Random Rant: Music To Make You Human

Published on December 12th, 2012 in: Music, Random Rant |

By Paul Casey

mj dancing

Michael Jackson was responsible for my first musical memory. Thriller, Bad, and Dangerous were the first albums which were as important as my miniature Batmobile, and that thing was pretty boss. Moonwalker, which was mostly quite bad, did have the great benefit of featuring an extended version of the “Smooth Criminal” video in between weird claymation sections and Joe Pesci as an evil Joe Pesci. This was directly responsible for fueling a life long, and probably ill advised, love for performance. Michael Jackson was a pure expression of not only a severe musical talent, but of the thought that it may be possible to dance so well that verbal communication would no longer be necessary.

For an introverted young sort, and later a socially anxious older sort, Michael Jackson’s music was a reminder that sometimes you just have to get out there and lay it down. Whether this is a groove, some excessive vamping, or a tricky foot shuffle, even the most egregious wallflower has to step up when “The Way You Make Me Feel” comes on. “I Can’t Let Her Get Away” insists that you get into a New Jack Swing, whether you are aware of Teddy Riley or not. “Human Nature” still brings on tears.

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Editorial: Join Our Club

Published on September 26th, 2012 in: Editorial, Over the Gadfly's Nest |

By Paul Casey

sasha grey
Sasha Grey:
Hipster or anti-hipster?

The first sign that you are a hipster is that you cannot stop using the word “hipster.” In conversation, your thoughts turn to those angles and rimmed glasses and how their love of Animal Collective makes them inauthentic. They’re false. You’re the real deal. You get hard at the thought of real music that gets to the heart of the matter. You think of yourself as open-minded but the need to attack that music you see as inherently wrong brings on physical discomfort, until you can release it on some misguided soul who loves Kenny Loggins without irony.

“Hipster” is rarely self-applied. It is a put-down, and those who use it with venom do so not to mock the pomposity of uptight jerkwads who JUST CAN’T BELIEVE THAT YOU DON’T FEEL WHAT THEY FEEL, but to highlight their confusion in not appreciating the universal objective qualities in music which disallow one from liking The Dandy Warhols over The Brian Jonestown Massacre. Or the other way around. There is no opposition to the hipster. There are simply variations of the hipster, which share the same affliction: They put far too much stock in their taste. What bothers them more than finding someone with the wrong tastes is being reminded that their taste rectification is not egalitarian but a rather dismal attempt to order the world.

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Paul Thorn, What The Hell Is Goin’ On?

Published on August 7th, 2012 in: Music, Music Reviews, New Music Tuesday, Reviews |

By Paul Casey

paul thorn cd cover

There were two barriers to my listening Paul Thorn‘s cover album, What The Hell Is Goin’ On? The first, I was not aware of Paul Thorn’s music. The second, I was not familiar with many of the songs he covered (and in some cases with the artists too). Quickly though these barriers turned to my advantage (aha!), finding a pleasant collection of Blues numbers and a new fellow who can turn it out a bit for money.

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Thoughts On: The Band, CAHOOTS

Published on August 6th, 2012 in: Music, Music Reviews, Retrovirus, Reviews |

By Paul Casey

Part four in a continuing series on THE BAND’s discography.

To read the whole series, go here.

“Where do we go from here?”

the band 1971

Cahoots was the last album of new material THE BAND would record until their last great work, Northern Lights – Southern Cross, in 1976. On the basis of the songs, and the disconnect between the constituents of THE BAND, it was a tough album to make. There is little thematic cohesion here. It is a leap around America in a manner—from the fairground to Chinatown—but it lacks the conceptual feeling of The Band or the personal confession of Stage Fright. It does have some of the eclectic feeling of Big Pink, if little of that album’s mood. It is when the burn out became an issue and when it became apparent that THE BAND could not muscle through their creative and personal issues. They do give it a hell of a try, though. Cahoots is not a classic, like the previous three, but it is a good record. (more…)

The Killer Inside Me

Published on August 3rd, 2012 in: Books, Movie Reviews, Movies, Over the Gadfly's Nest |

By Paul Casey

the killer inside me

All art should be able to cover bad thoughts and bad people, as they exist, or could exist, without having to make these things pay back society in some sense. After reading Jim Thompson’s The Killer Inside Me and watching Michael Winterbottom’s 2010 adaptation, it seems that many critics demand moral payback. Taking Lou Ford and making him a cautionary tale, or something for upstanding society to feel superior to, would make a lot more people comfortable.

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The Very Best of Sonny Rollins

Published on July 30th, 2012 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Retrovirus, Reviews |

By Paul Casey

sonny rollins best of cover

“What was beginning to happen to me was that I was being expected to really deliver great music all the time. In other words my name was bigger than I thought I could support with what I was doing. I remember one particular job that I had, when I just felt I wasn’t really playing well enough, you know? And everybody was really so excited to see me and I really felt I let the people down. I was really frustrated with myself, you know? That was really the genesis of this thing on the bridge. That’s what really it was all about.

I was out walking two blocks from where I lived at, actually, and I looked up and I saw these steps, you know, going up. And I walked over the street and I walked up those steps and there was this big beautiful expanse of bridge, you know? Nobody up there.

Usually I don’t pay too much attention to the trains. Usually absorbed in what I’m doing. But in a way it adds, you know it’s part of the atmospheric noise, and it adds to your playing in a way, you know? All these sounds, you see, because I’m sure subconsciously I change what I’m playing to blend with the sound of the train. It all has its effect.”
Sonny Rollins from BBC Arena’s Beyond the Notes documentary

A striking image in the history of the 20th Century Jazz. A powerfully gifted man, having given up a professional life in music, plays his saxophone atop the Williamsburg Bridge, between Manhattan and Brooklyn, New York. Sonny Rollins, music, and the world. Moving with the trains, with the earth moving as they pass by, and the earth moving to the sounds of his saxophone.

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The Very Best of Wes Montgomery

Published on July 27th, 2012 in: Current Faves, Music, Music Reviews, Retrovirus, Reviews |

By Paul Casey

wes montgomery best of cover

“His playing transcended the instrument. Other Jazz guitarists, you know they’re playing the guitar but Wes and his whole approach, the way he phrased, his sense of swing, you kind of lost a sense that he was playing the guitar. He played the guitar like a horn, for instance. He phrased like a horn player and it just really caught people’s imaginations. It was really different.”
Jim Ferguson from NPR’s The Life and Music of Wes Montgomery

The guitar was rarely a dominant instrument in Jazz. Relegated to a back-up, or to flesh out a sound, the guitar did not have the sparkly flair of a lead instrument. With the exception of Benny Goodman Sextet member Charlie Christian, or the Gypsy Jazz of Django Reinhardt, there were few guitarists in Jazz who were considered to be serious figures in the genre. Through his recordings and performances, Wes Montgomery did much to legitimize the guitar in Jazz, as well as influence a whole heap of musicians. The fracturing of the genre into Free and Fusion guaranteed its place, as well as the legacy of Wes Montgomery.

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Thoughts On: The Band, STAGE FRIGHT

Published on July 16th, 2012 in: Music, Music Reviews, Retrovirus, Reviews |

By Paul Casey

Part three in a continuing series on THE BAND’s discography.

To read the whole series, go here.

the band group color

“Now deep in the heart of a lonely kid
Who suffered so much for what he did
Gave this plough boy his fortune and fame
And since that day he ain’t been the same.

See the man with the stage fright
Just standing up there to give it all his might
And he got caught in the spotlight
But when it gets to the end
He wants to start all over again.”
—From “Stage Fright”

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Twilight and The Problem With Modern Horror

Published on July 9th, 2012 in: Horror, Movies, Over the Gadfly's Nest, Underground/Cult |

By Paul Casey

audition poster

When I saw Takashi Miike’s Audition, I did not know that the sub-genre of “torture porn” existed in horror. As such I did not approach it as an exercise in sadomasochism. (It is not, anyway). As I became aware of creators like Eli Roth, and a rather embarrassing discussion on how he had GONE TOO FAR (!!!! etc.), it was clear that there was still a burgeoning market for transgressive horror pictures. The Last House on the Left, I Spit On Your Grave, The Hitcher, the work of Lucio Fulci all caused similar bother upon their release. Some of the above were innovative, exciting examples of the independent creative spirit existent in 1970s American cinema. Others were not.

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Thoughts On: The Band, THE BAND

Published on July 3rd, 2012 in: Music, Music Reviews, Retrovirus, Reviews |

By Paul Casey

Part two in a continuing series on THE BAND’s discography.

To read the whole series, go here.

the band recording album by elliott landy
Photo © Elliott Landy, 1969

Recorded primarily in a Los Angeles house that once belonged to Sammy Davis Jr., THE BAND’s second, self-titled LP, is considered to be their masterpiece. It is the album on which the legend of THE BAND was built. Unlike Music From Big Pink, Robbie Robertson gets a writing credit on every song, collaborating with Richard Manuel on three tracks, and Levon Helm on one. It does not have the diversity of their debut, but instead comes their most cohesive work.

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