Freddie Hubbard

Somehow I thought that he must be older than that, but jazz trumpeter Freddie Hubbard died today at the age of 70. I have to admit to not really knowing much of his music beyond a handful of Blue Note albums from the 1960s that he was a sideman on. These include Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch, Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil, and Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage. Classics, all of them, and Hubbard plays beautifully on just about every track, sometimes outshining his more-famous bandmates. His solo on the title track to Maiden Voyage is particularly brilliant. His work is definitely worth a second listen. Or a first.

On the Curious Similarities Between Britney Spears and James Brown

I may be mishearing this, but then there's a long and noble history of misheard lyrics in popular music. I'm finally listening closely to "Womanizer" by Britney Spears. I don't know whether I should be embarrassed by that or not. I suppose as a popular music scholar, I should be embarrassed that I hadn't really heard this song until today. But the small part of me that's still a jazz-and-classic-rock snob is shocked to even be admitting to listening to this song ever. But I'm trying to catch up on all of those end-of-year lists and so forth, so I figured I should give this track a serious listen.

Anyway, the song is fine. And I'm so out of the loop on the Britney comeback/crash stories that I'm not sure which part of the cycle we're in right now. So I'll limit my comments to one of the lyrics on "Womanizer." Britney is taunting this guy, saying she won't get with him because she knows that he's a womanizer. And then she says, "You say I'm crazy/ I got your crazy." Which is really cool, at least in the way that I'm reading it. It's like, "Oh yeah? I don't care what the tabloids say. You think I'm crazy? I got your crazy right here, mister. Come a little bit closer." And then POW!!! She smacks that no-good womanizer.

However, I may be wrong on my interpretation of the lyric. In fact, I may be repeating a similar mistake. One of my favorite songs by James Brown (who went to the great big funk show in the sky almost exactly three years ago) is "The Big Payback." And my favorite line in that song is "I don't know karate/but I know ca-razy!" It's actually the same kind of sentiment that Britney's song is putting out there. It's like, "I might not know karate, I might not make it neat and clean, but if you cross me, I will mess you up big time, I will go crazy on your ass." Except I've also heard this transcribed as "karazor" or something instead of "ca-razy." And karazor, according to various interpretations I've seen on that most prestigious of sources (the internet), is either some sexual technique (really--I researched the controversy surrounding this misheard lyric a few years ago) or just JB's way of saying "razor." Meaning he's going to cut you with a razor. A similar sentiment to my interpretation, I guess, though certainly more explicit about the kind of violence intended.

But there's a similar sort of ambiguity happening with "Womanizer," too. Indeed, some of the lyrics websites have a slightly different hearing of Britney's lyrics, putting it as "I got you, crazy" instead of "I got your crazy." Which changes the meaning completely. But I think my interpretation is right, because Britney's vocal accent is clearly on "got" which only really makes sense if the lyric is "I got your crazy." If it was "you" and not "your," the vocal accent would be on the "you," since that's the most important element in the phrase. "I've got you, crazy." Just like that other song by James Brown: "So good, so good, I got you."

So you've got to hand it to Britney. If she can make me think of James Brown twice in one discussion of a rather unremarkable pop song, she's got something going for her.

Three times, actually. For, as somebody once said, "Hit me, baby, one more time." And as somebody else once said, "Hit it and quit it!"

Respect

It's great and all that Aretha Franklin is performing at Obama's inauguration. I sort of wish that someone other than John Williams was being commissioned to write the piece that is going to be played, evidently, right before Obama is sworn in. But my big question is: where's Stevie? I trust that he's being saved for the 3-hour long concert and dance party that's happening immediately after the ceremony, right? I've heard people say that they expect Inauguration Day to be a cross between the 1963 march on Washington and Woodstock. I wonder if anyone who played at the original Woodstock is going to play during Inauguration Day? I'd vote for Richie Havens.

"And you see it there . . . one right after the other"

Honestly.





http://www.slate.com/id/2206749/

Did Someboday Say . . .

I don't particularly care who gets appointed to be the next senator from New York state,* but it does seem to me that a good portion of the discourse surrounding the possible appointment of one Caroline Kennedy to this seat involves something that I do spend quite a bit of time thinking about, namely the mythology of the baby boomer generation. Exhibit A is Ruth Marcus's Washington Post article. Marcus has gotten beat up all over the internet for her musings on Caroline Kennedy as a senator. Again, I don't really care who gets appointed. But here are a few of the paragraphs that seem to have drawn some reaction, and that also seem to be dealing with boomer nostalgia:

What really draws me to the notion of Caroline as senator, though, is the modern-fairy-tale quality of it all. Like many women my age -- I'm a few months younger than she -- Caroline has always been part of my consciousness: The lucky little girl with a pony and an impossibly handsome father. The stoic little girl holding her mother's hand at her father's funeral. The sheltered girl, whisked away from a still-grieving country by a mother trying to shield her from prying eyes.

In this fairy tale, Caroline is our tragic national princess. She is not locked away in a tower but chooses, for the most part, to closet herself there. Her mother dies, too young. Her impossibly handsome brother crashes his plane, killing himself, his wife and his sister-in-law. She is the last survivor of her immediate family; she reveals herself only in the measured doses of a person who has always been, will always be, in the public eye.

Then, deciding that Obama is the first candidate with the inspirational appeal of her father, she chooses to abandon her previous, above-it-all detachment from the hurly-burly of politics.

I know it's an emotional -- dare I say "girly"? -- reaction. But what a fitting coda to this modern fairy tale to have the little princess grow up to be a senator.

The baby boomer generation likes stories--"fairy tales," in Marcus's words. Hey man, don't we all? The only difference is that the baby boomer generation, far more than other groups in the U.S. now, seems to have the power to turn theirs into reality. I think that's what Marcus is saying would happen if Governor Paterson** appointed Caroline Kennedy to this senate seat. And I certainly think that's a big part of what's happening in the tribute band scene.

*OK, that's a lie, I do care. I'm holding out hope that it will be someone cool like, I don't know, David Bowie (probably not a U.S. citizen, though he does live in Tribeca, doesn't he?) or Bernie Williams. And I realize that those choices are as irrational as Marcus's critics would say her choice of Caroline Kennedy is. But come one. Bowie and Bernie are WAY cooler than Caroline Kennedy. This isn't even a contest.

**Shout out to Governor Paterson, by the way. He's awesome! I hope he has a future in government. He's already the coolest black, blind governor New York state has ever had.

John's Grammy Ballot (Pt. 2)

So, album of the year.

The nominees are:

Coldplay, Viva La Vida
Lil Wayne, Tha Carter III
Ne-Yo, Year of the Gentlemen
Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, Raising Sand
Radiohead, In Rainbows

So most of these albums I had already listened to when they came out. And a track from Year of the Gentlemen was a topic of a previous post. So I decided to dive into the one record that I had only listened to very vaguely, Lil Wayne's Tha Carter III.

Lil Wayne got a lot of Grammy nominations, but he seems to be a pretty polarizing figure. I read one review of this album (in Guatemala, no less) that said that it was basically unlistenable, and that every beat and every rhyme was crap.

I wouldn't quite go that far. But I do have to admit to being a being surprised that people seem to like this record quite a bit. The singles aren't exactly bad. "Mr. Carter" is at least salvaged by the fact that Jay-Z shows up on it. I'd like "A Milli" if the bass and snare didn't come in every time that I sort of get into the strange groove conjured up by sampling someone saying "A Milli" continuously (that's a 3+3+3+3+2+2 pattern for those of you keeping score at home). "Got Money" with the ever-Auto-Tuned T-Pain guesting on it reminds me a little bit of "Yeah" by Usher. I do like the line where he tells people to clap their hands if they've got a bankroll. But I think this album actually should have been disqualified from the first song ("3 Peat") which is TERRIBLE. Lil Wayne's raspy, whiny voice is particularly irritating on this track, and he doesn't have any guest artists around to save him. And I'm sorry. But any song that name-checks Stuart Scott is grasping at straws, don't you think?

Anyway, there's already been a little bit of discussion of Ne-Yo on this blog and in the comments section of another blog. I do think Ne-Yo is pretty much a genius. He reminds me a bit of Michael Jackson in the early 1980s. I hope that things turn out better for Ne-Yo, though.

So yes, the synth on "Miss Independent" is pretty cool. And Ne-Yo in general seems to be able to sing without too much studio trickery (though, these days, who knows?). There are lots of nice grooves and timbres on this record. It's definitely state-of-the-art pop music, everything is in its right place, if you know what I mean. But there's nothing that's really grabbing my ear, no irresistible hooks, no tracks that are begging to be replayed. It's very solid, but just not too exceptional. I could listen to this all night, but I don't think I'd remember much of it afterwards.

Raising Sand is pretty obvious Grammy bait. All of these collaborations with older respected artists we haven't heard from in a while and newer, critical-darling artists are. (See, for example, Van Lear Rose.) Sometimes the hype is worth it, sometimes it isn't. But, as I said on the "Record of the Year" post, I'm less than impressed by this album. Fine music for playing at a Starbucks (is that going to become the dis of the 21st century?). But can't really hold a candle to some of the other nominees (not to mention all the albums that came out that weren't nominated).

Coldplay shouldn't be overlooked as easily as they sometimes are. There's always going to be a place for big, loud, chiming guitar-based rock. And if you want to ever discover how good Coldplay is at doing what they do, go see a mediocre Coldplay tribute band (I'm convinced that all tribute bands to Coldplay are probably mediocre). Because, at least in the studio, Chris Martin is really a very impressive singer, far better than he gets credit for. I used to think that his voice was some sort of unholy, faceless amalgam of every successful tenor in 1990s rock (a little bit of Jeff Buckley, Bono, Dave Matthews, and Thom Yorke). But I've changed my mind. Maybe it's just that those four have faded a bit into the background, but Martin's voice seems to have taken on a bit of personality, at least to my ears. There's some interesting stuff on Viva La Vida (particularly, I dig "Lovers in Japan"), but it's actually not as good as A Rush of Blood to the Head. Snicker all you want, but that album was great. Even if you're a Coldplay-hater (which I sometimes am), there are some inarguably great tunes on that record.

It's unfair for me to name Radiohead's In Rainbows as record of the year, but I'm going to anyway. It's unfair because Radiohead is unequivocally my favorite band of the last 15 years and I'm moderately obsessed with them. I of course actually paid to download In Rainbows, and then I bought it legitimately on vinyl (cause I'm cool like that) when it came out on January 1st of 2008. And I downloaded the free videos that they put up on iTunes. And I paid to download the "From the Basement" videos from iTunes, as well. (And they're GREAT, by the way! Highly worth downloading.) And I saw Radiohead in Camden this last summer, basically my last night of carousing and listening to music before I left the U.S. this fall.

The first four tracks on the album are great, man. I hate to be so positive, but can you really find anything at all that isn't AWESOME in "15 Step," "Bodysnatchers," "Nude" [finally we get to hear an official version of this track which had been kicking around for like 10 years, check the Meeting People is Easy documentary], or "Weird Fishes/Arpeggi"? No, you can't.

I'm less impressed with the rest of the album. "Reckoner"--another old bootleg finally released officially--has lost my favorite part somewhere in the wash (the part at thend where Thom used to say, "Reckoner, Ba ba ba. Reckoner . . . whoo."). Check out the original here. But it's still pretty good, just not approaching the brilliance of the first few tracks. "House of Cards" keeps showing up places (for example, Grammy nominations and an episode of the ludicrous television show Brothers and Sisters that also had "Nettie Moore" by Bob Dylan in it), and I'm not sure entirely why. I'm not as impressed by the album-ending "Videotape" as some other people seem to be. I've never quite understood this thing where people go crazy over the last songs of Radiohead albums. I never really liked "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" or "Motion Picture Soundtrack," either. ("The Tourist," though, the last track from OK Computer is wonderful.) "Jigsaw Falling Into Place" salvages the second half of this album, though. That, coupled with the sheer brilliance of the first four songs makes this my favorite album of the last year.

But I should say that there's NO WAY it will win the Grammy. Unless you weren't paying attention last year, you know that Radiohead first released this as a pay-as-you-wish (including nothing) download on its website, only releasing it in conventional physical formats several months later. The record industry is deathly afraid of this type of stuff, and there's no way they're going to reward Radiohead with a Grammy for pulling the kind of stunt that they hate. Not that Radiohead have really been darlings of the Grammy voters, anyway. I'd sort of like to see Thom give a Grammy acceptance speech, though. But I don't see it happening this year.

Loose Canons Sink Ships

Two articles--one pessimistic, one optimistic--both advancing a notion of the unchallenged supremacy of the canon. Yikes!

Some representative quotes at random:

Victor Davis Hanson, writing in City Journal, "Any common, shared notion of what it means to be either a Westerner or an American is increasingly rare." Umm, and this is a bad thing why? Since when is being an American or a Westerner a singular kind of identity?

John Parker, writing in something unfortunately titled Intelligent Life about (among other things) Classic FM, a less-stuffy classical music radio station in the U.K.: "It is certainly true that a good deal of Classic FM’s output is undemanding; the most ferocious and rebarbative contemporary music is banned. But it plays the world’s greatest music in proper recordings. It takes the classical canon beyond the traditional audience of connoisseurs and, with its magazines and books, tries to engage new audiences more deeply with the music it plays." All well and good. I should hope that any radio station would try to "engage new audiences more deeply with the music it plays." But unquestioningly describing the Western Classical Tradition (minus Schoenberg, Stockhausen, and Boulez--apparently) as "the world's greatest music" is a bit much in this day and age, don't you think? And saying that listening to this music shows that you are objectively smarter reeks of a kind of lazy "Mozart for Babies" type of attitude. Come on. Where's Bourdieu when you need him?

Interestingly enough, the two articles are kind of talking to each other, albeit in a weird way. Hanson argues that one of the reason there's a boom for general education liberal arts online courses, CDs, DVDs (look for advertisements in the New Yorker) is that universities are no longer providing access to this knowledge, but people are still hungry for it.
Parker says that more and more people are listening to opera on their iPods and reading the classics in Oprah's book club; both of these are signs that people are getting more intelligent. Though Parker also says that one sign that people are more intelligent is that a greater percentage of people have degrees. As someone currently in a Ph.D. program, I can tell you that more degrees definitely does not necessarily equal more intelligence.

John's Grammy Ballot (Pt. 1)

Once again this year, the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences declined to nominate me for a Grammy. When will they ever recognize my talents?

(I tell this joke every year. It reminds me of an introduction that David Bowie gave at a concert at Jones Beach in 2005. "I'm going to play 'Under Pressure' right now. I wrote this song with Freddie Mercury. And once again, tonight, Freddie failed to show up to sing his part.")

Anyway, since I'm not nominated, I can be completely objective. I'm going to listen to as many of the nominees as I can stand and let you know my thoughts. Today we'll just look at the nominees for "Record of the Year." And if anyone can explain the difference between "Record of the Year" and "Song of the Year," well, I'd be grateful. (By the way, you can see the full list of nominees--not including me--here.)

And the nominees are . . .

Coldplay, "Viva La Vida"
M.I.A., "Paper Planes"
Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, "Please Read the Letter"
Adele, "Chasing Pavements"
Leona Lewis, "Keep Bleeding"

Well, we can get rid of "Chasing Pavements" right away. Come on. This song is terrible. Really. It's not even a good example of this style of pop music (that I don't particularly like, but can at least appreciate when it's done well). It's a kind of faux-Dusty Springfield that seems to be all the rage these days (see Winehouse, Amy--who, by the way, is a million times better than Adele). I have no idea how they come up with nominees, but this one seems like it was put on the list as a dare.

Leona Lewis and "Keep Bleeding" aren't going to get much more support from me. I can at least recognize that this song is put together a lit bit better than "Chasing Pavements," but there's nothing in this tune to grab my interest.

In theory, I like the idea of Robert Plant and Alison Kraus, but I'm not terribly impressed by "Please Read the Letter." It's fine, but sonically not terribly interesting. This album is general seems to be filled with reverbed guitars and mezzo-piano vocals. And the last minute of this track is a half-hearted attempt to rock that actually just sort of depresses me.

"Viva La Vida" is now the subject of a lawsuit (see my previous post). Rhapsody (always good for provocative and hilarious album reviews and descriptions) describes this track as "Phil Collins swagger." Really? Phil Collins? Since when has Phil Collins been associated with swagger? He's actually, I think, the last person I associate swagger with. I do like the syncopated strings, though. But I just can't stomach the chorus of this song anymore. Hell, Bono would be embarrassed to sing something like, "For some reason I can't explain/I know Saint Peter will call my name."

The obvious choice is "Paper Planes" by M.I.A., clearly the best song of the last year. Maybe one of the best songs of the last 5 years or so. Though it's hard to call this the "record of the year." What record? There are like a million different versions of this song. A remix E.P. and then a ton of un-official versions of various genres. (Dig, if you can find it, the bossa nova cover.) This song is actually a lot less rhythmically interesting than something like "Bird Flu," but I can understand how the juxtaposition of the sing-songy verses and the gun shot/cash register chorus with what sounds like a small children's choir singing about how they want to take your money would tickle the mind grapes (so to speak) of the listening public. I've raved about M.I.A. before, so I'll limit my remarks to quoting one of the greatest boasts I've heard in a long time in a record: "Yeah, M.I.A. Third world democracy. I've got more records than the KGB. So, uh, no funny business."

If I Could Sue

Coldplay, which just got nominated for a bunch of Grammys (what is the proper plural of "Grammy," by the way?) also just got sued. Joe Satriani, he of guitar-shredding fame, alleges that Coldplay ripped off his song "If I Could Fly" on the title track of their latest album, Viva La Vida. Evidently this possible plagiarism/influence has been kicking around the web for a couple of months now. And of course, like anything, there's a youtube video illustrating the matter under discussion. You be the judge.



(I really like the stretched picture of Chris Martin in a turtleneck. That should be their next album cover.) And is if that isn't enough, a Brooklyn-based band called Creaky Boards also alleges that Coldplay ripped off the track "Viva La Vida" from them! I just hope that they don't end up getting sued by Satriani, too. Check out their video here.



I wrote a review of this Coldplay album when it came out, maybe I'll recycle it from my facebook profile if this case actually goes anywhere. I haven't had much of a chance to look at the Grammy nominations yet, but there may be a post or two on that soon, as well.