So here we are again, more than a day late and way more than a dollar short. Why do I even put "Tuesday" in the title? I DID record this song on Tuesday, so there's that, at least. Without further ado, this week's tune:
"Ariel Ramirez" - Richard Buckner
I have to admit, I didn't really know a whole lot about Richard Buckner other than this song before doin' a little research for the post. His was a name that was always on my periphery, being mentioned in the same breath with other darkly impressionistic southern-gothic folk singers as the late, great Townes Van Zandt, Guy Clark, & Jimmie Dale Gilmore, to Jay Farrar in his creakier, more experimental moments to Sparklehorse' Mark Linkous. I'd gotten a hold of several of his tunes, but the one that always stood out was "Ariel Ramirez". A short two-minute stagger through melancholy and regret, it's spare instrumentation and lyrics-that-talk-about-everything-but-the-actual-point-he's-trying-to-make afford listeners the opportunity to let their minds create images and interpretations that tap into their own past experiences, without ever getting too specific. Being literal isn't Richard's thing. He's had a long career, with it's business ups & downs (he was signed to MCA for a hot minute in the late 90's & soon thereafter unceremoniously dropped - he dubbed the label "Musical Career Assasins", and spent entire shows asking the audience if anyone knew an actual honest record label executive), but with a consistently progressing artistic arc that finds him becoming more vague, more restless, and even more willing to push the boundaries of his songwriting and his arrangements. In essence, taking his own aesthetic as far as he can drag it. They've even used the song in a Volkswagen commercial.
Here's Buckner's version:
I love the misspelling of "Your" in the second line. The fancy font makes it even funnier.
(ed. note - It's been a while since I started composing this post, and in the meantime, Buckner's song "A Gauzy Dress in the Sun" has been on a damn-near constant loop. Sweet Jesus in the morning, what a song.)
For my version, I went over to my good friend Tim "Sweet T" Warren's house out in Bloomingdale, GA, to record. He's got a little studio/man-cave that is pimped out properly and has a real comfortable feel for layin' down tracks. He's also a pretty rockin'-good songwriter in his own right. Check it! I kinda swapped Buckner's guitar lines for piano, put a old-telephone-call effect on the backing vocals, and let the song do the rest of the work.
You can stream it at my MySpace page.....
Marquez
Wednesday, August 11, 2010
Sunday, August 8, 2010
Look at THIS guy.
Hey kidz-
Just a quick note, a follow-up to the little rant I went on last time about Prop 8 and all the people who are out there worrying about everyone else's behavior, while completely disregarding the messes that are their own lives. One of the worst (if not THE worst), most ri-donk-ulously hateful, ignorant and hypocritical "churches" (or organizations? or Klans?) is the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS. This church's congregation, and their #1 Head Asshole-in-Charge Fred Phelps are responsible for the entire godhatesfags.com movement. No link, but feel free to go there if you wanna be upset/have a laugh at extraordinarily stupid people.
Anyhoo, one of their cronies (read: assholes), decided to camp out down in Key West with a buncha very clever signage to protest the absolute abomination that they believe is homosexuality. Well, one kid decided not to just let it go, went and made one of the most awesome signs ever (black & white, minimalist, genius) and set up his own camp right next to him. The picture has now gone viral, just as awesome, cute, funny (i know this vid contains the word "faggot", but it's a satire of stupid people saying stupid things, so, y'know...), horrible things on the internet are wont to do. Bathe in the glory:
Well played, sir..... Well played.
I'll theoretically be back on Tuesday with another Cover-Tastic Tuesday post, with new music and analysis. Which means, see ya on Wednesday nite and/or Thursday mornin'!
'Til next time!
Marquez
Just a quick note, a follow-up to the little rant I went on last time about Prop 8 and all the people who are out there worrying about everyone else's behavior, while completely disregarding the messes that are their own lives. One of the worst (if not THE worst), most ri-donk-ulously hateful, ignorant and hypocritical "churches" (or organizations? or Klans?) is the Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, KS. This church's congregation, and their #1 Head Asshole-in-Charge Fred Phelps are responsible for the entire godhatesfags.com movement. No link, but feel free to go there if you wanna be upset/have a laugh at extraordinarily stupid people.
Anyhoo, one of their cronies (read: assholes), decided to camp out down in Key West with a buncha very clever signage to protest the absolute abomination that they believe is homosexuality. Well, one kid decided not to just let it go, went and made one of the most awesome signs ever (black & white, minimalist, genius) and set up his own camp right next to him. The picture has now gone viral, just as awesome, cute, funny (i know this vid contains the word "faggot", but it's a satire of stupid people saying stupid things, so, y'know...), horrible things on the internet are wont to do. Bathe in the glory:
Well played, sir..... Well played.
I'll theoretically be back on Tuesday with another Cover-Tastic Tuesday post, with new music and analysis. Which means, see ya on Wednesday nite and/or Thursday mornin'!
'Til next time!
Marquez
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
COVER-TASTIC TUESDAY - When Jesus Christ returns to earth....
So, yeah.... It's not Tuesday anymore. See, what had happened wuz.....
Of the three Cover-Tastic Tuesday posts so far, only one has actually made it to the site on a Tuesday. BtB is nothing, if not a well-oiled, interweb savvy, blog-o-spheric, 1's & 0's-spittin' machine. Go team! We'll try harder, I promise. In my defense, we (The Train Wrecks) played in Charleston, SC, last nite @ The Pour House, which rawked, and then hauled arse back to Savannah to play at 10:30AM (like, in the morning... ouch) for the B-I-G HUGE announcement that Rock & Run will be comin' to town next year. Mayor Otis was there, we've got pictures comin' in the Savannah Morning News (ed. - scroll through the pics on the rock & run link), the people from the big, talkin' picture box were there to get some video footage of us, and a suprisingly large number of SAV's movers & shakers were there. In suits & ties (& pant-suits for the power ladies. I like-a dat look for some reason.... Meeee-ow!), all sweatin' like Sarah Palin during a vocabulary test. (Palin - "I can see Russia from my house, and I can make up entire new words on a whim") Heat index was around 115 degrees. Ugh. And now it's nap time, for reals....
But let's take on the latest cover tune before I pass out:
The Fountains - "Talks American"
I first heard this song back when I was livin' in Clemson, SC (Go Tigers? Bein' a Clemson sports fan is brutal). It's a pretty sleepy college town, with not much in the way of a history of notable musical exports. Perhaps the one exception were the gentlemen from Sunbrain. They were the most successful, if not arguably the best, out of a crop of melodic punk-ish indie groups that sprang up in and around the Clemson area during the grunge-alternative bakesale that was goin' on in the 90's. (Everybody gets a contract! Everybody gets airplay!!) They toured a good bit regionally, recorded a bad-ass debut LP, and got snapped up by the newly formed Grass Records. (Quick aside: Grass Records eventually turned into Wind-Up Records, which unleashed Creed on the world, so fuck them, but anyway....) Grass Records had a pretty fantastic roster of high-quality, probably-not-made-for-the-mainstream bands (The Wrens, FTW!), which also included a very young band out of Omaha named Commander Venus, fronted by a precocious kid named Conor Oberst. Today, known mainly as Bright Eyes, he commands huge audiences, beds models & actresses, and moistens the panties of indie/hipster kids the world 'round. Well, he was obviously taking copious notes while listening to and performing with Sunbrain, cause his quivering vibrato that the kids swoon to (because emotion?) are a total rip of the quivering vibrato of Sunbrain's singer David Dondero (because EMOTION!) Oberst even admits it in a June 2004 Spin article naming Sunbrain's Perfection Lies one of the albums that had the most influence on him. Dondero, a criminally underexposed and underappreciated (ed. - sroll down to #10) singer-songwriter now based out of San Francisco, continues to put out beautiful, thoughtful music that, in a more perfect world, would allow him the fame & fortune to be sipping Cristal on a bed littered w/ sweaty, satisfied starlets, while Conor would (should?) be drinkin' OE 800 and eatin' bologna sandwiches outta the back of a 1987 Chevy Astro. I could go on an Oberst-hatin', what-are-you-kids -thinkin' jag forever, but I guess I'll go ahead and digress. Deep breath... In with the good air, out with the bad....
All this lovin' & hatin' leads to the song in the spotlight today. Sunbrain's guitarist Russ Halluer formed Ghostmeat Records in Clemson, SC, before the demise of the band, then picked up his tent and moved to Athens, GA, while things within the group slowly fell apart. A good deal of Ghostmeat's musical output came in the form of numerous, varied, and typically excellent compilation discs featuring bands from the Clemson/Athens area, as well as friends from far afield that they had met while on tour. Of the many standouts scattered across these mixes is "Talks American", by Athens, GA's, The Fountains. A protest song of sorts against the conservative governmental and religious values brought to the forefront during the Reagan era (ed.- totally not dating myself there, right? i turn 76 yrs. old next may. yay social security!!!) , the band sets surreal situations (with The Messiah in a starring role, played by various actors) into exaggerated dogmatic, and sometimes very real, societal norms of the time. It's funny and poignant at the same time, and certainly damning as well, and it's all put to a bluegrass-indebted acoustic guitar figure that ramps up to a full-on rock & roll stomp by the song's end. I don't really know what ultimately happened to the band, and it's just another example of an artist with a really fantastic product that, through financial concerns, personal issues, or just plain bad fuckin' luck, got lost in the shuffle and faded into obscurity. It's a bullshit business, fo' sho', but hopefully a little light will shine on these guys and this wonderful song.
On a related side-note, the last line of this song goes:
Well, when Jesus Christ returns to earth, she's gonna be a five-foot-three Samoan...
She'll speak some words of wisdom, man, but noone here will understand....
'Cause they'll expect to see a man, who hates the queers and talks American.
Prop 8 got overturned in California yesterday calling the ban of gay marriage unconstitutional. Although me, myself, am not necessarily a marriage fan in general (I'm a cynic... It seems like a really shitty contract that doesn't matter if you truly love somebody), I just don't understand the institutional hatred and repression of gay & lesbian people. I could go on another, completely different jag about how useless and vile and, in the end, what a wasted emotion homophobia (or racism, or misogyny) is, but the courts finally got one right, for now at least. If two hypothetical dudes or dudettes wanna get married, go for it! I imagine a gay wedding would be the most fan-tabulous thing evah! But seriously, quit hatin' for no good reason, people. It'll burn you up inside.
Stream "Talks American" by The Fountains here. (ed. - crap. the link isn't really workin' for me on my Apple. if you have real media installed, you may fare better. i'll track down an mp3)
Stream my version on my myspace page here.
No mo' rants today! *steps off of soapbox, falls, breaks hip*
XOXO
Marquez
Of the three Cover-Tastic Tuesday posts so far, only one has actually made it to the site on a Tuesday. BtB is nothing, if not a well-oiled, interweb savvy, blog-o-spheric, 1's & 0's-spittin' machine. Go team! We'll try harder, I promise. In my defense, we (The Train Wrecks) played in Charleston, SC, last nite @ The Pour House, which rawked, and then hauled arse back to Savannah to play at 10:30AM (like, in the morning... ouch) for the B-I-G HUGE announcement that Rock & Run will be comin' to town next year. Mayor Otis was there, we've got pictures comin' in the Savannah Morning News (ed. - scroll through the pics on the rock & run link), the people from the big, talkin' picture box were there to get some video footage of us, and a suprisingly large number of SAV's movers & shakers were there. In suits & ties (& pant-suits for the power ladies. I like-a dat look for some reason.... Meeee-ow!), all sweatin' like Sarah Palin during a vocabulary test. (Palin - "I can see Russia from my house, and I can make up entire new words on a whim") Heat index was around 115 degrees. Ugh. And now it's nap time, for reals....
But let's take on the latest cover tune before I pass out:
The Fountains - "Talks American"
I first heard this song back when I was livin' in Clemson, SC (Go Tigers? Bein' a Clemson sports fan is brutal). It's a pretty sleepy college town, with not much in the way of a history of notable musical exports. Perhaps the one exception were the gentlemen from Sunbrain. They were the most successful, if not arguably the best, out of a crop of melodic punk-ish indie groups that sprang up in and around the Clemson area during the grunge-alternative bakesale that was goin' on in the 90's. (Everybody gets a contract! Everybody gets airplay!!) They toured a good bit regionally, recorded a bad-ass debut LP, and got snapped up by the newly formed Grass Records. (Quick aside: Grass Records eventually turned into Wind-Up Records, which unleashed Creed on the world, so fuck them, but anyway....) Grass Records had a pretty fantastic roster of high-quality, probably-not-made-for-the-mainstream bands (The Wrens, FTW!), which also included a very young band out of Omaha named Commander Venus, fronted by a precocious kid named Conor Oberst. Today, known mainly as Bright Eyes, he commands huge audiences, beds models & actresses, and moistens the panties of indie/hipster kids the world 'round. Well, he was obviously taking copious notes while listening to and performing with Sunbrain, cause his quivering vibrato that the kids swoon to (because emotion?) are a total rip of the quivering vibrato of Sunbrain's singer David Dondero (because EMOTION!) Oberst even admits it in a June 2004 Spin article naming Sunbrain's Perfection Lies one of the albums that had the most influence on him. Dondero, a criminally underexposed and underappreciated (ed. - sroll down to #10) singer-songwriter now based out of San Francisco, continues to put out beautiful, thoughtful music that, in a more perfect world, would allow him the fame & fortune to be sipping Cristal on a bed littered w/ sweaty, satisfied starlets, while Conor would (should?) be drinkin' OE 800 and eatin' bologna sandwiches outta the back of a 1987 Chevy Astro. I could go on an Oberst-hatin', what-are-you-kids -thinkin' jag forever, but I guess I'll go ahead and digress. Deep breath... In with the good air, out with the bad....
All this lovin' & hatin' leads to the song in the spotlight today. Sunbrain's guitarist Russ Halluer formed Ghostmeat Records in Clemson, SC, before the demise of the band, then picked up his tent and moved to Athens, GA, while things within the group slowly fell apart. A good deal of Ghostmeat's musical output came in the form of numerous, varied, and typically excellent compilation discs featuring bands from the Clemson/Athens area, as well as friends from far afield that they had met while on tour. Of the many standouts scattered across these mixes is "Talks American", by Athens, GA's, The Fountains. A protest song of sorts against the conservative governmental and religious values brought to the forefront during the Reagan era (ed.- totally not dating myself there, right? i turn 76 yrs. old next may. yay social security!!!) , the band sets surreal situations (with The Messiah in a starring role, played by various actors) into exaggerated dogmatic, and sometimes very real, societal norms of the time. It's funny and poignant at the same time, and certainly damning as well, and it's all put to a bluegrass-indebted acoustic guitar figure that ramps up to a full-on rock & roll stomp by the song's end. I don't really know what ultimately happened to the band, and it's just another example of an artist with a really fantastic product that, through financial concerns, personal issues, or just plain bad fuckin' luck, got lost in the shuffle and faded into obscurity. It's a bullshit business, fo' sho', but hopefully a little light will shine on these guys and this wonderful song.
On a related side-note, the last line of this song goes:
Well, when Jesus Christ returns to earth, she's gonna be a five-foot-three Samoan...
She'll speak some words of wisdom, man, but noone here will understand....
'Cause they'll expect to see a man, who hates the queers and talks American.
Prop 8 got overturned in California yesterday calling the ban of gay marriage unconstitutional. Although me, myself, am not necessarily a marriage fan in general (I'm a cynic... It seems like a really shitty contract that doesn't matter if you truly love somebody), I just don't understand the institutional hatred and repression of gay & lesbian people. I could go on another, completely different jag about how useless and vile and, in the end, what a wasted emotion homophobia (or racism, or misogyny) is, but the courts finally got one right, for now at least. If two hypothetical dudes or dudettes wanna get married, go for it! I imagine a gay wedding would be the most fan-tabulous thing evah! But seriously, quit hatin' for no good reason, people. It'll burn you up inside.
Stream "Talks American" by The Fountains here. (ed. - crap. the link isn't really workin' for me on my Apple. if you have real media installed, you may fare better. i'll track down an mp3)
Stream my version on my myspace page here.
No mo' rants today! *steps off of soapbox, falls, breaks hip*
XOXO
Marquez
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