with Folkways
(also on the net) and 2 with Proverb and 2 with Avco Embassy, THAT WE NEVER
RECEIVED A PENNY IN ROYALTIES FROM ANY OF THESE COMPANIES!!!! We have
been getting screwed for over thirty years and now with our product on
the Internet, we are getting screwed again!!! Last month, Carl Gardner
(Coasters), Bill Pinkney (Drifters) who, by the way, will be celebrating
his 75th birthday in August, Tony Silvester (Main Ingredient) and myself
filed a lawsuit against MP3.com.

We would greatly appreciate any involvement from you regarding fighting
these pirates. By the way I noticed you used the word "sharecroppers"
several times in this article. Before escaping rural Mississippi in
1953, my father at 75, along with my 13 brothers and sisters were dirt,
poor sharecroppers on land owned by the head of the local KKK. We grew
up learning to sing gospel tunes, while picking cotton in the fields.

Sincerely,

Lester Chambers

(Source: 2007 Punmaster's MusicWire http://www.punmaster.com)

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Posted 3/09/2007 07:51:00 AM by barbara flaska

A bit late tuning in

Larry Miller celebrates the broadcast birth of underground radio, 40 years ago on 2/27 the power was turned on and he broadcast his first show on KMPX in San Francisco. Finding this Lost and Found site is a major score because they seem to catch the spirit. Well worth listening to Larry and these other flashbackers now on live stream (and archived shows) because they just don't do that too much anywhere on radio anymore.

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Posted 3/01/2007 09:56:00 PM by barbara flaska

Required Reading

Everybody go over and hear what Carl Wilson says about the weaponization of music.

Thirty years ago this year, a friend of mine was imprisoned, tortured, and later publicly executed. The story actually gets worse from there. I am reminded of this quite often lately given current events. So for my own personal reasons, and especially because we find ourselves in this day and age, some moral outrage is welcome. I'm glad Carl had a lot to say. More especially because this has been a very difficult paragraph to write.

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Posted 3/01/2007 10:14:00 AM by barbara flaska

The internet can be so strange. This article "The Hashbury is the Capital of the Hippies" (NY Times magazine, 1967) is posted in entirety at a place appropriately called Ugly Flashbacks (a site which otherwise is entirely in Russian, I think).

Not much to report first hand from my side as I only ventured across the Bay into that world a few times, and my short time in the Haight Ashbury was much earlier (1963) long after what was left of the beatniks had straggled over from North Beach (where the original Anxious Asp was located and whose jukebox played Shirley Ellis's "Nitty Gritty" many, many times each evening) into the Haight's crappy lowrent apartments, I mean historic Victorian lofts of such breathtaking vintage that even the woolen carpets had decayed from age, with wainscotting heavily layered by many coats of paint, and high ceilings that dispelled any chance of heat.

And the walks in the park then could be good, because that year the sun would come out at least once in awhile, and stumbling across a statue of Vivaldi in a hidden glade was cause for wonder, or more wondrous yet the discovery of the solarium, which was dazzling dressed out in many coats of super-gloss white enamel though sometimes too brilliant in the direct sun, and which occasionally made me laugh (especially when thinking of the one caricatured by Heinrich Kley).

I wasn't anywhere near the Haight Ashbury. And in 1967, my connection with music was tenuous, but the underground radio station poured generously for me each night. There were just a few trips to record stores for me, and hearing the new imported lp by a guy named Jimi Hendrix. I didn't hear that on the radio or not just yet. I was lured into the back room of The Store by a friend teasing and asking me, "Are you experienced?"

So I clinked through the wooden beaded curtain into the sanctum sanctorum where he played that whole Experience album, newly arrived from England and pressed on a different sort of vinyl you could tell by the heft and feel, and both sides, on a turntable. There was a jukebox in that room, too, but needing repair the machine only lit up when it was plugged in -- so he plugged it in, and that was our version of a light show I guess. The music was unusual, and unique enough that I knew I needed to be more comfortable for an extended listen, and so sank farther back into the battered itchy mohair chair and listened all the way through. And he flipped the disc over and played the other side and had to go out and wait on customers and such. I realized I was already running a bit late to make it all the way to campus for class, so I left. And though I didn't rush out anywhere to buy the record, I did stop back in a few days to inquire if he had it handy, which he didn't, as the record was so precious to him he didn't want to risk leaving it at the store or carrying it in on a regular basis. (So I heard it on the radio after that).

The Store (a most generic name for the time) was a for-profit place of unique ephemera, semi-antiques, cultural artifacts, kitsch, and collectibles on Telegraph that as I recall a guy from the mime troupe (and Diggers) named Peter (Berg) was running. Because he is famous for starting the free stores, you see, The Store isn't mentioned too much in the more official versions and literature that is currently handed down and received, or maybe I'll hedge and suggest perhaps I'm not remembering correctly myself. (And I kind of doubt the latter, as I know the lady who said she told him he should be doing something like that, and as she was busy and struggling at the time, she was a bit miffed she had given that notion away; but this digression has a happy ending because she has gone on to open such a mercantile herself).

Anyway, it wasn't he, that big bear of a man with beads over wooly turtleneck (who sometimes was tardy depositing money into the bank and so people who sold him the kooky trinkets suffered through the indignity of a rubber check drawn on his account, but to be fair he tried to pay most people in cash from the register) who played the Jimi Hendrix record for me. But a handsome, well-groomed fellow I knew from Los Angeles who was in the area to study the fine art of printing and bookmaking who has since gone on to fashion for the true effete many books of poetry and art, some of which you might recognize.

So 1967 was like that, although this is just what I'm remembering at the moment.

Thinking about it, one of the few high points that year that in any way involved music was most tangential. As I waited for a bus on San Pablo, Chris Strachwitz offered me a lift towards home, dropping me off at my bus stop by an ice cream parlor which distracted me from standing at the uncovered bus bench in the patter of rain. Usually passengers would walk across the parking lot and huddle under the benign overhang of the ice cream parlor roof directly in front of the big glass plate windows. But that day, I entered and had a double cone while waiting for my connecting route. And my bus transfer was still valid though a bit folded and worse for wear, and even a bit soggy from insistent raindrops, when I handed it to the always cranky driver regularly assigned to that lousy route.

And, really, the funniest thing about the whole year was to hear a story from the guy in Hashbury, who used to wear thin white gloves when he handled rare records. He was stopped in Berkeley near a demonstration and the police made him empty his pockets. He was obliged to explain to them how it was he had those delicate white gloves in his possession.

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Posted 2/27/2007 07:42:00 AM by barbara flaska

Strange Things Happening Every Day

Book Alert

Shout, Sister, Shout!: The Untold Story of Rock-and-Roll Trailblazer Sister Rosetta Tharpe by Gayle F. Wald



Review By: Joan Osbourne, Singer-songwriter - June 14, 2006 "A book like this is long overdue. Rosetta Tharpe was a major star and a huge influence on the musicians of her day. Listen to her recordings and you can hear all the building blocks of rock and roll."

Review By: Bonnie Raitt, Singer/songwriter - June 14, 2006 "Rosetta was one of the most beloved and influential artists ever in gospel music... and she blazed a trail for the rest of us women guitarists with her indomitable spirit and accomplished, engaging style. She has long been deserving of wider recognition and a place of honor in the field of music history."

Review By: Isaac Hayes, Singer/songwriter - June 14, 2006 "Rosetta Tharpe was one of my first influences, one of the first people I heard sing. I'm glad Gayle Wald has done a book on her because people need to know."

Review By: Greil Marcus, author:Mystery Train:Images of America in Rock-n-Roll - June 14, 2006 "Rosetta Tharpe was larger than life -- but sometimes, as Gayle Wald tells the story, she was larger than herself. Wald's account of Tharpe's 1951 marriage in Griffith Stadium in Washington, D. C. -- she signed a contract for the wedding, then went looking for the husband -- is a classic American tall tale, except that it happened, and, in these pages, you are there."

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Posted 2/26/2007 07:11:00 PM by barbara flaska

Perfect Pitch

Jazz critic Whitney Balliet somehow captured the actual sound and shape of the music, and the humanity of his subjects, in his prose.

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Posted 2/26/2007 03:11:00 PM by barbara flaska

Doug Wouk's upcoming talk at EMP about Clydie King reminded me of this olde (2006) bookmark "Spectropop Presents Looking for Pat Powdrill" by Brian Nevill, from Downey Records to touring Ikette (with a bus crash in the middle) and then session singer right next to Merry Clayton. I think Brian did good work here!

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Posted 2/26/2007 09:35:00 AM by barbara flaska

Another reason why dead hippies hate boomers, this article: "Death & Co. is frightening some neighbors." The restaurant has apparently flipped a local musician who's accused of throwing rats at the place.

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