The Brigadier wrote:This is easily one of my favorite threads (probably #1), and I've picked up on some music that I love by reading it. I have a bestest friend who lives in Boston, and we've always had extensive conversations about music and movies and books, so I've emailed him a little here and there about some of the music discussed in this thread (ex. "I just read about and heard Wooden Shjips! Do you know Wooden Shjips?" ... "Yes, love Wooden Shjips." [paraphrased for convenience]) Anyway, here's his most recent email about stuff I've written to him about this thread. For the record (ah, uh), I love all of the below musics, although I have not yet heard an entire album by MF Doom and I feel very insufficently privy to his stuff. One more note- I added a few pictures to his text. Anyway, no further ado, here's Tom:
Swell Maps: in the ever-dwindling arena of remastered/rereleased classic recordings on CD (including in recent years big blowouts for The Fall, The Kinks, Can, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Faust, T Rex, Amon Duul, etc.,) the best by far in the last year and a half has been Secretly Canadian's Swell Maps reissue of the (only) two 'Maps albums.
I bought "Jane From Occupied Europe" as soon as it came out, and dammit if it STILL doesn't shock me that that shit came out in'70/'80. One of those " 'way ahead of their time' doesn't cover it" things. On constant rotation at the Barndting [combined last names of Tom and his wife] household.
Yeah, "Fishscale" may fall a bit short of "Supreme Clientele" in the "Bracingly Original and Completely Unique" category, but I'm the LAST bastard on this ball to tell you that taking a couple of cues from Doom is a bad thing. I loves me some "Clientele," but I prefer some "Fishscale."
Speaking of Hiphop's last (and maybe greatest) god of stream of consciousness lyrical flow, every time I think my tastes are becoming more steadfastly American, I'm proven wrong. Like last week: I walked into a shop and they were playing "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" by The Band - an Americana sort of band if there ever was one; and I was so taken by it, so suddenly, that I had to immediately go to a store and buy one of their CDs (which I'd been meaning to do anyway,) and the liner notes immediately informed me they were from Toronto. Then the other day I was (for whatever reason) compelled to look up MF Doom on allmusic, and the first thing I saw was the bio note "born 'Daniel Dumile' in London, 1974." Well, fuck. Here's my Doom comment - everybody who wants to know, already knows that the guy's a lyrical shitstorm. His production work is less revered, and if only for that reason, you NEED to get yourself "Special Herbs: The Box Set" (not a box set) which includes the otherwise impossible-to-find, utterly shocking "Secret Herbs & Spices" bonus disc, which is just about the best god-damned instrumental hip-hop beats disc ever recorded. Seriously. Addictive shit.
Teenage Fanclub just so happens to be the most timeless, classic, kickass-good band in the entire Creation roster (which also included My Bloody Valentine, The Jesus and Mary Chain, Swervedriver, Saint Etienne, Primal Scream and a dozen other great bands,) but their discography is difficult. The band seemed to swerve from nakedly sincere to maudlin at the drop of a hat, and there are few albums that don't contain both.
"Four Thousand Seven Hundred and Sixty-six Seconds" (I think it's called) is a really good intro. singles comp. "Bandwagonesque" is probably their finest hour and "Thirteen" is the noisy-ass album their label either didn't want to hear or did (it was 1993, after all.) "A Catholic Education" is the pre-Nirvana noisy pop album that was an actual Nirvana influence, and doesn't 100% sound like them, though it's still good.
I love Springsteen, and I didn't completely realize that until I actually moved to the Northeast (believe me, it helps.) Here's the thing: even if he didn't produce anything else of artistic value (which he did,) I'd be forever beholden to him for "Nebraska." There are entire genres of American fiction I'll never need to read because of "Atlantic City" alone. But the whole album's a jaw-dropper.
S3 was, and is, one of the great psych-rock bands in history. Having said that, as big a fan as I am, there's really only one Spacemen album for me, and that's "Performance: Live at the Melkweg, Amsterdam." There just had to have been some extra-extra-good drugs in town that night.
Pan Sonic - A
