marc pietrzykowski

Some years ago, I took the subject lines of a bunch of spam I saved, made a chart converting every letter of the alphabet into a musical note, and then, using spaces for rests and another formula for the length of the notes, programmed them into a midi software program. And it sounded like an aeolian harp… no, it sounded like random notes. In any case, the algorithmic weirdness of spambots is still interesting to me for a minute, not much longer; amidst the sudden burst of spam recently sent to this site were a bunch with the word “christmas” inserted, so I got comments from ebony christmas amateur and chinese new year christmas firework. Of course, any spambot hitting this site is a piece of crap, since I get very few hits or links… I actually feel a little bad for the poor, lame algorithm that washed up at my door. Well, ok, not that sorry.

62) Chitty Chitty Bang Bang: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

“The Old Bamboo” might hold the record for the song stuck in my head the longest, off and on, throughout my life; after seeing this movie on TV, I sang the “Bamboo” chorus a billion times and never could quite dislodge it… it would pop up in the strangest situations, and so I would find myself singing “Me ol’ bam-boo, me ol’ bam-boo / You’d better never bother with me ol’ bam-boo. / You can have me hat or me bum-ber-shoo / But you’d better never bother with me ol’ bam-boo.” And so Dick Van Dyke got another soul to torture in hell, I suppose. Also, I thought the bamboo song was actually from Mary Poppins for the longest time, perhaps because the actor playing the child-sniffer-outer scared the shit out of me and replaced it with a pair of rusty garden shears. (bonus: I’m not scared anymore:

also, this movie was written by Roald Dahl, based on a book by Ian Fleming! )

63) The Flaming Lips: The Soft Bulletin

In another life, I played in a band that opened for the Flaming Lips somewhere in the midwest, I think, or maybe it was Philadelphia… anyway, this was a while ago and they were awful, bad Zeppelin-y sludge that wandered around pointlessly–but man did they have a great light show! Now, they are much more accomplished, still wander around pointlessly a lot (really, guys, some of the instrumental passages are pleasing, but too many of them sounds like Yes outtakes), and write good songs about 2/3 of the time. (bonus: nah. There’s enough already).

64) Brian Eno: Here Come The Warm Jets

I lost track, but I think it wasn’t until track 6, “On Some Faraway Beach,” that I first heard a snare drum on this CD. There are drums a plenty, and the upfront ticka ticka high hat on “Baby’s On Fire,” but nary a snare until halfway through the album. Eno’s picture on the cover looks a lot like Riff Raff from the Rocky Horror Picture Show, so I often find images from that movie flitting through my head while listening to this recording. Eno in full pop glam mode, excellent songs, and he pretty much just sings and “treats” the other players (Fripp, Manzanera, Spedding, etc) instruments. Right on. (bonus: you can access a javascripted set of Eno’s Oblique Strategies here.)

65) X: Los Angeles/Wild Gift

Wowza, this is the first CD thus far that I have had cassette and lp versions of, and it’s a double CD. Had’em both, yes I did, because DJ Bonebrake keeps the speed flowing smoothly and Billy Zoom just keeps grinning out punk rockabilly licks and then the other two folks do their thing, singin and a-howlin about “Johnny Hit and Run Pauline” and “The World’s a Mess, It’s In My Kiss” and “White Girl” and on and on… Exene Cervanka must be the most in-tune out-of-tune singer I have ever heard, she’s just close enough to the right note to be viable, even interesting, and is a perfect foil for John Doe’s none-too-pure-itself-now-that-you-mention-it holler. No idea why X makes me want to write in run-on sentences. (bonus: the letter X is a voiceless velar fricative.)

66) banco de gaia: Iqizeh

I used to listen to this CD a lot to fall asleep, which is not a bad thing; the first 2 or 3 songs are lush, techno-house throbbers that will put you to sleep if you want to sleep, ot make you dance, if you want to dance. Because I used the CD as a sleep aid, I often missed out on the last 2/3 of the songs, which are quite different in tone from the first few, and are actually quite good, challenging, world music/techno/trance pieces. (bonus: according to the band’s–ok, it’s just one guy–according to Toby Marks website, “Banco de Gaia was a 17th century Portuguese fisherman who came across a giant golden pyramid sticking out of the Atlantic one day. He went back to his village to tell eveyone else and when they got back they were just in time to see the top of the pyramid disappearing beneath the waves.”)

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I seem to have fallen into the habit of listening to a bunch of CDs before writing about them (see previous entry). I’m not sure that’s a good idea; I need the immediacy of writing soon after listening, and I am afraid I will get out of order, have many little piles of CDs around and not know which goes first… we’ll see what happens with the holiday s coming up. For one thing, I will have to intentionally go out of order and listen to Xms CDs, and also I should reach 100 CDs listened to soon, which means I listen to a box set.

56) Joe Jackson: Laughter and Lust

This was Jackson’s last pop song collection before experimenting with more extended neo-classical stuff; it’s not as raucous as “Look Sharp,” nor is it rooted in jazz and standards like “Jumpin’ Jive” or “Body and Soul.” No, it’s perched somewhere between those 2 stylistic modes, with plenty of horns and jazz changes layered atop punchy chord progressions. “Trying to Cry” is great, “Hit Single” is a hit single that makes fun of hit singles, and “My House” sounds, lyrically at least, like Joe is channeling mid-era Bruce Springsteen. Lots of hooks, lots of snarky wordplay: basically the kind of CD Joe could make in his sleep. (bonus: apparently Joe is a smoker’s rights advocate, including moving to Berlin becasue of the anti-smoking ordinances passed in NY in 2003… gotta stand for something, I guess!)

57) The Cardigans: Super Extra Gravity

I don’t know what it is about Nina Persson’s voice that I dig, her range is just ok and it isn’t especially warm, but it has the same kind if shimmering clarity that glosses sad songs the way Sandy Denny’s did, adding one more dimension of pathos to the arrangements. That said, this CD doesn’t really move beyond “Gran Tourismo” at all stylistically, and there are fewer memorable songs, but it’s still worth listening to, especially on headphones or while driving at dusk. (bonus: this CD does not, unlike the previous 2 in their ouevre, contain a weirdo avant-bubble cover of a Black Sabbath song. Which is not really a bonus, now that I think of it.

58) King Chango: The Return of El Santo

Wow, I forgot how stylistically spastic this CD was. Is stylistic eclecticism more valued in South American pop for some reason? Actually, I’m just thinking about Los Cadillacs Fabulosos, and King Chango aren’t quite that crazy, but they do manage to mix drum-and-bass, jarocho, reggae, and straight-up disco all together in a single song. The lyrics I can decipher on the fly seem like good slogan sincerity (a la Spearhead), but I don’t have time to sit and translate them all just now. Wild, make your booty move music from a NY via-Venezuala group that, unfortunately, seems to have broken apart. (bonus: perhaps King Chango joined the Chango Family?)

59) Kid Thomas: Wail, Baby, Wail!

This CD is proof that a Little Richard pompadour, a Little Walter harmonica style, and a bunch of shiny pantsuits can lead to a career in music. The Kid can sing about as well as Johnny “Guitar” Walker, which is to say, not very well, but he screams convincingly, and every once in a while hits a great falsetto phrase that almost, but not quite, sounds like Otis Rush. Listening to the production history here is interesting: a few straight up Chicago blues, some jump blues, then a James Brown vamp, then suddenly someone gets a wah-wah peddle for a few songs…  and then there are a bunch of studio outtakes for no good reason at the end. Who doesn’t like listening to a bunch of drunk musicians playing 1/2 a song and yelling at each other? (bonus: ok, this is really not a bonus, but it is an interesting story. Apparently, the Kid was working as a landscaper in LA when he struck and killed a kid who swerved in front of his van. He was acquitted of manslaughter, but the distraught father of the dead child showed up outside the courthouse and shot and killed Thomas in 1970).

60) Gorillaz: Gorillaz

I liked Blur ok, never enough to buy a CD, but I like the Gorillaz enough to buy both of theirs, perhaps because I am a sucker for hip-hop influenced production and hooks that seem like they make sense but really don’t, or maybe they do, or they just sway back and forth between gibberish and intelligibility (“I aint happy, I’m feelin glad / I got sunshine, in a bag / I’m useless, but not for long / The future is coming on”). never really investigated the whole “virtual band” cartoon narrative part of this group, but I loved “Tank Girl”… (bonus: Wow, Albarn and Hewlett collaborated on an opera version of one of my favorite books, Wu Cheng’en’s “Journey To The West.” Holy crap!)

61) Lyle Lovett: And His Large Band

No jokes about his head, I promise. “Stand By Your Man”! By a man! Well, yeah, and once the obviousness wears off, a great version of the standard. 2 or 3 great originals here (particularly like “Which Way Does That Old Pony Run”) and the rest are just fine, thanks, so humble and unassuming that one begins to wonder if Lyle might not one day unassume himself into a bit of a caricaturish corner, until folks think of him in the same breath as Will Rogers. (bonus: actually, Rogers could be quite a bastard. And his famous quote, “”I never yet met a man that I didn’t like,” was in reference to a question about Leon Trotsky. So, Lyle could have worse celebrity models).

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Reminder: I am listening to all of my CDs, one at a time, and the whole process should, at my current rate of listening, take 2-1/2 years, if I don’t buy any more.

50) Richard Thompson: Sweet Warrior

Oh, where to start. Richard Thompson has saved my life even more times than Los Lobos’ Kiko CD, and I will listen to many more of his recording by the time this project is over. And then I will go back and listen to them again… a startling, unabashedly literate songwriter, passionate singer, and stunning guitarist who modeled his style as an early player on concertina and accordion melodies. This CD is his most recent (as of 11/18/2008), and is as consistently strong as his best solo work; “Dad’s Gonna Kill Me” is the best Iraq war protest song I’ve heard, “Bad Monkey” and “Mr Stupid” are snarky and smart, and “Guns Are The Tongues” mines the same vein as “Vincent Black Lightning” without being mere revision. His best recording in several years, methinks. (bonus: the liner notes start with Edmund Spenser’s “Sonnet LVII.” What else could you want?)

51) Alison Krauss: Now That I’ve Found You

Alison Krauss can veer too far into M.O.R. repressed memory flavorlessness for my tastes about 1/4 of the time, but the other 3/4 she plants twangy kisses on my head and her band rips like they lived through the French Revolution and don’t want any more heads to roll, but are still quite pissed about the Directoire. This is a greatest hits of a sort; while “Baby, Now That I’ve Found You” is the best-knows baby song here, I prefer “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby.” (bonus: “When God Dips His Pen Of Love In My Heart,” featuring one of those bloody metaphors that Christianity so excels in. Their version of “I Will” also makes me feel inky.)

52) Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington: The Complete Sessions

Whilst lunching down near the starchy roots of American popular music (at Duke’s Place, I suppose), Louis and Duke made this recording: “I’m Just A Lucky So and So,” “Black and Tan Fantasy,” “The Mooche,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing,” “I’m Beginning To See The Light”… geez. Armstrong’s voice/horn and Ellington’s piano and arrangements are the Tigris and Euphrates of American pop, they define our ability to recognize things like “soul” and “melody” in other artists. (bonus: “Solitude.”)

53) Neil Young and Crazy Horse: Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere

I’m confused, since I never bought this CD, and it’s in the Kate Bush The Sensual World CD case, though the cover is missing… I did buy the Kate Bush CD, but I have it complete, in another case, with cover, elsewhere. Oh well, Neil Young has been both under- and over-rated during his long career, and his estimation of his own lead guitar playing is definitely out of whack–playing the same note over and over while the band chugs on is interesting for a minute, not for 3, and not in every goddamn song–but in any case, he has written some great songs, 4 of which are on here. I won’t list them, everyone should have their own Ur-Neil… (bonus: though I expected Kate Bush, at this point in the project, surprises like this are more than welcome. And I’m sure there is an interesting story behind the misinserted CD.)

54) Funkadelic: Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow

I’ve seen P-Funk 7 or 8 times, 3 times on my birthday (in 2 different cities, a weird coincidence), and never have they played 2 of my favorite Funkadelic songs: “Friday Night, August 14th” and “Funky Dollar Bill,” both from the album. I understand why this particular CD is an obscure part of the P-Funk canon: it is so drenched in reverb, it sounds like it was recorded in a swimming pool inside a swimming pool inside George Clinton septum. I love it, it’s scary psychedelia, the acid rush preceding the roaring fright funk of Maggotbrain. (bonus: “Friday Night, August 14th” is apparently about nothing more than getting a tax rebate from the gov’t and blowing it with as much style as possible, but the date is also, in the U.S., national Creamsicle day.)

55) Spike Jones: Spiked! The Music of Spike Jones

That this CD follows Free Your Mind… is one of those accidents of CD shuffling that I hoped would happen when I began listening. Apropos Spike’s music, some stray notes: Billy Barty was in the band for a while. Doodles Weaver (the horse race announcer on “William Tell Overture”) was Sigourney Weaver’s uncle, and an early contributer to Mad magazine. Thomas Pynchon wrote the liner notes to this collection. “Winston, are you in voice?” And of course, “Pal-ya-chee…” (bonus: bless their digital hearts, here are some episodes of Spike’s radio show on the Internet Archive.)

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Wha? Snow? Yes, a little tiny bit of snow outside. Hooray!

47) Psychedelic Demons: Volume 2

I picked this up in Iceland because I liked the cover and package design, and because I was in Iceland. Trance/Goa electro stuff, fun to listen to, fades into the background when you aren’t paying attention, already sounds curiously dated… I mean, geez, they’re using 1999 technology to make trippy dance music! Grandpa, shut it off! Xenomorph is the only artist I recognize, but like I said, it’s unobtrusive fun, and knowing the artists more intimately might make it more obtrusive. (bonus: this cd is bit of a collector’s item, apparently, selling for 20-30 eu… I also bought a set of playing cards in iceland, and a jump rope with carved wooden peni for handles (at the Phallological museum), though I gave those to someone for xmas.)

48) Brand New Immortals: Afro-Sheen Protein Piston

This is one of those CDs that really should be good; the production is fine, the players all competent, the arrangements complex without being obnoxious, and the singer, David Ryan-Harris, has a rough, vaguely soulful voice and a hyphenated name. But it isn’t good, it’s boring. part of the problem is that all the songs smack of hipster posing, of people who have studied how to seem soulful and interesting, but can’t actually pull it off; the title should have been a hint, but I bought this one in Atlanta at the Gooodwill store for .50 cents, so my antennae were a little sleepy… (bonus: it’s only an ep, so I didn’t have to listen for very long).

49) The Beta Band: The Three e.p.’s

Should it be “e.p.’s” or “e.p.s”? Well, if they didn’t use periods for the abbreviation “ep,” then surely not, at least not anymore (using the apostrophe in such a case was the norm years ago); the periods make it a tricky question, however. “e.p.s” does look weird, my brain wants to make the “s” another abbreviation. Ultimately, this is a house style question, whatever the issuing organization decides is fine as long as they are consistant. Let’s check, shall we? This CD was issued on Astralwerks… right away, it’s clear this is a British company, since the periods are outside of the quotation marks; their website is messed up, too, some of the main links are busted, so I have to poke around–there it is, the Beta Band page. And lo, the title of this recording, on the astralwerks website, is “The Three EPs“. Bastards. (bonus: An excellent cd, my favorite Beta band recording.)

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Lordy, lordy, I’ve listened to a few CDs but have had no time to list’em. Now I do!

43) Ned’s Atomic Dustbin: Some Furtive Years: A Ned’s Anthology

Bands with 2 bass players, viva! The Dirtbombs are my new favorite 2 bass (and 2 drummer!) band, but Ned’s whatever ya call it were enjoyable as well, cartoonish in the UK style, airy and fast, pop-punk before such an idea became a kind of aural ipecac… Apparently, Ned’s was at the center of the Grebo subculture; I find the apparently constant need to differentiate oneself whilst finding others of like mind to share the effects of this need with quite funny, an endless parade of subcultures that seems a symptom of modernity–but who knows, perhaps medieval monks scalloped the hem of their robes to signal to others that, in fact, Corinthians was the best book of the Bible, no matter what the Abbot said. In another sense, these genre categories are simply a way to sort information… and now that I think back on it, I can’t remember any of the Ned’s songs I just listened to, just the sound, so I guess categorization is important. (bonus: ok, I can remember 1: “Kill Your Television.” And no, I didn’t just look at the case.)

44) Small Fry: Capitol Sings Kid’s Songs For Grownups

“Bibbidi-Bobbidi-Boo”! “Mairzy Doats”! ” The Pussy Cat Song (Nyow! Nyot Nyow!)”! I have long been angered by the infantilization of the US public, by slogans encouraging us to embrace our inner child, spend money and time foolishly, indulge ourselves in puerile brand loyalty… and I still am, but celebrating childhood and being a childish adult are 2 very different things. These songs made me giggle, dance a bit, and reminded me that childlike wonder is useful for leavening adult seriousness, but is not a condition one should aspire to. (bonus: go on, somebodies’ grandpa…)

45) Iris DeMent: Lifeline

Iris DeMent’s voice is a wondrous instrument, capable of soaring yet entirely fragile and quavering; it is also an acquired taste, I understand, and I have certainly acquired it. This CD is a collection of country gospel songs, gently produced so as not to get in the way of Iris’s voice, each composition adding a different feel, which is hard to do with a gospel collection–or at least it seems hard to do, since so many gospel collections swerve between rousing and somber, with little room left over for other moods. “God Walks The Dark Hills,” which features Iris solo with her piano, made me tear up, and I’m not even that sort of believer. (bonus: “I Don’t Want To Get Adjusted” is my new favorite song title.)

46) Roky Erickson: I Have Always Been Here Before, The Roky Erickson Anthology

2 CD set provides the listener with an interesting map of production techniques Roky’s collaboraters have used over the years, and of course a bunch of weird songs that yell at traffic. The 13th Floor Elevators songs all have that electric jug thing percolating in the background, which, if one is in the wrong mood, can be pretty annoying… but I was in the right mood, I guess, since I dug it. Even on those early songs, the lyrics are a bit odd and definitely tortured, and then Roky goes into the asylum and comes out to form a group called Bleib Alien and writes songs like “Red Temple Prayer (2-Headed Dog)” and “Creature With the Atom Brain.” Puts me in mind of a line from Mike Leigh’s movie Naked: “What’s it like to be you? Pretty hectic, I would think.” (bonus: Roky is apparently doing well now, playing gigs, and no longer obsessed with mail. It is sad to think how primitive we are as a species when it comes to mental health…)

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Feel pretty good today. It’s been a while since I was proud enough of my countrymen to cry with joy. Cheers!

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Hmm, the seeqpod widget doesn’t work so good, maybe a link to the playslist in their main site would be better? Probably won’t make a difference, but here it is. Now then, on to business.

39) Musikás and Marta Sebestyen: Morning Star

Lovely, aching, sparse, churning Hungarian folk music; Sebestyen’s voice has the mournful quality that so suits the harmonic minor group of pitches much Eastern European folk is played in (the “gypsy” scales…), the ones that hooked Bartók when he was a young composer. And of course the band is cool:; fiddle, viola, bass fiddle, dulcimer, a little mandolin, and something called a “hit-gardon,”which is precisely a cello that you hit with a stick, and also pluck with your finger, as a percussion instrument. “Gymesi dallamok” (Cry Only On Sundays). the most rousing track here, features two gardon bashers, and makes me want to drink plum brandy and shoot dice with the devil, or at least his cousin. (bonus: I was sure I heard Tuvan throat singing on one track, and sure enough, there it is in the liner notes, on a song representative of asian/hungarian cross-pollination, or perhaps shared origins, it’s not clear. But it is funky.)

40) MoxyFruvous: Bargainville

My wife used to tend bar at a small music joint, and if the bands spoke to her like she was a human being and not just another employee, she would buy their CD. So, the guys in Moxy Fruvous apparently are decent human beings, but that doesn’t mean I have to enjoy their music, and I didn’t. Way too clever clever songwriting goo, harmonies as rich as a sanitary napkin, and annoyingly tight-assed instrument diddling… no, not much to see here. Imagine Take 6 fused with the Austin Lounge Lizards, raised in Canada. (bonus: not as bad as Wolfmother).

41) The Fugs: The Fugs First Album

Ah, but for the grace of god and a world lacking in psychedelics, the Fugs might well have been Moxy Fruvous. Basically this is Ed Sanders and Tuli Kupferburg and whoever else they could convince to hang out in the Village somewhere and imbibe whatnot and sing “Boob-a-lot” and “Swinburne Stomp” and of course, “Nothing.” Very funny, occasionally profound verbiage bellowed over incredibly amateurish instrument tracks. And they’re still at it! (bonus: “Defeated” is a bonus track on this CD, and is probably my favorite Fugs song, which starts out “when I was a little baby boy / my mommy defeated me” and just gets better from there….)

42) Lyle Lovett: Step Inside This House

I group Lyle and kd lang together in my head, maybe because they both started out doing country swing stuff, and they both slept with Julia Roberts–no, I’m kidding, no idea who sleeps with who out there in the world and no desire to know. But, this is a geographically-organized collection of covers, like kd’s Hymns of the 49th Parallel (cd 15, for those scoring at home), this one all covers of West Texas songwriters: Townes Van Zandt, Steve Fromholz, Guy Clark, Walter Hyatt, and a bunch of others. 2 CDs, and not a stinker among them, which is not something you can always say about Lyle; much as I love some of his own compositions, he has a tendency to slide into the cheese dip and get all smarmy with his weird shaped head… I wish my head was shaped like that. (bonus: several pictures of Lyle’s head, usually next to someone else for comparison.)

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The Shuttered Room is about to start, scary. I have to pick up the pace, averages to follow, and a sampling of this month’s cds via seeqpod.

36) Guided By Voices: Human Amusement at Hourly Rates (Best Of)

32 songs, on 1 cd. Nov 12 is Guided By Voices day in LA, apparently. Have a cocktail, shake your ass. Great pop, helicopters and bones of steel. I came late to the GBV party, not sure how I missed seeing them live, but what the hell. Enough singalong choruses, creative arrangement moves (within a pretty narrow double guitar, drum, bass frame), and memorable lyric bits (I am a scientist – I seek to understand me / All of my impurities and evils yet unknown /I am a journalist – I write to you to show you /I am an incurable / And nothing else behaves like me) to put the whole pop/punk/alternative rock shambling herd to shame. Apparently the four-hour DVD of their final show is a thing of beauty, but now is not the time for DVD’s… (bonus: the GBV database).

37) T Rex: Tank

T Rex always makes me think of Ken, a guy I used to know who had fried his brain on PCP, and described the night the synapses actually fizzled as “like when all the numbers on a calculator start scrambling and spinning around.” Ken also was on a ton of different medications, and T Rex also reminds me of downers, of music that would was made under the influence of Quaaludes… the songs bounce, but they bounce like they were trapped in warm jelly. “Mad Donna” and “Life is Strange” stand out from the druggy rumble. (bonus: no idea why, but “Children of the Revolution” and “20th Century Boy,” 2 of the best T Rex songs, are added on as “extended play” tracks. Thanks!)

38) Flamin’ Groovies: Teenage Head

I’m a monster… got a revved up teenage head. Yup. Great rootsy rock songs, the US version of what Pub Rock was in the UK, I suppose. This is easily the Groovies best, most consistent album, though others have great songs on them. Listen to this while your 401k collapses and you just might not feel so bad… Some fun covers tacked onto the CD version (“Shakin All Over,” “Walkin’ the Dog”). (bonus: the cover alone is enough to restore one’s faith in garage rock.)

>>>Extra special month-end bonus: I listened to 38 cds in 31 days, not a very good rate (1.22 cds/day), and I should try to listen to more, but if I try to go to fast, I will not really be listening, I’ll just be consuming, like the tourists that go to see Michelango’s David at break neck speed, circle, snap a pic, and get back on the bus. I did have time to put together a seepod mix of 1 song from each cd, or at least 1 very much like some cds that I could not find (Accordian Party!), so anyone inclined can share my listening experience in miniature (though, being seeqpod, many of these might not load when you go to listen. But some will…:

SeeqPod – Playable Search

Oh yeah: The Shuttered Room sucks. Terrible, not scary, bad karate chops…. but an ok soundtrack. Still messed up my halloween somewhat; when you want to be scared by a movie and it doesn’t do the job, it’s a bit like having to sneeze without sneezing. Maybe I’ll watch some campaign commercials instead.

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