Jamaican Music

by tim Posted on April 4, 2013

Jamaican music has always been heavily influenced by all sorts of stuff.  At least it used always to be.

The original Dynamite compilations on Soul Jazz are some kinds of reggae/ska predominantly, but all sorts of music push through. One of the great revelations of those records is how diverse they are.

It also seems to me that Jamaican musicians in general have been highly conscious of their commercial viability. Which killed Jamaican music in the end.

Maybe I’m talking out my ass, but that’s how I read it.

When Jamaica’s musicians were alone and on their own, they just did whatever sold to people in the dance halls.  Captive audience, willing to embrace a pretty wide variety of music. Anything that survived that period, early 60s thru early 70s, has a real, real high likelihood of being good.

The process of reggae hitting the mainstream started about when Clapton covered I Shot the Sheriff and was complete by the time Peter Tosh signed to the Stones’ record label.

By that point, a lot of Jamaican musicians were just doing whatever reggaeish bullshit they thought would sell to this new, much larger audience.

An inevitably less discerning audience.  All larger audiences are so.

An impressive, vital last gasp in the 70s/early 80s.  Some of which is noted below.

But as an awesome, widespread thing happening in real time, Jamaica was fucking over.  Reggae in particular died a death more absolute than just about any other kind of music.

Perhaps there have been great Jamaican records made in the last twenty years.  Anyone?  Please tell me I’m wrong.

I’ve been listening to Jamaican music for almost thirty years.  For the last nine years, I have listened to a ton of it.  Sometimes the same things over and over again.

Maybe you think you hate “reggae.”  Maybe you like it and don’t know where to go from wherever you are.

Maybe you know more than I do already.

I am not an expert.

But I know what I like, and I think anyone with any predisposition to liking any Jamaican music would like these records.

It is an idiosyncratic list, I guess.

I’m going to ignore most dub, because people talk about these things, and there are so many records.

I’m also going to ignore Bob Marley and LKJ, whom I love and are obvious, and people like Jimmy Cliff and Black Uhuru who made some super music and some not-so-super music.

With that understood, please buy these records, without hesitation:

The Congos – Heart of the Congos.  Whatever version you can find.  If you don’t like Heart of the Congos, stop there.

Augustus Pablo – Original Rockers. Or some of the other million ones, but this one is surefire for me.

100% Dynamite compilation.  On the Soul Jazz label.
200% Dynamite compilation.  On the Soul Jazz label.
500% Dynamite compilation.  On the Soul Jazz label.

NOT the Dancehall versions; the regular compilations that say “ska, soul, rocksteady, funk…” right on the front.  Those three Dynamite comps in particular are mindblowing.  As good as popular music gets.

Cedric Im Brooks & The Light of Saba – The Magical Light of Saba.  On the Honest Jon’s label.  Everyone should own this album.  My mom should own it.  Maybe I’ll give it to her for Xmas some year.

One of the Sound Dimension compilations on Soul Jazz.

Any of the Tighten Up compilations.

Keith Hudson – The Hudson Affair.  Brilliant distillation of Hudson’s remarkably dark vision.

If you get a couple of these and don’t like them, you should probably write off Jamaica.

Until then…do not!

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Some Thoughts: Jason Molina/Magnolia Electric Co.

by tim Posted on March 19, 2013

Magnolia Electric Co. was at Electrical Audio when they found out Michael Dahlquist was dead.

Bottomless Pit was at Electrical Audio when we found out Jason Molina was dead.

Our first trips out east/west were due 100% to Mags taking us along for the ride.

They wanted someone to do about a month of shows all told.

“Uh…how about if we cherry-pick the best three or four shows on each coast, and you pay us like we’re bringing an extra 100 people in, instead of the 30 we really know we’re doing?”

They went for it.

Our group’s collective wounds were still fresh in the wake of Michael’s death. We were still finding our sea legs, to say the least. It hurt to play.

We took to all of those guys instantly. They made us feel completely welcome and at home. It was a very soft landing and a great way to get moving. I would have loved to have done more shows with them.

JMo was a hugely enthusiastic, lovable man. He was an unreconstructed weirdo. He was hilarious. Even when he was being a cranky bitch he was pretty funny. I saw him too drunk a couple of times. It was uncomfortable, and I know I didn’t see him at his worst.

If that phone call had been “Molina is in town and not uncomfortably drunk” instead of “Molina is dead,” we would have dropped everything and spent yesterday evening hanging out. We would have rather done that than made a record.

JMo slept, sweat, and bled music. I would call his obsession with his art pathological, but he had genuine pathologies and now is not the time to be glib.

He was a great writer. He was a great singer.

He didn’t know when to quit in either art or life. Couldn’t quit, more like it. But I’m not so sure music didn’t rescue him and keep him afloat longer than he would have been without it.

I’ve missed him for a while, now with the unmistakeable extra knife-twist of finality.

Be good to each other. You never know, for better or worse, you never know.

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Requiescat: Jason Molina

by tim Posted on March 18, 2013

I feel I knew Jason Molina well, though we didn’t spend an inordinate amount of time together.  Honestly, I don’t think he was that complicated.

He seemed guileless.  He came by his assets and afflictions honestly and wore them like a coat.  He had a pure artistic impulse.

As far as his problems are concerned, we all know people who walk this road.

It splits.  You can quit, or you can die.

By the time you get to the fork, you don’t always have control over which way you go.

A lot of us tried to help him navigate.  And he tried.  But he didn’t get around the corner.

I liked him a lot.  He was funny and generous and brutally smart.  He was enthusiastic.

He sang like a fucking bird.

Requiescat, JMo.

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Death of an Acquaintance #1

by tim Posted on March 11, 2013

Hard to explain how it sucks.  Less obvious than it is when you lose someone to whom you’re real close.

You don’t want to overdo it.

A co-worker I really liked died suddenly several years ago.

He was a funny old guy who did circuit layout. He was all crippled up from some bullshit that happened. License plate on his car was GIMP.

He would get hilariously angry at anyone who did anything stupid and impeded his progress on his layout. Really good swearer, inventive, almost lyrical.

I was pretty efficient and laughed at everything he did, so we got along great.

He would say various crude things about the (few) attractive young women in the office. Terrible things, I suppose. But it was just him and me, and implicit (sometimes explicit) was the fact that he was this gimpy old man and these women with their tits and asses and so forth had ultimate power over him. Plus he was really really funny.

We often had to go to the large-format copier to get printouts. On one occasion, a young woman was there waiting for her copies. She happened to be deaf as well as fairly voluptuous.

No one else is around, we’re like two feet away from her, waiting for the copier.

This guy nudged me with his cane and nodded at her ass, the existence of which wasn’t news to me.

“I CAN SEE HER PANTY LINES.” Really, really loud.

I looked at him, stunned.  “Mike, what….”

He shrugged. “Ahhhhhh, she can’t hear us.” Somehow in this tone of voice that made him not a dick. Like he was a little sad she didn’t know he was appreciating her in his way. I laughed and laughed later, when I had the space to do it.

Anyway, he was leaving his kids’ house, slipped on the porch, fell down the stairs. Bonked his head, poof. Out like a light, never came back. Died a few hours later.

So going to work got a little shittier. I meant to write to his wife, then too much time passed and it would have been weird to do it. Plus I would have had to leave out a lot of stuff.

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Las Vegas

by tim Posted on February 27, 2013

The first time I was there as an adult was 2006, I think.

I walked onto the floor of the Wynn. Everything was gold. Bright without being glaring somehow.  Expertly lit to keep you awake.

No clocks. The persistent jingle-jangle of special casino music, meant to echo the sound of coins in the slots, which stretched as far as one could see. Beyond that, mirrors to create an illusion of neverending abundant greed…and pilferage, if you peered into them long enough.

I thought of the time we stopped at a Starbucks on tour and walked in the front door. We had to pass through a line of a dozen idling SUVs, queued for the drive-up window.

Those two images should be in the history books when they write the chapter on the decline of American civilization.

It’s a horrible place. I can enjoy it for exactly 36hrs. At which point I get to the airport as quickly as possible. No matter when my flight is.  I’m trying to get on the next plane out.

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Life Coach

by tim Posted on November 17, 2012

We had a man at a work event once, at my old job, do a number on all of us. He was a life coach. His name was Shore Beach or something like that. Seriously, it might have been Shore Beach. Shore Leave. Shore Stone. Stony Beach. Something.

Anyway, his rap was about taking care of yourself and grabbing the brass ring of life.  Positive thinking. Carpe diem. Just do it.  Maximize, in general: that was the suggestion.  Anti-antidepressants, explicitly, which seemed a little weird and presumptuous and actually kind of…offensive. But people say lots of things when they are talking 100% out of their asses.

Then we broke boards. They were pine, and you held them up for your fellow board-breaker with one hand on either side, with the grain vertical.  One guy accidentally broke his board just goofing around with it. They were pretty easy to break, unless you held them up the wrong way.  At least one guy got hurt due to poor board-holding technique.  He wasn’t in the greatest physical condition, but his board wasn’t going to break itself.  He kept at it until it broke.

It was one of the top half-dozen dumbest things I have done in my life. Not quite as dumb as the compulsory flash mob or having to wear camouflage to work, but pretty dumb.

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Tour Tale #2

by tim Posted on November 15, 2012

Silkworm had just started a tour.  We had played in Missoula, first show.  Stayed over with our folks there.  Left early next day to pull an all-nighter to Columbia, Missouri.

Had a show in Columbia, after which we were to play a half dozen shows with Shellac out East.

Stopped in Livingston on our way and ate another great lunch at the Myers Ranch, which was Michael’s grandmother’s farm.  Incredible, straight-off-the-cow hamburgers.

Dinked around the farm for a bit.  When you’ve got to drive 1500mi by the following evening, there’s no good way to divide it up.  Leave at noon, leave at 5PM.  It makes no difference.  Plus this way we would have ended up in Kansas City around lunchtime.  Ideal.

Decided to go through Nebraska, since we didn’t make it through there much.  Which meant dropping straight down through the heart of Wyoming.  We left Livingston.  It was 65 degrees and sunny.  It was also late March.

We were on a semi-voluntary jag of either Achtung Baby or Zooropa in the van.  More often than not, we wouldn’t play anything in the van.  You get enough music when you’re on tour.  But one of those albums got played over and over again, because it was stuck in the tape deck and we couldn’t get it out.

Sun went down.  Had been getting chillier, and now it got colder more quickly.  The van was heated, but not too warm, in the interests of staying alert. 

I saw the faint outlines of snow snakes form on the road in front of me.  Signs on the side of the road suggested we “tune to AM 760 for weather info,” but the U2 tape was stuck, and the radio was therefore unusable.

Ssssssst.  I felt the back wheels give a little bit.  The road looked clear.  It wasn’t.  Quite slick.  I tapped the brakes and felt the van wriggle to regain traction.  I cut our speed from 65mph to 50mph.

Fog descended to ground level, slow but persistent.  More fog.  More fog.  Visibility cut.  40mph.  Well after midnight.  Roads worse if anything.  It started to dawn on me that we were going to have to bail on Columbia.

Right shoulder, 1/4mi away, taillights poked through the fog.

Left shoulder, same distance, headlights poke through the fog.  Someone has spun out or slid over from the other lanes.  Someone else has pulled over to help him.  I lifted my foot off the accelerator.

The fog parted.  Center of the road, “UPS” and “UPS.”  Two big brown shields, one on each trailer of a double-length tractor-trailer rig.  The headlights on the left, the taillights on the right.  Rig stretched from one shoulder to the other.

We were maybe 1/8mi away.  I hit the brakes.  Antilock went shugga-shugga-shugga.

Van did not slow down.  At all.  The road is a rink.

To my left was the median and a gnarly V-shaped ditch.  Everyone else in the van was lying down asleep, except Michael in the passenger seat.  Sideways would be bad.

Trailer was softer than the cab, but it was 2 1/2 or 3 feet off the ground.  No telling what would have happened if the hood peeled up into the windshield.

I kept the van straight to take the blow to the front.  Aimed square at the tractor’s front edge to stop us without a slide.

We hit the corner of the cab dead-on, 30mph, maybe slightly less.  Radiator went poosh.  Three-foot geyser of antifreeze.

Sleeping passengers fell off their seats.  Joel flew out of the loft onto Andy.  Andy flew off a seat onto Vick, who was on the floor.  I bashed my knee on the dash.  The truck cab corner had cleaved a neat, deep V into the front of the van, stopping at the engine.

Quick inventory.  No casualties.  We got out of the van.  The road had an inch of solid ice on it.

A trooper was there.  Yards away, just behind the semi, in the process of closing down the freeway.  He had only just gotten to this jackknifed truck.  A woman had run her SUV off the road a half-mile farther south, killing her child in the process.

Tow truck and ambulance got us to Cheyenne, a few miles south.  We ended up at a Ramada.  Made a call, and my father-in-law and a friend of his drove 800mi from Missoula to fetch us and all our stuff the next day.

Then we drove 800mi back.  I was driving when we hit a snowstorm on the legendarily shitty Homestake Pass outside of Butte.  Complete whiteout.  White-knuckled it over and on to Missoula.

Michael took the Greyhound from Missoula to Seattle and borrowed a van from our friend in Engine Kid.  1000mi round-trip. 

We drove 1700mi from Missoula to Kalamazoo and played the last of our six shows with Shellac and a show in Chicago.

And then we drove to Minnesota to make the Libertine record in 3.5 days.

And then we drove Steve back to Chicago.

And then we drove 2000mi from Chicago to Seattle.

Nine weeks later, I flew to Denver, rode the Greyhound up to Cheyenne, and got the van back from Cowboy Dodge in Cheyenne.  State Farm had the shop fix half of it before they realized it should have been totaled, so they went ahead and finished the repair.

I drove it straight 1200-some miles back to Seattle.  A few weeks later, we went back on the road.

8yrs later, I sold the van with 250-some thousand miles on it, after we moved to Chicago.  I still see it on the street every now and then.  White van with blue panels, Shellac sticker on the back window, where Bob put it.

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Neil Young #1

by tim Posted on October 12, 2012

We had nosebleed seats at the United Center.

Los Lobos started and sounded like soup. Not surprising, three guitars and an organ will do that. But I realized it wasn’t where I wanted to be.

I told V we should go to the floor. The security guys were young. I looked the first guy in the eye as we passed and brushed past the second usher from the side. I pretended I didn’t feel him try to grab me, and my wife acted like she was trying to catch up. We don’t usually do things like that.

Los Lobos was good. Great bar band, in an arena. It’s fun to watch David Hildalgo play guitar.

Crazy Horse was…I don’t know, “good” doesn’t cut it.

That stuff is embedded in me. So much of my own feelings and thoughts are in that music.

It should be odd to have such a visceral connection to what someone else does.

It’s like being bathed by someone who loves you. How isn’t that awkward? It just isn’t.

You don’t parse a bath, but the last run of four songs was amazing, catalog sounding new. But the best things were Ramada Inn and Walk Like a Giant, literally new. The chorus of Ramada Inn has been on a loop in my head since I woke up.

In addition to being moved, to feeling there was just an awful lot being GOT, I had a whirligig of thoughts in my head. “Oh shit, they still totally have it. It is all there. Why am I about to cry? He’s fucking getting old. But he’s a different person when he’s up there. Maybe he can just stay up there forever.”

That’s what Bob Dylan’s trying to do. It won’t work. But oh I get it, I get it 100%.

I hope the guy never dies. I know he will. That might be the last time I see them. I want to follow them around the country right now.

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Knowing when to start #1

by tim Posted on September 1, 2012

When I was a kid, the Missoula County Library had a Bookmobile that puttered around town all summer. There was a summer reading contest, and you got Dairy Queen stuff depending on how many books you read.

The girl who won the whole thing was named Bronwyn Smith. Pretty incredible name. She won the whole thing, and she got a MEDIUM SUNDAE. You can get WHATEVER YOU WANT, and you get a medium anything?

I was eleven. I would go to the Bookmobile to get sports books. I was really into sports.

My favorite teams were the Sixers and the Raiders. I got some crappy bio of Dr J.  Someone actually wrote a book about the 70s Raiders teams. Not that they didn’t deserve it, with Ken Stabler and Fred Biletnikoff and Dave Casper and Cliff Branch and Ray Guy in there. Someone wrote it, the Bookmobile had it on a shelf, and I read it.

I would read the Pro Basketball Handbook for the year cover to cover. Jack Sikma was 6’11”. George Gervin was 6’7″, as was Wes Unseld, who outweighed him by 65lbs. Stuff like that.  It’s all still in there someplace.

One day, I went in there, climbed in that weird old green van, and the regular old librarian lady wasn’t around. In her place was this willowy, super duper cute girl, maybe 25 I guess, slender and very pretty.

It made me feel funny to look at her. At this moment, it makes me feel funny to think about how funny it made me feel.

Pale, clear skin with a few freckles. Fine features, no makeup. Long, straight, dark brown 70’s hair pulled back in a ponytail. Green eyes, black rimmed glasses. Could not give a fuck about the Bookmobile—thrilling. Even I could tell she didn’t have a bra on. Black t-shirt with Cheap Trick Cheap Trick Cheap Trick Cheap Trick typed down the front of it.

People don’t realize what they do to other people sometimes. How you can imprint on someone.  Like a bomb drop.

THIS WAS COOL.

One of those moments. A lot changed.  

Nerding on sports vanished. I had always liked girls, but clearly I was missing something. I had always liked music, but I didn’t have any Cheap Trick records.

I got All Shook Up a little over a year later.  That record had a big impact on me, in that it was such a disappointment. It made me realize that every record a band puts out is super fucking important, because you only get to make so many of them and your name is on every one of the sons of bitches FOREVER.

That said, I have seen Cheap Trick play Just Got Back live, at a Harley dealership in Orlando. It was awesome.

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Ago

by tim Posted on September 1, 2012

A few years ago, my friend Agostino sets up a music festival in his hometown of Catania, Sicily.

Friends of ours are down there, having fun, eating magnificently, as if it can be avoided in Sicily. But otherwise just sitting around waiting to play for the most part.

Day of festival gets close. Weather kind of shitty. Like it seems like it’s pretty much going to storm day of show.

One of our friends is all like Ago, what are the contingency plans? Ago said there weren’t any. He asked if they had an indoor option. Ago said no.

Our friend starts to get kind of agitated. His group has come all the way down there to play, just this one thing pretty much.

Ago looks at him and says, hey, it doesn’t have to rain.

And it didn’t rain, and everything was awesome.

Another decent story about Ago, somehow along these lines:

Five of us fly into Catania.  My pal Matt, his girlfriend Claire (now wife), me and my wife and our kid. We mean to be there ten days. All our luggage, stroller and the baby stuff you need with an 18mo-old.

Ago was there to pick us up. In a little Fiat hatchback. Very small car, in which you could kind of clown-fit five adults if they weren’t uncomfortable with being truly uncomfortable.

Ha ha. This is stupid. No chance we’re getting everything in there.

Ago lights a cigarette and sticks it in his mouth. Opens up the hatch, cigarette dangling, starts coaxing luggage towards the back of the car. Very casual process, barely even moving. How was your trip? Etc. etc.

We’re like shit we’re going to be here all day, and then we’re going to have to get a cab, and it’s Catania and that will take hours b/c everyone moves so goddamn slow when they’re not on Vespas. Plus we’re tired and hot and smell bad and oh my God we’re going to be here ALL DAY.

He’s talking, picking up luggage, absentmindedly pushing it toward the hatch. Not even into the car, really.  The car is fucking full, and still he puts luggage up against the pile of luggage, massages it, kneads it like dough kind of.  Like a sculptor or an obstetrician working on a hopeless breech. We continue to make small talk, but we are getting kind of antsy because WTF this is so obviously a losing proposition.

Mid-sentence, he just reaches up and…shuts the hatch. Which closes. Matt and I looked at each other in astonishment. Everything fit. He wasn’t even thinking about what he was doing, and he somehow stuffed all that crap into that car, when it looked like there was no possible way to do it.

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