J Dilla: DONUTS

Three days after the release of Donuts, J Dilla was dead. Suffering from a rare blood disease, J Dilla spent the last year of his life battling the illness, losing weight and having to perform in a wheelchair during a European tour in 2005. You wouldn’t know J Dilla (aka Jay Dee) was fighting for his life from listening to Donuts –an album crafted with the precision expected from a producer of J Dilla’s calibre and acclaim. A decade into his career J Dilla had produced everyone from Ghostface Killah, Janet Jackson, A Tribe Called Quest, Busta Rhymes, Common, Raphael Saadiq and collaborated with fellow hip hop producer Malib on Welcome 2 Detroit.

A total of 31 tracks (the longest “song” is 2:57 –most tracks are just over a minute in length). The pace of the album is as varied as the artists J Dilla samples: Frank Zappa, The Beastie Boys, Malcolm McLaren (?), Dionne Warwick, the standard James Brown, et al. “Geek Down” invokes a doom essence reminiscent of RJD2’s “The Horror” while “Time: The Donuts of the Heart” is pure sexy time. [Warning from the US Surgeon General: listening to “Time: Donuts of the Heart” may cause some women to become pregnant]. –L.M Harrison

Serge Gainsbourg: Histoire de Melody Nelson

Album’s premise: A middle-aged man accidently hits a 15-year old named Melody Nelson with his Rolls-Royce. He takes her back to a hotel and seduces her, only for her to die in a plane crash soon after.

Serge Gainsbourg is French; so this kind of risqué story is accepted and expected in a French concept album. In fact, Serge Gainsbourg built his career as a seductive poet manwhore. His song “Je t’aime...Moi Non Plus” released in 1969 had co-singer Jane Birkin (girl on the cover Melody Nelson) faking an orgasm for the last minute of the song. “Je t’aime” was banned across Europe, went #1 in the UK and was aggressively denounced by the Vatican.

Gainsbourg had a long and fruitful career in his native France and across Europe. However his daughter, Charlotte Gainsbourg, is much better known in the English-speaking world (actress in AntiChrist, The Science of Sleep and her critically album IRM, written and produced by Beck) than her father who died in 1991.

But Histoire de Melody Nelson, originally released in 1971, is one of those few albums that are perfectly crafted from start to finish. Every backing vocal, the funk guitar, bassline, drumbeat, the strings –everything is where it should be at all times. I tend to see this vinyl a lot in hip-hop orientated music shops and it’s easy to see why; the slick production values of Jean-Claude Vannier provide ample opportunities for sampling.

The instrumentals are like stained-glass in a medieval cathedral. Stained-glass was used to tell the stories of the Bible to the illiterate peasant masses. And like the stained-glass, the instrumental flourishes and female choir in Melody Nelson move the story along for Anglophone ears, making it more accessible.

It's still an odd album though; I can't imagine listening to this while driving in your car or hanging out with friends. -L.M Harrison

The official video for the opening track "Melody":


Serge Gainsbourg - Melody by challenges-auto

Below: The closing track "Cargo Culte." [Disclaimer: I did not make the video].

LIVE! Crystal Stilts

You put a bowl of soup in the microwave and press start. It comes out cold. You put it back in for twice as long; you take the bowl out and it’s still cold! No matter how many times you microwave it, the motherfucker just won’t HEAT. Frustrated, you throw the bowl of soup in for 10 minutes at maximum power and wait. The end result: it’s now scalding hot, and you still can’t eat it. This describes the Crystal Stilts show at the Biltmore Cabaret in Vancouver this past Thursday.

But first I want to talk about the second opening band. I wish I could remember their name (it was either Case Studies or Student Teacher), because God were they awful. Not just bad musically, but they managed to implode with a Spinal Tap-like grandeur.

Things started out well enough. Everyone was in sync with the female band member who was bashing the hell out the tambourine, totally absorbed in the moment. This lasted for about two songs. Then at some point the drummer just said “fuck it” and walked off stage and spent the rest of the night chatting up two chicks at the bar.

Now down to three band members.

Tambourine Girl has to sub in for the drummer, and she is clearly pissed about it. Her limited drumming skills results in the band playing the same instrumental on a loop for 10 minutes. Finally Tambourine Girl says “fuck it” and walks off stage without a word.

Now down to two band members.

The two bewildered guitars players face each other playing the same instrumental over and over again. They stop playing whenever the first guitar player has to pick up a piece of paper to read the lyrics. Or the set list. Or the cords. I not sure what was on that paper, but this Stop and Go lasted (I kid you not) for at least 20 minutes. Sensing a growing hostility from the audience, the exasperated guitarist takes off his guitar, mumbles “the Crystal Stilts are on next”, unscrews a mikey and sulks off stage. End of the opening acts.

Crystal Stilts take the stage. Since the two open acts were trying hard emulate the sound of the Crystal Stilts (lo-fi atmospheric 60s surfer proto-punk?) there was only a few degrees of separation between the poor opening acts and the headliners, and as a result the Crystal Stilts became tainted. Even with the lead singer doing his best Lizard King impersonation, the Stilts seemed unremarkable. And after waiting four hours on cold soup, the Crystal Stilts were boiling hot and you were past caring. -L.M Harrison

Don't Think Twice, It's Alright

At the time of writing, today marks the two month anniversary of the passing of artist Suze Rotolo (the girl clutching Bob Dylan on the cover of The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan and in the outtake photo above) the girlfriend and muse to Dylan in the early sixties. Let’s use this moment as an opportunity to put the spotlight on one of the Greatest Albums Ever Made, which was added the US Library of Congress’ National Recording Registry (recordings that are “culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States”) in 2002.

The thing about Dylan is that there are so many facets, phases and layers to his work that countless trees have died with people writing books and articles trying to figure out this man’s psyche. Allen Ginsberg stated that when he heard the sixth track “A Hard Rains a-Gonna Fall” he broke down and wept –because with that song, a new generation was taking up and surpassing the mantle established by Ginsberg and his beatnik peers a decade earlier.

Nothing significant can be said or written about this album that hasn’t already been done before, so I’ll just state that in this “iPod shuffle” generation it’s easy to ignore albums. However it’s worth the investment to listen to the album its entirely. Instead of listening to The Tallest Man on Earth, do yourself a favour and listen to the person Kristian Matsson is trying so hard to impersonate. -L.M Harrison

Bob Dylan vs. TIME Magazine (1965):

REWIND: The Stooges FUNHOUSE (1970)

Nothing can touch its reckless abandon of convention and its orchestrated havoc.*

If pure, wild anarchic chaos was unleashed from the bowels of hell, this is what it would sound like. From the animalistic grunts on the opener Down on the Street to the wailing of TV Eye to swirling oblivion of LA Blues it’s obvious that all conventional sensitivities were thrown out the window when the Detroit-based band The Stooges recorded their 1970 release Funhouse. The Stooges were never ones to colour within the lines and with Funhouse The Stooges decided to push it just a little bit further. Produced by Dan Gallucci of The Kingsmen (Gallucci played the organ riff on the radio hit ‘Louie Louie’) Gallucci wisely hung back and recorded the album live in the studio with few overdubs or fancy studio enhancements. As this minimalist creation comes at you through the speakers you realize just how raw the record sounds. Ron Asheton’s simple but reckless guitar playing, Scott Asheton’s relentless drumming and the steady playing of bassist Dave Alexander somehow transforms this traditional three-piece band into a bull in a china shop. And then there’s James Osterberg (aka Iggy Pop) whose bolstered confidence and frenzied vocals marks a new level of mayhem. Their previous debut album, simply titled The Stooges, sold few copies, and after failing to achieve any notable success with their first album it appears the band played as though they had nothing to lose --and in reality they didn’t. That desperation can be heard throughout the album and in turn The Stooges began mapping uncharted waters in music. Many music historians now point to The Stooges’ career and this recording in particular as a sentimental development in what would later become punk music. Although praised and celebrated by critics and music fans in recent years, Funhouse, like their previous album, sold few copies when it was originally released. The Stooges would break up less than two years later after releasing the iconic David Bowie-produced Raw Power album.

*Authors Note: I dare you to listen to the opening track “Down on the Street” and not feel the urge to strut. I dare you.

Young Caruso: The Milan Recordings 1902-1903

Guess what? Recording technology 99 years ago was primitive. Despite the obvious limitations in sound fidelity, in some ways the unique “feel’ of older recordings can trump today’s slickly-polished Pro Tool records.

Such is the case with The Young Caruso, Songs and Arias: Milan Recordings 1902-1903 from Angel Records, an old vinyl I stumbled upon the other day.

The record is a document of the early recordings of Italian tenor Enrico Caruso. Born in 1873, Caruso was the eighteenth (yes, 18th) child of a poor mechanic. Despite his poor beginnings, Caruso grew to become an international star back in his day. Caruso’s 1907 recording of “Vesti la Giubba” was the first gramophone/phonograph to sell more than 1 million copies. Freddie Mercury of Queen was big fan of Caruso’s operatic singing style.

I was in a shitty/depressed mood when I put the record on, and listening to this distant sounding, century-old recording by a long dead tenor lightened my mood in a perverse, existentialist kind of a way.

Should you run out and get this record? Probably not. However its good background music and an interesting listen, even if just for the historical novelty of it.

UPRISING: Clark Graham

Clark Graham, the singer/songwriter and current resident of Los Angles, is performing songs off his upcoming LP around West Hollywood, along with fellow songwriter and transient Matt Moore (whom Graham met while hitchhiking from Phoenix to Jefferson City). You can hear some of Graham latest songs here: http://www.myspace.com/259133053/music/songs/Concrete-Rhythm-80388199