Can't stop listening to this

Autre ne Veut - "OMG"

Modern Mali Desert Blues

If Pavement can go on a reunion tour, let's do a reunion tour of this blog. For every post one of you do, I'll match it with a post. That way we can get the ball rolling.

Now that Erik is in Portland and I'm in New York this will continue to be a good way to both stay in touch and share music with each other. Instead of worrying about saying things about music, let's just post links, videos, or quick comments to share with each other something that has caught out interest in our digressing musical excursions. I think the time it takes to make an in depth review is holding us back from keeping this up. So, for the sake of brevity, I'll stop talking and make a post in the fashion described above.

Saw this band do a secret show for free two weeks ago at Santos House Party. They killed it. The band is based around the female lead, a bit of a diva, but all focus is on the 17 year old kid who took his dad's place as lead guitarist in the band. He will certainly be someone to keep an eye on. Watch him on the far left of this video.

Marina Rock

I know that Yacht Rock has been a burgeoning undercurrent on the musical radar of record diggers for quite sometime, what with Fleetwood Mac and Bread providing soft rock for the ages, but what are the implications, transgressions, and transcendent moments of yacht rock?

Marina Rock. A Marina is a place where a lot of yachts sit tied to docks, bobbing up and down in the waves, glistening in eternal sunset mode. What are the implications of this you may ask? Well, the late seventies had an answer. A plurality of answers. An armada of yachts, anchored, chilling, chilling in the marina with sunsets, caressed and massaged by boat shoes. Marinas are places where you are either arriving or departing, lounging, reflecting or planning. Contemplative, introspective, serene.

Mexican Summer (Who knew they were an imprint of Kemado!?) just reissued this superb example of AM radio pop, soft rock private pressing from Georgia 1976. The album is Music and Dreams by Robert Lester Folsom, and it will sweep you away in a dreamy ocean of acoustic guitar and Californian, Neil Young via the Eagles, singer songwriter waves.

Another gem for you all to keep an eye out for will be sitting in the budget bin at a record store near you. Ian Matthews was in a band called Plainsong whose In Search of Amelia Earhart is a crowning achievement in the annals of soft rock lore.

So keep your eyes peeled to the horizon my brethren, and you too will know peace, love, and yachting for it is summer in winter. All hands on deck.

Album of the Century

Neil Young Archives, Volume 1 [1963-1973]

Album of the Decade

I know that we don't really post on this blog anymore, and that it is now more like those records you bought in high school that are in no way redeemable but you still have to see them at your parents house every time you go home.

Regardless, I'm going to make more and more audacious claims every post I make until someone counters my post with an even MORE audacious post, to which I will only scoff and leave comments about how predictable it was.

So, album of the decade motherfuckers. Group Doueh - Guitar Music From the Western Sahara.

I didn't know there was youtube footage of these guys from the big tour. I mean, I'd seen the SF DVD footage, but not this. Wish I'd been in Europe for that Sublime Frequencies tour, and I wish I didn't have class on Friday so that I could go see Tinariwen in Brooklyn.

I'm just going to stay up all night watching these youtube videos instead.




Supergroup Style:


In Amsterdam (no drug jokes)


In Berlin (Which makes this krautrock, right? Totally Ege Bamyasi inspired Desert Blues Jam)


And some more Souleyman for good measure:

Top Ten Time!

It's that time of the year! Put up christmas lights, air your grievances, and post your top ten lists online in front of god and everybody. I really enjoyed Erik's review of good dj mixes for the year, I think I listened to that Johnny Nash mix way more than the doctor ordered.

So, let's put an end to revisionist history right here by posting our top tens up before everyone else does. After seeing everyone else's lists I always want to pretend like I listened to something way more legit than I really did.

More realistically, I had to put together a list a week ago, so I'm not leaving much hope for the releases of the month of December. However, those Academy reissues of SJOB Movement and Mebusas are real hot. That and the Nosmoke release of the Ngozi Family LP 45,000 Volts is so good, I may like it more than the Chrissy Zebby Tembo and the Ngozi Family LP from last year. Super heavy on the Sabbath riffage and still throwing down some traditional Zambian percussion and language in between is about as essential as they come.

Because I spent a ton more time on reissues than new music this year, I will start the list off there.

Reissues:
V/A Ouga Affair (Disques Savannahphone)
V/A Take Me To The Water (Dust-to-Digital)
V/A Psych Funk 101 & School Me Volume One (STA)- Strong start for an oddball label!
Alan Lomax in Haiti (Harte)
Mortika: Recordings from the Greek underground (Mississippi)
The Units -History of (Community Library)
The Durutti Column Box Set (Kooky)
Death… For the Whole World to See (Drag City)
Ofege – Try and Love (Academy)
Jerusalem - Jerusalem (Vintage)


As always, many <3’s to Analog Africa, Honest Jon’s, Monk, and Norton (particularly those early Sun Ra Doo Wop jamz and "I am Strange" 7".


New Releases: No Particular Order

Julianna Barwick - Florine (Self-Released)
Desire (Italians Do it Better)
Lindstrom & Prins Thomas - II (Eskimo)
William Fowler Collins - Perdition Hill Radio (Type)
Dam Funk - Toeachizown (Stones Throw)
Ducktails - Landscapes (Olde English Spelling Bee)
Music Go Music - Expressions (Secretly Canadian)
Ata Ebtekar &The Iranian Orchestra for New Music Performing Works of Alireza Mashayikhi - Ornamentalism (Sub Rosa)
Neal Morgan – To the Breathing World (self released)
Life’s Blood releases 001: Cole’s Gifts and 003: The Endless Bummer’s Modern American Calypsos For Voice and Computer

Record digging highlights for 09: Gems from the bargain bin
Willie Guy Rainey - s/t (Southland Records)
The Sufi Dance & Song Record, San Francisco CA (Rainbow Bridge Distro)
Kitaro - Ten Kai aka Astral Voyage (Wergo/Spectrum)
Level 42 - Starchild (Polydor)
Manhar Udhas - Aagman (Super Cassette Industries)

A friend of mine asked me to do a "balearic" set at his party. Not sure he knew what I knew, but I found that song just in time and squeezed it between this great cheeseball gypsy disco song called "sandstorm" and some Japanese folk ragas. Turns out doing a "balearic" set is a good way to loose friends who DJ Detroit techno using Serato the rest of the night. Saved myself by pulling out a Ricardo Villalobos suite and getting the hell out of there. I wish I could've recorded my set, I would have posted it. It was fun, switching off with a kid who showed up with a bag of Chicago house records (many of which he preferred to play at 33 rpm?).

That wraps it up for me. Miss you dudes. I'll be in CA for the holidays, and I think I am going to the Rickshaw Stop for New Years. Hopefully be able to see you guys when I'm out there, nerd out and listen to some records!

We will miss you Jack Rose!

Our thoughts and best wishes go out to Jack Rose's family and friends. I was very sad to get a call and hear that Jack Rose passed away. He will be missed out here in Philadelphia, as he was an extremely talented and inspired musician, and I am sure he will be missed even more by his family and friends. The likes of his self titled LP on Tequila Sunrise and his seminal Kensington Blues as well as his work with Pelt are wonderful artifacts to remember him by. Here he is playing his classic "Kensington Blues."