The couple of accusations of pompousness on the Sleater-Kinney thread is troubling. On one hand there’s no pleasing everyone. On the other hand, you’re my peers, the one group of people I share my #1 passion with. So maybe I’m doing something wrong. All I’ve intended to do was simply to share the love. I think many people misunderstand that just because I rate an album a certain way, I don’t expect everyone to agree. I’m simply sharing my opinion. Some artists or albums I’m crazy about and am willing to explain my opinions all day and all night. With others I’m not so committed. That’s about the extent of it.
I know a lot of people prefer to use this forum to talk about anything and everything, including extremely personal matters. It’s not that I don’t do that with people I know, but in a public forum, there’s something to be said for privacy. I prefer to keep that stuff with people I know one-on-one.
But that doesn’t mean I wanna be a total stranger. Here’s a recap of the last couple months. My girlfriend and I took a much needed vacation in Jamaica in February. She was studying for the level 3 boards. That’s a 2-day long test that occurs during the second year of residency that determines whether you’ll be eligible to become a fully licensed physician able to write prescriptions. It’s very stressful, and makes it hard on a relationship. I spent a lot of time and energy helping her try to be relaxed and focused for that. Last week, to great relief, she passed and I took her to Vermilion (interesting Indian-South American fusion) to celebrate. We got very drunk, so all I remember was that the molten chocolate cake was incredible. Jamaica is similarly blurry. Checked out John Holt in downtown Negril. I paid a dread cabbie to take us around wherever. I think I remember smoking a spliff bigger than a baby’s arm, being whisked to the hills and witnessing a Rastafarian grounation, complete with incessantly pounding Nyabinghi drums and a reasoning session that probably lasted days. Lots of sun, fun, rum, sand, water, reading and reggae beach parties.
I read a few books there, including
A Love Supreme: The Making of John Coltrane’s Masterpiece by Ashley Kahn. I never imagined a whole book could be written about a thirty minute recording, but this was nicely done, with beautiful photos and great quotes from fellow musicians, and Coltrane himself. I had acquired most of his albums by about ’94, but it’s taken me a long time to digest his sixties work. In fact, I’ve only listened to
Ascension once, and am just now feeling ready to absorb it. There’s a great quote from Coltrane that I can’t seem to find again, that says something like, the greatest music is challenging and takes effort to listen to and understand. I bet if he were alive he’d be up for tackling the Mars Volta album! I spent a lot of time the past few months listening to the aforementioned album, and
Crescent,
Meditations,
Africa/Brass, etc, and just, well, uh meditating.
The next one I read was
King Jammy’s by Beth Lesser. I love the design and layout, but Lesser’s writing leaves much to be desired. Though I would like to get around to checking out Jammy’s early 80s dancehall efforts, the book doesn’t make it seem all that compelling. At least Lesser spent a lot of time with Jammy’s and his family, and gave a fairly thorough background. But it seems like she was smoking too much weed when she should have been honing her writing chops.
People Funny Boy: The Genius Of Lee Perry was much more satisfying. It was also pretty intimidating – a heavy bible, nearly 600 pages. I had the book nearly two years before I could work up the ambition to dig in. I knew it would be an expensive proposition, because I would be compelled to hunt down most of the songs it discusses. And the book covers nearly everything Perry set to wax. Lee Perry’s life pretty much covers the entire history of modern Jamaican music. Always a big music fan, having already won a series of dance contests, Perry had his epiphany while driving bulldozers in Negril in the late 50s. While breaking up boulders to develop the very same beach community I was reading this at, he believed the boulders were speaking to him, telling him to go to Kingston (“King Stone”) and try his hand at the music business. This may very well have also been early signs of schizophrenia that would later sidetrack his career after 1978.
What’s amazing to me is the amount of talent this small island produced, and how passionate nearly every single Jamaican is about music. Its entire culture revolves around music, which is pretty unique when you compare it to the U.S. in general. And why wouldn’t nearly everyone become a musician when it was one of the only ways to scratch your way out of poverty. If your records got distributed in the U.K., your life could change completely. When Island struck a deal with Perry after his success with a hit from Susan Cadogan, he invested the money into building the Black Ark in his back yard, and stayed very connected with his community. Perhaps too close – when he ignored his Rasta spiritual advisor to take a vacation and go to the country, Perry suffered a breakdown and Black Ark was destroyed. I’ll include a more thorough account on my site.
I collected a good percentage of the songs (most of which are out of print) highlighted in the book and collected them in my Jamaican/Lee Perry folder in chronological order, and are accessible via slsk. I also greatly expanded my knowledge of roots albums in general. I’ve been chatting with Chicago DJ Algo Riddim and initiated a massive trade. He’s a madman – he probably has one of the top five reggae collections in the U.S. I’ve also been haunting the boards of Pressure Sounds and Blood & Fire, gathering more knowledge and recommendations. Currently stuck in heavy rotation – Rico * Man From Wareika, Justin Hinds * Jezebel and Ijahman * Haile I Hymm. I updated my
Jamaican list accordingly. I’ll also have a piece on this stuff with the Lee Perry. On top of that I’m doing research on another bigger project, that could someday be a book.
I’ve also been listening to the remastered
You’re Living All Over Me, my favorite Dinosaur Jr. album. It’s great to hear Barlow’s Stooges-inspired bass and Mascis’ Neil Young-like guitar freakouts louder and clearer than ever. I wonder if Merge will tackle Husker Du’s catalog.
Zen Arcade sounds perfect, despite being recorded and mixed during a 14 hour acid trip, but I always thought
Flip Your Wig and
New Day Rising sounded like ass.
A couple of show highlights lately were Slint and Bloc Party. I was kind of afraid that Slint would be a little boring. Their stuff didn’t exactly inspire the most exciting aspects of post-rock and math rock. Aside from the extended between-song pauses and tunings, they rocked like motherfuckers. Several moments they sounded like they were going to veer into grindcore territory. Very ‘eavy, very loud. Great show, glad I got to see them. Bloc Party was even more satisfying. When the Ponys were playing, friends thought they were pretty good. But I wondered, where’s the rhythm? I wasn’t into it. Thankfully, Bloc Party exceeded all expectations and blew everyone away. What a great show – friends finally understood what I meant in my hype about the drummer. He was a total rockstar. Expect Guns ‘n’ Roses to attempt to poach him soon.
This is getting long. Contrary to popular belief, I only listen to music for pleasure. There’s no other way – it’s not my job.
I’ve also been trying to get back into racing shape. With no fast training I took a crack at the Shamrock Shuffle a couple weeks ago, placed 598/19,000, down from last year’s 344 because I’m coming off an injury. I hope to get stronger in smaller 5ks on the lakefront later this spring. Hey, I said I have a life, I didn't say it was all exciting!
Best,
Tony
