The Musical Concern
Daniel Johnston
Is And Always Was
(October 6, 2009 – Eternal Yip Eye Music)

Every mind is an island - a landlocked island surrounded by walls: knee walls, great walls, or middling, porous walls that filter the stuff of daily life. It’s the last one that most people are born with (or build up). This one renders “balance,” “normalcy,” “functionality.” In short: sanity.

An abundance of trouble awaits either side the wall too thick, too low, or too high. The island will dry out, flood, or whither in darkness, and might, over time, become boring, manic, or menacing. Eventually, the tolerance of neighboring islands is exhausted and upheaval ensues. At length, this is insanity.

In the hour or two before sitting down to write, I listened to an interview with a “teacher” who espoused all sorts of nonsense regarding the “human condition.” The talk was broadcast on a reputable national radio network, yet I hazard a guess that not a handful of fellow listeners recoiled from the following packaged insanity:

“(Y)ou are…pre-biological. To find yourself you remove yourself from the identity as a body by stopping thinking. In the sweetness of silence, silence is realized to be always here, always available. Silence is here in noise, it is here in thoughts, it is here in confusion, it is here in anger, in sorrow, in life and in death. Always present. Then realize that silence is your own self… You are always present as silence.” --Eli Jaxon-Bear

There’s much to be gained from a smooth speaking voice and a calm demeanor, not to mention the careful indexing of mad thoughts and faux logic. But imagine, if you will, the preceding passage spoken in fits and starts by an agitated or angry speaker who pauses too often and too long to gather his sentences.

The former we call “teacher,” but the latter, “lunatic?” It’s crazy what we call crazy.

Too soon, Rimbaud and Van Gough crumbled under the weight of their own lunacy. Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson carried their load to the bitter end. The great masses of manic-depressive genius, however, are trampled under the foot of Time. The odds are against them, Time being what it is. (Given enough Time, any monkey…)

So, it is with something akin to reverence that I come to Daniel Johnston’s latest LP, Is And Always Was.

Time and the odds were not on his side. Not when, in the 1980s, he ran around Austin, Texas passing out homemade cassettes of his homemade recordings. Not during his numerous hospitalizations for “nervous breakdowns.” Not when the crowd grew quiet as he melted down and quit on stage. And not as computer algorithms identified Daniel Johnston as a mere musical novelty, lumping him in with The Shaggs and Wesley Willis.

Johnston, now 48, has lived a mental Hell and suffered the accompanying indignities and hazards, yet here he is with something wonderful, something vital, and for him (and his fans) something new.

Producer/musician Jason Falkner (Jellyfish, Beck, Paul McCartney) has managed to craft an even-keeled, eleven-song album fit for an audience who would have dismissed, if not panned, Johnston’s previous releases. All tracks get the full studio treatment, and there’s scarcely a harrowing moment during their combined 35 minutes. Yet Johnston, in his unguarded glory and casual, raw emotion, is completely present and commanding throughout -- it’s still his show.

Some fans may find themselves wishing for more lo-fi, or less zap ‘n’ blip from the special effects machines. Others may have to relearn how to tap their toes to a consistent beat. But that’s a small price to pay if it buys a broader audience and a bigger stage, if it allows Johnston to stretch Time and beat the odds.

Whether you’re a hardcore fan or a newcomer, I simply wouldn’t trust anyone who didn’t love “Queenie the Doggie.”

Queenie the Doggie, who “always had the most fun, most all of the time,” is an instant Johnston classic. More celebration than lament, Queenie scampers through Johnston’s sun soaked memory backed by a half-country, half-calypso soundtrack. A children’s song, if not for the breezy delivery of the lyric that opens and closes the song: “Queenie the Doggie was a friend of mine/If only the money could save her now.” And also this: “Love is an illusion and it plays with your brain/It’s plain and it’s simple, it’s hard to explain.”

In “I Had Lost My Mind” Johnston flips the figurative upside down, and goes in search of his mind, not unlike one would search for a pet. His encounter with the lady at the Lost and Found is straight, sand-up comedy, as his “cute little bugger” is returned. “I said ‘Thank you, ma’am, I’m always losing that dang thing.’”

The quasi-anthemic rocker, “Fake Records of Records of Rock and Roll” disses the music world and lays down the mid-tempo boogie! Johnston isn’t happy with the bands or the fans these days. “Well, it sounds just like shit to me -- Fake records of rock and roll/The ruin of history -- Fake records of rock and roll/Can’t even get down and boogie --Fake records of rock and roll -- Look out!”

And finally, from the spacey, acoustic-driven opener, “Mind Movies,” a few lines for comparison with the above quoted passage from Eli Jaxon-Bear:

“You make a lot of movies in your mind and you sure are impossibly unkind. I am nowhere to be seen. I’m out to lunch. And I don’t want things to turn out wrong. I’m just a psycho trying to write a song. And talk is cheap. I’m just a creep for your love. You never were a zero ‘til you died. You make a lot of movies in your mind and you sure are impossibly unkind. And I love you so. And I can’t let go.”

Which passage says more about the “human condition?” Which teaches or informs? Which one smells of dishonesty? Honestly, side by side, which passage appears the product of madness?

JH

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Daniel Johnston

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The Gulf Coast Dispatch

Aaand, We’re Back.

After several weeks away from the music typer, TWS returns with a look the new Daniel Johnston record, Is And Always Was.

While away, I DJ’d a doo-wop sock-hop on the coast and a rock-n-roll wedding in Atlanta.

Great fun all the way around, especially in the ATL, where hospitality serves at the pleasure of the smart and funny.

Thank you all, so much.

JH

Digging Up Bones
Special to The Review

Brian Jones:
Still Dead, After All These Years

A big heart is a desirable human trait, provided it’s not coupled with an enlarged liver.

Brian Jones had been on one hell of a rock-n-roll tear from 1962, when he placed his ad for potential band mates in a music paper, until 1969, when Sussex, England officials pulled his body from the bottom of a swimming pool.

During that interval, via his success with the Rolling Stones, Jones managed to corral enough money to buy the estate of Winnie-the-Pooh author, A. A. Minle, piss off the whole of his band, and grow both his ticker and his liver to proportions large enough to have a coroner comment on them in his official death record.

Over this past weekend, a plethora of news sources reported that authorities were reevaluating the circumstances surrounding the death of Jones, based on “new documents” from investigative journalist, Scott Jones.

The conspiratorial dust-up goes like this:

After three years of Jones’ erratic behavior, plus diminishing contributions to recording sessions, and two drug busts for pot, coke, and smack (resulting in his inability to gain a work visa for an upcoming U.S. tour,) a contingent of Stones came ‘round to give him his walking papers. In a P.R. move worthy of any good corporate giant, the boys gave him the face-saving option of resigning, which he took, citing differences on the past few “discs.”

The Stones, at the behest of John Mayall, snatched up guitarist Mick Taylor as Jones’ replacement. They quickly booked a concert for July 5, 1969 to showcase the new addition. (Instead of canceling the show on the news of their founding member’s demise, the band went on with it, disingenuously, as a quasi-impromptu, memorial tribute.)

In the interim, Jones threw a party at Pooh Palace on July 2. Among the invited, was Frank Thorogood, a carpenter who had been dragging his feet on palace renovations. Jones intended to confront Thorogood regarding his malingering. Late that night, as the party quieted, Jones and Thorogood came to no good in the pool. The resulting tussle ended with Jones at the bottom of the pool, emergency technicians pulling him out, and a coroner reporting on enlarged organs and “death by misadventure.”

That’s the Brian Jones row on a slow news week.

A more realistic view is that Jones was plateauing at exactly the wrong time. According to a friend, he was in a “happy” mood. He was getting off the junk – that same coroner’s report showed less than three pints of beer in his belly, and NO drugs, not even marijuana. Rumor has it, that he was talking to Jimi Hendrix (among others) about throwing together a new band.

While anything is possible, including a violent throw-down with a handyman in the swimming pool that Pooh built, the likelihood of a scandalous murder is duboius. It’s far more likely that an enlarged liver enraged a worn out heart and together the two shut down the whole shootin’ match. Just another sad story of rock-n-roll excess.

Closer to facts, consider these: Brian Jones was the founding member of the Rolling Stones. He was plastered a lot. He became the odd man out because he couldn’t move (with the Stones) beyond the blues of Howlin’ Wolf, and Muddy Waters. A mile-wide antisocial streak was the base fuel for the fire that burned him out in every way: publicly, personally, and creatively. He died when his heart stopped.

Scott Jones, the longsuffering reporter, is still with us, and he’s the one with 600 pages of interviews and god-knows-what-all. He’s the one who recently handed the dossier over to the Sussex officials. He’s the one who waited until all of his major players and witnesses died. Maybe it’s time Jones let Jones rest.

For the benefit of those who like to rock, I offer this week’s Playlist, a compilation of Rolling Stones deep cuts, from 1966 to 1968. Three years that, in retrospect, became an ever tightening noose around the neck of Brian Jones. Once the guitarist, now (ironically) the receding multi-instrumentalist. But play his part he did, right through the sessions that were released in 1969 as Let It Bleed (“You Got The Silver” was his final recording with the band).

Apart from his recordings with the Stones (and his apparent lack of compositional prowess) two significant works are accredited to Jones: Mord und Totschlag (A Degree of Murder,) the soundtrack to an avante gard German film, and Brian Jones Presents the Pipes of Pan at Joujouka, a production piece showcasing the primative, Sufi-trance music of Morroco. Three cuts from the latter are presented here.

JH

The Musical Concern
The Postmarks
Memoirs At The End Of The World
(August 25, 2009 – Unfiltered Records)

This is a curious concoction: One part soundtrack to Bond – James Bond, one part dream-pop. A girl named Tim. And a band better suited to the “South of France,” than “South Florida,” their home base. The strange cherry on top is that Tim (Yehezkely) was tapped to be the vocalist after an open-mic performance at a dance club.

If this sounds like a bad idea to you, I couldn’t agree more. However, there happens to be the nagging matter of an opening cut from Memoirs At The End Of The World (their third full-length.) “No One Said This Would Be Easy” is a gorgeous piece of film score that simultaneously manages a commanding pop presence and an indie-folk aesthetic. The bombast of movie music washes into a gauzy vocal, accompanied by acoustic guitar. This song establishes the rules for what’s to come and demands continued attention.

“My Lucky Charm” follows in a bouncy, Supremes vein. Then darkly, plush strings herald the coming of a “Thorn In Your Side,” a trippy, three-minute journey in pursuit of the happiness “at the end of the world.” (Lee Hazlewood, phone home.) In “You Don’t Know Till You Try,” Yehezkely’s mantra, “it’s gonna be fine,” finds an uneasy place atop dissonant (synth) horns that hint at an altogether, different outcome.

Jonathan Wilkins (drums) and Christopher Moll (guitar) are the other two thirds of this songwriting trio. (Brian Hill (bass) & Jeff Wagner (keys) are credited with “additional instrumentation” on the band’s website.) They are self-professed cinemaphiles with an uncommon talent for atom-smashing elements that don’t fit. Case in point: “All You Ever Wanted” begins in scratchy ambiance, morphs into breezy groove, then incorporates a brief four-bar suspension, before breaking full into a sing-and-sway chorus. Acoustic guitar serves as a syncopated metronome, a sitar doubles the vocal.

The only thing not to like about this record is that it’s too long. And not by much. “Jetsetters” (the single!), “The Girl From Aglenib,” and the closer “Gone,” drag down the energy, and make for a murky finish. Even so, Memoirs At The End Of The World has to be my pick for After-Party Album of the Year.

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Unfiltered Records

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JH

Digging Up Bones
Special to The Review
Jim Dickinson: Americana Master

I did not hear the unfortunate news of Jim Dickinson's passing until Tuesday when I sat in on a recording of the Back Row Baptists. Connor Christian and Jim Barber are co-producing the new album, and they placed a vinyl copy of Dickinson's first release Dixie Fried on the console to respectfully persuade his specter to somehow intersperse with the recordings.

How fitting it was that the Back Row Baptists were laying down a most particular interpretation of Rolling Stones' "Sway" that day. Looking back on it, I wondered if Jim's dancing ghostly fingers helped to ballet on the piano or tweak the console
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Most folks remember Dickinson for his brilliance in the studio as engineer, producer and sideman. From his work on the timeless Big Star recordings, to the Albert Collins and Ry Cooder albums, Bob Dylan to Aretha Franklin, Sam & Dave, Arlo Guthrie, John Hiatt, Betty Lavette, to his own sons Cody & Luther of the North Mississippi Allstars, Jim put his magic pixie dust on many classic recordings.

You know the keys on the Stones' "Wild Horses"? That's Jim.

It wasn't just Dickinson's studio wizardry that caused my admiration for him. I found it very easy to fall in love with "James Luther Dickinson". One of my first experiences with him as an artist was his album Free Beer Tomorrow. From his oscillating drawl on "Well of Love", or his charming look at adversity in "Bound to Lose", he had this magnetic way of explaining the world - he draws you in to his songs with a booming, almost subterranean burr. He sang the way he talked, and talked the way he sang. He was natural.

Fellow music devotee Judson Henry and I saw what may have been Dickinson's last solo show in Memphis at this year's Folk Alliance. They carted in a piano just for him. It was just slightly out-of-tune. Perfect. That's the way Jim liked it. He carried on for over half an hour telling stories, singing songs, playing the piano and painting pictures with his Memphis narratives. Jud and I drank it in - as if it were the last of the best of the good stuff that had been bottled and saved for a special occasion. Little did we know that this would be the last of the best of the good stuff.

Bob Mehr of Commercial Appeal says, "A gifted raconteur, musical philosopher and cultural historian, Dickinson was a veritable treasure trove of pop arcana and profound theory, capable of finding the cosmic and literal connections between deejay Dewey Phillips and former Mayor Willie Herenton, wrestler Sputnik Monroe and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr." As a fan of Jim's once marveled, he's the quintessential "maverick badass". And so he was.

Jim was real, and still is. His stories, his music, his memory are all available on hundreds of recordings for us to savor. The epitaph he chose for himself sums it up: "I'm just dead, I'm not gone."

Click a glass to Jim, and go out this weekend and get a copy of his album, Free Beer Tomorrow. You'll be glad you did.

Yer pal,
PETE KNAPP

Ed: Pete Knapp is the Roots Music Association’s Promoter of the Year (2008), and Founder and President of Shut Eye Records & Agency in Atlanta. He’s also a tireless champion of excellent music, everywhere.

More information at http://www.shuteyerecords.com/

The Musical Concern
Robert Pollard
Elephant Jokes
(August 11, 2009 – GBV Inc.)

Imagine you’re a rice farmer in rural India – a young, second-generation farmer with a family to feed and scary story to tell. Your father told it to you just as his father told it to him. Once every 48 years the gates of Hell swing wide, unleashing an uncontrollable horde of ravenous rats. They appear suddenly, and in the space of a few hours ravage your crop, leaving your paddy stripped clean, your prospects bleak.

As much as it might appear to be a plague straight from the Bible, truth is, it’s all about bamboo. Once every 48 years the bamboo plant makes a grand play at reproduction. The stalks fruit, the fruit drops, and the seeds therein scatter; thus the circle of bamboo life continues. This fruit is abundant; it’s been 47 years since the last drop! And since bamboo reproduction only gets two shots per century, "abundant" may be construed as an understatement.

The rice farmer’s wife gathers a basketful, cuts it into chunks, and boils it in a soup – a soup that is also a powerful aphrodisiac. There’s still plenty to be had, so the rats get in on the fodder. They literally gorge and screw like there’s no tomorrow. With extra-sexy food at the ready, the rodent population sores to a bazillion overnight, and guess what? All the bamboo fruit is soon devoured; leaving a swarming, hungry, flood of vermin to do what they must: eat the rice.

So goes the handiwork of Nature: repulsive, magical, and awesome.

It’s a proven, scientific fact that the natural forces at play in the rice fields of India are the exact same as those swimming in the chemical soup of Robert “Bob” Pollard’s brain. Even so, many would prefer a blind eye in the face of science. Many would love a single-word study.

Prolific.

Now we’re talkin’!

Bamboo, the Pied Piper of Famine (A year ago today)

JH

The Gulf Coast Dispatch
Disproportionate Things

Michael Jackson’s passing came damn close to crashing the World Wide Web or the Internet. I’m never clear on what is who when you get down to it. What I am clear on is that things are quite unbalanced.

In the last week Les Paul and Jim Dickinson died. And the Internet didn’t even shrug.

It’s not that you shouldn’t love Wacko-Jacko, to each his own, and there’s no accounting for taste, as the sayings go, but, Jesus Christ, shouldn’t there be a little less cult of celebrity and a little more music appreciation, especially since we can learn so much and venture so far online?

I think of MJ and Quincy Jones in the studio for the Thriller recordings. Theses guys chained a dozen 48-track machines together in search of the ultimate album! The sound was literally so dense that it wouldn’t fit on the vinyl: the pressing plant returned the masters for a redo.

That kind of wild story doesn’t happen without Les Paul, 40 years earlier, in his garage with a screwdriver and a reel of tape…

Jim Dickinson was an American icon, as well. I had the great pleasure of seeing him perform in a Memphis hotel room earlier this year. My friend Pete from Shut Eye Records was in the audience that evening. Pete has a thought or two on Jim that we’ll publish here on Friday, so be sure to check back for his piece and the accompanying playlist. It’s sure to be informative, entertaining, and most important, pertinent.

JH

Digging Up Bones
Special to The Review
Woodstock Turns 40: Dirty, Stinking Hippies

In a genteel game of word association I’ll say “Woodstock” and you’ll say “Hippies.” I’ll let your response hang in the air for a long, awkward moment, then you’ll add “dirty, stinking hippies,” and follow up rapidly with “Hendrix,” “Star Spangled Banner,” “lighter fluid,” “flaming guitar,” and so on. On another day you might say “Santana” or “Richie Havens” or “Sly & The Family Stone.”

Chances are, we could add a player or two and continue this exciting game forever without anyone ever shouting “Tim Hardin,” or “Sweetwater.” If someone suddenly barked out “Keef Hartley,” then we’d know that time itself had come to an end.

As the "festival-to-end-all-rock-festivals" reverberates into its fourth decade, I wondered if there was anything left on that old rock-n-roll bone. Turns out, yeah. But you’ve gotta forget about the acts that parlayed a drug-addled weekend into superstardom, and look to the ones that time forgot.

Tim Hardin, the ex-marine and Vietnam vet who had a taste for heroin and lazy folk guitar. Sweetwater, a Los Angeles group with about eighty members, who regularly opened for The Doors, traveled in a beautiful, beautiful balloon, and occasionally drifted into preachy social commentary. Keef Hartley, the British drummer who once replaced Ringo Starr in a pre-Beatles outfit. (I include Hartley’s band here simply for their mind boggling ability to roll James Gang guitar, Spencer Davis Group organ, Blood Sweat & Tears horns, and Mountain vocals into a single, 6-minute jam.)

The Paul Butterfield Blues Band is here, too. They suffered the indignity of having to open for Sha-Na-Na -- yep, that Sha-Na-Na. And that’s reason enough to give ‘em three of the eight slots on an obscure music blog. That, plus their “Love March” could have just as well been a Sly Stone number.

(Playlist to the left.)

JH

Digging Up Bones
Special to The Review
Les Paul Dead at 94

My earliest memories of Les Paul are all bad. Back in my rock band days, it seemed that every guitarist had a Les Paul this or a Les Paul that, and never, ever would the damn things stay in tune! This made for embarrassing moments on stage and wasted time and money in the studio. Of course, Les Paul, the man, had nothing to do with any of this. He simply invented that chunk of lumber and magnets that would eventually turn so many kids into guitar gods…as soon as they learned how to tune the ^@#%& thing!

While everybody knows about Paul’s guitar, his inventing the eight-track recording machine is less (no pun intended) widely known, but perhaps just as important.

Here are some more fun facts:

-A teacher once informed Les’s mother that the young genius would never learn music.

-Les Paul was also known by several different stage names including The Wizard of Waukesha & Rhubarb Red.

-After a car accident crushed his left arm, his elbow would become immobile. Les had the elbow set to heal at an angle that would allow him to continue to play guitar.

Les Paul, an American great, died from complications of pneumonia yesterday in White Plains, N.Y.

Long live Les Paul!

New York Times Obit

Chasing Sound

JH

Digging Up Bones
Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros
Streetcore
(October 21, 2002 – HellCat/Epitaph)

Had Joe Strummer lived to see this release, the outcome would have been different. Since every musician is either a self-flagellating tyrant or a delusional buffoon – and often a combination of the two in any given moment – there’s nothing gained in speculating about how it would have been different. Strummer died unexpectedly of heart failure in December of 2002, and the record wasn’t finished. A gaggle of folks, including a couple of the Mescaleros and a Rick Rubin, saw the production through to its release ten months later.

Strummer purists might have a fit, but I'll have my cake and eat it too. I like to think that Strummer was well on the way to his finest collection since he broke up The Clash with his Mick Jones Communique. Also, I think that he would have fallen short without relinquishing the production reins. (See his catalogue up to Streetcore.) Sometimes you can’t see the barn for the horses. (See paragraph one, line two.)

Did I say there was nothing gained through speculation?

Streetcore opens with an average, pop-punk number, “Coma Girl”. Nothing to get riled up about, but it grows on you in a mindless-fun way. Then the Mescaleros "let that ragga" drop with “Get Down Moses,” a fine drum-and-bass groove with evocative lyrics and plenty of Stratocaster and Hammond in just the right spots. Enter unadorned acoustic guitar and deep, melodic vocals in a tribute to Johnny Cash, “Long Shadow.” The scenery quickly shifts again with a pounding rocker about…well, rockin’ (or rioting) in “Arms Aloft.” “Ramshackle Day Parade,” a plaintive, sing-along, fit for Combat Rock follows. There’s a break for a cover of Bob Marley’s “Redemption Song,” then Streetcore starts to rumble again…

I’ll snuff the urge to pummel you with notes on notes. Just these: Strummer’s vocals are nowhere stronger, the scope is broad, the lyrics are intelligent, and the production is stellar… and I don’t give a damn who produced it. Streetcore is Clash quality.

JH

The Musical Concern
Megafaun
Gather, Form & Fly
(July 21, 2009 – Hometapes)

Roots music and noisy experiments hookup in the mashup of the year!

It looks good on paper, but the result is 51 minutes of uninspired meandering.

The opening tracks are steeped in CS&N vocal dalliance, with track three, “The Fade,” proving the strongest byway of early, Wilco style, country-rock. “Impressions Of The Past” follows with a peppy piano intro that morphs into a counter-rhythm hook. The song disintegrates into noise, then crashes…only to be revived… and polished off with an earthy, glee club that laments the past through “shifting colors” and so on. Later, the glee club guides us, with field hand reverie, through more noise, and overwrought, stop-and-go business. See “Darkest Hour” and “Columns.”

On the upside, Gather, Form & Fly is whimsical.

Likely, Megafaun had a real blast making this record. (My guess is that the bong was always packed and within arm’s reach of -- if not sitting directly on -- the mixing console.) They’re sure to be a hit at music festivals, especially among the Iron & Wine crowd.

Megafaun

Hometapes

JH

Digging Up Bones

Maximo Park
Our Earthly Pleasures

(2007 – Warp Records)

Establish, embellish, stir it up, let it sit, blow it up, then quit it. In a nutshell, that’s a surefire formula for effective rock-n-roll. Add the unexpected cadence. Add the unbalanced repetition (3 or 5 “ooh, ahh baby”s, instead of 4) and the effective starts to become attractive. Now, throw in a turn of phrase, especially at the dramatic beginning of the record. You know, something like, “You’ve been/With me/A year/To the day/Three hundred/And sixty/Five days/Watching me decay.” Now you are turning the attractive into the irresistible.

More words: “The pounding rain continued its bleak fall/We decided just to write, after all.” “Ignorance isn’t bliss/Familiarity still leads to contempt.” “Are you hopeful/Or just gullible?” Smart lyrics bind the guitars and keys to the drums and bass and full-fledged production, while propelling oblique friends and lovers through a gray city.

This, the second outing for Maximo Park, is a straightforward, modern rock record that seldom stumbles and often exceeds the limitations of its form.

It’ll work both ways: bookish and ballsy.

Maximo Park
JH