Mar 032007
How about some new tunes for your weekend? Here are a few songs I’ve been digging at that hip coffee house somewhere between Philadelphia and Dayton, OH. Enjoy.
The Detroit Cobras, “Can’t Do Without You”
Mekons, “Snow”
Fred Frith, “Heart Bares”
Apropos of nothing, when an upcoming Mekons show was announced on the Mekons listserve to which I subscribe, someone posted “Do you think they’ll play Snow?” It’s not a likely choice being an obscure number from year 4 in a nearly 30 year career, and someone ultimately positied that the odds were about 7 in 127. Now I’m not so sure.
There’s a groundswell for “Snow”. The album it’s from sounds pretty good to my ears. I’m still trying to find just the right album to enjoy by The Mekons after the one album I’ve owned by them and liked a lot since it came out, Honky Tonkin’.
I like that Fred Frith tune. Educate me about the man, Mr. Mod. I always thought of him as one of them lower east-siders along with Zorn, et al. Am I mistaken?
Frith is an Englishman, I believe, who was part of Henry Cow and, later, Art Bears. I first learned about him through a song called “What a Dilemma” that a friend put on a mix tape and later, I believe, a Ralph Records sampler. Like Zork and that crowd, he’s all over the place and apt to improvise/make noise. Some of his records, such as the one with “What a Dilemma” and Art Bears’ Winter Songs, I love. They’ve got some focus, they’ve got humor, they’ve got balls (as needed). I’m also a fan of the 2 Henry Cow albums I own, the one with the green sock and the one with the red sock. Some of his albums are so rooted in aimless improvisation that my interest quickly wanders. I always want to love Speechless, for instance, because of the cover shot, but it bores me.
I bet The Great 48 knows about Frith too. If memory serves, the eMusic review from AllMusic for the album containing “Heart Bares” was written by the man himself. That’s a good “song” album I will be downloading in its entirety shortly.
And speaking of Memory serves, Frith plays some hot guitar on that great Material album – if memory serves, that is.
Frith’s other Ralph release, Gravity, is really great. I do like Speechless, though, so take it with a grain of salt. All Henry Cow albums with a sock are winners. The one you described as “green” is more grey, I believe. That’s their second album that opens with Bittern Sturm over the Elm or something like that, which I remember you posted a while back. The Red one is the one they did with Slapphappy. I was their third. Their first album, mostly a white sock with some other colors laced in, called Legend, is probably my favorite. It has all the compositional interest of Uncle Meat era Zappa. It’s really quite great Prog Rock in my book. Frith got his Downtown reputation because he spent a lot of the early 80’s in NY and also had a trio with Bill Laswell and Fred Maher of Material. That Little power trio was called Massacre. I think they have some material on the aforementioned Speechless and they also had an album under the Massacre moniker on celluloid. Frith also did lots of solo guitar records that included things like banging on multiple guitars with sticks.
Gravity is the one with “What a Dilemma” that I like best. Yes!
Green, gray, whatever – yes, that’s the one I like best. I don’t think I own Legend. I’ll have to check that out someday.
I’m reminded of the details by my old friend M.Ace (www.ookworld.com) that we saw Fred in Allentown PA way back when:
“We saw Fred (w/ Tom Cora — as Skeleton Crew) in that terrific little basement theater at the Americus Hotel”
Mike and I saw a few shows in Allentown – seems to me there was a little odd-ball scene happening back then (Late 70’s/early 80’s).