Black Sabbath - Black Sabbath

 #Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #1970s #Fantasia #Night on Bald Mountain #animated music video

Listening to Black Sabbath’s self-titled 1970 album is a lesson in heavy metal history. Though bands such as Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple influenced the formation of the genre, Black Sabbath is often considered the first true heavy metal band, perhaps because they were the first to devote their focus to the darker themes that became an often controversial element of metal. Robert Plant of Led Zeppelin also has been quoted as saying he thought Black Sabbath was the first true heavy metal band. Living in an impoverished English town where career choices for most were limited to factory worker or criminal, the boys of Black Sabbath could not relate to the idealistic hippie music that was popular when the band formed in 1968, considering themselves a blues band. Guitarist Tony Iommi, observed the lines that formed at the local movie theater whenever it showed horror films and remarked that if people were so willing to pay to be scared, perhaps they should try playing evil-sounding music. With that in mind, they took their name from a Boris Karloff film.
The title track exemplified Sabbath’s goal of capturing horror in music. It began with atmospheric sounds of heavy rain, thunder, and a single, tolling bell. Then Iomi played a slow, ominous riff based on the “devil’s tritone,” an interval notoriously avoided in medieval music because its dissonance evoked a sense of evil - perfect for Sabbath’s purposes. Though speedy, seemingly effortless shredding has become nearly synonymous with heavy metal, the slogging pace of this formative song was truly heavy, creating a feeling of immense weight and pressure intensified by the dread-soaked vocals of Ozzy Osbourne in his prime. The story of being dragged to hell by a figure in black was not conveyed so much by the lyrics as by the despair in Osbourne’s voice when he moaned, “Oh no, no, please God help me.” The song was haunting in a way that most listeners in 1970 had no idea how to process. This dire sound eventually became the primary influence of the doom metal subgenre in the early 1980s.  From: https://www.classicrockhistory.com/black-sabbath-album-review/

Dead Pirates - UGO

 #Dead Pirates #McBess #psychedelic rock #garage rock #art rock #heavy psych #animated music video

Dead Pirates roared into existence in 2009 as the “band” behind “Wood (Dirty Melody),” an infectious slice of garage punk that soundtracked an animated music video by the French illustrator Matthieu Bessudo — better known as McBess. At the time, the “band” was just McBess himself, a chance for him to stretch his creative muscles beyond the Max Fleischer-inspired artwork and videos for which he’s become known. McBess created the video for “Wood” during his day job at Oscar-winning VFX studio The Mill. “What I wanted to do was make music,” he says. “It didn’t really matter if I became famous or anything like that. It just started to get bigger and bigger.”
It happened quickly; after the release of “Wood (Dirty Melody),” a friend asked Mcbess to play a private Christmas party, so he put together a rudimentary group, including his younger brother, Tristan, flown in from Berlin, on guitar. In 2010, a Dead Pirates 7” was recorded to accompany a McBess-penned comic book entitled Malevolent Melody. Two more EPs followed in 2011 and 2014, along with shows in London and Europe, and a tour to South America in 2015. “It was strange,” says McBess, explaining how his band ended up playing to a crowd of 500 people in Buenos Aires. “I went to South America to do an exhibition, and a friend of mine there was into some good music and said it would be easy to set up a tour. He landed us like six or seven dates.”
Now, Dead Pirates are gearing up to release their debut LP, “Highmare,”a collection of ultra-heavy psychedelic jammers as indebted to ‘70s classics as McBess’ artwork is to Betty Boop. And they’ve had no trouble finding an audience — the first pressing of Highmare is almost completely sold out on Bandcamp. McBess is ready for the attention. “Before this I was never 100% certain of what we were doing, he says. “But this one is different. Nobody is taking it lightly.”  From: https://daily.bandcamp.com/features/dead-pirates-interview

Maria McKee - Absolutely Barking Stars

 #Maria McKee #alternative rock #alt-country #folk rock #roots rock #singer-songwriter #1990s #ex-Lone Justice

I am mystified by my obsession with Maria McKee’s Life Is Sweet. I tried several years ago to explain what it is about the album that touches me so, but I don’t think I did a good job. This album went almost unnoticed; McKee, best known as the lead singer for the alt-country band Lone Justice, took a total 180-degree turn from her previous albums and released a raw, powerful collection of songs that hit at the core of my being. Or as McKee says in “Absolutely Barking Stars,” “She plays Pandora with my soul.” It’s as if she is trying to purge some demons from her mind while welcoming angels at the same time, not knowing who was coming or going. But in the process she releases every emotion imaginable. Aside from a few phrases such as the one above, I have no idea what the third cut, “Absolutely Barking Stars,” is about. The lyrics are pretty abstruse (e.g., “Her apron strings are trailing out like sparks / Her comet tail is whipping, slicing up the dark”). But the song is a microcosm of the entire album: sometimes soothing, sometimes angry, but mostly glorious. The song begins with an electric guitar, and Maria McKee’s voice is almost whispering. But the chords change from major to minor in the second measure – something you don’t hear too often that early in a song. She doesn’t stop there, though: In the pre-chorus, the chord progression hits three minor chords in a row, building in tension as her voice, which was earlier almost whispering, is now sounding more anxious and louder. Then the chorus, the majestic chorus, resolves back to the main key, and McKee’s voice, now double-tracked, cracks in jubilation as strings join in the angelic chorus. Her voice splits into melody and harmony later as she sings with herself, like she’s battling her alter ego. Soon the chorus gives way to a powerful, feedback-laden guitar sequence, and then it’s back to McKee to ramp it up again. “Absolutely Barking Stars” leaves me breathless each time I hear it. You may get it, you may not. But listen for the changes in chords, the change in tension and volume, the different textures involved in each part of the song. And appreciate how Maria McKee can go from a whisper to a glorious diva in a matter of measures.  From: https://hooksandharmony.com/absolutely-barking-stars-maria-mckee/

After making her name as the gritty, soulful lead singer of roots rockers Lone Justice, Maria McKee embarked on a solo career that often reflected the country and blues accents of that band's work while also taking on a more eclectic and personal outlook, both in lyrics and music. After the sophisticated pop of her self-titled 1989 solo debut, McKee dove deep into expressive Americana on 1993's critically celebrated You Gotta Sin to Get Saved, next picking up an electric guitar and exploring more experimental paths on 1996's Life Is Sweet. After breaking ties with the major labels, McKee was able to follow her muse without compromise with the sophisticated and impassioned pop/rock of 2003's High Dive and 2007's Late December. After a long layoff from recording, McKee returned in 2020 with the deeply introspective and poetic La Vita Nuova.  From: https://www.shazam.com/artist/maria-mckee/114205

Infant Annihilator - Blasphemian

 #Infant Annihilator #deathcore #technical death metal #heavy metal #brutal deathcore #extreme metal #animated music video

For anyone who's been indoctrinated into the heavier side of metal, grindcore sweethearts and one-time boy band Infant Annihilator may be a familiar name to you. For those of you who just looked up the name in order to prove you already know them, welcome to the shit show. No hipster bullshit here. Infant Annihilator was formed in 2012 by drummer Aaron Kitcher and guitarist Eddie Pickard. Since then, they’ve released three albums and a few loose singles. That’s all you’re getting, look the rest up on Wikipedia. Now, on to the butt-fuckery. Infant Annihilator is a band full of dudes who like taking the piss in a traditional post-modern way on the surface, but once you’ve looked past the superficial you learn very quickly that these boys are incredibly talented in such a way that it actually frustrates you that they don’t seem to take it all that seriously.
In the early days, vocalist Dan Watson set the tone for the brutality with an impressive array of grunt-styles to really set the tone for the pounding you’re meant to take. Coupled with the near machine-like drumming of Kitcher and the impressive and sometimes soulful solos of Pickard, you’d almost think they’re an incredibly talented Grindcore band that only improves on the pre-established legacy. Then you watch a video and holy shit, these dudes really just don’t give a fuck and go all in. Decapitation Fornication (2012) tells a Cannibal Corpse-style story of a deranged person viciously murdering their victim and then disposing of the body. The video, on the other hand, showcases the band’s love for one another, in sometimes graphic detail, complete with thrusting and black box action. Not my kind of good time, but hey, metal is a judgment-free zone.  From: https://sinneth.com/do-you-know-infant-annihilator/

Love - 7 and 7 is

 #Love #Arthur Lee #psychedelic rock #folk rock #acid rock #psychedelic pop #garage rock #jazz rock #blues rock #West coast psychedelia #1960s

One of the best West Coast folk-rock/psychedelic bands, Love may have also been the first widely acclaimed cult/underground group. During their brief heyday - lasting all of three albums - they drew from Byrds-ish folk-rock, Stones-ish hard rock, blues, jazz, flamenco, and even light orchestral pop to create a heady stew of their own. They were also one of the first integrated rock groups, led by genius singer/songwriter Arthur Lee, one of the most idiosyncratic and enigmatic talents of the '60s. Stars in their native Los Angeles and an early inspiration to the Doors, they perversely refused to tour until well past their peak. This ensured their failure to land a hit single or album, though in truth the band's vision may have been too elusive to attract mass success anyway.
Love was formed by Lee in the mid-'60s in Los Angeles. Although only 20 at the time, Lee had already scuffled around the fringes of the rock and soul business for a couple of years. In addition to recording some flop singles with his own bands, he wrote and produced a single for Rosa Lee Brooks that Jimi Hendrix played on as session guitarist. Originally calling his outfit the Grass Roots, Lee changed the name to Love after another Los Angeles group called the Grass Roots began recording for Dunhill. Love's repertoire would be largely penned by Lee, with a few contributions by guitarist Bryan MacLean.
Inspired by British Invasion bands and local peers the Byrds, Love built up a strong following in hip L.A. clubs. Soon they were signed by Elektra, the noted folk label that was just starting to get its feet wet in rock (it had recorded material by early versions of the Byrds and the Lovin' Spoonful, and had just released the first LP by Paul Butterfield). Their self-titled debut album (1966) introduced their marriage of the Byrds and the Stones on a set of mostly original material and contained a small hit, their punk-ish adaptation of Bacharach/David's "My Little Red Book."
Love briefly expanded to a seven-piece for their second album, Da Capo (1967), which included their only Top 40 hit, the corkscrew-tempoed "Seven & Seven Is." The first side was psychedelia at its best, with an eclectic palette encompassing furious jazz structures, gentle Spanish guitar interludes, and beautiful Baroque pop with dream-like images ("She Comes in Colors"). It was also psychedelia at its most reckless, with the whole of side two taken up by a meandering 19-minute jam. It was still a great step forward, but by mid-1967, the band was threatening to disintegrate due to drugs and general disorganization.
The group was in such sad shape, apparently, that Elektra planned to record their third album with session men backing Lee (on his compositions) or MacLean (on his compositions). Work on two tracks actually commenced in this fashion, but the shocked band pulled themselves together to play their own material again, resulting in one of the finest rock albums of all time, Forever Changes. An exceptionally strong set of material graced by captivating lyrics and glistening, unobtrusive horn and string arrangements, it was not a commercial hit in the U.S. (though it did pretty well in Britain) but remains an all-time favorite of many critics.
Just at the point where they seemed poised to assert themselves as a top band, Love's first and best lineup was broken up in early 1968, at Lee's instigation. Several albums followed in the late '60s and early '70s that, though credited to Love, are in reality Lee and backup musicians - none of whom had skills on the level of Bryan MacLean or the other original Love men. Lee largely forsook folk-rock for hard rock, with unimpressive results, even when he was able to get Jimi Hendrix to play on one track. The problems ran deeper than unsympathetic accompaniment: Lee's songwriting muse had largely deserted him as well, and nothing on the post-Forever Changes albums competes with the early Elektra records.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/love-mn0000314600/biography

Frank Zappa & The Mothers - Live at The Fillmore east June 1971

 

 #Frank Zappa #The Mothers of Invention #Flo & Eddie #psychedelic rock #experimental rock #blues rock #art rock #jazz fusion #avant-garde #musique concrete #proto-prog #comedy rock #absurdist #1971 #live recording

That’s right, you heard right, the secret word for tonight is “Mud Shark.” But for this bawdy tale from the not-so-briny shoals of Seattle, Washington alone, this is required listening. Of course, instrumental fans who hunger for something more filling from Fillmore will find it in tracks like “Lonesome Electric Turkey” and the evergreen “Peaches En Regalia.” This live record (one of the last from the Fillmore East if memory serves) is one of my favorites from the Flo & Eddie experiment, showcasing their unique stage presence on the dialogue-driven “Do You Like My New Car?” and cascading into a delirious version of The Turtles’ “Happy Together.” Unlike some of Frank Zappa’s live releases, Fillmore East retains the atmosphere of a live show from beginning to end, with a minimum of post-doctoring and a maximum of spontaneous energy (or as spontaneous as a band playing a tortuous track like “Little House I Used To Live In” can get). Among the other Zappa/Mothers albums out there, Fillmore East reminds me most of the 200 Motels soundtrack, where a similar mix of complicated instrumentals and humorous dialogue songs co-existed happily (although I understand that Uncle Meat tasted about the same too). As an oral history of rock stars and the groupies who love them, Fillmore East puts Professors Flo & Eddie at the podium, overshadowing the rest of the band much of the time. Ordinarily, their monkeyshines steal the spotlight from the erstwhile top banana (Frank) and his phenomenal fretwork. But Fillmore East finds a better balance than Just Another Band From L.A., for example, alternating between the profane and the musically profound in a way that satisfies both camps.  From: https://progrography.com/frank-zappa/mothers-fillmore-east-june-1971-1971/

The Mothers of Invention were an American band active from 1966 to 1969. Throughout, their output was primarily directed by composer and guitarist, Frank Zappa (1940–1993). Their albums combined a broad span of genres and utilised diverse instrumentation. Their lyrics were generally humorous, with frequent style-parodies of contemporary Pop music (with doo-wop love ballads endlessly lampooned), bountiful surreal imagery, cartoonish vocals and oblique, satirical protest songs. Their diversity and insincerity makes their classification difficult, but Zappa's increasingly ambitious and avant-garde compositions towards the end of the 1960s share many features of Free Jazz and 20th Century Classical music. The group's output, particularly Absolutely Free, also proved enormously influential on the then-nascent genre of progressive rock.
Zappa disbanded the original Mothers of Invention line-up in 1970 to create music under his own name, but shortly reformed an entirely new band sometimes known as "The Mothers." This new incarnation had a strong vaudeville style and were much bawdier than before, with new vocalists Flo & Eddie, previously of the Turtles, taking the lead. After Zappa was pushed offstage at the Rainbow Theatre in 1971, he broke up this second band and concentrated on a jazzier style with a short-lived big band called the Grand Wazoo, but returned with a third lineup of the Mothers in 1973. This reformed group retained musical similarities to the previous group and the chamber music of the late '60s Mothers, but with a tighter, funkier sound; George Duke's soulful vocals being perhaps the most memorable addition.  From: https://www.last.fm/music/The+Mothers+of+Invention/+wiki

Dead Can Dance - Children Of The Sun

 #Dead Can Dance #Lisa Gerrard #Brendan Perry #neoclassical #darkwave #world music #ambient pop #art rock #avant garde #gothic rock #worldbeat #neo-medieval

Dead Can Dance have been included in a wide variety of musical subgenres within rock. Due to their name, image, and electronic-drum-driven ethereal sound, many defined the band as part of the dark, gothic style when they began to achieve notice in the early 1980s. Indeed, the media have called the work of Dead Can Dance everything from “world music” to “unclassifiable.” Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard, the core of Dead Can Dance, have said their creations come from pure inspiration. “No two people ever make the same music naturally, not if they’re really honest with their music,” Perry told Ann Marie Aubin in Strobe. “What we try to do is draw very deep inside us, in regions that are normally connected with the subconscious - a willful immersion in trance-like states and improvisation, then bring down a whole gamut of influences we don’t really have conscious control over.” Perry and Gerrard met in 1980 in Melbourne, Australia. They decided to name their project Dead Can Dance after a ritual mask from New Guinea. “The mask, though once a living part of a tree, is dead,” Perry explained. “Nevertheless, it has, through the artistry of its maker, been imbued with a life force of its own.”  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/dead-can-dance 

Dead Can Dance combine elements of European folk music - particularly music from the Middle Ages and the Renaissance - with ambient pop and worldbeat flourishes, touching on everything from Gaelic folk and Gregorian chant to avant-garde pop and darkwave. Originating in Australia, the group relocated to London in the early 1980s and signed with 4AD, for which they released a string of acclaimed albums, including the popular 1991 compilation A Passage in Time, which introduced the project's distinctive medieval art-pop to the United States before ceasing operations in 1998. They reunited in 2005 for a short tour, and officially re-formed in 2012 and issued their 12th studio LP, Anastasis, with Dionysus arriving six years later. Over the course of their career, Dead Can Dance have featured a multitude of members, but two musicians have remained at the core of the band - guitarist Brendan Perry and vocalist Lisa Gerrard. Perry had previously been the lead vocalist and bassist for the Australian-based punk band the Scavengers, a group that was never able to land a recording contract. In 1979, the band changed its name to the Marching Girls, but still wasn't able to get a contract. The following year, Perry left the group and began experimenting with electronic music, particularly tape loops and rhythms. In 1981, Perry formed Dead Can Dance with Lisa Gerrard, Paul Erikson, and Simon Monroe. By 1982, Perry and Gerrard decided to relocate to London; Erikson and Monroe decided to stay in Australia. Within a year, Dead Can Dance had signed a record deal with 4AD. In the spring of 1984, they released their eponymous debut album, comprised of songs the pair had written in the previous four years. By the end of the year, the group had contributed two tracks to It'll End in Tears, the first album by This Mortal Coil, and had released an EP called Garden of the Arcane Delights. In 1985, Dead Can Dance released their second album, Spleen and Ideal. The album helped build their European cult following, peaking at number two on the U.K. indie charts. For the next two years, Dead Can Dance were relatively quiet, releasing only two new songs in 1986, both which appeared on the 4AD compilation Lonely Is an Eyesore. Within the Realm of a Dying Sun, the group's third album, appeared in 1986. In 1988, the band released its fourth album, The Serpent's Egg, and wrote the score for the Agustí Villaronga film El Niño de la Luna, which also featured Lisa Gerrard in her acting debut.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/dead-can-dance-mn0000225948/biography  

Pink Floyd - Arnold Layne

 #Pink Floyd #Syd Barrett #Roger Waters #progressive rock #art rock #psychedelic rock #space rock #experimental rock #British psychedelia #1960s #promo film #music video

On March 10th, 1967, Pink Floyd made their mark in musical history when they released their first single Arnold Layne. The avant-garde song, written by Syd Barrett and recorded at Chelsea’s Sound Techniques studio, fused together psychedelic rock and trippy sound effects with a hint of pop. Arnold Layne tells the story of the title character, a transvestite who would steal women’s clothes, who Barrett says was based on a real person. Seen as controversial at the time, Pink Floyd faced difficulty gaining airplay with the track. But Barrett wasn’t concerned with mainstream popularity. “If more people like them dislike us, more people like the underground lot are going to dig us,” Barrett once said. “So we hope they’ll cancel each other out.” When the single was released it was backed by the tune Candy and a Currant Bun and credited as “The Pink Floyd” on the initial pressings, but the “The” was quickly dropped. Pink Floyd clearly made a great choice for their first single which foreshadowed to the world the mind-blowing music that was to come from one of the greatest British psychedelic rock bands.  From: https://www.955klos.com/2022/03/10/55-years-ago-pink-floyd-makes-their-debut-with-arnold-layne/

Genesis - Looking For Someone

 #Genesis #Peter Gabriel #Phil Collins #Anthony Phillips #progressive rock #art rock #British prog #symphonic prog #theatrical rock #1970s

Definitely not to be confused with the happy-slappy Genesis of the 1980s by any means! Somewhere in the English countryside, circa 1970, five lads from a prestigious boarding school were hard at work in a small house (courtesy of gracious parents), recovering from wounds (namely having their debut album, From Genesis To Revelation flop and then nearly throwing in the towel altogether) and redoubling their creative efforts. Armed with a steely resolve, a recently acquired Mellotron, a contract with the fledgling Charisma Records label, a sympathetic producer in John Anthony and ambitious new material, Genesis set it's sights on upsetting the apple cart of ordinary music. No longer were they going to be pegged as "Moody Blues wannabes". What emerged was an important, yet largely unheralded milestone in the development of progressive rock as we know it. Here, the essential building blocks of the classic Genesis sound were coming to the fore, although they had yet to fully gel and integrate, but you could tell that even greater, more startling things were to come.
"Looking For Someone" leads off with a piercing Gabriel vocal and smoky organ, the protagonist looking for meaning and purpose in a world that doesn't seem to have any. The band charges in with full force, exercising newly found ambition and ability. Gabriel's slightly raspy and soulful singing carries this songs mood so strongly, supported by plaintive guitar statements from Anthony Phillips and frantic propulsion from Banks, Rutherford and drummer John Mayhew.  From: https://www.progarchives.com/album.asp?id=2448  

Amanda Palmer - Leeds United

 #Amanda Palmer #ex-The Dresden Dolls #alternative rock #dark cabaret #dark folk #punk cabaret #singer-songwriter 

According to Palmer, this song was inspired by a real-life incident. “I had been dating this guy from Leeds, Ricky Wilson from the Kaiser Chiefs, and we had a totally brief flash-in-the-pan fling. We had a really great time together. I really liked him, and I went up to his house in Leeds for a week. He gave me this great Leeds United jersey, which I prized. And then when I got back on tour a couple of days later I wore it on stage. I had a bra underneath, so I took off the jersey and finished the encore all sweaty and stuff. I went back to look for it, the stage was being cleaned, and it was like, ‘Fuck! Where’s my shirt!?’ I had that shirt for all of about 5 days. I’d already gotten all excited and sentimental about it, and then it vanished.”  From: https://genius.com/Amanda-palmer-leeds-united-lyrics

Tone Deaf:  You had your new album come out last year — how has the response been since it’s came out? You also had 15,000 supporters for it. It must have been amazing to have so many people put their faith, their money, and their trust in you for a record.

AP: It’s been amazing. It’s actually less hectic than having major label. You know, with your creativity and your soul and time and own vice-grip, I think it’s a lot easier, but then again I’ve played on both sides of that field and it’s a cost benefit in both departments. Being crowd funded by 15,000 people has its own set of tasks, responsibilities, drawbacks, but I would choose every single one of them one hundred times over the drawbacks of being at the mercy of profit driven major labels.

Tone Deaf: When you do release an album in that sense, is it hard to gauge how successful it’s been?

AP: That’s a really good and complicated question. What I have found is that it’s hard to gauge success, period. Even in the heyday of the Dresden Dolls, success was so slippery and impossible to define. The label defined it one way, we defined it a completely different way. If 20 years of releasing music and touring has taught me anything, it’s that I have to creatively manufacture my own definition of success. It’s definitely not streaming number. It’s definitely not money. It definitely isn’t whether or not magazine X gave me a five-star review, because all of those things have and haven’t been true in certain parts of my career, and have actually no bearing on whether or not a project was successful. I have to say that my ultimate definition of success has a lot more to do with the concrete emotional impact I can see the work having on people when I tour it and when I put it out than it does with whether or not the media weighs in or whether or not something is in the charts.

Tone Deaf: If you look at chart positions, there’s so many variations between so many artists. But then when you see you play live, your fans are so dedicated, and clearly that’s a good gauge of success if it resonates with the people, and you see that they’re enjoying it.

AP: Well that in itself is a slippery slope, because how many people need to be in that room for you to be able to call it successful? I mean, I have gotten to the point as an artist where I think I’ve fine-tuned my ability to the point to where I could bust out that ukulele, and I could play a song for you that would move you, and that’s the only thing I did this year, and I could still call it a successful endeavour, because I connected with, and affected somebody. I think we’ve just been fed the Kool-Aid for so long that scale is everything and blockbuster hits are everything, and success is upsized that we forget as artists that our role doesn’t have to do with size and scale. And we need to start flushing that Kool-Aid out of our system.

From: https://tonedeaf.thebrag.com/amanda-palmer-interview-2020/list/check-out-amanda-palmers-do-it-with-a-rockstar/

Amanda MacKinnon Gaiman Palmer (also known as Amanda Fucking Palmer, born April 30, 1976) is an American singer, songwriter, pianist, storyteller, writer and ukulele player. She's most famous for her work as part of the Brechtian punk cabaret duo The Dresden Dolls, along with drummer Brian Viglione. They released three studio albums and toured as openers for Panic! at the Disco, until they went on hiatus in 2008. Although Viglione and her have done shows together since then, the band has officially broken up, even though Palmer has announced plans for them to produce music again.
In 2012, Palmer famously released an album with her at-the-time band The Grand Theft Orchestra called Theatre is Evil, which was funded entirely over Kickstarter - a groundbreaking artistic decision at the time, which was worth it, as the Kickstarter far overpassed its goal. She released the album for free through her website, and then debuted on the Billboard top 100 Album list at number 10 due to the immense number of Kickstarter pre-orders.
Her songs vary wildly in style and topics, with many featuring dark humor and subject material. She's fond of recontextualizing children's songs in a more mature, adult way, and of making puns. Amanda's also known for performing covers of whatever she feels like, ranging from an entire EP of Radiohead covers on the ukulele, to classic musicals, to Black Sabbath, to Britney Spears, to a reimagining of Rebecca Black's song "Friday" from the perspective of a truck-stop prostitute.
In 2019, seven years after her last studio record, Palmer released There Will Be No Intermission, a far more serious, stripped-down album mostly just featuring her on a piano. It tackles subjects like abortion, death, depression, loss, and the climate crisis, and was released to massive critical acclaim. The world tour accompanying it featured only her at a piano, telling the most intimate and human stories of her life. Concerts often went for up to four hours.  From: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Music/AmandaPalmer

PJ Harvey - Wang Dang Doodle

 #PJ Harvey #Polly Jean Harvey #alternative rock #art rock #indie rock #hard rock #punk blues #folk rock #avant-rock #lo-fi #singer-songwriter #1990s

PJ Harvey, in full Polly Jean Harvey, is a British singer-songwriter and guitarist whose mythically pitched, fanatically intense recordings and concerts set new standards for women in rock. Harvey, born to countercultural parents in rural England, seems to have grown up with a sense of rock as simply another elemental force within the landscape. “Sheela-na-gig,” for instance, a single from her first album, Dry (1992), took as its central image the female exhibitionist carvings with gaping genitals found throughout Ireland and the United Kingdom, whose origins are the subject of debate. The song, like many others by Harvey, treats female sexuality as a ravaging, haunted force, but, instead of acting the victim, she theatrically embodies her obsessions, equates them with the alluring menace of rock and the blues, and builds herself into an archetype.  From: https://www.britannica.com/biography/PJ-Harvey

"Wang Dang Doodle" is a blues song written by Willie Dixon. Music critic Mike Rowe calls it a party song in an urban style with its massive, rolling, exciting beat. It was first recorded by Howlin' Wolf in 1960 and released by Chess Records in 1961. In 1965, Dixon and Leonard Chess persuaded Koko Taylor to record it for Checker Records, a Chess subsidiary. Taylor's rendition became a hit and "Wang Dang Doodle" became a blues standard and has been recorded by various artists.
"Wang Dang Doodle" was composed by Willie Dixon during the second part of his songwriting career, from 1959 to 1964. During this period, he wrote many of his best-known songs, including "Back Door Man", "Spoonful", "The Red Rooster" (better-known as "Little Red Rooster"), "I Ain't Superstitious", "You Shook Me", "You Need Love" (adapted by Led Zeppelin for "Whole Lotta Love"), and "You Can't Judge a Book by the Cover". In his autobiography, Dixon explained that the phrase "wang dang doodle" "meant a good time, especially if the guy came in from the South. A wang dang meant having a ball and a lot of dancing, they called it a rocking style so that's what it meant to wang dang doodle". Mike Rowe claimed that Dixon's song is based on "an old lesbian song" – "The Bull Daggers Ball" – with "its catalogue of low-life characters only marginally less colorful that the original". Dixon claimed that he wrote it when he first heard Howlin' Wolf in 1951 or 1952 but that it was "too far in advance" for him and he saved it for later. However, Howlin' Wolf supposedly hated the song and commented, "Man, that's too old-timey, sounds like some old levee camp number":

    Tell automatic slim, to tell razor totin' Jim
    To tell butcher knife totin' Annie, to tell fast talkin' Fannie
    We gonna pitch a wang dang doodle all night long

From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wang_Dang_Doodle

Sophie - Faceshopping

 #Sophie #Sophie Xeon #avant-garde #experimental pop #hyperpop #electronic #avant-pop #dance-pop #bubblegum bass #avant-pop #music video

Sophie Xeon, stylized as Sophie, was an avante garde singer and producer behind some of the biggest names in pop music.  Before the artist’s unexpected death at 34 on Jan. 31, 2021, Sophie had pioneered the hyperpop subgenre - a radical blend of trance, electronic and hip hop music - and collaborated frequently with pop stars like Charli XCX. As a transgender artist, Sophie also inspired many LGBTQ+ listeners and queer musicians.
Sophie’s music is liberating in its absurdity and unconventionality. The sounds challenge the conventions of mainstream music, experimenting with auto-tune, vocal distortions and a complete abandonment of acoustic instruments. One of the most intriguing parts of Sophie’s music is how it simultaneously critiques and contributes to the pop industry. In a 2015 interview with Rolling Stone, Sophie noted that hyperpop strove not to make fun of pop music, but to push its boundaries and urge experimentation.
In the song “Faceshopping,” Sophie sings, “I’m real when I shop my face,” in a reference to Adobe Photoshop and the ability it provides to alter the way one is percieved. The dissonance that Sophie feels between the self that is physically presented and the self in Sophie’s mind can only be remedied by editing or surgery. Sophie validates body modification as a way of self-determination — an experience unique to the trans community and to those who experience gender dysphoria.
Sophie’s music is a peek into the future of pop. It’s deeply personal, openly critical and unabashedly fun. It uses machine-like sounds to reveal a true, human self. In a world where the digital and authentic are seen as antithetical, Sophie has shown us that real and synthetic can exist simultaneously, and we have the power to create our truest selves.  From: https://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2021/02/li-sophie

Aimee Mann - I Should've Known

 #Aimee Mann #alternative rock #alternative pop #pop rock #singer-songwriter #folk pop #1990s #ex-'Til Tuesday

Aimee Mann is from Virginia, and is one of many successful Berklee College of Music dropouts. She is known for her straightforward but somewhat sorrowful style of Pop-Rock. Her albums often tell stories, sometimes a different tale with each song, and sometimes with concept albums based on a particular storyline, as with The Forgotten Arm (2005). She experimented with different musical styles in the 1980s, first dropping out of college to perform with her punk band Young Snakes, then founding new wave act 'Til Tuesday with Michael Hausman. 'Til Tuesday's best-known song is the anthemic breakup ballad "Voices Carry." She went on to record three full albums with 'Til Tuesday before embarking upon a solo career. Mann’s songwriting style has taken on a signature morose tone over the years since her foray into New Wave. Known for collaborations with independent creatives in film and comedy such as P.T. Anderson and Paul F. Tompkins respectively, Mann explores the dark sides of human nature in her songs. She says, "There is always a fair amount of moments where I write something that I suddenly realize is a very apt description of a situation that's uncomfortable or horrible, but that the very accuracy of it makes me laugh, even though I can't really expect that other people will. It's a bit of a gallows humor, maybe."  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/aimee-mann

Wilson Pickett - In the Midnight Hour

 #Wilson Picket #soul #R&B #Southern soul #rock & roll #deep soul #Stax/Atlantic #1960s

Wilson Pickett was an American singer-songwriter, whose explosive style helped define the soul music of the 1960s. Pickett was a product of the Southern black church, and gospel was at the core of his musical manner and onstage persona. He testified rather than sang, preached rather than crooned. His delivery was marked by the fervor of religious conviction, no matter how secular the songs he sang. Along with thousands of other Southern farm workers, Pickett migrated in the 1950s to industrial Detroit, Michigan, where his father worked in an auto plant. His first recording experience was in pure gospel. He sang with the Violinaires and the Spiritual Five, modeling himself after Julius Cheeks of the Sensational Nightingales, a thunderous shouter. Pickett’s switch to secular music came quickly. As a member of the Falcons, a hardcore rhythm-and-blues vocal group, he sang lead on his own composition “I Found a Love” (1962), one of the songs that interested Atlantic Records producer Jerry Wexler in Pickett as a solo artist. “Pickett was a pistol,” said Wexler, who nicknamed him “the Wicked Pickett” and sent him to Memphis, Tennessee, to write with Otis Redding’s collaborator, guitarist Steve Cropper of Booker T. and the MG’s. The result was a smash single, “In the Midnight Hour” (1965). From that moment on, Pickett was a star. With his dazzling good looks and confident demeanor, he stood as a leading exponent of the Southern-fried school of soul singing. His unadorned straight-from-the-gut approach was accepted, even revered, by a civil-rights-minded pop culture.  From: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Wilson-Pickett

OvO - You Living Lie

 #OvO #noise rock #sludge metal #industrial #extreme metal #experimental #avant garde #dark electronica #Italian

OvO is an Italian noise rock duo formed by Stefania Pedretti and Bruno Dorella in 2000 in Ravenna, Italy. The two initially planned for the band to be totally improvisation-based with an open lineup. After encouragement from members of their local music scene to become a band and tour, they decided to do so in order to play with Cock ESP, an extreme noise band from Minneapolis. Since, the pair have released eight full-length albums on a variety of international record labels. The origin of the band's name, OvO, stems from using a piece of the Italian word "nuovo", or new, which creates a palindrome. Decibel Magazine summarizes OvO's 2016 album, Creatura, as "making rhythmic, layered, sludgy noise" and a "David Lynch dance party.” Counting Swans and Diamanda Galás as their biggest influences, Pedretti and Dorella are known for primitive industrial sounds and Pedretti's theatrically dark vocals. The band is set up in minimalist fashion, with only two members, one of whom plays a half drum kit. Stereogum's Doug Moore described the band's sound as, "music – rhythmic noise, really – that simmers with a flat-affect malice, owing equal debts to extreme metal, noise rock, industrial music, and dark electronica," while Christian Eede of The Quietus recalled their music as being "punctuated by slamming, swampy drums, squalls of feedback and punchy guitar riffs, as well as Stefania Pedretti's no-holds-barred vocal."  From: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OvO_(band)#cite_note-Decibel_Magazine-5

Chelsea Wolfe - Carrion Flowers

 #Chelsea Wolfe #dark folk #gothic rock #experimental rock #noise rock #ethereal wave #industrial #doom metal #black metal #electronic #singer-songwriter #music video

“What I want is to open up. I want to know what’s inside me. I want everybody to open up. I’m like an imbecile with a can opener in his hand, wondering where to begin—to open up the earth. I know that underneath the mess everything is marvelous. I’m sure of it.”
– Henry Miller
Digging beneath the mess of the world to find the beauty underneath is perhaps the most consistent theme in Chelsea Wolfe’s expansive discography—a theme that ties together her ceaseless explorations in unorthodox textures, haunting melodies, and mining the grandeur embedded within ugliness and pain. With her sixth official album Hiss Spun, Wolfe adopts Miller’s quest to become empowered by embracing the mess of the self, to control the tumult of the soul in hopes of reigning in the chaos of the world around us. “I wanted to write some sort of escapist music; songs that were just about being in your body, and getting free,” Wolfe says of the album before extrapolating on the broader scope of her new collection of songs. “You’re just bombarded with constant bad news, people getting fucked over and killed for shitty reasons or for no reason at all, and it seems like the world has been in tears for months, and then you remember it’s been fucked for a long time, it’s been fucked since the beginning. It’s overwhelming and I have to write about it.”
Hiss Spun was recorded by Kurt Ballou in Salem, Massachusetts at the tail end of winter 2017 against a backdrop of deathly quiet snow-blanketed streets and the hissing radiators of warm interiors. While past albums operated on the intimacy of stripped-down folk music (The Grime and the Glow, Unknown Rooms), or the throbbing pulse of supplemental electronics (Pain Is Beauty, Abyss), Wolfe’s latest offering wrings its exquisiteness out of a palette of groaning bass, pounding drums, and crunching distortion. It’s an album that inadvertently drew part of its aura from the cold white of the New England winter, though the flesh-and-bone of the material was culled from upheavals in Wolfe’s personal life, and coming to terms with years of vulnerability, anger, self-destruction, and dark family history. Aside from adding low-end heft with gratuitous slabs of fuzz bass, longtime collaborator Ben Chisholm contributed harrowing swaths of sound collages from sources surrounding the artist and her band in recent years - the rumble of street construction at a tour stop in Prague, the howl of a coyote outside Wolfe’s rural house in California, the scrape of machinery on the floor of a warehouse at a down-and-out friend’s workplace. Music is rendered out of dissonance - bomb blasts from the Enola Gay, the shriek of primates, the fluttering pages of a Walt Whitman book are manipulated and seamlessly integrated into the feral and forlorn songs of Hiss Spun.  From: https://chelseawolfe.net/bio/

Nine Inch Nails - Broken

#Nine Inch Nails #Trent Reznor #industrial #alternative rock #electronic rock #industrial rock #industrial metal #ambient #transgressive #banned music video

Nine Inch Nails’ Broken (also known as The Broken Movie) is a 1993 short film featuring four music videos from the Broken EP with wrap-around segments shot in the style of an amateur snuff film. The extremely graphic film was directed by Peter Christopherson of Throbbing Gristle, Coil, and Hipgnosis design group fame. The NSFW video has never seen an official release (perhaps because no label would want to put their name on it?) and has to this day been a difficult piece to track down. The terrifying, violent, and unforgettable film was originally “leaked” by Trent Reznor himself via hand-dubbed VHS tapes in the ‘90s. The original tapes were given by Reznor to various friends with video dropouts at certain points so he could know who redistributed any copies that might surface. Reznor later implied in a comment on the Nine Inch Nails website that Gibby Haynes of the Butthole Surfers was responsible for the most prominent leak of the original tape. In 2006 and 2013 the film was briefly “leaked” to the Internet, many believe by Reznor himself. In both cases, the film disappeared quickly. In the case of the 2013 “leak,” the entire video was made available for streaming on Vimeo via the Nine Inch Nails Tumblr account, but was removed by Vimeo almost immediately.  From: https://dangerousminds.net/comments/broken_nine_inch_nails_infamous_unreleased_snuff_film_now_online_nsfw_watch

 

David Crosby - Laughing

 #David Crosby #Crosby, Stills & Nash #folk #folk rock #West coast folk rock #singer-songwriter #contemporary folk #ex-The Byrds #1970s

The ’60s were over and David Crosby was living on a boat. Aside from the recording studio, his 59-foot schooner, named The Mayan, was the only place where things made sense. When Crosby was 11, his parents decided to enroll their son in sailing classes. The wild-eyed, giggling California kid had an anti-authoritarian streak that was starting to get him in trouble, and some time on the docks, they imagined, might give him some discipline, or at least a place to spend his summers. Sailing came naturally, like he had captained many vessels in a previous life. It was an uncanny feeling, comforting and strange. As the decade came to a close, Crosby wrote the title track of Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s blockbuster album Déjà Vu about this very sensation.
Around the same time, he experienced his first major loss. In 1969, on her way to take the cats to the vet, Crosby’s girlfriend Christine Hinton swerved her van and crashed into a school bus. She died instantly. Grief-stricken and depressed, Crosby stood at the start of a long spiral that would consume his next two decades. “I watched a part of David die that day,” his bandmate Graham Nash wrote. “He wondered aloud what the universe was doing to him.” He turned to hard drugs. Fifteen years later, he was in prison, almost unrecognizable, the creative spark that had defined him all but dissipated. Crosby seemed to exist only in the past tense.
While 1971’s If I Could Only Remember My Name is the first release credited to Crosby as a solo artist - and for a long time, the only release - it’s an album defined by harmony, community, and togetherness. The backing band is composed of members of the Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane, with notable appearances from Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, and Graham Nash. At the time of its release, these were some of the most popular names in music, nearly all of them coming off respective career-bests and commercial peaks. And yet together, they sound gloriously abstract. The music feels the way a dream sounds when you try to retell it in the morning: foggy, only loosely coherent, dissolving in real time.
This is David Crosby’s fingerprint. Look back at his earliest songs and you can hear an artist fighting against the confines of popular music. He played guitar in strange ways, opting for odd tunings that carried his songs and lyrics to unexpected places. His first great song, the Byrds’ “Everybody’s Been Burned,” sounds a little like a standard, except for the bass soloing through the entire thing. Later, in a cut called “What’s Happening?!?!,” he sang through what sounds like barely contained laughter, like someone exasperated with how much they have to say, realizing how words fail our deepest visions. The band can barely keep up with him.
The story goes, Crosby was kicked out of the Byrds for a few reasons. One, he was a pain to work with. Two, he had taken to indulging in long rants on stage, veering toward conspiracy theories about the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Third, he had written this troublesome little song about a threesome. Continuing his nonmonogamous streak, he had also accepted a role playing with Stephen Stills in Buffalo Springfield at the Monterey Pop Festival. His bandmates took it as a sign of disloyalty—or maybe just an excuse to abandon him. Soon after his dismissal from the Byrds, Crosby and Stills began working with the Hollies’ Graham Nash on a new project focused on tight songwriting and three-part harmony. With Nash, Crosby found his most natural and consistent partner: someone who laughed at his jokes, provided comfort and wisdom when he needed it, and joined him on The Mayan for long treks down the California coast.
Near the end of If I Could Only Remember My Name, Nash and Crosby duet on a gorgeous, wordless piece of music, scatting along to one of the best melodies Crosby ever wrote. “I called it ‘A Song With No Words,’” he announces proudly at a show in 1970, gesturing toward Nash at his side. “He called it ‘A Tree With No Leaves.’ That shows you where he’s at.” The audience laughs. On the sleeve of the record, the song has both titles, Nash’s in parentheses, a symbolic compromise that speaks to the group mentality of the record. Alone with his music, Crosby heard sketches. With his friends around, they became forces of nature.
The creation of the album involved Crosby spending idle time alone in the studio, leaning against a wall or collapsing into tears, before his collaborators arrived to elevate the mood and enliven the music. Jerry Garcia’s pedal steel and Joni Mitchell’s harmony vocals turn “Laughing,” the most conventional song on the record, into the psych-folk ideal: a lazy sunset that gains resonance as it subdues. The kaleidoscopic opener “Music Is Love” was just a plaintive guitar riff before the choir turned it into a commune. “Everybody’s saying that music is love,” they all sing, one after the other, creating a world where it’s true.
Crosby was adamant not to let his pain define the record. “I got no more understanding than an ant does when you pull off his legs,” he told Rolling Stone about his grief. He spoke about his desire to keep the sadness to himself — “It was the most horrible trip of my life and nobody needs to go on it” — so that his music could remain an escape. The album ends up somewhere in the middle. It’s a peaceful but broken sound.
The only song with a narrative arc is “Cowboy Movie.” It tells the thinly veiled story of CSNY dissipating, less interesting for its hippy-comedown mythology than its depiction of a narrator finding himself more desperate and alone with each passing minute. The story is in the music too: a gnarled, paranoid skeleton of Young’s 1969 song “Down by the River” that crackles and fades like a dying campfire. Crosby’s voice is more ragged than usual. “Now I’m dying here in Albuquerque,” he sings at the end. “I might be the sorriest sight you ever saw.”
The record closes with two songs that Crosby recorded by himself. Both are mostly a cappella, his voice layered to sound angelic and vast. “I was sitting there, kind of goofing around,” he said of the experiments, “And then all of a sudden I wasn’t goofing around.” Titled “I’d Swear There Was Somebody Here,” the closing song has since been identified as Crosby’s elegy for Christine. On a record that includes some of his most pointed writing about politics (“What Are Their Names”) and loss (“Traction in the Rain”), this was his clearest statement. He sounds helpless, haunted.  From: https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/david-crosby-if-i-could-only-remember-my-name/

Black Sabbath - Hole in the Sky

#Black Sabbath #Ozzy Osbourne #heavy metal #hard rock #classic rock #heavy blues rock #British blues rock #doom metal #heavy metal pioneers #1970s

Sabotage is the final release of Black Sabbath's legendary First Six, and it's also the least celebrated of the bunch, though most die-hard fans would consider it criminally underrated. Sabotage came at a time when Sabbath was turning in one platinum record after the next, and critics were finally starting to appreciate the band as much as their fans. It also came during a lengthy and bitter legal battle between the band and their former management, which no doubt informed lyrical themes of betrayal and paranoia as well as the pervasive overall feeling of life itself unraveling. Musically, the band continues further down the proto-prog metal road of Sabbath Bloody Sabbath, and this time around, the synthesizers feel more organically integrated into the arrangements. What's more, the song structures generally feel less conventional and more challenging. There's one significant exception in the blatant pop tune "Am I Going Insane (Radio)," which rivals "Changes" as the most fan-loathed song of the glory years, thanks to its synth-driven arrangement (there isn't even a guitar riff) and oft-repeated one-line chorus. But other than that song and the terrific album-opener "Hole in the Sky," the band largely eschews the standard verse-chorus format, sticking to one or two melody lines per riffed section and changing up the feel before things get too repetitive. The prevalence of this writing approach means that Sabotage rivals Vol. 4 as the least accessible record of Sabbath's early material. However, given time, the compositional logic reveals itself, and most of the record will burn itself into the listener's brain just fine. The faster than usual "Symptom of the Universe" is a stone-cold classic, its sinister main riff sounding like the first seed from which the New Wave of British Heavy Metal would sprout. Like several songs on the record, "Symptom" features unexpected acoustic breaks and softer dynamics, yet never loses its drive or focus, and always feels like Sabbath. Less immediate but still rewarding are "Thrill of It All," with its triumphant final section, and the murky, sullen "Megalomania," which never feels as long as its nearly nine-and-a-half minutes. But more than the compositions, the real revelation on Sabotage is Ozzy Osbourne, who turns in his finest vocal performance as a member of Black Sabbath. Really for the first time, this is the Ozzy we all know, displaying enough range, power, and confidence to foreshadow his hugely successful solo career. He saves the best for last with album-closer "The Writ," one of the few Sabbath songs where his vocal lines are more memorable than Tony Iommi's guitar parts; running through several moods over the course of the song's eight minutes, it's one of the best performances of his career bar none. Unfortunately, after Sabotage, the wheels of confusion came off entirely. Technically, there were two more albums released, but for most fans, the story of Osbourne-era Sabbath effectively ends here.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/album/sabotage-mw0000652467 

Pretenders - The English Roses

 #Pretenders #Chrissie Hynde #new wave #alternative rock #pop rock #hard rock #pop punk #British/American #1980s

As a woman breaking into rock, Pretenders founder and lead singer Chrissie Hynde offered a much-needed upset to the genre’s domination by men. Even as she deplored her perceived lack of commercial “beauty,” she was able to use this ostensible deficiency to her advantage — thus establishing herself as a serious songwriter and musician. She told Fred Schruers in a 1981 Rolling Stone story, “They’re not looking at me like I’m some sex symbol or girl with huge tits bouncing around the stage. And this thing [her guitar], this isn’t an extension or a phallic symbol.” Hynde has also insisted on being uncompromisingly straightforward in her music. Newsweek contributor Jim Miller noted her attack on the sexism prevalent in rock lyrics: [Her songs] are memorable not only for the skilled way in which Hynde reworks stock riffs, but also for the matter-of-fact, unsentimental manner in which sex is described from the viewpoint of a woman with appetites and a will of her own. Her best lyrics, at once tender and tough, are a bracing change from rock’s stock erotic fare, which often features a macho stud laying waste to the enemy.  From: https://www.encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/music-popular-and-jazz-biographies/pretenders

Faun - Walpurgisnacht

 #Faun #pagan folk #darkwave #neo-medieval #folk rock #neofolk #European folk #traditional #world music #German #music video

Of all the anonymous-authored quotes floating around the interwebs, this is probably my favorite: "Religion is regarded by the common people as true, by the wise as false, and by the rulers as useful." The quote is often attributed to Roman renaissance man, Seneca the Younger, though nobody seems to know when or where he actually said it, which means someone probably just stuck that quote onto him to give it more legitimacy. I guess the quote being the truest thing ever simply didn’t make it legitimate enough. What’s kind of funny about people attributing this quote to a Roman is that anytime I see the quote, I immediately think of the Roman Empire. When Rome started out, religion was generally an unorganized series of beliefs and rituals that greatly differed from tiny region to tiny region. A region often had a patron/patroness god/goddess such as Athena for Athens. Today this ancient form of religion is known as “Paganism.” However, when the city of Rome became the huge Roman Empire, there were many different peoples with many different beliefs and cults all living under one government. For a while, the government’s official policy was that anyone could believe what they wanted, as long as they paid their taxes. Actually, there was a fairly new religion called Christianity which was banned for a while. But eventually Christianity was legalized, made the official religion of Rome, and Pagans were heavily persecuted. Because Roman culture was based on Greek culture, and the Greeks love irony. And buttsex. So in an act that has forever solidified itself with the above quote, the Roman leaders used religion as a way of uniting the multicultural empire. It made sense. It’s pretty hard to have unity when you have a nation full of Latins, Greeks, Germans, Celts, Arabs, Jews, Turks, Iberians, and so on, all believing vastly different things. The Roman Empire needed to be united under the worship of one imaginary friend, as opposed to a diverse tapestry of imaginary friends. So this is the part most of us are familiar with. Christians in power began persecuting Pagans in an attempt to stomp out the old religions, a practice that continued well after the empire had fallen, and there were new kingdoms in its place. One of the methods of stomping out both the religion and culture of Paganism, besides a genocide here and there, was the Christianization of Pagan holidays. The Celtic holiday of Samhain became the Catholic holiday of All Hallows’ Eve, now known as Halloween. Ostara became Easter. For those of you wondering what painting eggs has to do with the return of Jesus, it symbolized the return of Spring, which is what Ostara was about. One of the Pagan holidays was May Day, which is the day after Walpurgisnact, and finally here we are!
Yes, dear readers, the Musik Video I’m reviewing today is about Walpurgisnacht. And the reason that massive introduction was needed is because the holiday, the Video, and the band that made it, are all proof that cultural Paganism is alive and well, despite two thousand years of attempts at Christianization. But first, one last history lesson. May Day, a secular version of which is still largely celebrated, was all about welcoming Summer. The Germanic Pagans celebrated the night before by lighting a bonfire, and dancing around a Maypole which symbolized a big throbbing Schwanz. Yeah, my elementary school teachers left that part out when my class did the Maypole dance. So how does one Christify a holiday like this? Well, the Catholic Church decided that April 30th - May 1st would be a time to celebrate Saint Walpurga, an English missionary that is credited with bringing Christianity to Deutschland. What followed next was perhaps the most awesome discretion in the history of religion. The night before May Day, known as Walpurgisnacht (Walpurgis Night), eventually became a haunted night where witches allegedly gather in Germany to hold rituals and, I assume, do various witchy things. Basically, Saint Walpurga’s night became Germany’s Satanic Halloween. To add yet another insult, The Church of Satan now celebrates Walpurgisnacht as one of its unholy holidays. Ouch. So now with all that being said, on to the Musik.
“Walpurgisnacht” is performed by German Pagan Folk band Faun, and it’s awesome. Seriously, with all the babbling I just did, it should be obvious that I love this topic, and Faun did a sweet job of honoring such a cool holiday. Faun’s “Walpurgisnacht” paints a really beautiful picture of German Pagans coming out to celebrate. Faun’s ode to Witchcraft is definitely more about the pre-Christian Pagan celebrations as opposed to Satanism. However, the Video actually bridges the past with the present. It starts out with some scenery porn showing the band travelling through the forest to the Maypole. When they get there, there are sexy Frauen wearing while silk, and prancing around the Maypole/Schwanz. After some more prancing, the girls light a bonfire, and as the flames grow higher, they smear dirt on their skin while looks of ecstasy appear on their faces. Yeah, the forest isn’t the only eye candy in this Video. But it’s at this point that things really get good if you’re a humungous nerd like me. The shots now alternate between the band singing around a bonfire in the darkness of night, and people dressed as fauns dancing around said bonfire, and waving incense. The shot then cuts to the sky to reveal three moons, and the Triple Moon Goddess of Wicca. After a close-up of the fauns, the shot then goes to show two moons with Wicca’s Horned God. It’s at this point that my head just fucken explodes all over the walls. Yeah, I pretty much marked out like mad the first time I saw this. I totally love Wiccan mythology. Yes, I know its ancient origins go back to the sixties, but who cares? The imagery and stories of Wicca are awesome. And we so rarely see any representation of its mythology in the media. So yeah, I was super excited to see the Triple Moon Goddess and Horned God here. What’s even better is that the Video then goes on to do things that reference other less known aspects of Wicca. The Horned God throws a type of spiritual rope up to the Triple Moon Goddess and pulls her down from the moon onto earth. This is a reference to a ritual called “Drawing Down the Goddess,” in which Wiccans summon the goddess to come down and possess the body of the High Priestess. I kind of have mixed feelings here. On the one hand, the fact that people believe in literally existing gods is one of the reasons I’m a card-carrying misanthrope. On the other hand, I can’t help but enjoy it from a pure entertainment standpoint. It’s cool mythology, and perhaps the people who worship these gods are a part of the mythology too. After the goddess is brought to earth, she and the god slowly walk towards each other, while a priestess holds a rope. She ties their wrists together, which is a reference to the Wiccan handfasting. And probably the bondage that will occur later that night. The Horny God, amirite?
“Walpurgisnacht” mixes good Musik, interesting stories, and pretty visuals to make a great Video. I also can’t stress enough just how good it is that Faun, who has songs in many different languages, chose the German language for this song. A lot of European bands sing in English in order to reach a wider audience at the expense of quality. English is fine, but die schreckliche deutsche Sprache is an art language. Depending on how one uses German, it can sound brutally violent, soft and sweet, heartbreakingly sad, or seductively sexy. Eisblume manages to do the latter three in “Leben ist Schön.” German is naturally dramatic, which makes it perfect for Musik and movies. “Walpurgisnacht” would have been a good song in the language of Shakespeare, but not nearly as good as it is in the language of Lindemann.
From: http://eisenkreuzleben.blogspot.com/2015/01/walpurgisnacht-faun.html

Faun is a German band formed in Munich in 1998, who have been labeled as Pagan folk (as they often refer to themselves), neofolk, darkwave, Celtic folk, medieval music or, more recently, folk rock. The fact is that the Bavarian sextet presents a range of very original and diverse compositions, ranging from melancholic ballads to more festive songs. Most of these characteristics are the result of the use of ancient musical instruments such as the Celtic harp, the nyckelharpa, the hurdy-gurdy, the cittern, bagpipe and many others. In addition, the songs are sung in several languages, including the band members’ native German, Latin, Hungarian and ancient Scandinavian languages. The name “Faun” refers to the deity of Roman mythology, Faunus, the Pan of the Greeks, which refers to the band members’ reverence for nature and its creatures.  From: https://mythologica.com.br/en/features/faun-german-pagan-folk/

Traffic - Hole In My Shoe

 #Traffic #Steve Winwood #Dave Mason #Jim Capaldi #psychedelic rock #progressive rock #British psychedelia #blues rock #jazz rock #folk rock #1960s #music video

This psychedelic song was written by Traffic's guitarist Dave Mason, who played sitar on the track. Depending on your state of mind, you might find some weighty meaning in the song, but Mason says he was just writing down random thoughts in the style of a nursery rhyme. He also insists that he hadn't tried LSD when he wrote it. In a Songfacts interview with Mason, he explained: "That's the first song I ever wrote. It was my first attempt at songwriting. I mean, that stuff I did back then, when I listen to it, I cringe and realize I need to work on writing. But writing comes out of living. You have to have something." Dave Mason tells us that this song was "the beginning of the end as far as the other three guys were concerned for me." The band's second single (after "Paper Sun"), it was a the biggest UK hit for Traffic, but it wasn't what Mason's bandmates had in mind, since they didn't think it represented their sound. Steve Winwood explained: "We never wanted to be a pop band but we had a hit with 'Shoe,' which was Dave's song. Dave had his own idea about the band, the rest of us had another one - a not-quite-as-sensible one, really, because it wasn't half as commercial." Mason quit the band soon afterwards and Traffic began to develop a less commercial sound, which put an end to their run of hit singles in the UK. However their new material proved popular on American Rock stations and it gave the band a second wind across the Atlantic.  From: https://www.songfacts.com/facts/traffic/hole-in-my-shoe

Traffic was a British rock group of the 1960s and ’70s, known for incorporating lengthy jazzlike improvisation into rock-music structures. Principal members included singer-keyboardist Steve Winwood, flautist-saxophonist Chris Wood, guitarist Dave Mason, and drummer Jim Capaldi. Founded in 1967 and charting one of the most tumultuous careers in rock history, Traffic underwent substantial shifts in both musical style and membership. The group’s first incarnation was a psychedelic pop collective whose members lived together in Berkshire, England, and collaborated on the composition of most songs on their debut album, Mr. Fantasy (1967). Mason departed briefly, returning just long enough to write half of the songs on Traffic (1968) — a hit in both the United Kingdom and the United States — before leaving again. Shortly thereafter, Winwood (who had already experienced fame as a teenager with the Spencer Davis Group) broke up the band and formed Blind Faith with former Cream members Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker. In 1970, midway through recording a solo album, Winwood reconvened with Wood and Capaldi, releasing John Barleycorn Must Die as Traffic. The 1970s version of Traffic, built on this core trio, moved away from pop songcraft and forged a sound built on free-form improvisation, earning continued commercial success with The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys (1971), Shoot Out at the Fantasy Factory (1973), and When the Eagle Flies (1974). Both on tour and in the studio, the group added and subtracted a number of additional musicians during these years before finally disbanding in 1975.  From: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Traffic-British-rock-group

Patty Griffin - Every Little Bit

 #Patty Griffin #folk #folk rock #Americana #country folk #alt-country #contemporary folk #alternative folk #singer-songwriter

1996 was one heck of a year for American roots music. You had Johnny Cash recording Unchained, possibly the greatest album of his long, long career, with Rick Rubin and Tom Petty. Outlaw country legend Steve Earle telling the world I Feel Alright after a long bout of drug addiction. Wilco announcing their arrival as a major player on the scene with sophomore album Being There. Jon Spencer and the Blues Explosion’s punk, techno, and blues-tinged rock album Now I Got Worry and their collaboration with the great R.L. Burnside on his punk, techno, and rock-tinged blues album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey. The Australian Nick Cave filling traditional American songs with overwhelming dread in his masterpiece Murder Ballads, and 16 Horsepower taking folk tradition to even darker places in the apocalyptic Sackcloth ’n’ Ashes. You’d think it’d be hard to stand out in the midst of all that, but the most powerful of them all was a debut album by a slight, unassuming New England divorcee.
Patty Griffin’s story plays out like a real-life version of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, with Griffin taking the end of her marriage as a catalyst to pursue her dream of musical stardom. She sent a demo tape of just her and a guitar to A&M Records. Superproducer/Chic frontman Nile Rodgers loved it, but he was unsatisfied with all the attempts to clean it up for mass consumption. So in the end, he just went ahead and released Griffin’s demo tape unedited. Nile Rodgers is not exactly a man who’s known for minimalism, so when he makes a decision like that, you know it means something. And he was exactly right. You can’t improve on a record that lands in your office already perfect. Living with Ghosts gets at what draws people to folk music. That age-old power of sitting in the same room with a musician around a hearth or campfire, nothing standing between you and the music.
For reasons known only to my parents, I came to Living with Ghosts years after discovering their collection of Griffin’s later, more polished albums — the oldest Griffin record they owned is 2002’s 1000 Kisses, so apparently they didn’t know about her before then and took years to cycle back to the beginning. Either way, Living with Ghosts was a revelation. Griffin evolved into a refined, motherly figure on her later albums. Living with Ghosts is the farthest thing from that. This is a pure, unadulterated howl of youthful rage and despair. Griffin’s proven she can belt like a soul diva, but there’s nothing in her catalog like the banshee wail she unleashes here. Maybe she never could unleash it again. She screams with so much power on this album it may have scraped her vocal cords raw. But Griffin’s incredible range is already present here. Living with Ghosts opens with a scream, and it ends with a whisper.
Living with Ghosts draws from the experience that led to its creation, most explicitly on “Let Him Fly.” That song, like “Time Will Do the Talking” regards Griffin’s dying relationship from a distance, from the perspective of someone with the wisdom to regard the inevitable with serene acceptance. But that’s not the mood at all on the raw, assaultive breakup songs “You Never Get What You Want” and “Every Little Bit.” “You Never Get What You Want” opens with Griffin sneering “You first found me in my holding pen/Stopped to take a look and stuck your finger in/I bit one off and you came back again and again.” It’s the kind of thing that could sound try-hard coming from a lesser artist, especially one doing such a total 180 from the persona Griffin projects for most of the album, but she hisses it out with such venom you have no choice to believe it. “Every Little Bit” gets at the same effect from the opposite angle, letting Griffin’s rage simmer through a husky, almost whispered vocal in the chorus, making the moment Griffin repeats the title, building in frenzy until words become insufficient and she starts screaming wordlessly land like an atom bomb. Both tracks make the most of Griffin’s limited resources as she plays the guitar subtly off key to create a dark, maddening mood. Near the end of “You Never Get What You Want,” her rage seems to boil over and the steady backing descends into frantic strumming like the acoustic-guitar equivalent of banging on the keys.
From: https://scottsm589.medium.com/a-shout-from-the-heart-patty-griffins-living-with-ghosts-304dcde3ee07

A singer and songwriter whose literate, impressionistic storytelling and richly evocative melodies have made her one of the most respected artists in the contemporary folk community, Patty Griffin is also a superb vocalist who sings of the human heart and soul with a passion that's palpable but never histrionic. Most comfortable working outside the major-label system, Griffin went from performing in Boston coffee houses to national acclaim with 1996's Living with Ghosts, a debut album drawn from her solo acoustic demo recordings. While she would explore more full-bodied arrangements on 1998's Flaming Red and 2002's 1000 Kisses, her work always expresses a powerful emotional intimacy.  From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/patty-griffin-mn0000022348/biography

The Rolling Stones - Torn and Frayed

 #The Rolling Stones #Kieth Richards #Mick Jagger #blues rock #hard rock #classic rock #British blues rock #rock & roll #British R&B #1970s 

In May of 1972 the Rolling Stones released their 10th British studio album and first double LP, Exile on Main St. Although initial critical response was lukewarm, it is now considered a contemporary music landmark, the best work from a band who rock critic Simon Frith once referred to as “the poets of lonely leisure.” Exile on Main St. was both the culmination of a five-year productive frenzy and bleary-eyed comedown from the darkest period in the Stones’ history.
By 1969 the storm clouds of dread building around the group had become a full-blown typhoon. First, recently sacked member Brian Jones was found dead, drowned in his swimming pool. Then, as the decade ended in a rush of bleak portents, they played host to the chaos of the Altamont Speedway Free Concert, a poorly organised, massive free concert, which ended with four dead including a murder captured live on film.
Yet amidst all this the Stones produced Let It Bleed (1969) and Sticky Fingers (1971), two devastating albums that wrapped up the era like a parcel bomb addressed to the 1970s.
Songs like Gimme Shelter, the harrowing Sister Morphine, and Sway, which broods on Nietzche’s notion of circular time, exuded the kind of weary grandeur that would define Exile.
The story behind Exile on Main St. has become rock folklore. Fleeing from England’s punitive tax laws, the Stones lobbed in a Côte d'Azur mansion that was a Gestapo HQ during World War II. Mick Jagger was largely sidelined, spending much of the time in Paris with pregnant wife Bianca. The musicians were jammed into an ad-hoc basement studio, a cross between steam-bath and opium den, powered by electricity hijacked from the French railway system. The house was beset by hangers-on, including the obligatory posse of drug-dealers. Yet with control ceded to the nonchalant, disaster-prone Keith Richards – the kind of person a crisis would want around in a crisis – they somehow harnessed the power of pandemonium.
The result was a singular amalgam of barbed soul, mutant gospel, tombstone blues and shambolic country, as thrilling in its blend of familiar sources as works by contemporaries Roxy Music and David Bowie were in the use of alien ones. Jagger shuffles his deck of personas from song to song like a demented croupier, the late, great drummer Charlie Watts supplies his customary subtle adornments, and a cast of miscreants – most crucially, pianist Nicky Hopkins and producer Jimmy Miller – function as supplementary band members.
All 18 tracks contribute to the ragged perfection of the document as a whole. Tumbling Dice and Happy are textbook rock propelled by a strange union of virtuosity and indolence. And there is an undeniable beauty to the likes of Torn and Frayed and Let it Loose, albeit a beauty that is tentative, hard-earned. The package is completed by its distinctive sleeve art, juxtaposing a collage of circus performers photographed by Robert Frank circa 1950 with grainy stills from a Super-8 film of the band and a mural dedicated to Joan Crawford.
Exile confused audiences at first: Writer John Perry describes its 1972 reception as mixing “puzzlement with qualified praise”. The response of critic Lester Bangs was typical. After an initial negative review, Bangs came to regard it as the group’s strongest work. Critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine confirms that the record over time has become a touchstone, calling it a masterful album that takes “the bleakness that underpinned Let It Bleed and Sticky Fingers to an extreme.”  From: https://theconversation.com/exile-on-main-st-turns-50-how-the-rolling-stones-critically-divisive-album-became-rock-folklore-181704