Read:My:Back

"Saint of the Pit" by Diamanda Galás

It's reassuring to know that in 2012, I'm still able to freak people out and ruin their lives with the sound (and in this case, sight) of Diamanda Galás. Twenty years ago, this was a ritualistic component of my weekly radio show on WPRB—these days, I just wait for my wife to walk into the room and then fire up this video clip.

"Saint of the Pit" was released in 1986 and is the second piece from her AIDS-themed "Masque of the Red Death" triptych. Further nightmare fuel here and here. Stunning and utterly distrurbing.

Wedding Present Radio Sessions from 1992

The Wedding Present: The Black Session by Peplau

I've been to exactly one Wedding Present concert. They played Maxwell's sometime in 1993, and although they performed masterfully and were louder than a freakin' atomic bomb going off, the fact that "Dalliance" (or anything else from the brilliant Sea Monsters LP) did not figure into the setlist sort of tarnished the experience in my memory. Sea Monsters and Bettie Serveert's Palomine totally defined a particular era at WPRB for me, and even as those months were unfolding in realtime, getting stiffed on "Dalliance" was a palpable annoyance. Getting on twenty years later, this live radio session from around the same time makes me feel like it's finally time to forgive.

Originally heard on the Black Sessions program which broadcasts on France Inter (French Public Radio—"FPR", if you will...) this great-sounding set showcases the band at their creative peak, and David Gedge's vocals in their exquisite and froggy-like prime. That's not to suggest that their later material is anything to scoff at—many years after this performance, a reincarnated version of the band effortlessly blew a lot of minds (mine included) with the track "Interstate 5", and rightly so.

But I didn't come here to tell you that. (Focus, man, focus!) These sounds have been blaring forth from the official r:m:b sound system all morning, and show no signs of relinquishing their control any time soon.

Go forth and amplify!

The Ex—Live at the Knitting Factory, 1999

WFMU's Kurt Gottschalk recently forwarded a link to some amazing footage of The Ex performing live on a Paris streetcorner. Watching it quickly set me longing for the years in which I routinely saw The Ex perform knockout sets at the old Knitting Factory on Leonard Street. Let praise be freely distributed to whomever uploaded this 80 minute knockout video of one such concert, during which The Ex ably demonstrate why they are the single greatest and most inspiring band of current history. Any chance to see them perform live should be seized upon as though your life depended on it. No foolin', they are that good!

I'm sure I was at the Knitting Factory on this night—probably in my customary stance near the other side of the stage, knocking back a Maker's Mark and getting my head torn up in the most joyous manner possible: entirely at the hands of The Ex. The author of the original Blogotheque piece sent by Kurt summates this band pretty effectively when s/he writes:

"[The Ex] started their career in Amsterdam squats at the beginning of the DIY movement, played ten times in every single European and international venue, mixed their rock with the freest jazz, and then rooted it in the heart of Ethiopia. The Ex is a symbol for musical freedom in its most rigorous form."

Bravo, I say! For more written eloquence, check out these words from WFMU's Brian Turner, regarding the band's visit to his radio program in January of 2007.

The Ex frequently rotates the selection of free MP3s available on their website, so definitely grab these favorites while they're still in the mix.

Listen to the Painters | Hidegen Fújnak a Szelek (with Tom Cora) | Prism Song | It's a Sin

Late note regarding the Knitting Factory video: DO NOT MISS the psycho guitar improv that punctuates the song "Lump Sum Insomnia" (pay close attention beginning at the 58 minute mark). The song is from their Starters-Alternators album (1998) and remains a much-anticipated element of their live show. No wondering as to why!

Wiley's "Numb3rs in Action"

Direct from WFMU's Digital Dump dynasty comes this utterly blazin' new Wiley track. As has been the case for many other stateside enthusiasts of the UK grime/dubstep phenomenon, copycat artists and samey releases fizzled my attentions pretty quickly. (I'll never forget the first time I saw that first Dizzee Rascal video -- It was in a hotel room in France, and when the track started I was so immediately captivated that I literally told my bunk mate: "Shut up, I'm watching this.")

Under normal circumstances, I am never that rude unless it is absolutely necessary.

Anyway, it's great to see Wiley still at it and continuing to drop epic tracks like this. "Numb3rs in Action" is from the 100% Publishing album, coming this summer on the Big Dada label. More info via Ninjatune here.

Reggae Britannia

I would strongly urge you to watch this ASAP, before it gets yanked from YouTube. It's busting at the seams with excellent archival footage, as well as great interviews with scene kingpins and converts like Don Letts, Linton Kwesi Johnson, Jerry Dammers, Viv Albertine, Dennis Bovell, and Stewart Copeland.

And can I just quickly add how jarring it is for me to imagine life in a place where quality art and culture are routinely celebrated the way they are in Britain? Can you imagine American network television producing a documentary of this caliber on any similar subject matter? The British youth culture fixations of my teens and twenties clearly paved the way for my more recent considerations of media, economics, and the complex paradigms that shape them. Considering the way we live, vote, and spend, is it any wonder that we so rarely feel any kind of kinship with the stories told on television?

Where are all the familiar faces?

 

The Iron Maiden scene from "Persepolis"

In further deference to my new life of being woefully behind the cultural curve, I finally watched "Persepolis", the uber-acclaimed animated French film from 2007, based on the graphic novel of the same name. The story considers the 1979 Iranian Revolution, as seen through the troubled gaze of a young innocent named Marjane. Like many other middle class Iranians of the era, Marjane's parents rally against the US-backed Shah, but end up remorseful over the rise of the Khomeini-led fundamentalist government that eventually assumes control.

The perhaps questionable role of graphic novels and political animation serving as historical documents notwithstanding, Persepolis recounts an exceptionally complicated series of events with admirable skill. The characters, especially Marjane and her grandmother (voiced by legendary French actress Dannielle Darrieux), are profoundly engaging and often wickedly funny in spite of the film's grave subtext. To the top of your Netflix cue, stat!

Butterfly Cupcakes

My wife is officially crazy. Not because she married me (zing!), but because she stayed up all night to hand craft a swarm of candy butterflies for our daughter's first birthday party cupcakes.

That a woman of such epic patience agreed to spend her life with a man who recently came close to putting his fist through a wall at his inability to assemble a ladybug-shaped tent is a remarkable thing indeed. (Note to non-parents: tasks such as "baking thematic cupcakes" or "assembling whimsical indoor tents" only became regular components of our lives after the arrival of our daughter. You should think very carefully about this before you start easing off the birth control.)

Anyway, chalk these cupcakes up as more proof that I don't have the patience for baking. I work in broad strokes, not pointillism. Nevertheless, I'm happy to stuff my face with the fruits of someone else's labor and find thematically suitable music for the occasion in the FMA. Use the player below to stream or download UK hip-hop trio Godmanwho perform the awesome "Slight Butterflies."

Nikki Sudden on WFMU [MP3s]

One of the selfish (but great) things about being involved with WFMU is how it's repeatedly granted me the opportunity to interact with my musical heroes. I'm no starfucker, but there's something to be said for dancing right nextdoor to the fantasy, and how doing so often reveals details of Our Most Exalted Rock Gods which are strangely absent from the written histories. For instance, did you know that Joe Strummer smells of tobacco and peppermint, Donovan is a bit like a leprechaun, or that Anton Newcombe is actually a really sweet guy?

In other words, there are the people, and then there is the mythology. But within the sacred confines of WFMU, the crossroads of those two competing concepts never resonated with greater poignancy for me than in the case of Nikki Sudden.

In the early 1970s, Nikki started a band with his brother called the Swell Maps, who somehow married the disparate influences of Krautrock and T. Rex to spectactular and lasting effect. His next band, the Jacobites, made no less a statement, albeit with very different ingredients in the cooker. And then there is the decade's worth of amazing solo albums and the memorable NYC-area shows that Nikki played in support of them. I made it a point to see him perform every chance I got, so by the time schedules finally granted him time to swing by my radio show for a live set on March 20th 2006, it felt like a meeting that was long overdue.

Nikki Sudden passed away unexpectedly less than a week after that performance, and it remains a crippling testament to what was a truly wonderful night of music in Jersey City. I wrote a short piece about the evening for the Brooklyn Rail several days after the news broke, so no need to go into all the sad details again. I'm just glad the tracks from that session are finally available for everyone to enjoy. Hosting Nikki on the radio was a years-long dream of mine, and I'm still humbled and honored to have spent some time in his company.

Eternal gratitude to Rob Watts and Danny Hole. Thanks be to Nikki. Stay bruised.

Xposted on the FMA here. Check the other Nikki sessions just made available there, too.

John Lennon vs. Me

This time of year always reminds me of the night a squad car carrying John Lennon's body sped past me on the streets of New York City. On December 8th of 1980, I was eight years old and in the city with my family for a holiday-related dinner with relatives. We were out late—much later than my parents ever kept me out back home, but I'm sure they'd been drinking and having a grand old time. The relatives we'd dined with were somewhat wealthy, and in fact we had eaten dinner at Tavern on the Green, then regarded as one of the city's more exclusive (albeit touristy) restaurants.

I had only a dim awareness of who the Beatles were back then. In 1980, I was far more interested in reenacting scenes from Star Wars with my friends than I was in any kind of music. But the Beatles' legacy was forever burned into my consciousness after my father jerked me away from the street as that squad car came screaming past, the bloody head of its famous occupant slumped against the rear passenger window. The Dakota apartment building where Lennon was murdered is only a few blocks from Tavern on the Green's old location near Central Park West, and sometime shortly before 11 PM, we were walking back to the garage where my father's car was parked. But when we crossed 72nd Street and observed the chaos left in the aftermath of the shooting, someone—a tear-streaked woman, by my father's recollection—told us what had happened. We left the city and drove home to the dark suburbs of New Jersey without speaking, probably listening to the news on the radio.

In spite of the weirdness of having been only blocks away when one of history's most famous murders went down, I never got into the Beatles the way most other kids seem to, and I often wonder why that is. Until I got older and started getting an allowance, the only Beatles record in the house was Let It Be, which belonged to one of my older siblings. Perhaps Lennon's death coupled with the eulogistic tone of that album's eponymous track is what set my associations with the band on such a weird path so early on. When you're a little kid, a song's lyrics are often the first thing that hits you, and lines like "in my hour of darkness / she is standing right in front of me / speaking words of wisdom / let it be" certainly influenced the childhood anxieties I experienced in bed at night. Long after my parents had ordered the lights switched out, the images conjured by that type of poetry were a lot to wrap my head around. It's funny to think about it again thirty years later—by anyone's estimation, a long time has passed since then. It's also quite peculiar for a band that broke up two years before I was born to in some way serve as a milemarker by which to observe my own aging. Maybe that's what people mean when they call Lennon's music "timeless". Maybe it's why that term has always bothered me so much.

France's answer to the J. Geils Band was a group called Killdozer, and they had a song about Fela Kuti.

Wait, what? How's that for a head-scratching post title! I came across this video a while ago—a French band from the late 70s called Killdozer (no relation to the noted American group of the same name), doing a pretty blazing cover of the Countours' R&B classic: "First I Look at the Purse". The song was later (1970) covered by the J. Geils Band, whom this Killdozer sorta sounds like, only... French-ier. Actually, as much as I love me some old J. Geils records (surprised?), I have to give props to Killdozer for the trace amounts of punky sneer they bring to the mix. Maybe this is what the Saints or Ivy Green would've sounded like had they been on Motown.

I just wasted five minutes looking for info on French Killdozer, and all I really learned is that they had a couple albums, and also have a song about Fela Kuti. It's not as good as "First I Look at the Purse", but you can check it out here. If you see the Killdozer record with this song on it at the WFMU Record Fair this weekend (for $2 or less, of course), please buy it and think of me.