The concert film appears to be a dying art form, one that has fallen out of favor with audiences and directors alike as people continue to evolve their definition of how much money good music is “worth”. Perhaps this is just a temporary trend? Let’s hope so, lest the majority of music fans around the world miss out on future performances such as those listed below. Here are EAR FARM’s Top 20 Concert Films of All Time…
20. Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars (directed by D.A. Pennebaker) - the importance of the event captured here -David Bowie in his prime performing his final show as Ziggy Stardust- most definitely trumps the film itself. The images are often entirely indecipherable… a muddled mess of blurred out red stage lighting and grainy nonsense, but the music is superb and the historical document of Bowie as Ziggy maintain this film’s importance.
19. Sign O’ the Times (directed by Prince) - twenty years before Superbowl viewers around the world realized Prince’s live show brilliance, the artist put together this film to document four concerts from his European tour in 1987. Prince and the Revolution (including Sheila E.), as always, are superb. The one thing keeping this one from ranking higher: the fact that a large potion of the film was reshot at Prince’s Paisley Park Studios because the artist thought the original footage “unusable”. Ah, royalty.
18. Roy Orbison and Friends: A Black & White Night (directed by Tony Mitchell) - Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits, Bonnie Raitt, Elvis Costello, and many other musical luminaries, join Roy Orbison for one of his final concerts ever, just months before he passed away. The results are stunning; both in terms of the brilliantly contrasty black and white photography as well as each and every performance from the all star band. Orbison himself is in peak form, nailing hit after hit and inciting chills with his golden voice. An essential concert film.
17. Dave Chapelle’s Block Party (directed by Michel Gondry) - this film documents both the organization and planning of an event (the titular block party) as well as the event itself. The behind the scenes looks at Chappelle are equally humorous and engagingly “normal”/everyman. It’s a film about a guy who had a dream and decided to try and make it a reality. The resulting concert features first-rate performances from Kanye West, Mos Def, Talib Kweli, Erykah Badu, Common, The Roots, and a reunited Fugees (among others). Beleedat.
16. Neil Young: Heart of Gold (directed by Jonathan Demme) - Heart of Gold, centering around a two night performance at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashville, is equally beautiful, poignant, and powerful. The magnetism of Neil Young is undeniable, the production of the film is perfection incarnate. If at all possible, see this one in a theater. Jonathan Demme sure knows how to capture the essentials of an artist/performance.
15. The Rolling Stones: Rock and Roll Circus (directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg) - shot in 1968 and not released until 1996, this concert curated by the Rolling Stones holds importance for the roster alone, if nothing else. It features Jethro Tull, The Who, Taj Mahal, Marianne Faithful, The Stones, and a supergroup called The Dirty Mac (comprised of John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Mitch Mitchell, and Keith Richards). All of the bands are in peak/hazed-out form and the added bonuses of the circus elements and people watching the invite-only audience make this one lots of fun.
14. F.E.E.L.I.N.G.C.A.L.L.E.D.L.I.V.E. (director unknown) - if you’ve never seen the band Pulp live, or if you’re looking for documentation of a band at the very height of their popularity and abilities, stop right now and find yourself a copy of this film. Shot during the band’s performance at Brixton Academy in 1995, this is likely the greatest evidence that ’90s Britpop was indeed important and much more culturally influential than many outside of the UK realize. Sexy, cheeky, and entirely in control of an arena full of adoring fans, Jarvis Cocker dominates.
13. Elvis: The ‘68 Comeback Special (directed by Steve Binder, Gary Hovey) - shot after Elvis had already lost his grip on the youth of America, but years before his devolution into the king of Vegas kitsch, the ‘68 Comeback Special is perhaps the last, and best, look at Elvis as The King. Dressed in head to toe black leather he croons and gyrates and rocks out and amazes. He also laid out the format for all of the VH1 Storytellers and Unplugged specials that have come since. A must-see for music fans who value history.
12. Depeche Mode 101 (directed by David Dawkins, Chris Hegedus, D.A. Pennebaker) - If the Pulp film above captures a band at the very height of their popularity and abilities, this one captures a band above and beyond all of that. Depeche Mode 101 is both a documentary and a concert film. It shows the backstage realities of the touring music business, and for that it’s interesting. But it also features the entire last concert of the Music for the Masses tour at the sold-out Rose Bowl in front of more than 80,000 people. Which, it just so happens, was one of the great concerts ever. Except for (or because of) those white jeans…
11. New Order: 316 (directed by David Barnard) - watching New Order perform at the Ukrainian National Home in New York City in 1981 is breathtaking. Here is one of the great bands of all time, that would later play to sold out arenas around the world, literally discovering who they are as a band right there on stage in a venue like any small club across the US. The beginning of the show sees Bernard Sumner performing with the moody intensity of the band’s previous lead singer (the recently departed Ian Curtis) and by the end he’s forging the future of New Order with a new sound and song (”Temptation”) that’s barely even got any lyrics yet. Amazing.
10. Monterey Pop (directed by D.A. Pennebaker) - this film documents the legendary Monterey Pop Festival of 1967 that featured Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin), Jefferson Airplane, Hugh Masekela, Otis Redding, Ravi Shankar, The Mamas & The Papas, The Who (who rightfully demolish their instruments at the end of “My Generation”), and Jimi Hendrix, who famously set his guitar on fire during “Wild Thing”. This last occurrence alone would place the film high on most lists of great concert films, but it’s Otis Redding who truly mesmerizes with his performances of “Shake” and “I’ve Been Loving You Too Long”.
9. Wattstax (directed by Mel Stuart) - once called the “black Woodstock”, Wattstax was actually so much more than that. Held in the Los Angeles Coliseum in front of more than 100,000 people, the event was socio-politically charged in a way that Woodstock never was. It was a chance for African Americans to assert that, in opening speaker Jesse Jackson’s words, “I am somebody”, it was about charging $1 for tickets so that anyone who wanted to be there could be, and it was, at least for a few minutes, about the audience coming down onto the field at Rufus Thomas’s request to do the funky chicken. Very plainly, Wattstax was, as Richard Pryor stated, “a soulful expression of the black experience.”
8. Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll (directed by Taylor Hackford) - equal parts documentary and concert film, Hail! Hail! Rock and Roll centers on one single event (Chuck Berry’s 60th birthday party/concert in his hometown of St. Louis) and one singular personality: Chuck Berry, the father of rock and roll. Backstage the viewer gets to see Berry in all of his imperfect glory… a cheapskate with absurd demands and unpredictable behavior. On the stage Chuck is a superstar of the highest order, lording over a concert that includes guest spots from Keith Richards, Robert Cray, Eric Clapton, Etta James, Linda Ronstadt, and many many more. Hail hail rock and roll indeed.
7. Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (directed by Adrian Maben) - another film that captures a band at a very crucial moment in their career, Live at Pompeii sees Pink Floyd developing their post-Syd Barrett/pre-Darkside of the Moon identity by performing six songs in the ancient Roman amphitheatre in Pompeii, Italy. Without an audience. Just one of the best bands on the planet and the ghosts of history: a perfect concert.
6. The Beatles: Let It Be (directed by Michael Lindsay-Hogg) - the original goal of this film was to show the Beatles rehearsing and then performing a live concert, something they hadn’t done in years. However, as the band members played and recorded together during these sessions they began to drift apart and the Let It Be film inadvertently captures many of the dynamics leading up to the band’s break-up. At times, the tension is palpable. However, the reason the film ranks so high on this list is solely for the all-too-brief concert portion. The one, the only, rooftop performance.
5. Led Zeppelin (directed by Dick Carruthers) - note the intentional omission of the vastly overrated The Song Remains the Same film. Why? Well, for starters, there exists much better live footage of Zeppelin than that and it’s contained on the DVDs within this collection released in 2003 called, simply, Led Zeppelin. Here you’ll find concerts from each point of their career: a 1970 show at Royal Albert Hall, 1975 at Earl’s Court, and 1979 at Knebworth. The raw force of the band is undeniable, and never before have today’s music fans been able to so clearly see and hear just why the world fell so completely in love with Led Zeppelin.
4. The Last Waltz (directed by Martin Scorsese) - in many ways, The Last Waltz is the quintessential concert film. One that should be shown to film students to teach them how to shoot a concert with style and reverence. Here, Scorsese (friend and roommate of Robbie Robertson) captures The Band’s “last performance ever” in a manner that is equal parts historical document and artistic statement. Worth viewing for the guest performances and all-star jam session (featuring Van Morrison, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and more) if nothing else, this one’s a classic.
3. Woodstock: 3 Days of Peace & Music (directed by Michael Wadleigh) - Woodstock was, quite possibly, the most important concert of all time. At least in terms of the groundwork it laid for future music festivals, in terms of the roster of performers, and in terms of the cultural zeitgeist it embodied. It should then stand to reason that any filmed documentation of said concert would rank highly on a list of concert films, and Woodstock certainly does, no matter who is compiling the list. Where this film truly exceeds though is in the way that Wadleigh manages to put the viewer right there in the midst of it all… with the hippies and the drugs and the mud and the peace, love, and rock and roll. And, the “Star Spangled Banner”…
2. Urgh! A Music War (directed by Derek Burbidge) - speaking of “capturing the cultural zeitgeist”, Urgh! A Music War does just that some eleven years after Woodstock. What Woodstock was for its generation, Urgh! A Music War was for punk rock, New Wave, and post-punk. Here is a collection of artists and performances just as impressive as those from Woodstock, if not more so. Among those who are featured are The Go-Go’s, Joan Jett and the Blackhearts, XTC, Devo, Oingo Boingo, Dead Kennedys, Gary Numan, Klaus Nomi (view below), Wall of Voodoo, Pere Ubu, Steel Pulse, UB40, Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, Gang of Four, Echo and the Bunnymen, and The Police. It’s a time capsule that offers a look at one of the most important moments in rock history (one that still massively impacts the sound of bands today) and is easily the most underrated and criminally overlooked concert film of all time.
1. Stop Making Sense (directed by Jonathan Demme) - words can not do justice to the magnificence captured within the film Stop Making Sense. This is about music and image combining effortlessly in the form of a singular Talking Heads concert (or, three concerts cut together as one, as it were). Rather than force extreme closeups and quick cuts on the viewer, Jonathan Demme lets the band do all of the heavy lifting, never losing site of the fact that this film is about the band and the audience, not the director. In doing so he allows David Byrne and crew ample space to flex their artistic muscles and the results are extraordinary. There’s no loose jamming or happy mistakes here; rather, everything is so well choreographed and performed that it seems more musical performance art or theater of some kind than it does a film of a band playing a live show. It’s easily the greatest concert film ever made. And frankly, if you haven’t seen Stop Making Sense, you haven’t any idea just how powerful a concert can be. Watch it, own it, and then watch it again. There’s something new and amazing with each viewing.
Sister Suvi! Drink Up Buttercup! Sam Champion! Takka Takka! Consider the below a belated Christmas gift from us to your ears as you grapple with the post-holiday blues, a veritable smorgasbord of live audio from our killer CMJ day party this past October. We’ve got full sets from four of the six outstanding acts that graced the Pianos stage, so even if you couldn’t come celebrate with us the first time around, the following 26 MP3s should help make up for it.
Our hope is that listening to these together might help us return to a simpler time, when “Blagojevich” seemed like a curse word you might call a blogger and Mickey Rourke’s career resurrection appeared as likely as Steve Guttenburg’s. Special thanks to Nadim Issa for his help with the live audio….now enjoy and let the sweet sounds tide you over until we return to our regular editorial schedule next week. Happy holidays! Read more…
From Wikipedia…
Boxing Day is a public holiday in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand and Australia, as well as many other members of the Commonwealth of Nations and Greece. It is based on the tradition of giving gifts to the less fortunate members of society. Contemporary Boxing Day in Australia and Canada is a “shopping holiday” associated with after-Christmas sales. It is usually celebrated on 26 December, the day after Christmas Day…
Boxing Day dates back to the century in which the primary practice of giving gifts to employees or to people in a lower social class. The name has numerous folk etymologies[3].
Boxing Day is also likely related to, and ultimately derived from, the ancient Roman Saturnalia[4], which also had elements of social role reversal.A Christmas box is, in English tradition, a clay box used in artisan shops. Apprentices, masters, visitors, customers, and others would put donations of money into the box, like a piggy bank, and then, after Christmas, the box would be shattered and all the contents shared among the workers of the shop. Thus, masters and customers could donate bonuses to the workers anonymously, and the employees could average their wages. The habit of breaking the Christmas box lent its name to Boxing Day. The term “Christmas box” now refers generally to a gift or pay bonus given to workers.
The Oxford English Dictionary attributes it to the Christmas box; the verb box meaning: “To give a Christmas-box (colloq.); hence the term boxing-day.” The date coincides with the Feast of St. Stephen.
Naturally, we’ve got a mix.
Read more…
Notice the careful word choice here. We’re not so much cheerleading those songs that fall under the textbook definition of actual “singles”; rather, we prefer approaching this whole inexact science of “best-of-ology” with open minds and even more open (opener?) ears. Which is to say this: the following represents our favorite songs from 2008. Tops. Period. Fully subjective, fully filtered through our own personal tastes, and fully responsible for rocking EAR FARM’s world in 2008.
So let’s do this thing, shall we? Scroll down to view/listen to the full countdown of EAR FARM’s Top Songs Of 2008. There are two lists, 10 songs each. And just like last year, they’re RANKED. Let us know what we messed up on, what your own favorites are/were, and where our favorites cosmically overlap…. Read more…
“Mele KalikiMIXa is the thing to say…”
It’s the holiday season and EAR FARM has got another super swell Christmas mix for your listening pleasure. Last week we featured an indie-rock centric mix, this week it’s all about the Christmas classics. Whatever your faith, denomination, system of beliefs, or family tradition might be, we here at EAR FARM hope that each and every one of you have a very happy holiday season and we wish you all of the best in the new year. Happy holidays!
“Less Than You Think” by Wilco which clocks in at 15:06.
How stupid is this country of united states, really? How much does the average American know about, oh, anything? Less than you think…
At ten years of age, American children take an international test and score well above the international average (supposedly). However, by the time they are fifteen, when tested against students from forty other countries, the American children place twenty-fifth. Twenty-fifth! What’s that, the 62nd percentile? Fantastic.
According to IQ and Global Inequality, the US scores the lowest in national average IQ among the developed countries of the world (including Switzerland, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, North Korea and China), at a national average score of 98. For some perspective, that’s only the numerical value of the age of any given Drew Peterson wife away from Forrest Gump. But don’t expect most Americans to even know what IQ is meant to measure… an article from the New York Times about US ignorance towards science suggests the following:
American adults in general do not understand what molecules are (other than that they are really small). Fewer than a third can identify DNA as a key to heredity. Only about 10 percent know what radiation is. One adult American in five thinks the Sun revolves around the Earth, an idea science had abandoned by the 17th century.
It gets worse. In seeking the best candidate to run for the office of President of the United States, the Republican Party nominated three candidates who openly disagree with the science of evolution. Evolution! Heck, you can prove that in 30 seconds with a bucket of fruit flies and an 8th grade science teacher. This is to say nothing of the mentally devolved woman the party nominated to serve as Vice President in 2008, and all of her forays into the morbidly moronic. Sarah Palin gives the term brainless new depth. The idiocy of one terrible President (who was, of course, duly reelected by wise citizens to a second term after a blunder-filled first) begat the nomination of his female counterpart, Sarah Palin, who then proceeded to dumb herself down so thoroughly with each public appearance that her idiocy actually offended the voting public of America. That is what happened right? How else do you explain the majority of voters voting for a liberal African American candidate when so many Americans hate people because of their skin color? They don’t?? Oh then perhaps the following family (pictured above, snippet from HERE) is simply an anomaly…
A New Jersey family who named their child after Adolf Hitler is having problems getting a birthday cake made for their 3-year-old. Heath and Deborah Campbell said their local ShopRite supermarket in Greenwich Township, N.J., refused to personalize a cake for their son, Adolf Hitler Campbell.
“We believe the request … to inscribe a birthday wish to Adolf Hitler is inappropriate,” Karen Meleta, a ShopRite spokeswoman, told the Express-Times.
Barry Morrison of the Anti-Defamation League agreed with ShopRite’s decision. “Might as well put a sign around their [the children's] neck that says bigot, racist, hatemonger,”Morrison said. “What’s the difference?”
The Campbells say they don’t understand what the big deal is. “ShopRite can’t even make a cake for a 3-year-old,” mother Deborah Campbell said.”That’s sad.”
The couple’s other two children are named JoyceLynn Aryan Nation Campbell and Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell.
I’m not saying that the majority of Americans are like this, at all, but these very ones, who do exist, have procreated. And that is a frightening proposition. Let’s recap: there is at least one three year old American whose first and middle names are Adolf Hitler and his family “doesn’t understand what the big deal is”. Right. They don’t get it? Shocking. Also not surprising: that the place which ultimately would fulfill their request turned out to be Wal-Mart and that these same parents-of-the-year misspelled one of their daughter’s many middle names in naming her Honszlynn Hinler Jeannie Campbell (obviously, within the context of this family, ‘Hinler’ was meant to have two m’s rather than an n). But WAIT! It gets even worse…
According to a study done by Jerold Jenkins: 1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives, 42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college, and 80 percent of US families did not buy or read a book last year. Perhaps this lack of reading explains why so many Americans can not locate their own country on a map of…their own country?!
From HERE:
According to a Gallup/Harris poll released Monday, a full 37 percent of American citizens are incapable of identifying their home country on a map of the United States.Of the 1,400 residents surveyed, the most common incorrect responses placed the more than 230-year-old territory in the Atlantic or Pacific Oceans (19 percent), the space where Mexico would appear were it in fact included on the map (10 percent), and inside the word “America” written just above the northernmost states (6 percent).
“On the whole, these figures should be construed as somewhat disappointing,” Gallup spokesman Keith Ventner said. “Especially the two percent that believed the United States was located on the map’s color-coded inset legend. I think we as a nation likely could have done without seeing that.”
The article continues in Onion-esque fashion, slamming the intelligence of Americans at every turn with humorous “facts”. No comical statistic quite reaches, however, the insult at the top of the article - written in clear italics for all to see…
Editor’s note: This post is a satire.
Right. Because without such a disclaimer, the average idiot reading the Huffington Post thinks so poorly of his/her fellow Americans that they actually might believe such an outlandish statistic without being told that what they’re reading is, in fact, not a fact. Imbecilic intelligence abounds. And yet, it gets even worse by the minute. Every short-sighted dollar spent bailing out corporations rather than repairing the failed educational system of the United States is like opening up a savings account at someplace really ridiculously unwise (like, Foxwoods) rather than in a proper bank (such as Washington Mutual… pardon the aside, but here’s my belated ad slogan suggestion for them: “WaMu is Safe4u!”). At a time of financial uncertainty such as we’re experiencing right now, finding sound long-term investments is the wisest thing any of us can hope to do. Not that any of us are wise, but spending money on the education of the children of this nation is an investment of unparalleled wisdom and well-documented urgency. Somebody has to teach young Adolf how seriously embarrassed of his given name he should be. The time is now, don’t you think? Do you think…?
How much, would you say, does the average American think, about anything? Less than you think.
*above image found HERE.
Buy A Ghost is Born HERE.
EAR FARM’s 8+ is a weekly feature that showcases songs longer than 8 minutes. Click HERE to see the songs recently featured in EF’s 8+.
The following is part two in a two part article. Part one was published last week and can be accessed HERE.
There have always been frivolous and stupid songs, but the issue here is different. When it is unimportant to have lyrical continuity that spans more than thirty seconds of a given song, what results are songs about nothing, stuffed with non-sequiturs and nonsense phrases played off as slang. This tendency has been ably mocked before in its worst offenders—consider Alanis Morissette’s cover of “My Humps” or this spoken-word rendition of “Buy U a Drank”—but such lyrical lassitude now seems to be par for the course. Here’s the first half of Flo Rida’s (above) “In the Ayer,” an aggressively average single that has been high on both the Billboard Hot 100 and Hot Ringtone charts for months:
[Chorus: Will.I.Am ][X2]
Oh hot damn, this is my jam
Keep me partying till the A.M.
Y’all don’t understand, make me throw my hands
In the ayer, ay, ayer, ayer, ay, ayer.[Verse 1: Flo Rida ]
Hey this is my jam
Y’all don’t understand
I’ll make you understand
What’s pumpin’ in my CD player (player)
Party all night like yayer (yayer)
Shawty got a hand in the ayer (ayer)
Make me want to take it dayer
Then I go, here I go, here is my song
DJ bring it back, come in my zone
I get paid for them couple bones
The next wop until the early morn
I need that crunk when I’m up in the club
Even my when my Chevy pull up on them dubs
Give me that drop yellow waist like a drug
Li’l mama hot and she might show me love
Oh hot damn celebrate to the A.M.
I love it so much it got me sayin’[Chorus: Will.I.Am/Fergie ][X2]
The chorus is repeated twice before and after the first verse, and the verse itself is half lifted from the chorus and half meaningless phrases spit out of a generic party rap lyric generator in random order. Even the near-canonized Lil Wayne trades in suture and disjuncture—his rhymes are tied together by wordplay and flow but divorced from one another in any overarching narrative sense. Some think it works for Wayne, but most other rappers and singers simply have neither the inspiration nor the motivation to say anything coherent at all. Only that thirty-second lode really matters.
It was not thus always for chart-toppers. R. Kelly’s “Ignition” flitted along the conceit that women and cars share some surprising similarities, both anatomical and temperamental. Catullus he is not, but Kelly’s megahit is the sum of its parts rather than just a mess of parts. That was 2003. Same can be said of Nelly’s “Grillz,” which, glittering with long-distance puns (“more karats than a salad”), tropes on dental accoutrements about as poetically as possible. That was 2005.
Then, writing a single with the heart of a ringtone would have still seemed like a tail-wagging-the-dog scenario. Now, when artists have begun releasing albums of only ringtones and hundreds of ringtones have been certified platinum (one million downloads) by the RIAA, it seems like good business sense.
above: fellow auto-tune lovers T-Pain and Kanye West swear that their Hawaiian tiki idol brings them good luck and tons of ringtone sales (from HERE)
Despite T-Pain’s coming album release, he and his Auto-Tune will no doubt soon be abandoned by the faithless tastes of pop listeners. But as far as the ringtonification of pop music, the worst is yet to come. Enter ringback tones.
Mobile entertainment sources trumpet that by 2010, ringback tones will outsell ringtones. A ringback tone, if you’re behind the curve, is the sound that you hear on the other end of the line when you call someone else’s phone. Now, most lines usually just play a dialing sound until the receiver picks up. Ringback tones aim to replace that dialing sound with a song clip of the dialed party’s choice. So, like ringtones, ringback tones are thirty-second song bites (that is the length of time most phones ring before going to voicemail) of poor sound quality. Unlike ringtones, however, you, the caller, will have no choice but to listen to them if you wish to reach the person you’re calling.
How will this new phenomenon affect pop music production? Well, it will continue to promote the high registers and light sounds that weak speakers carry best. And it can only amp up the premium for catchy hooks, since ringback tones are unique in their ability to aurally bludgeon a captive audience. You can’t shuffle past the song or change the station. Musicians have thirty seconds of your undivided attention to lodge their songs in your cortex. The imperative of the thirty-second clip will only serve to promote the reigning chorus-dominated song structure as the most profitable one.
Ringback tones will also continue to drive demand for those tunes that speak for something deep and central to a person’s being, the types of songs people think emblematize them. Because I Got High” and “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” are two such demographic anthems that already rake in heaps of ringtone profits (though ringback tone users will want to be prudent in selecting what tunes will serenade their mothers and job interviewers on the other end of the line). Could the ringback tone usher in a new era of Bruce Springsteen and Twister Sister cash cows? Will you have to hear “Redneck Woman” every time you call Aunt Trudy?
There is some consensus that American pop music is a bit lost right now, and the typical corporate culprits are usually blamed. But with such huge new markets opening up for the distribution of insipid music, expect pop to get worse before it gets better.
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*front ringtone picture from HERE; above Flo Rida picture from HERE.
**you can view this entire article on a single page HERE.
EAR FARM’s Hit-or-miss is a weekly feature (every Tuesday) wherein the EF music library is put on shuffle, the song that plays is then searched (using the song title) on Google images and a resulting photo (plus an MP3 of the song) is posted.
Listen: “The Race Is On Again” by Yo La Tengo from I Am Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass
View: Image search results for The Race Is On Again - above image is from the 1st page of results (and was originally from HERE).
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You can see all of EAR FARM’s Hit-or-miss posts thus far right HERE.
Wikipedia defines an EP as “a vinyl record, CD, or music download which contains more music than a single, but is too short to qualify as an LP. Usually, an EP has around 10–28 minutes of music, a single has up to 10 minutes, and an album has 30–80 minutes.”
EPs are often the domain of little-known/unsigned bands, one-off projects, or filler meant to sate audiences between LP releases. Which is to say, EPs often aren’t the most essential listening you’re likely to find; however, we’ve heard more than a couple of great ones this year and would like to take a moment to share some of our favorites. Listed below, in alphabetical order by band name, you’ll find our selections for EAR FARM’s Top 8 EPs Of 2008.
- Animal Collective - Water Curses (MP3: “Water Curses”)
Water Curses falls into the ‘filler meant to sate audiences between LP releases’ category of EP existence, yet it still retains all of Animal Collective’s exuberant charm and doesn’t feel like a potboiler of any kind. It’s largely comprised of leftovers from the sessions that produced the band’s Strawberry Jam LP but offers enough in the way of something new and different to believe that herein lie hints as to where the band is headed on next year’s Merriweather Post Pavilion… It’s like listening to the sound a crooked smile might make as it expands upon the face of a friend. In other words: wicked. - Battle of Mice/Jesu - Split (MP3: “The Bishop” by Battle of Mice)
This EP, comprised of two songs each from two different heavy-hitting bands, was a long time coming (being released roughly a year after it was announced) but definitely worth the wait. On it, Jesu continues to devolve towards their lighter side (but in a surprisingly good way) while Battle of Mice deliver two of their strongest songs to date. One of the year’s most criminally overlooked releases. - Goes Cube - Not What We Thought (MP3: “Goes Cube Song 57″)
On what would end up being their final release with song titles that include their own sequential numbering system, Brooklyn’s Goes Cube shreds to new heights that find the vocals a touch more forward in the mix. This is not, however, at the expense of any of their viscerally imposing power. Listening to this EP is a bit like waking up from a deep sleep only to find that you’re in the middle of being pushed out of an airplane at 10,000ft. The experience at first shocks you, then terrifies you; but once you’ve pressed play, it’s already too late. Traveling from listless melancholia to full bore sledgehammer assault in the blink of an eye is what Goes Cube does best… this one’s full of precisely that kind of music. - Final Fantasy - Spectrum, 14th Century (MP3: “The Butcher”)
Owen Pallett released two EPs this year under his stage/band name Final Fantasy, the stronger of which is Spectrum, 14th Century. On this record he finally begins to live up to the immense potential displayed (but never fully realized) on He Poos Clouds. Where before he’d concentrate on a singular violin hook, now Pallett opens up his, er, palette to include an array of sounds and arrangements befitting an artist about to truly define his own vision. Perhaps that’s exactly what Final Fantasy is going to do on the next LP, perhaps that’s what’s already been done with Spectrum, 14th Century. However you look at it, a very fine release. - The Laughing - Jungle EP (MP3: “The Canopy”)
Named one of our Top Breakout Bands for ‘08/’09, Austin’s The Laughing captures the smiling mope of The Cure and mixes it with heavy doses of primal thunder and late-career Talking Heads jungle love. It’s equally sexy and weird, catchy and danceable. Think Clap Your Hands Say Yeah mixed with TV On The Radio. Or perhaps, if David Cronenberg’s The Fly were a band, it’d be The Laughing. Decide for yourself if that sounds like something you’d like. Chances are you’ll fall in love immediately. - Sean Bones - Easy Street (MP3: “Easy Street”)
Call it the accidental EP of the year. Initially intended as an aural companion to S/S Friends’ debut clothing line (fittingly, summer shorts), the four-song Easy Street eventually preened and strutted towards its own share of deserved attention….and not just from us. Turns out the folks at Frenchkiss Records also fell head over heels for Bones’ throwback to the thick analog haze and squawking organs of reggae’s sound system heyday, signing him on the strength of this EP and ensuring many endless summers to follow. A perfect marriage of the lovely hiss of tape reels and chalky, stuttering guitars, an upbeat ode to city living, loving, and chilling, or, as Bones himself puts it, “a weird and winning study of early reggae styles and recording techniques.” All so casual too. - Tanya Morgan - The Bridge (MP3: “The Bridge” (featuring Elucid))
2008 was an unquestionably slow year in the world of hip hop that left many wondering if there was a single release worth praising. Some have said Q-Tip’s The Renaissance was the top rap record of the year, most others find themselves caught up in the group think that favors Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter III. Yeah yeah yeah, wrong! In our opinion, the best straight up hip hop record of the year was Tanya Morgan’s EP The Bridge. It mixes lyrical aptitude with shake ya ass beats in a style akin to old school legends such as Eric B. & Rakim and/or A Tribe Called Quest. Word is this EP is simply a “bridge” between proper LPs, so be on the lookout for more from Tanya Morgan in the near future. Until then, jam on this. - Violens - V (MP3: “Violent Sensation Descends”)
Violens have already been pegged as an artist to watch out for next year by us and that’s largely due to the brilliance exhibited on this EP. It’s a brooding and nostalgic journey into urban psychedelia that should find many friends with fans of the sound The Rosebuds have been cultivating for years. Now, if they’d just find a way to incorporate some kind of psycho killer string section into the band’s live show I’d finally be able to do something with this phrase I’ve been keeping in my back pocket… “hold onto your Vaios! The violence incited by the violas and violins of Violens was, in a word, violent.” Shut up, you love it.
See also: EAR FARM’s Top Albums of 2008 & Top Breakout Bands for ‘08/’09.
“Do you hear what I hear? A song, a song, high above the tree…”
It’s the holiday season and EAR FARM has got another super swell Christmas mix for your listening pleasure. In fact, we’ve got TWO: an indie-rock centric one this week and some Christmas classics next week. Whatever your faith, denomination, system of beliefs, or family tradition might be, we here at EAR FARM hope that each and every one of you have a very happy holiday season and we wish you all of the best in the new year. Happy holidays!
“Put It Together” by Love As Laughter which clocks in at 8:16.
Let’s put it together. Let’s build a great song, shall we? All this talk of year-end lists and best of this and tops of that has put us in a reflective state, the kind where we just want to construct something from the ground up and call it our own.
We want to put something together, and we want you to come along for the journey. It doesn’t matter if your musical chops aren’t up to say, Mr. 320 BPM levels, or your creative juices have altogether dried up and left your mind grapes more like parched little raisins. We can do this, and the main reason why is right under your nose and at the tip of your fingers….we got internet! Read more…
Anyone watching the BET Awards in June may have noticed a suspicious coup in the “Best Collaboration” category. So-called singer T-Pain (above) appeared as a collaborator on four of the five nominated tracks. Perhaps alerted to this loading of the dice, BET left T-Pain’s name off the long list of collaborators on DJ Khaled’s “I’m So Hood (The Remix)” on its BET Awards page.
But collaborate he did, for his presence has been ubiquitous on the pop charts this past year, a beneficiary of the pop production strategy of discovering a gimmick and then saturating the airwaves with it. Lil Jon’s outboard-motor growl was omnipresent in the same way in 2004. He seemed to pop up in half of that year’s hip-hop and R&B songs like an unwanted birthday clown.
But Lil Jon’s vocal splash did not make as great a ripple. His guttural yelp could not be replicated by many others. The robot-voice effect achieved by T-Pain, on the other hand, is mechanical, created with a pitch distortion device called Auto-Tune. The trick has since been co-opted by Kanye West (for his part in Young Jeezy’s “Put On”) and that other promiscuous collaborator Lil Wayne (whose brittle patter is rendered completely unintelligible by the Auto-Tune on the new T-Pain single “Can’t Believe It”), among many others.
I don’t like the Auto-Tune on its own merits. Suffusing a voice with technology and polish, it turns a singer into a sound effect. T-Pain, who just dropped a new album, brings little vocal personality to any song, which perhaps explains why he always overstates his visual presence attired as a magician pimp drum major. On his website, T-Pain absurdly classifies himself as a soul singer, where he could more accurately be described as a man yodeling lyrics about strippers through a tracheotomy tube. His 2007 single “Buy U a Drank” is to soul what Huey Lewis’s “The Heart of Rock n’ Roll” was to rock and roll. Never mind that T-Pain can’t sing without the Auto-Tune and anyone can sound like him with it.
What I really don’t like about T-Pain and his Auto-Tune, however, are that they epitomize a new kind of pop song, designed not for radio or iPod play, but for the twee, jangly speakers of a cell phone.
above: Melodyne auto-tune plug in for Cubase (from HERE)
Auto-Tuned vocals sound great in ringtone form—high-pitched, tinny, thin, and artificially inflected. That the climbing popularity of ringtones would influence the pop charts was inevitable, of course. The tide that only a few years ago allowed cell phones to mimic radios has begun to wash back. Now, ironically, at a time when sound technology has never been better, much of pop music is being laid out on the Procrustean bed of shrill, weak, handheld speakers. This year’s Top 40 fare was light on sonorous bass beats and drop-tuned guitars, since low, weighty sounds are flattened in ringtones anyway. Instead we had zippy, reedy synthesizers and the snigger of hi-hat cymbals. Missing also, at least among new artists, were the fluttering melismas of the likes of Beyonce and Mariah Carey, since no cell phone on the market yet can project that kind of vocal fullness. Rihanna and Katy Perry just don’t work the octaves the same way, and they don’t need to.
But the constraints of cell speaker timbre are only the most obvious limiting factor in pop songwriting, and also the least consequential. After all, the quality of cell phone speakers may improve.
A look back at many of the high-charting singles of the past year or so reveals a spate of songs that actually sound like phones. Some have instrumentals that mimic the polyphonic ringtones of distant 2005. Consider, for example, the boops and beeps marching up and down in Lil Wayne’s “Lollipop” or Three 6 Mafia’s “Lolli Lolli (Pop That Body).” Other hits seem to mirror the ring-ring echo of truly old-school phones with hooks (discrete, catchy musical phrases) consisting of short, cascading insistences. Here consider Natasha Bedingfield’s “Pocketful of Sunshine” (“Take me away!/ take me away!/ take me away!/ take me away!”), Chris Brown’s “Kiss Kiss,” (“Lovin’ lovin’/ lovin’ lovin’/ kiss kiss/ kiss kiss.”), or, most recently, Ne-Yo’s “Closer” (Come closer/ come closer/ come closer/ come closer… I just can’t stop/ I just can’t stop/ I just can’t stop/ I just can’t stop.”). Nearly all these ringtone-friendly songs are partitioned so that there are as many hooks as possible in each chorus, which creates more break points at which a listener can cut off the tone and answer her call. This placates the same impulse that makes you idle your car for a moment and wait for a song on the radio to play out a phrase before you turn off the ignition. Something strikes me as sinisterly Pavlovian about all this. When I hear these songs, my brain looks for a phone to pick up.
above: Ne-Yo hears a familiar ringtone, attempts to get closer (from HERE)
The trend is more annoying than alarming, though. It’s a shame to see how ringtones have effectively dumped unusual time signatures, discordances, and other nuanced or challenging sound textures out of the pop toolbox. But what really deserves doomsaying is the way ringtones have straitjacketed pop singles into a structure that privileges chorus over verse and catchiness over content.
In a very unscientific study, I timed the choruses of twelve R&B songs that received heavy radio and ringtone rotation this year. They fell between twenty-five and thirty-two seconds, with twenty-nine being the median. The chorus is usually the part of the song excerpted for a ringtone, and, as it happens, the typical ringtone chirps for about thirty seconds. The popularization of ringtones is encouraging songwriters to work in the thirty-second medium of the ringtone rather than that of the two-to-four minute radio single.
While the medium may not be the message—no one’s wondering why there are so many songs about Verizon—it certainly clips its wings. More and more singles, especially in rap and R&B, are being structured to showcase chorus and hook riffs, while sloppy and nondescript verses merely buttress them. The verse portions of many songs are neglected because they have become filler: all a single needs to push sales and downloads is a catchy thirty-second clip that can be easily pinched from the rest of the song and dropped into the pockets of fourteen-year-olds. The ultimate victim is the quality of lyrics. Since chorus lyrics, even in the best of pop songs, are often kept simple and repetitive and verse lyrics no longer matter as much, there is little incentive for producers to work with creative songwriters.
To be continued next week…
*front ringtone picture from HERE; T-Pain with elephant picture from HERE.
Listen: “A Song For Ellie Greenwich” by Parenthetical Girls from Entanglements
View: Image search results for A Song For Ellie Greenwich - above image is from the 1st page of results (and was originally from HERE).
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EAR FARM’s Hit-or-miss is a weekly feature (every Tuesday) wherein the EF music library is put on shuffle, the song that plays is then searched (using the song title) on Google images and a resulting photo (plus an MP3 of the song) is posted. You can see all of EAR FARM’s Hit-or-miss posts thus far right HERE.
There are disco bands, rap bands, Yiddish folk song bands in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but not Kiss. I believe we have more gold records in America than any other group, but it’s OK[…]A lot of those guys on the (HoF) board can go and get my sandwich when I want, and I mean that in the nicest way…
As you may be able to tell, Kiss’s denial from the pearly gates of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is not sitting well with the longest tongue in rock, Gene Simmons. And why should it? At last count, Kiss has sold well over 85 million albums worldwide, racked up 24 gold albums and inspired cultish devotion from a generation of Dungeon Masters – see Rivers Cuomo and Chuck Klosterman – and jocks alike. Like it or not, Kiss’s ethos of pyrotechnic groin lunges and bombastic excess IS rock and roll.
So why no love from the Hall? It’s certainly not based on some technicality. In fact, the beauty of the eligibility process lies in its simplicity. So long as the act has released their first single or album at least 25 years before the year of their nomination, it’s all good (Kiss’s first release came in 1974). Instead, all signs point to the curmudgeonly gatekeeper of this rock and roll boys club as the one responsible for the band’s exclusion, a certain Rolling Stone founder and chair of the Hall of Fame foundation named….you guessed it, Jann Wenner.
Critics have harped on Wenner’s sizable influence on the nomination process for years now, charging that he often picks personal favorites over more deserving candidates. But despite his tendency to play fast and loose with his authority, Wenner has done a pretty good job overall at choosing artists (see the full list of inductees HERE).
Of course, that doesn’t mean there’s no room for improvement, and all this talk of snubs and who really “deserves” to be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame got us thinking about some other artists whose tenure in Cleveland’s ivory tower is about due. With this year’s induction ceremony about five months away – and a list of nominations that include Jeff Beck, Chick, Wanda Jackson, Little Anthony & The Imperials, Metallica, Run-DMC, The Stooges, War, and Bobby Womack (but no Kiss) – we set our sights on next year and ranked the top 20 performers, non-performers and early influences we feel should receive one of the top honors in rock. Read more…
Look out! It’s a Grammy High School Dance Party!
As you no doubt know by now, Grammy nominations were announced Wednesday evening and….the surprising thing is….they did a pretty commendable job spreading the love this year. Go Grammy! Mixtape #36 represents a fairly wide spectrum of nominated artists in categories ranging from dance and electronic to hip hop and metal and back to some good old rrrrock. The result approximates the most kickass 2008 high school dance soundtrack, like, ever. Check out the full list of nominations HERE, check out the mix below: Read more…
