Daily Listen by Brian Brock

Derek Bailey - Guitar, Drums ‘n’ Bass (hear “Concrete”)

Evidence that drum ‘n’ bass overwhelms whatever it encounters.  Not one of Derek Bailey’s greatest albums, but it is one of his more interesting.  It’s an invaluable piece of sound, for introducing people who might shrink from Bailey’s classics, for listening to when you can’t decide whether to listen to regular sounding techno beats or distorted free jazz guitar, or just as the unique thing that it is.  In a way, Derek Bailey is doing something really cool, as the old free jazz head jamming on top of the new thing - but really, isn’t it surprising that there isn’t a similar disc from every jazz musician?

Supposedly this album sprang from Bailey’s habit of jamming along with the local drum and bass or techno or electronic music station (by the way, are people really happy calling these types of music “electronic dance music”?  Don’t they yearn for a handy term like “rock” or “classical”?).  I think that a simple recording of that would convince better - in a way, this album is like some ethnomusicologist writing down the elements of some faraway music and recreating it in the lab.

It’s out of print, get it here:

Derek Bailey - Guitar, Drums ‘n’ Bass

or, if you don’t like to see ads, you can go to this emporium of lost classics and deadly noises, I assume the download there is pretty much the same, and you may find some other pretty things:

Blog of somebody calling himself bigfatsatanist

Shania Twain - Come On Over (hear some crazy Canadian mash-up)

When did I start listening to country music? It was definitely sometime after I was over the first flush of Fleetwood Mac fever. (A student of mine once claimed Fleetwood Mac was a country music singer, actually.)  I would sit in the car outside the gym at St. John’s College in Santa Fe, waiting for my girlfriend, who is an exerciser.  I was flipping stations between U2, NPR, Missy Elliott, Lynyrd, country, and this music they have in New Mexico which I think is called Norteño, although I prefer the Taos station that plays it.  My country music moment hit me while listening to the song “My Front Porch Looking In” by Lonestar.  To be precise, it was the line “There’s a carrot top who can barely walk / With a sippy cup of milk.”  (The singer has been travelling all around, but he loves most the view he sees looking in from his front porch; for example, a “sippy cup.”)

I had long enjoyed the extended cliche-sequences and articulated normalcy of country music lyrics.  “My baby left me holding the bag, the bag of cats, cats cryin’ in the night, as I howl at the moon, I’m gonna open that bag, that baaag oooof caaats… I let the cat!… outta the bag.”  (“Bag Of Cats” © B. Brock)  But here was a man singing about sippy cups. 

It’s the G.W.Bush effect, or to be precise, the Sarah Palin effect: the difference is eradicated between the master of the universe and a humble householder, or at least that is the story told by the one and believed by the other.

I began listening to country radio with more interest, and soon discovered Shania Twain.  Actually, of course I was aware of her music in 1998 when she was busy selling 40 million or so copies of Come On Over.  But if you listen to country radio, Shania Twain songs stick out like a half-Labrador Retriever in a litter of German Shepherds.  She and “Mutt” Lange took the standard country formula and applied the intensely crafted style Lange perfected on Def Leppard albums.

There’s a lot more to say.  About Shania’s use of folksy-isms, about moments of precision, about the Mutt “hey heys” that could almost be cut and pasted from Def Lep songs.  I have spent quite a bit of time thinking about the song “That Don’t Impress me Much”.

audio from:

amandalynferri:

CV dream-tern, Chris Han made this really good mash-up of Canadian bands.

Barenaked Ladies - one week
Avril Lavigne - complicated
Sum 41 - fat lip
Nickelback - photograph

Tegan and Sara - the con
The Stills - of montreal
Simple Plan - i’d do anything

Neil Young - heart of gold
MSTRKRFT - work on you
Celine Dion - all coming back to me now

Shania Twain - man i feel like a woman
Broken Social Scene - stars and sons
Nelly Furtado - i am like a bird

Alanis Morissette - ironic
Chromeo - Momma’s Boy
Hot Hot Heat - goodnight goodnight

Arcade Fire - wake up
The Band - The Weight
Sarah McLachlan - i will remember you

Oh Canada
Metric - Monster Hospital
Billy Talent - This Suffering