Posts Tagged With "Music"

. . . And One More Thing About Sun Ra

January 31, 2017 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

As discussed in a recent Brain Fuzz podcast episode with artist Michi Meko, I recently revisited Sun Ra for some reason. Probably because I’m rebooting my record collection and realized he wasn’t represented.

I couldn’t remember how the evolution of his music worked, so I decided to start again from the beginning. This proved tougher than expected – the discography is massive and disorganized. Recordings were made, then shelved for years in some cases, then released, then maybe released on another label and combined with another title.

What’s striking is just how the early work fits nicely into jazz sub-genres like bop or swing. The early Supersonic Jazz and Sound of Joy are enjoyable simply as jazz records.

Sun Ra as he appears on album cover of Space Is The Place.

I say simply, because something noticeable happens with Nubians of Plutonia – a new favorite of mine. The emphasis shifts to experimentation, and from there, the listening gets more complicated. Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy is downright difficult – the seemingly devil-may-care approach coupled with percussion at the forefront makes for tough going, even on repeat listens.

By the time of Atlantis and later, Space Is The Place, Sun Ra has struck a balance between the avant garde and the approachable.

Is Space The Place?

But of course, approachable is far from accessible. It’s tough to connect the cosmic and demonic references in the titles of even the earlier, more traditional jazz works. And at first glance, it just gets stranger from there.

For most potential listeners, the Sun Ra persona is a barrier. In the past, I lumped the costumes and the language all in neatly as “Afrofuturism,” mainly because it was easy to label and move on and, hey it’s just weird and maybe even nonsense.

In actuality, there’s much more to it. Spoiler alert: Space isn’t the place after all.

. . . And that is why you should not only listen to Sun Ra, but check out our Brain Fuzz arts podcast episode with Michi Meko for unique insights on Afrofuturism, altered destiny, and persona.

Brain Fuzz: The Podcast

September 15, 2016 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

I’m lucky to call Joe Camoosa a friend. He’s also a great painter. I would say artist, but he doesn’t like being called an artist. (You’ll have to ask him.) So, I’m almost always at a loss as to how I can best describe him.

If you love Tokens From The Well, you’ll at least really like Brain Fuzz. Maybe you’ll love it. And vice versa.

Going back almost a year, and at the urging of more than one other person, he and I started thinking about a podcast. We started recording conversations with no agenda or outline. They were surprisingly cogent. They were also surprisingly coherent and relevant (at least to us).

Then, we started to structure our conversations a bit more. We still allowed for the randomness and variety that makes like interesting, and it all works somehow.

Topics include the creative life, studios, exhibitions, galleries, art travel, music, books, bands, various audiophiliac concerns, and related (or unrelated) minutiae. We typically avoid politics, religion, and sports.

Listen to Brain Fuzz sometime. And better yet, subscribe.

If you like Tokens From The Well, you’ll love Brain Fuzz – the new art, music, and culture podcast. I take that back. Regardless of whether you love Tokens From The Well or not, you’ll probably like Brain Fuzz.

Either way, give it a listen.

Eastbound and Up: Nashville (Part 1)

July 5, 2016 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

“Smells like Bonaroo, tastes like heaven,” said the barkeep at The Pharmacy, regarding their Etienne Dupont Cidre Bouche Brut de Normandie. Neither one of us knew quite what to think about that assessment, but I can attest to the claims regarding their burgers probably being the best in Nashville.

The burger at The Pharmacy might actually be the best in Nashville.

We were between stops on our first day back after a few months away, sandwiched between settling in our E. Nashville Airbnb and hitting a vinyl shop.

The afternoon’s itinerary also included a stop at a certain coffee shop where you can admire the artisan style iPad point-of-sale while trying to decide if you’re in a line or not (and for what). There, you have ample time to admire Metric on their turntable setup as you wait for your order to be called out.

Also, they have coffee.

I’ve had a similar experience while seeking caffeine there before. A friend’s recent account of his visit was surprisingly similar down to bus cart confusion. I still couldn’t locate the bus cart.

They also have several hot teas.

Eastbound and Up

One could easily stay in East Nashville and never go downtown, or anywhere else for that matter. Still Nashville has so many evolving neighborhoods that would be must stop destinations in any city. Grimey’s is truly a one-of-a-kind music store with a fine venue right under it in The Basement. That’s worth leaving East Nashville for. But, they’ve got a sister – or brother – venue with the Basement East in, you guessed it, East Nashville.

Black Mountain at Mercy Lounge in Nashville.

Closer to downtown, you’ve got Mercy Lounge and The Cannery Ballroom. The history alone regarding these Cannery Row venues is surprising. Speaking of history, there’s of course the Ryman. And, yes, the acoustics really are what they say they are.

Most of these stops have histories before the development boom of the last ten or fifteen years in Nashville. This boom has brought an almost overwhelming number of destinations for foodies and those with high credit limits and levels of disposable income. At the time of writing, roughly $2 billion in building projects across the area are underway.

What’s fueling the development? I hate to say it, but it looks like it might actually be as simple as a concerted shift in urban design combined with an effort to attract business (read: employers) to the city. Area industry has been lauded as more diversified (read: it’s not just country music) than that of other cities. It’s a college town. It’s a sports town.

In short, it could be a poster child for what loose monetary policy is supposed to do everywhere.

Some Potentially Related – or Tangential – Facts About Nashville

Like Florida, Tennessee has no income tax.
Nashville is a pain to fly into without a private jet.
Hotel rooms are few, and a Hampton Inn might cost as much as $400 per night.
Uber is a very effective method of transportation there.
Carter Vintage Guitars is better than Gruhn Guitars, but don’t tell anyone.

What’s The Origin Story of Hot Chicken?

The demon spawn of tourism and loose monetary policy includes hype. In this case, the show Nashville can also be counted. And then there’s hot chicken.

Being southern, I had never heard of what has been hailed as a uniquely southern dish. Then, on a recent trip to Nashville, I found that it couldn’t be avoided. Like the author in a Bitter Southerner account, I didn’t understand where it came from or how I had missed it.

And, just as in the story from The Bitter Southerner, I made a similar discovery regarding it’s origin story when I asked an Uber driver about it.

He said he and his brother would be roused when their father needed soakage around 2 am. But no, he said, it was never as big of a deal as it is now. It was just a thing in the black community.

I asked another Uber driver, and he said the best hot chicken was in East Nashville, contrary to countless reviews of tourist traps. I did see the phrase “Spicy Chicken” on an old storefront window and a telephone number without an area code.

I don’t know the difference between spicy chicken and hot chicken, but I did get a Gulch restaurant to bastardize (read: improve) one of their dishes with hot (or spicy) chicken. It worked.

Anyway, you can get Nashville Hot Chicken at KFC now.

In the next post, we’ll continue our survey of Nashville including a look in on the arts and a trip for bagged ice.

When The Alternative Goes Number One

August 27, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

As explored among earlier posts, country music has a problem. If Jason Isbell is accurately capturing the rural southern experience, then there isn’t really anything alternative about alternative country.

Add the fact that his Something More Than Free has spent time at number one on the country chart, and it isn’t even alternative in a market or business sense.

Hard kicking southern rock hat made in China.

Cultural confusion on multiple levels . . . a hard kickin southern rock cap made in China.

Alternative Country

There are countless other acts in the “alternative country” space that are producing extremely good work: Amanda Shires, Ryan Bingham, Bobby Bare Jr, and Hayes Carll come to mind. All are expanding on themes that have run from country music’s inception through its blues, R&B, and soul influences. In their music, contemporary humor meshes with traditional thematic material, and though it may not always aim for the emotional or psychological impact that is a consistent component of Isbell’s work, it doesn’t have to.

Alternative? If anything, it’s just the next logical evolution in country music. Or, what “country” really is.

Americana

Isbell took some well-deserved trophies home from 2014’s Americana Music Awards. Here are lyrics from a song that helped earn those awards – “Elephant” – about a friend dying from cancer:

She said Andy you’re better than your past,
winked at me and drained her glass,
cross-legged on the barstool, like nobody sits anymore.

She said Andy you’re taking me home,
but I knew she planned to sleep alone.
I’d carry her to bed and sweep up the hair from the floor.

If I had fucked her before she got sick
I’d never hear the end of it
she don’t have the spirit for that now.

We drink these drinks and laugh out loud,
bitch about the weekend crowd,
and try to ignore the elephant somehow.

John Hiatt, another artist classified as “Americana,” painted this picture in “Master of Disaster” – a blues rock trip through the LA area (with a shoutout to Madame Wong):

Close one there
Choking in clean underwear
Bleeding tongue
8-ball pounding in my lungs

I still don’t know what Americana as a genre really is. To me, Americana is the flea market ephemera that decorates the dining area of Cracker Barrel. All that the Americana label does is keep the more intellectually challenging country-influenced music conveniently away from the trough of fodder that distributors and big box stores can easily peddle as “country.”

These are lyrics penned by contemporary human beings wrestling with contemporary pain.

The Real Alternative?

Logically, the real alternative country sound is what emanates from the alternative universe created by musicians mimicking thick southern or country accents native to nowhere. They stick to themes that are now industry standard and keep convenient stereotypes of country life and southerners alive.

Why kill the golden goose anyway?

If Americana is the decorative ephemera in Cracker Barrel’s dining area, what has become identified as country is the Chinese-made shlock pushed in their waiting area “gift” shops. It feigns authenticity . . . just enough.

Something More Complicated

August 20, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Every geographic region has its own flavors of joy and hardship. Life in southern Mississippi demands something different than the plains of Oklahoma. Job prospects in Trenton or the ports of New Jersey are different than those of Mobile or New Orleans.

Bottling The Essence

Consistently across his writing and recording, Jason Isbell is capturing probably better than anyone else the unique experience of contemporary and rural southern life.

You thought God was an architect and now you know
He’s something like a pipe bomb ready to blow.

Jason Isbell (image from Picasa)

With that line from “24 Frames,” it’s easy to see that Something More Than Free requires more than just one good listen.

A line like this:

I don’t keep liquor here, never cared for wine or beer
And working for the county keeps me pissing clear.

. . . is comic on one level, but it also nails the vicious cycle now so common in southern rural life: Pain of personal ambition choked by lack of job prospects; add drug or alcohol addiction as a way of escape; further limit your job prospects; repeat.

It’s one thing to craft the imagery (in Something‘s “Speed Trap Town” for example), but it’s another to bottle the essence.

Even with Wal-Mart a half hour away, the country life is one that requires a different grit and know-how than what is required in urban life. Sound farfetched in 2015? Deal with a flooded dirt road in southern Alabama, a dried up well in middle Georgia, or an ice storm in the foothills of Appalachia. Sure, it’s easier now than it was in 1915, but life can be surprisingly difficult.

Meanwhile, farming isn’t what it used to be and most of the manufacturing jobs are gone. It’s a big deal when the new Kia, Mercedes, or BMW plant opens.

Then there’s military service, a related theme Isbell frequently explores. It is a fact that military enlistments have always been represented disproportionately by southerners and the trend actually continues to rise. As a result, armed conflict disproportionately impacts southern families and communities. Take a look at the lyrics from “Dress Blues”, a cut from the previous album Southeastern:

You never planned on the bombs in the sand
Or sleeping in your dress blues.

And no, Zac Brown did not write that.

Digging Deeper

As with “Dress Blues” and so much else in his work, Isbell insists on digging deeper into the southern and rural psyche – so much so that at times the writing has a Faulknerian quality. Isbell has expressed genuine surprise at the commercial success of Something More Than Free, and it’s understandable. The message in this work is contrary to the blind, usually mindless flag-waving, God-fearing, beer-guzzling stereotype peddled in what has become known as country music.

The southern existence is a lot more complicated. Indeed, country life – not just southern life – is a lot more complicated.

Country Music Has a Problem

August 10, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Country music has a problem. More accurately, country music has a new problem. Jason Isbell’s excellent Something More Than Free hit number one on Billboard’s country chart and number one on the rock chart . . . in addition to spending some time in the top ten on the Billboard 200.

It probably wasn’t supposed to work out this way. More about that later.

That Don’t Impress Me Much

Country has been defined by the “contemporary country” or “country pop” sound, look, and feel since the arrival of Garth Brooks, Shania Twain, and Billy Ray Cyrus between 1990 and 1993.

It started off innocently enough – each of those artists are talented, each in his or her own way. There is no debating this fact. But, the powers that be got greedy when they saw just how much money could be made with country music after years of slow country sales and the “new traditionalist” country of the 1980’s.

Bad Rock With a Fiddle

Jason Isbell, from the cover of Something More Than Free.

Tom Petty once called it “bad rock with a fiddle.” And, that’s exactly what country music – as it is now generally accepted – started to become in the early 90’s.

With time, the color that our friends in low places had was lost. The jokes grew stale. Conversation became a bland re-hash every time: God, country, family, pickup trucks. S.O.S. different day. Same beer. Same bar. Slightly different chorus.

In this case of (extreme) arrested development, we grew apart. You know, like, when you grow up and they don’t.

Eventually, that’s also how we ended up with Keith Urban on American Idol.

Alt-Country and Americana

Several things the powers that be couldn’t explain began in the mid-90’s. For one, there was Johnny Cash’s “revival” with the help of Rick Rubin and the American recordings. It was often explained away as simple nostalgia. But, the demographic that embraced those records and went to the concerts weren’t old country fans looking to relive the past. It was a new – and very different looking – group of fans. In fact, many of those fans were likely still mourning the death of Kurt Cobain who passed away loudly on April 5, 1994. The first of Cash’s American recordings was released only weeks later that very same month.

It was about this same time, the term “alternative country” – now often also referred to as “Americana” – was born. One of the glaring issues with this label is that many alternative country artists also happen to be new traditionalists: Lyle Lovett, Dwight Yoakam, and Steve Earle, for example.

And, there are the artists that actually pre-date new traditionalism: Loretta Lynn and Emmylou Harris. Don’t forget Willie Nelson – also now usually lumped into alternative country.

Interestingly enough, there is also Shooter Jennings (yes, that Jennings), Hank III (yes, that Hank), and Bobby Bare Jr. (yes, that Bobby Bare).

Jason Isbell on Facebook with a post in response to accusations of “hype” surrounding Something More Than Free.

Still, early alternative country artists such as Uncle Tupelo and Wilco are largely credited with defining alternative country. Drive-By Truckers with their Muscle Shoals ties – and with whom Jason Isbell played – have helped further the sub-genre. Somehow though, bands like Wilco can also “graduate” from alt-country to alt-rock. Or, in the case of Drive-By Truckers, southern rock.

It all gets very confusing.

More importantly, what happens when the alternative goes number one?

Gimme The Sound, Man

February 6, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Contemporary Art - Matthew White - I want the sound injectly directed into my head. (2015)

Detail from I want the sound injectly directed into my head. (2015)

Sales of song downloads last year suddenly dropped, dramatically. The recent music industry sales numbers, as covered here in “Streaming Is Killing the MP3 Industry,” illustrate the broad cultural shifts underway:

What we expect as music listeners (consumers) is changing.
How we consume music is changing.
The nature of music delivery – now, as packets of data – is changing.

I want the sound injectly directed into my head. is an exploration of these ideas and related questions. It is an industrial style guitar fitted with black iron pipe as a neck, which also acts as conduit. The guitar is restrung with cat 5e cable (I now routinely enjoy working with it, by the way), exploding in a bouquet from its non-existent headstock.

Fitted for wall mounting, the piece displays much as a guitar would on a musician’s studio wall.

What Next?

For links to upcoming Tokens From the Well blog articles, follow @mwgallery on Twitter or “like” artist Matthew White on Facebook.

Updated February 25, 2016.

Streaming Is Killing the MP3 Industry

January 6, 2015 By Matthew White Leave a Comment

Nope. 2014 was not a great year for the MP3 industry. According to reports in The Wall Street Journal, sales of downloaded songs and albums “plummeted” while the use of streaming grew “sharply.”

And, for the icing on the cake: Vinyl sales are up significantly.

The Who and What By Numbers

Streaming is killing the MP3 industry, and hipsters should note the numbers on vinyl.

Let’s briefly review 2014:

Downloaded album sales dropped 9%.
Downloaded song sales dropped 12%.
Streaming grew by a whopping 54%.

Total album consumption was 257 million units. Downloaded albums represent 106.5 million of that total.

Hipsters should note that while vinyl sales are up, it’s only 9.2 million units in all. That’s about 4% of total (“new”) album sales across formats. Despite the saber rattling across posts and shares – as well as my own wishes for our culture – that’s not enough to spill a PBR (or Genessee) over.

To put a face on some of these numbers, Taylor Swift had the biggest album sales of the year with more than 3.66 million copies of her 1989.

So . . .

On the surface, the significant movement of these numbers in such a short period of time is what is most impressive. And, even more importantly, it’s interesting to put these numbers in perspective among broader trending across decades (RIAA offers a lot of data available via subscription). For example, notice how cycles in format adoption have sped up.

What would Rob and Barry think about streaming? High Fidelity is also a book by Nick Hornby that may or may not be available on Kindle.

The assumption that consumers are purchasing and downloading single songs while abandoning whole albums is wrong. The data backs this up. Among us enlightened music consumers, we may not like who they download or how they download it, but they still value the “album” as a collection of songs. In fact, since 2013, single song downloads declined more than album downloads.

The impact to what remains of an always clueless “music industry” is clear. People are listening to more music while they – and the artists – make less money.

. . . And In The End

These numbers tell us more about how our culture’s consumption habits and brains are evolving than they do about our music tastes.

The free market can be a real bitch. Music makers have greater access to instruments, collaboration, and distribution. Consumers have access to more music, more artists, and more formats. Are the sheeple engaging with albums and album tracks in ways that the enlightened would prefer? Who knows? They probably never will anyway.

These shifts in trends raise an interesting question about how artists integrate the distribution format into their work. For example, in 1967’s Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hears Club Band, The Beatles mixed several seconds of sound for the record’s run-out groove. This was followed by a 15 kilocycle pitch that was included especially for dogs. Interestingly, use of the run-out groove actually dates back to recordings for 78s.

For most, the uncomfortable fact of the matter is that music now – like sales charts – is mostly data. That fact is not inherently good or bad. The real question is, what next?