Justifiably Lost

I've spent the morning listening to Rhino Records' deluxe repackaging of the Bee Gees' Odessa - complete with stereo and mono mixes and a disc of demos and sketchbook versions of the songs that would become Odessa. The thrust of the liner notes is that it's an overlooked masterpiece, and here's one person who agrees.

Me, I hear the 1969 album and hear a band living sadly and belatedly in the shadow of the Beatles, and there's no song here as good as anything on Sgt. Pepper, nor is there a song here as good as "Holiday" or "Lonely Days." It's all mannered performances and average ideas, with only its ambition to distinguish it. It's likeable and certainly loans itself to the contrarian impulse to salvage the reputation of a "lost classic," but like so many lost classics, Odessa requires you to overlook some rather obvious flaws to agree.

An Underrated Skill

I'm listening a lot to A.C. Newman's Get Guilty, and I fear one day he'll drift for me into the same place that Robyn Hitchcock and Robert Pollard occupy in my thinking - guys whose lyrics I once found evocative but now find evasive. But he sure knows how to decide what song starts an album. I get caught up in his projects right away.

Give Blood

For fans of New Orleans music, I present this health update I received a couple of days ago:

I wanted to update you on Snooks Eaglin and Harry Ravain.

Snooks has been hospitalized recently, but he has been released and is doing
better. Snooks required some units of blood during his hospital stay, and
those units were charged to his hospital bill. Ochsner Blood Bank has
organized a replacement blood drive for him. Units of blood are very
expensive; a replacement drive puts donated units back in the blood bank and
Snooks gets a credit on his hospital bill for each unit donated. Thus, a
replacement drive helps keep the blood supply at good levels and helps him
with his medical expenses.

If you are able to donate blood, please call the Ochsner Blood Bank and tell
them you would like to donate in the name of Fird "Snooks" Eaglin. If you
live out of town, you can donate at your local blood bank or hospital, and
give them Ochsner's contact info and Snooks' name. The hospitals will
handle all the paperwork.

Ochsner Blood Bank
1516 Jefferson Highway
New Orleans, LA 70121
(504) 842-7826

Thank you.

Also, local drummer Harry Ravain has been battling lung cancer for a little
over a year now. Harry does all kinds of musical things, but most people
know him from Benny Grunch & the Bunch. His prognosis is greatly improved
and it is possible for him to now have surgery to remove part of his lung so
he can be cancer-free. Rock 'n' Bowl and his friends will host a benefit on
Sunday, February 8 to help defray his medical expenses. A $5.00 donation
will get you entertainment by the following: Benny Grunch, Bobby Cure, Earl
Stanley, Fleur de Lis NOLA, John Blancher (!), The Nobles, New Orleans
Quarter Notes, Orleans, Paul Varisco, Phat Tuesday, acclaimed hypnotist
Amazing Dr. Z, and much more. For more information, please call Alan Reese
at 504-888-9586 or 504-289-2167. You can check up on Harry by reading his
blog.

Showing Your Ass

I'm not someone who normally cranks on kidsthesedays and their lack of historical sense, but sometimes the only way to learn not to reveal your ignorance is to be called out. RollingStone.com has musicians handicapping the Grammy races, and in his commentary on Record of the Year, Nick Jonas says:

"Chasing Pavements" brings me back to great songwriting and classic, big-band sounds — Ella Fitzgerald comes to mind. There's a great chorus, and a beautiful string line that makes me smile every time I hear it.

Adele sounds like Ella? Really? Or does it sound like a song from some point in the past sung by an African-American woman? That is so not-close that it's hard not to think of it as an unintended variation on 'they all look alike to me.' Or, more accurately, Jonas pulling respected names out of his mental rolodex even though he's never heard them. And he should know that songs with lots of instruments and big band jazz aren't the same thing.

Funny in its own right is Bruce Springsteen's "Girls in Their Summer Clothes" being nominated for Best Rock Song. Does it rock? And the girls in their summer clothes pass him by because he looks like a dour, middle-aged man on the cover. Of course they'd pass him by.

Make a Better World to Live In

A follow-up to yesterday's thoughts on listening to music:

On my way in to work this morning, I had listened to a randomized mix disc I made of stuff in my iTunes, and I hit Holy Fuck's "Super Inuit" followed by Blackbeard's "Oohkno." I know dub is a specialized taste, and psychedelic krautrock from Toronto's even moreso, but those sounds and other non-jazz instrumentals join my world and make it more interesting, as opposed to lyric-oriented rock and pop, which generally take me out of my world. The disruption I experience trying to work to rock or pop isn't just a disruption caused by hooks; it's one caused by the music's intent to offer me another person's perspective on the world. If it's any good, it's designed to take me somewhere else - into someone else's head if nothing else. Dub, on the other hand, makes my world more psychedelic and more interesting.

Lil Wayne

My essay dealing with Lil Wayne's contradictions appeared yesterday in the San Diego Union-Tribune.

Work-Free Zone

I've been following Michaelangelo Matos' Slow Listening Movement blog with sympathy. Anyone who is on a significant number of PR lists eventually accumulates so much new music that it becomes a burden that only other music writers can appreciate. One side effect of those stacks is how they affect your listening habits in ways that can become burdensome. Because of OffBeat's focus on Louisiana music, it dominates my listening and there's no joy in yet another CD by an identity-free jazz/funk combo or trad jazz revivalists remaking the most obvious songs in the New Orleans repertoire.

The concept is to spend more quality time with the music, which I appreciate because much of what I listen to is shaped by what I'm doing. I tend to check out DJ mixes, jazz, dub and electronica when editing because the lack of vocals - or their de-centralized position means they don't interrupt my train of thought. Music that makes me notice it through that process gets a second or third listen. I often listen to CDs I'm trying to review in the car because it's the least multi-tasked listening that I do in a day.

That means, though, that most of my listening in a day is work-related, and the wall of CDs go largely untouched. I finally had to make certain decisions about listening to keep from losing the fun of music in the work. I only listen to music that has no work attached to it in the house. Still, there are limits to what I listen to at home because my wife can't stand Motorhead - and I married her? - and drone-oriented music. The only place I can hear Alan Vega next to the Undertones next to the Stooges and John Barry is my iPod, which I declared a work-free zone.

... and while writing this, I've been checking out Zu's Carboniferous, which ends up as annoying as most Ipecac releases. Free jazz squeaks and squonks tied to metal crunch and fidgety beats just aren't that much fun, no matter who plays them.