The Post-Rockist

Huzzah! The 2008 Riverfront Times Music Showcase is upon us! Ladies and germs, feast your eyes and ears upon the magnificent, stupendous, astonishing line-up of town troubadors, warblers, and aspiring legends converging from all corners of metro St. Louis for one day, and one day only! Ring the bells! Wave the flags! Blast the trumpets! This event is one for the ages, and not to be…

Huh? Oh, you’re not buying it? Ahem. Well then, let me start over. I admit it’s a little difficult to get excited for an event with a title as quaint as “Riverfront Times Showcase”; it conjures images of job fairs, where you half-expect the bands to be lined up in little booths handing our fliers and demo CDs to aimless undergrads. At least in Detroit the local paper named their music fest the “Blowout,” which has a little more zing! bang! pow! to it (Not to mention it was four days long, none of those days being a Sunday. C’mon, St. Louis, step it up). So far, the reaction I’ve gotten from friends about this little shindig have ranged from, “A local music showcase? Wow, sounds like a blast. I’d love to go but I’ve got to, uhm, iron my socks. All day. Sorry,” to “Meh, it’s just the same few bands that play every year.”

I get this creeping feeling that the Showcase audience will consist entirely of other bands, their girlfriends, and myself. Nevertheless, I remain cautiously optimistic in hopes of a better turnout. After all, I’ve only lived in St. Louis for less than a year now, which hasn’t been nearly enough time to make me feel jilted and jaded toward the state of local music. (I’ll give it another year before I, fingers crossed, find indisputable proof that So Many Dynamos, the Bluebird, and the RFT are engaged in a secret sexual tryst/malicious cabal determined to overhaul all St. Louis media and poison the milk in our schools’ cafeterias to turn the children into goth indie zombies. Or whatever it is they’re supposedly up to. Jinkies!)

As strange as it may sound, I really am excited for the Showcase. Twelve-plus hours of the best live music St. Louis has to offer — a lot of which I’ve seen already, but most of which is going to be brand spanking new to me — condensed into one easy serving. Plus, it’s dirt cheap. Based on who I’ve already seen, who I’m hoping to see again, and who I’m hoping to see for the first time, I’ve cobbled together the following hour-by-hour unofficial Post-Rockist itinerary: (Continued)

1. Woody Guthrie - I Ain’t Got No Home
(from Dust Bowl Ballads)

2. Hank Williams - Ready To Go Home
(from The Ultimate Collection)

3. Dolly Parton & Porter Wagoner - Better Move It On Home
(from The Essential Porter Wagoner and Dolly Parton)

4. Eddie Floyd - Bring It On Home
(from Chronicle: Greatest Hits)

5. Elvis Presley - Baby, Let’s Play House
(from The Sun Sessions)

6. The Kinks - I Took My Baby Home
(from Kinks)

7. Solomon Burke - Home In Your Heart
(from Home In Your Heart)

8. The White Stripes - Let’s Build a Home
(from De Stijl)

9. Tom Waits - Come On Up To the House
(from Mule Variations)

10. Crosby, Stills, Nash, & Young - Our House
(from So Far CSNY)

EPILOGUE: Swan Silvertones - I’m Coming Home
(from Love Lifted Me/My Rock)

Lately I’ve been giving a lot of thought to house music over here at Post-Rockist HQ, and not the four-to-the-floor variety. But the idea of “home” in music. Everyone has one, or had one: that place with four walls and a roof over your head where you plant your roots and watch Judge Judy comfortably in your sweatpants. But in pop culture “home” isn’t so much a place as it is a goal; a site for departures and arrivals. Someone’s always leaving home, coming home, dreaming of home, building a home, wrecking a home, sick of home, or homesick.

So in that spirit of adventure, I’ve put together a little mix of house music. It’s not necessarily the greatest selection of home-themed songs, but it follows a loose story arc of homelessness to homecoming. We start with Woody and Hank bemoaning the absence of home in a socioeconomic and spiritual sense, respectively, before picking things up a notch with the saucy country duo Dolly Parton and Porter Wagoner toying around with the foibles of spousal obligations. Eddie Floyd tries to smooth things over with his departed lover with remorse in his voice and a sturdy Stax strut to signify his sincerity. Meanwhile, Elvis and the Kinks, lovers in tow, want to bring their babies home with non-too-subtle metaphors veiling their animal intentions. The man with the sexiest voice on this list, however, Mr. Solomon Burke, is seeking a home with a little more permanence than a brief playdate. And Jack White… well, I don’t really know what he’s on about, but he sounds serious. With home finally in sight, Tom Waits is there to rattle our foundations with his booming growl, reminding us of the fragile and shambling nature of all those things we hold dear to our heart, but reassures us like a bohemian Baloo that transcendence can be found in our transience. Home at last, Graham Nash celebrates the little joys found in our domestic setting, and yes, this song has been overplayed, but that doesn’t make it any less beautiful. Finally, the a capella gospel legends the Swan Silvertones figuratively bring it all home to tidily wrap up the spiritual void first noticed by Hank Williams at the beginning.

Quite frankly, I’m a little surprised that “Home” hasn’t been the subject of one of Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hours yet, considering his other topics. Bob, if you’re reading this, and I know that you are, feel free to use the idea. Just be sure to give credit where credit is due.

Living Room Music I

Living Room Music II

Living Room Music III

Living Room Music IV
(all selections from John Cage: Music for Percussion)

I don’t listen to John Cage as much as I used to; in part because I don’t have as strong of an urge as I once did to listen to outlandish or difficult music in an attempt to “prove” that I have diverse taste, and in part because I’ve come to realize that incredibly inventive and challenging music can still be presented to me in a palatable pop format, complete with catchy hooks and choruses to keep my short attention focused.

Yet the other day I was listening to my iPod on shuffle mode when “Living Room Music I” came on, and I had to do a double-take. The shifting patterns of crisp, polyrhythmic beats — was this the start of a new Panda Bear remix I had downloaded off Gorilla vs. Bear without realizing it? No, there was no predictable build-up of fuzz and effects; everything stayed refreshingly sparse and concise.

I suppose if there’s any proper way to be reintroduced to John Cage, complete chance would be the way to do it. After listening to “Living Room Music I” thanks to the random assortment of iPod shuffle, I went back to revisit the entire 8-minute movement. The point of the piece, in short, is that all sounds in time constitute music, sounds are all around us in nature, and even interior spaces as mundane as a living room count as a natural environment. “Living Room Music” is a percussive piece created for four musicians who are instructed to use (from the score): “Any household objects or architectural elements… [including] magazines, newpaper… table… furniture…. largish books… floor, wall, door.” This was put together in 1940, decades before Tom Waits started banging on kitchen cabinets to create the percussion for Mule Variations and charging $100-plus for paperless tickets to see him at the Fox. (Although, listening to “Living Room Music III” I don’t know how an organ constitutes an ordinary “household object.” Hmmm. Sounds like cheating to me.)

Think about it — 1940! That was back when Jimmy Dorsey and the Glenn Miller Orchestra were all the rage. This sounds starkly original in contrast, it could almost pass as a release from the noughts. (The exception being “Living Room Music II” with its vocal exercises built around Gertrude Stein’s “The World is Round” — the performance screams 1970s public access and black turtlenecks.) The music is clean and economical, perfect acoustical feng shui for my new living room and continuing posts on homeownership.

Well, I’ve finally moved into my house. It’s been quite the ordeal: the cable guy accidentally drilled a hole in my brand new kitchen floor, a door had to be removed to fit in some new appliances, and I have a metric ton of cardboard boxes left to dispose of. But at least the hard work is behind me now. And, to celebrate, I’m playing the obligatory non-ska hit “Our House” by the British ska band Madness. This song has held up surprisingly well over time, sounding more like Dexy’s Midnight Runners than any of their other not-as-successful ’80s ska singles. And the video, of course, is priceless. A small part of me still likes to believe that this video accurately reflects the lifestyles of men in Great Britain: cheeky, tweedy, and slightly effeminate.

Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazelwood - “Some Velvet Morning”
(from Fairy Tales & Fantasies: The Best of Nancy & Lee)

Primal Scream - “Some Velvet Morning”
(from Evil Heat)

Sorry for the lack of regular posting as of late, kiddos. As some of you may know, I’ve been mired in the paper work and physical labor demanded of a first-time home buyer. Just this past weekend, as a matter of fact, instead of blogging I was living out my worst HGTV nightmares: painting nearly every damn room in the house. The living room, it was decided, was to be a shade of blue the marketing geniuses at the Behr company had dubbed “Velvet Morning.” Because I’m a dork, and because painting is tedious work, I kept myself entertained by singing, “Some velvet morning when I’m straight, I’m gonna open up your gate,” etcetera. Now, coming out of my choppy Midwestern monotone mouth, these nonsensical phrases sounded about as idiotic and fruity as any number of “songs” I like to make up and sing to myself when I’m bored. But, coming out of the deep, echo-rich mouth of Lee Hazelwood and his stunning mustache, the words take on a new meaning. They become determined, driven, heroic. Maybe it was the fumes I was inhaling, or maybe it was the mysterious Morricone-inspired strings, but all of a sudden it was like my painting had taken on a new sense of purpose.

“Some Velvet Morning,” the Nancy Sinatra/Lee Hazelwood duet, is a powerful song, even if it makes no fucking sense whatsoever. Something about dragonflies and daffodils, a story that may or may not be told depending on the narrator’s mood, and some elusive chick named Phaedra whose presence is signified by a sudden switch to carnival-like rhythms. Yeah. It was an unexpected B-side hit in the late ’60s. I guess you could call it a psychedelic parable about… I dunno, love?

The vague, stoned moodiness of the song have garnered it something of a cult following and a bevy of covers, including attempts by Lydia Lunch and Slowdive. One of my favorite versions of this song, however, was done by Primal Scream, who take the song from its fantasy/mythology roots and plant it firmly in sci-fi territory. All of Evil Heat has a post-apocalyptic electro-garage vibe to it, like Blade Runner on ecstasy, but somehow listening to Bobby Gillespie’s vocodered voice on “Some Velvet Morning” feels surprisingly natural. And Kate Moss absolutely kills filling in for the Sinatra role. “Look at us but do not touch,” she coos, in what might as well be the official motto of supermodels everywhere. If I didn’t know this was a cover I would totally believe that this was a Scream Team original.

Okay, I realize this is quite possibly the lamest excuse for a blog post evah, but before I embarass myself any further and toss around phrases like “technophobic sexpot” to describes Moss’s reimagining of Phaedra I’ll try and bring this to a quick and tidy close. After all, I’ve only just reestablished my internet connection and I still have tons of boxes to unpack. But, keep your eyes on the P-R and I’ll plan on sneaking in some more exciting home-related music posts. You lucky dog.

(foto credit)

When the members of Wilco shuffled onto stage Friday night, dressed like librarians on happy hour, the crowd went bananas. Wild, uncaged, totally unexpected excitement. Don’t get me wrong, I like Wilco. Pretty much everyone I know likes Wilco. They’re a very likeable band. But they’ve been granfathered into that rare indie elder band status, occupied most notably by the likes of Yo La Tengo, where they’re still young enough to be releasing amazing, vital records, but they’ve also been around the block enough times that everyone sort of takes it for granted that they’re a Really Good band that consistently puts out Really Good songs. In another ten years or so they’ll be selling $100 tickets at the Fox to middle-aged fans in business suits. Nobody gets out of their chair, screaming bloody murder excited for a Really Good band, do they?

Apparently, they do. (Continued)

Wednesday nights aren’t too bad if you can spend them running around town to catch international touring bands who have serendipitously converged upon a single city limit–your city limit–on the same night. Sure, you have two more days of work before the weekend, and that big meeting tomorrow morning, and you know you’re going to drink a bit too much and feel crummy all day long, but you’ve got Thursday to recover, and don’t you need some release after three grueling days of paper pushing and mindless emailing at your job?

And how often do three popular British acts–in this case, Foals, The Teenagers (England via Paris), and Kate Nash–come through Detroit on the same night? The answer lies somewhere between “very seldom” and “never once before.” That’s almost 3,800 miles, although I think it is a lot shorter if you measure by meters. They should’ve carpooled. Sadly, I only made two shows. Sorry Katie. I totally fell for Lily Allen a couple of years ago and, when it comes to bubble-gum pop with hints of ‘tude from a cute British doll, I pretty much become the gooey lovesick mess of my pubescent yore, but yours was the most expensive show and a man’s gotta draw the line somewheres.

The agenda: Catch my Detroit pals Millions of Brazilians opening at Alvin’s, then to the Magic Stick for The Teenagers, then back to Alvin’s for Foals. (Continued)