Tag: music

la la la la zzzzzzz……

USA-based online CD trading site to give 20% of revenue to performing artists.

Today, USA-based online CD trading site la la opened its doors to the public. Although the site remains in beta testing until the official launch in July, new members are able to register without needing an invitation from other beta testers or the site administrators. With this soft launch comes an announcement of the “Z” Foundation, a non-profit organization that will donate 20% of the trading revenue of la la to performing artists. Founder Bill Nguyen hopes to eventually increase that percentage to 90%.

From the start, the vision of la la has been focused more on providing inexpensive ways for music fans to discover new artists and less on getting music for cheap. The site seeks to create a community that promotes music in general and supports performing artists in particular. The “Z” Foundation is one outlet for that vision. Eligibility is available only to working musicians, defined as any individual who has performed on a recorded release or live performance in the last year and whose music-related income accounts for more than half of their total income. To register, musicians can go to http://www.lala.com/z.

I have been a beta tester for la la over the past two months, and with 144 trades (total of sent and received) under my belt, I am willing to admit that I’m a fan of the site. As a friend to several full-time performing musicians, I’m also a fan of the “Z” Foundation concept. Music is an essential part of my life, and I appreciate the opportunity to give back to the musicians while also swapping out CDs I don’t listen to anymore for new-to-me CDs. There are other media trading sites out there (Title Trader, SwitchDiscs, etc.), but only la la has stepped up and given something back to the people who make this music available in the first place. That’s something to sing about.

An Interview with Susan Werner

“I believe that we can be a diverse society of extraordinary creativity and innovation and vitality and freedom, and those things are the best things that we can be.”

Susan Werner, PatriotMy introduction to the music of Susan Werner was in the fall of 1999 when a friend who produced a local acoustic music radio show lent me copies of Time Between Trains and Last of the Good Straight Girls. I was instantly enchanted with the sincerity and wit that Werner brings to her music. Her last album was a thematic collection of songs that sound like they are from the 20s and 30s, but are all orginal and new. Recently, Werner made available for download a song she describes as an alternative national anthem. “This is a song that takes the National Anthem and turns it on his head,” says Werner. “It’s Francis Scott Key meets Arlo Guthrie.” I had the pleasure of speaking with Werner about the song a few weeks ago.

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shhhh cowboy

New York style roots rock that doesn’t take itself too seriously.

cover of Some Other PlaceMost Blogcritics readers are familiar with Jon Sobel as a witty and thoughtful music critic, but probably few know that Sobel is also a musician and songwriter. His band, Whisperado, has an EP that should be in every literate music fan’s collection.

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the pen

Music for the literate masses.

John McCutcheon - Mightier Than the SwordBefore I listened to Mightier Than the Sword, my experience with John McCutcheon’s music consisted of one track from his 1987 Step by Step, which featured the hammer dulcimer. The song is “Babylon is Fallen,” which is an old Sacred Harp tune, and one of my favorites to sing. When I bought that CD some years ago, I was singing with a shape note group in Kentucky. Now I’m in Washington, surprised to discover that this hammer dulcimer player is also a guitar-playing contemporary singer/songwriter of repute.

Mightier Than the Sword first attracted my attention because of its theme. McCutcheon has been a voracious reader for most of his life, and the themes from the books he read found their ways into his songs. For this recording, he took that a step further and collaborated with willing authors to write a collection of songs inspired by a particular book or poem of each author. I haven’t read any of the works that inspired this recording, but after having listened to it, I feel like I know the essences of them.

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music icon

I met Cris Williamson this past weekend, thanks to my friends Kiya & Miriam. Although I was aware of Cris and her importance in women’s music, I had not listened to her much. Her best-selling album The Changer and the Changed was released the year I was born. I didn’t even know that women’s music … Continue reading “music icon”

I met Cris Williamson this past weekend, thanks to my friends Kiya & Miriam. Although I was aware of Cris and her importance in women’s music, I had not listened to her much. Her best-selling album The Changer and the Changed was released the year I was born. I didn’t even know that women’s music existed until 1996-ish, and by then it was virtually gone. There are still some remnants of it, but women (mostly lesbian) musicians and fans don’t need it now like they did in the 1970s. Meeting Cris in that context was…interesting. I have tremendous respect for her.

One question that resulted from that meeting is: Who is the icon for 20-something women? The only women musicians I can think of for my generation are in their 30s (Ani DiFranco, for example). I can’t think of a 20-something woman musician who has influenced her peers in the way that Cris did for her peers in the late 70s.

josie’s on a vacation far away

The Butchies – Make Yr Life Years ago, I fell in love with the music created by queer feminist power pop rockers The Butchies (Kaia Wilson, Melissa York, and Alison Martlew). Their first full album Are We Not Femme? is on rotation in the soundtrack of my post-college music experience. Six years later, a more … Continue reading “josie’s on a vacation far away”

The Butchies – Make Yr Life

Years ago, I fell in love with the music created by queer feminist power pop rockers The Butchies (Kaia Wilson, Melissa York, and Alison Martlew). Their first full album Are We Not Femme? is on rotation in the soundtrack of my post-college music experience. Six years later, a more mature Butchies have put out their third album, Make Yr Life; fourth if you count their work on Amy Ray’s Stag in 2001. This time around it’s on Yep Roc Records, rather than Wilson’s Mr Lady Records, as they have done with previous recordings. This has resulted in a polished production that brings out more of the subtleties of the band’s songcrafting.

As usual, I have trouble reconciling the feminine, emotional vocals with Wilson’s gender-bending personal style. She is a political feminist statement from the moment she opens her mouth and the music flows out sounding like “somewhere between The Rocky Horror Picture Show and the suspended time right before your head spins off into orgasm.”[1]

With practiced ease, Wilson and her bandmates are able to shift from quiet intensity to rousing exuberance, often within the same track, without it seeming contrived. In fact, that is one of the style characteristics that have distinguished them from their contemporaries in my internal musical catalog. The song topics have gone from blatantly political to more of the personal-is-political. From the love-struck opening track “Send Me You” (“caught in your eyes / and i’m losing my mind”) to the I’m-over-you “Second Guess” with its repeated refrain, “i don’t need you anymore,” the human experience (or at least the romantic aspect) is played out in hook-filled power pop tunes.

The CD ends with a very satisfying cover of The Outfield‘s “Your Love.” Wilson’s breathy voice and solemn intensity coupled with York and Martlew’s light touch on the drums and bass, respectively (as well as a sprinkle of backing vocals), presents this cover with appropriate reverence. Much like Sixpence None the Richer‘s cover of “There She Goes,” the song takes a 180° shift in perspective. It is paradoxically both a Butchies-type song and not a Butchies-type song. I spent most of the first listen trying to place it, and the countless subsequent listens reveling in the beauty of it.

Take my advice and make room in your CD rotation for Make Yr Life. You won’t be sorry.

don’t lay that shit on me

Second-wave feminists in the late 60’s and early 70’s had a rock and roll voice, sung by bands such as the Chicago and New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Bands.

The Chicago and New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Bands and Le Tigre – Papa, Don’t Lay That Shit On Me

Second-wave feminists in the late 60’s and early 70’s had a rock and roll voice, sung by bands such as the Chicago and New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Bands. Precursors to today’s riot grrl and queercore bands, they broke through and gave women in the liberation movements their own rock and roll anthems.

In 1972, Rounder released a record called Mountain Moving Day consisting of four songs each from the Chicago and New Haven Women’s Liberation Rock Bands. It was an attempt to capture the power of their live performances, and neither band was experienced with recording in a studio. This shows through in the roughness of the arrangements, but only if one is looking for it. The power of their songs and the statements they made to women and rock goes beyond these technical issues.

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the slits

One of the first female punk bands of the late seventies was the Slits. Never heard of them? You should.

One of the first female punk bands of the late seventies was the Slits. Never heard of them? You should. They toured with better known acts such as the Clash and White Riot, but did not gain the long-term fame and attention of their tour mates. Koch Records has recently reissued their 1979 recording Cut on CD with two bonus tracks, “I Heard It Through the Grapevine” and “Liebe and Romanze.”

When the band formed in 1976, none of the members could play instruments very well, but thanks to the punk movement of the time, that was no impediment to their musical creation. Cut has minimal instrumentation, with heavy emphasis on vocals and percussion, but it works. The producer, Dennis Bovell, came from a reggae background, and this is evident in the recording. The combination of reggae and punk stylings with a feminist approach to rock music gives the recording its unique sound.

It is obvious that the Slits influenced many of the all-girl bands of the 80s like the Go-Go’s and others. The retro music revolution that is sweeping through modern indie bands should pause and take a page from the Slits, as well. Their use of repetitive musical and non-musical sounds, call-and-response, and emphasis on lyrical song crafting are techniques well worth paying attention to.

Don’t expect to find this band on your top 40 radio station or MTV (do they even show videos anymore?), but if the music directors at the college stations are paying attention, this reissue will be heating up the CMJ charts, if it isn’t already.

Article first published as The Slits – Cut on Blogcritics.org

love songs

Only those who are confident that their sweethearts would not dump them for this chanteuse should pick up a copy of this CD.

My first introduction to Marlene Dietrich occurred a few weeks ago when I picked up a copy of the movie Witness for the Prosecution. As an Agatha Christie fan, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to see yet one more dramatized version of her writing. I had heard of Dietrich before watching the movie, but it wasn’t until I saw her that I began to understand the attraction so many had (and still have) for her. Needless to say, I was eager to give the new Sony Legacy release Love Songs a spin.

The CD is a collection of songs recorded by Dietrich mainly in the 1950’s, with the first three tracks recorded in 1930 and 1931. A handful of the tracks are available on other recordings, but many have been languishing in vaults or private record collections until Sony picked up the masters and dusted them off. The sound quality is most impressive. Harry Coster did the digital sound restoration, and did it so well that one can hardly tell that the originals were 78s. The three tracks recorded in the 30’s do have that canned sound of recordings from the time, but without much of the hiss and pops of the old records. The rest of the recordings are fuller and warmer, a tribute to not only the re-mastering, but also the improvements in recording technology in the intervening twenty years.

Dietrich’s vocal technique is less than perfect, but her alto voice drips with a seductive quality that makes up for whatever may be lacking. As the liner states, when she sings, she transforms “strong men into masochists and beautiful women into groveling slaves worshipping at the alter [sic] of Sappho.” The CD will be released just in time for lovers shopping for Valentines Day gifts, but only those who are confident that their sweethearts would not dump them for this chanteuse should consider picking up a copy.

Article first published as Marlene Dietrich – Love Songs on Blogcritics.org

redneck woman

So here’s to all my sisters out there keeping it country
Let me get a big ‘hell yeah’ from the redneck girls like me

I’ve been listening to the local country stations lately while driving around when the public radio stations aren’t broadcasting anything I’m interested in. I never cared much for country until I saw the Dixie Chicks at a Lillith Fair in 1999. I started scanning the dial on long car trips, and discovered that there are in fact some witty songwriters in the country genre, as well as some great toe-tapping tunes. One of my recent favorites is a song by Gretchen Wilson that was profiled yesterday on NPR’s All Things Considered.

My reactions when I first heard this song were mixed. On the one hand, I appreciated the songwriting and gutsy humor, but on the other hand I felt a tinge of discomfort. I’m not a redneck woman, nor do I wish to be, so I couldn’t feel a kinship with the song like the women screaming “hell, yeah!” in the chorus. What appeals to me is the independence and unashamed statement of self proclaimed in this song. The commentator put it in the same category as the Dixie Chick’s Goodbye Earl, another song I can’t relate to directly, but greatly appreciate the sentiments.

I recommend giving the tune a spin on your favorite audio medium. If anything, you’ll be doing some chair dancing.

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