Community Noise

I decided it was time to put together another playlist. I didn’t have a theme in mind, so I offer some random things that I’ve been listening to recently, tossed together with some new stuff that I hear on the radio as I write this.  All but one track can be listened to at the YT link.

Community Noise Playlist #6

1. Nox Novacula – “The Path”
Local goth band. Really cool stuff. As far as I can tell, they’re only releasing their stuff digitally and, dammit, I like my LPs and CDs.  Somebody needs to straighten these guys out.

2. The Temptations – “Papa was a Rolling stone”
For a couple of years now, I’ve been digging 1960s-1970s soul. When I’m home, an LP can find it’s way onto the stereo at any time.  When I’m out around, there’s some on my MP3 player, so it comes up on random play.   Such was the case one sunny Friday afternoon when I was walking over to my shop.

3. Pleasures – “Star and the Equal Time”
On Saturday evenings, DJ Sharlese has taken the reigns of the long-running radio show Audioasis, dedicated to local music.  She’s finding some pretty good stuff, and plays a lot of good old stuff.
Unfortunately, … I couldn’t find this on YT. You can listen to it here:
https://pleasures.bandcamp.com/track/star-and-the-equal-time

4. Sonic Youth – “My Friend Goo”
I’m reading Kim Gordon’s pretty good memoir, Girl in a Band. After I’m done, I’m sure there’s a post or two to be written about this woman. In the meantime, I always loved Goo best.

5. Tom Waits – “Clap Hands”
Rain Dogs is one of the most innovative albums that I’ve ever heard. Incredible.  It’s one of the records in my collection I go back to say “damn” when I listen to it again.

6. Paul Simon – “Under African Skies”
Damn.  Simon’s Graceland is one of the most innovative albums that I’ve ever heard. Incredible.  That stanza, Joseph’s face was black as night |The pale yellow moon shone in his eyes |His path was marked | By the stars in the Southern Hemisphere | And he walked his days | Under African skies …  really well phrased.  It’s as good as any Dylan, and that’s a mouthful of praise.

7. Sly and the Family Stone – “You Can Make It If You Try”
This album, Stand!, sits in front of the stack, and generally outside the crate, patiently waiting for me to spin it again.  And again.

8. Velvet Underground  – “ Foggy Notion”
I have this Polygram sampler, 3 songs on Side A from The Velvet Underground, Van Morrison, and Richard Thompson; and another 3 songs, one each, on the B Side.  There used to be this cool record store, Uptown Records on Queen Anne; the buyer was named Ann (no relation), and we developed a little rapport; she’d always thank me for buying cool stuff, ‘cause that meant she got to go buy more cool stuff.  (Instead of, you know, more Abba.)  One night I walked up to the cash register with this and she simply froze; “Where did you find this?”  She didn’t know the store had it and was mad that I was buying it and not her.  And she still wouldn’t date me.
With a story like that, I’m having a hard time deciding to part with this, but I never actually listen to it.  It’s an odd place to see VU playing.

9. Childish Gambino – “Saturday”
Watching Saturday Night Live, and this popped into my life.  Good to listen to, and fun to watch all the dance and performance art going on.  Must have been 25 people on stage. Damn.

10. Posse – “Voices”
Don’t forget to listen to Posse.  They have more out now than the 7” I featured last year.

11. Goat Girl
Also, the new Goat Girl album is out – buy it on LP or CD from Rough Trade Records.  I love these girls.

12. Ben Thomas – “Tangent 7”
The Live Music Project had it’s fourth birthday party last week, and I won a CD in the raffle. I don’t see how it could have been rigged in my favor, plus there must have been about 50 prizes. The ensemble might feature a bandoneon. Wikipedia says it’s a type of concertina “particularly popular in Argentina, Uruguay, and Lithuania.” OK, but I don’t know what a concertina is either. Look at the picture, duh, it’s a squeezebox.

Here’s a random note. It requires 6 clicks and a paste to add a video to a YT playlist. That’s when I already have the link for the song that I want to add. And it takes some hunting around to just find the place to create a new playlist. Couldn’t we design a better interface?

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Checking out, the cashier asked if I found everything I was looking for.  I explained that I did no homework for the day; I like to walk in and let things come to me.

For Round 1, I went to Silver Platters up in Lynnwood.  Mid-morning by time I got there, there was no line to enter the shop, the clawing for one-offs had died down, and the long line for one of four cashiers was moving quickly.  It was Record Store Day, 2018 – last Saturday, 21 April.

I picked up, all vinyl, a Brian Eno EP, a re-issue of Shiho and her Japanese electronica, a compilation of girl garage bands from the 1960s; on 10-inch vinyl I selected Sublime, Flaming Lips, and Noah Gundersen.  Free stuff was 2 flats, huge flats, 18”-square, of Aretha Franklin and The Smiths.

Not homework, but I will admit that I had the local radio station playing Friday afternoon; they were reviewing material that would be available on Saturday.  DJ Kevin was interviewing Matt Vaughan, owner of Easy Street Records and RSD co-founder.  (Easy Street is a really cool store, and café, whenever I make it over the bridge to West Seattle.  Think of it, next you find Seattle.)

Vaughan was delighted that Flaming Lips put something out interesting to listen to, but I couldn’t remember what exactly that was; I chose one of their two 10-inch records available.  The DJ was excited that Noah Gundersen was playing a live set at a different record shop, but I couldn’t remember that I actually heard anything of his playing.  My attention zeros in and fades away.

The thing about a 10-inch record, it could be a 45-rpm or a 33-rpm play; the label is vital.  Not labeled, I started this one out at 33 and the music was great, but Noah’s voice sounded a little slow.  Like he was mumbling in a cemetery soon after his own death.  I moved the speed up to 45, and his voice sounds right, but the band sounds rather normal.  Let that be a lesson to him.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-sEj1q8bEF4

If you want the interviews and whole in-studio experience, you can watch and listen:

Noah Gundersen – Full Performance (Live on KEXP)

Good grief the Sublime 10” is amazing.  The ska/rap/punk/pop mixture has texture and themes; rhythms and just enough sounds in-between the reggae thing.  I have listened to a lot of reggae over the years – local radio has had a Saturday morning reggae show for at least 33 years – but this is different.  The reggae beat is not the dominate idea; other aspects of the composite sing out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2sVxEWIRvY4

The Shiho stuff is a beautiful experience.  My favorite record store experience: pick something up, don’t know anything about it, but something clicks inside.  “Give it a shot.”  Take it home.  Cue it up.  Whammo.  Something cool, never knew it existed.  Exploring the electronica and atmospheric music areas is pretty new to me; this was a good place to continue my brief education.  The bright clear-pink vinyl is extra credit, which is normal for RSD.

Girls in the Garage, volume 3.  On searching, there are at least 6 volumes to this series.  It’s good we have a chance to remember the multiple precursors to Riot grrrl.  I randomly provide one selection.

The Liverbirds “Why Do You Hang Around Me”

You can listen to the whole thing, of course, on YT.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0YtRBHqRGw

RSD 2018, round 2.  Fun, but less eventful.  I searched and noticed a couple of record stores that I didn’t know about.  In the afternoon, I went down to Jigsaw Records, on the eastern edge of Ballard, not far from where I live.  Cute little shop, a hole in the wall on a strip long known for funky drinking wells.  I took a chance on Television Personalities, and it’s OK.  I’m still digesting it.  No free stuff.

I want to know.  Did people celebrate Record Store Day this year?  Where?  What did you buy?  What did you find to love?

Let us close up with some Aretha, why not?

On a bright, beautiful, sunny Spring day, I went spider hunting in a cemetery more than a century old.  It wasn’t eerie or creepy, and my sister thinks I’m crazy.  I am a volunteer for the arachnologist at Seattle’s Burke Museum.  I guess the preferred term is “spider collecting.”

I picked up Rod in the morning and drove south towards Vader, not even a wide spot in the road off the I5 corridor, and not terribly far, in miles or spirit, from where I grew up.  The cemetery is just out of town, but you’d never notice being in town.  Sounds like a movie, Spider Hunt: Cemetery Watch

During the drive, I thought about spiders, trying to think of music that had something to do with our arachnid friends.  I remembered the Lime Spiders, a psychedelic band from the 1980s, and I remembered not listening to them much.  That would have to change.

They’re pretty good.  Randomly, here are some tracks.

The Lime Spiders — Slave Girl

Lime Spiders — Out Of Control

Lime Spiders — Too Close To The Sun

The Lime Spiders — Volatile

I learned many things during the day.  A spider is an order of arachnid.  Arachnids are a class of arthropods (joint-legged invertebrate animals).  The arachnids also include scorpions, ticks, mites, harvestmen, and solifuges.  (You are not alone, I had never heard of a solifuge.)  (For those that don’t remember high school biology, the taxonomy goes like this: domain, kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus, and species.)

To catch, hunt, or collect spiders, and properly catalogue them, you need to pay attention to the habitat.  On this Saturday, in this pleasant graveyard, we searched leaf mulch, moss, fir trees, shrubbery, grasses, tomb stones, fallen pine cones, and an out building (for house spiders).  Across the road, in a clear-cut / new-growth forest area, we further searched the habitats of ferns and tall grasses.  There are different techniques, which generally have something to do with trying to get the spider to “fall out of it’s habitat” so you can see it.  (The exception is the wolf spider, which quickly runs amok in 20 directions, trying to avoid you.  I caught several and felt badly for the little guys.)  For example, hunting in leaf mulch: you pick up some mulch, put into a wire-mesh shaker, shake onto a white sheet, and see what falls out.  Bits of dirt and partially-degraded plant matter, lots of little beetles and ants, centipedes, and other creepy crawly things, and spiders.

Of course, there’s  “Boris the Spider” from The Who.  But you don’t need kill spiders; be not afraid – the spider just wants to eat bugs, and those also probably freak you out.

Rod wants you to know that the house spider that you guys call a “daddy long-legs” is not a spider, it is a harvestman.  It is an arachnid.  It is a myth that its venom is poisonous to humans.  It is a myth that its fangs are too small to bite you – it doesn’t bite you because you are not its prey.

Rod was telling me that his favorite music was primarily bebop jazz.  Benny Goodman had a trio, sometimes quartet, that played some innovative jazz; of course, he’s more well known for his work in the big band swing era.  Benny Goodman — “Where Or When”

And for jazz vocals, he prefers Anita O’Day.  I’ll feature “Honeysuckle Rose”.