This week’s special guest edition of Saturday Night Shut-In comes to you from Hrrundivbakshi!
Hey, guys and gals — I come before you once again (a bit tardy — sorry about that) with a fine assortment of scratchy vinyl, culled from the dustbins, thrift stores and flea markets of our nation’s capitol. Well, almost. The music you’ll hear in this episode was actually found in West Virginia — but it’s all good, and it’s all here. Free of charge, as always — the pops and clicks cost no extra. Enjoy!
This week’s special guest edition of Saturday Night Shut-In comes to you from Chez Royale! That’s right, ladymisskirroyale and Mr. Royale share with you a mix entitled Geniuses, Crackpots & Visionaries. A note from Mr. Royale, including the tracklist and notes on this evening’s selections, follows.
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Mr. Royale sez…
Let’s see, this mix is actually part of a larger compilation I’ve put together, which includes the likes of Harry Partch, Brian Wilson, John Cage, Stockhausen, Glenn Branca, Morton Subotnick, John Zorn, Captain Beefheart, Steve Reich, Iannis Xenakis….etc. In other words, musicians who have stood on the outside and came up with something unheard before, some kind of personal, uncompromising artistic vision. Perhaps these artists have been obscure or widely followed, but there’s something of an independent spirit in each. The title of the collection is, of course, tounge in cheek. Hey, maybe Lucia Pamela really did go to the moon
With the post on Wildman Fischer, Erika and I hit on the idea of a G,C & V shortlist, this time highlighting the “crackpots” section. Certain names came up that were too obvious. People with mental health issues (Syd Barrett, Roky Erickson, Mary Margaret O’Hara, Kristin Hersh), but who make very “acceptable” music. I was adamant that this list be a WTF kind of a thing. We refined it to a criteria of “unhinged” recordings, ones that make you say “how in hell did this EVER get recorded? Somebody thought this was a good idea? Did somebody lose a bet?” And yet, in their own way, each of these is delightful!
In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-In your host, Mr. Moderator, lacks time to chat but constructs a set around some thoughts on Levon Helm and the passing of yet another member of one of his childhood faves, The Band.
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Who knows where the time goes? In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-InMr. Moderator experiences an unexpected attack of early ’90s nostalgia. Join him, won’t you, on this journey through a palette-cleansing decade that may not have set the stage for much but wasn’t bad while it lasted.
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A couple of weeks ago I attempted to help a friend work through his difficulty with buying individual songs vs full albums. In this digital age he has struggled with buying only the tracks he thinks he’s going to like off iTunes or eMusic. I told him it’s all right, that he should buy what he wants to listen to, save space on his hard drive for more of the good stuff. But he holds deep, sincere feelings that doing so does not respect integrity of artist’s work. He’s as true a believer in the album format as any rock nerd I’ve ever encountered.
“I’ve got to buy the whole album and listen to the whole album in the sequence the artist intended,” he told me. “I want to respect the integrity of the artist’s work.”
“When you go to an artist’s exhibit,” he continued, “do you walk into a room and immediately skip half the paintings?”
“I look at them all in some order, as they’re presented,” I said, “but I don’t spend 3 minutes and 30 seconds on each painting. I first glance at them, the way I listen to the 30-second sample of each song on an album I’m checking out on eMusic.”
“How do you know a song’s not going to get better after the 30-second clip you hear?”
“I don’t know for sure,” I replied, “but there are certain devices that usually suggest I’m not going to like a song, like a long, slow, finger-picked minor chord intro.”
My friend was incredulous. “When you buy a new album do you skip right to Track 3, or do you listen to the entire album?”
“The first time through I listen to the entire album, but the second and third time I listen I may start lifting the needle over the songs with long, slow, finger-picked minor chord intros. Life’s too short for that shit!” Then I assured him that I eventually give these songs another chance and sometimes learn that I do like one of them.
This went back and forth until I learned a key detail in my friend’s Rock Nerd Profile: my friend had never bought a single (ie, a 7-inch, 45 RPM slab of vinyl), not even as a little kid. Now it all made sense.
I was compelled to restart our debate, which was now growing quite heated.Continue reading »
In this week’s edition of Saturday Night Shut-InMr. Moderator reflects on a possibly musical life-changing event. He asks that you attempt to listen through his newfound ears.
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Listening to The Jam‘s great Setting Sons, which may be my fave by them. But it never really got the spotlight it deserved, did it — due to being sandwiched between their two legendary LPs, Sound Affects and All Mod Cons.
Sure, there were some hits on this, like “Eton Rifles,” and I could do without their version of “Heat Wave,” but whenever The Jam comes up no one ever seems to talk about this album. Why oh why?
Are there any other bands who have a “lost” album — one that seems softer and more vanilla in between the crunchier bookends? Maybe I should listen to Give ’em Enough Rope again???
