February 23, 2008
Okay Avery, Here's a Podcast
At long last, it's time for my first podcast. Featuring electronic music mostly, with songs from Vampire Weekend, Hot Chip, Glass Candy, Martin Rev, MIA, and more.
Avery, I'm posting now. Thanks for the encouragement, happy birthday, and congrats on the latest kid. We really should catch up. Okay, I'll stop talking to you through my blog now.
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 6:28 PM
October 27, 2005
“les p’tits chiens” (clip + “making of”)
This guy at ignatub.com is a genius. Check out this latest video, called "les p'tits chiens":
http://ignatub.crao.net/wp-content/medias/Chiens_sor3.mov
Claymation is so cool, and it blows me away that people can do this in their home now with a laptop and a digital camera. I was in Scotland when a fire destroyed many of the original sets and characters from Wallace and Grommit, and you could tell how much people loved those shows by the press coverage. It was all over the newspapers, generally as a main headline. I can't wait to get deeper into this Ignatus (Jerome Rousseaux) guy's site.
Thanks to Alexander Bailey of Radio Khartoum from the indiepop list for the tip.
[I had to un-embed this thing b/c it was taking a long time to load- I replaced it with the URL 11.27.05]
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 5:35 PM
September 25, 2005
It's not a drunk mummy, It's Devo!
“ALL OF A SUDDEN, DRUNK MUMMIES WERE SHAKING THEIR FISTS AT US. DRACULAS WERE SHOUTING OBSCENITIES AT US. THAT MADE US EVEN HAPPIER, AND PISSED THEM OFF EVEN MORE. IT MADE US FEEL WE HAD TO BE DOING SOMETHING RIGHT TO GET SO MANY PEOPLE PISSED OFF.”
The Believer interview w/ Mark Mothersbaugh
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 11:48 PM
September 24, 2005
Another Musical Milestone... It's Complicated
I've only been a music fanatic, at least in the obsessive, brooding sense immortalized by writers like Nick Hornby, for about 8 years. The grandson of a professional organist, son of a once-professional singer, somehow I missed out on learning to read music or play an instrument. I cut my teeth on 70's and 80's hair bands, classics of excess canonized by my father and uncles and frequently played on vinyl during all-night drink-offs at our family home.
But it wasn't until college that I really dove in to those old albums and began to ask myself questions about structure and style. What did all these overblown chord progressions mean? How did we get here?
I spent too many hours every week of my freshman year in a small sound room in Hampden-Sydney's Eggleston library (this room sadly no longer exists). With a backpack full of books and a head full of sprawling, perhaps unanswerable philosophical questions, I would lie back on a small couch and crank Miles Davis, acadian folk songs, The Clash, whatever modern music had become important enough to merit inclusion in that library's precious catalog.
Later came Beau Patterson, a great friend and raging alcoholic with whom I spent many memorable days searching for new sounds. Then Joe Goldkamp and now Charles Allison, who continued to fill many of the gaps in my musical education.
Along the way I have experienced several of those magic "ah ha!" moments. Some music is so primally pleasing that it seems to speak from beyond time, awakening in the mind a sense of connection with the great cosmic struggle of humanity. And I really don't think that's overstating the situation.
So what were your milestones? Going somewhat in order chronologically, for me there were: Beethoven's cello concertos; Tom Waits' gritty alcohol-soaked melodies and noisy, uneven albums; Barry Hannah's fiction, which accomplishes his stated goal of approximating through writing the effect of jazz and rock; The Clash, oh the Clash; Roy Orbison's Black and White Night, which I've commented on in a previous post; The Beatles of course; Television's Marquee Moon, still one of my top few favorite albums, with its sweeping teenage angst and that classic strategic pause after the first syllable of the word diction; the heady math rock of King Crimson's "Discipline"; The Kings of Leon's secret song after "Holy Roller Novocaine," which became a metaphor for my senior year of colege and which is perhaps the most perfect statement of the conflict between our existing connection to a place and our desire for something better, something unknown. Now comes Electric Warrior from T. Rex. From the first listen to the first song on the album, "Mambo Sun," I knew I had found another of those rare portals into cosmic greatness. If I wrote for Spin I'd call it something like a "bluesy sonic glamthrust mashing late-teen depression together with a soaring lust for life."
Since I don't write for Spin, I'll just give you a bit of Pitchfork's review:
The most significant aspect of Electric Warrior isn't its arena rock confidence; it's that Bolan allows his grinning mask to slip. With the incomparable aid of producer Tony Visconti, Bolan sketches a vast, empty room, where, after the party's over, he resides alone, wide-eyed and desperate. On ballads like "Cosmic Dancer", "Monolith" and "Girl", he speaks in the same gibberish as elsewhere, but he's clearly haunted-- by what we can't say. But the gaping, searing question mark that comes at the conclusion of the album-- guitar feedback paired with a string section, holding a shivering and very ambivalent cluster of notes-- is just one of many clues that there's more to Electric Warrior than its surface lets on. This is not simply a man who plays party songs because he wants to: This is a man who plays party songs to fend off darkness.T.Rex: Electric Warrior: Pitchfork Review
In the style of a stock ranking service, I have to rate this album a "strong buy." By the way, did anyone else find the two lines of "Frame by Frame" that Adiran Belew played at Nightfall last night irritating as hell? I guess I really just wanted to hear King Crimson. Belew is certainly no one-trick pony, but it did sadly remind me of a story I heard from the old alma mater. My friend Brad there told me that the college had secured the services of one Mr. Robert Van Winkle, formerly MC Vanilla or, after 1988, "Vanilla Ice" to play the traditional homecoming concert at this nearly all-white, preppy as hell private boys' college. Oh, the painful irony of preppy life! Someone at Sydney had the foresight to add a rider to the contract with Mr. Van Winkle requiring that he play "Ice Ice Baby," his 1990 hit, no less than three times in that short concert. As demeaning as it would be, I sure wish somebody had required Mr. Belew to play through at least one full song from his Crimson days. The short riffs from "Frame by Frame" and "Discipline" just left me wanting more, and nothing else he played really did it for me.
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 3:26 PM
September 18, 2005
Roy Orbison's "Black & White Night" Re-release
I just found out that Roy Orbison's "Black & White Night" is being re-released as a DVD+SACD or a DVD+DVD Audio set. I don't know the release date, but I have had this DVD for a few years and it is a consistent favorite of mine. My friend Beau introduced me to it and as he later wrote in a scrap of fiction, "Roy Orbison looks like God in black sunglasses." Very much worth the obsessive attention given to it by producer T Bone Burnett, this is a great concert.
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 5:05 PM
August 10, 2005
Hometapers of the world, unite!
I'm psyched on Charles Allison's new site design. It's clean and simple and very blog-like. As always, you can download the entire Kil Howlie Day catalogue (pretentious English spelling alert!). Go get 'em, they're free, and good. Do it now.
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 6:13 PM
August 7, 2005
That Show Totally Post-Rocked
Well, Lamar's came through again with really strong drinks and a fun show on Friday night. In fact when my neighbors wanted me to go to the Local to watch Melelee Roots on Saturday I almost thought about it but realized that it would be so ridiculously awful in comparison to Friday's show that my head might explode, so I didn't go. Anyways, Keith John Adams opened, then Casper and the Cookies played and then Elekibass. They were all really fun to see, starting with me walking in on the middle of KJA's set and him following me with a guitar and asking my name and then later dedicating a song to me while threatening me if I left because, as he said, "it's really embarrasing when you dedicate a song to someone and then they leave."
Well, I didn't leave, I stayed and loved both bands after him. Elekibass came out dressed in three-piece suits, something you sort of expect from Japanese alt-punk-post-whatever musicians, but with carnival masks as well, something I didn't expect at all. I ended up blowing a huge amount of money at the merch booth, but that gave me an excuse to stay home Saturday night and relive the night before with the assistance of my new stereo.
Here are some links:
Toothpaste for Dinner Comics
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 5:15 PM
June 11, 2005
Action Adventure Dream
If anyone hasn't experienced Andrew Bird's music, go buy the new album, Andrew Bird and the Mysterious Production of Eggs NOW. It's incredible. I recently had the chance to catch Andrew's show in Chattanooga and he has cemented his place in my pantheon of admirable musicians.
If you can't make it immediately to a record store, check out his Web site where you can download "A Nervous Tic Motion of the Head to the Left," one of my favorite songs from the new album.
22 June 2005: Just found more info. on Bird, at Righteous Babe's site. Check it here.
Posted by Mark C McKnight at 1:58 AM
