I first write about Howard Finster HERE, where I described it thusly:Although Rev. Howard Finster, a preacher from rural Georgia with little formal education whose paintings went so far as to become REM and Talking Heads album covers, may be America's best known folk artist, he also had a little-discussed musical side. The album "The Night Howard Finster Got Saved" is largely dedicated to spoken-word tracks, but t
here's some ace tunes on it as well. Singing in a high'n' lonesome twang, playing guitar, harmonica, and...piano, Finster's music should sound familiar to anyone who's heard the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack."
After receiving a comment asking for more last August, I looked into it and it turns out that the album is now out-of-print and pricey, so I could indeed put the whole thing up. Only I couldn't find my copy. Recently whilst looking for something else entirely, I did found my copy and here 'tis: The Night Howard Finster Got Saved There's much to enjoy here: Finster's old-fashioned Southern speech, his charmingly out-of-tune piano, the passionate singing. One of the spoken-work tracks, "Last Call I Had," is particular stirring, as Finster describes how he talked a suicidal New Yorker out of jumping, over the phone. But the climactic title track truly must be heard to be believed - over two different tape recordings playing two different fiery Finster sermons, the good rev. sings, shouts, whistles, whoops and hollers over the din. For 25 minutes. Absolutely mental.
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"Glorious" Gloria Parker is a veteran of the Big Band era who is not only still alive and well, but plays, among other instruments, musical glasses - wetting one's finger and running it around the rims of a set of wine glasses to play melodies. She's quite amazing, a real virtuoso on her obscure instrument. I esp. dig the cool funk of "God Bless You Merry Gentlemen" from her album "A Toast To Christmas".
And that'd be cool enough. But it gets better. Much, much better.
A series of legal mishaps has led the still-feisty New Yorker to write a book entitled "Corruption Reigns in the Courtroom." Not only that, she has released, and is selling thru her website, a musical album of the same name. In a theatrical voice, accompanying herself on piano playing showtune-y music, Parker sings her chirpy, upbeat original songs. All her lyrics deal with how much she hates the American court system. Every song.
Don't have the album yet, but the four mp3s on her site (scroll to bottom of page) range from absolutely wonderful to absolutely wonderful. Haven't read her book, but I know of at least one of the legal setbacks that has caused this obsession - her co-authorship of this song:
Alan Holmes & His New Tones "Supercalafajalistickespeealadojus"Incredibly, she lost her suit against Disney for it's use of the Sherman Brothers tune featured in "Mary Poppins." I'd be pissed, too. (Actually, Dick Van Dyke's gawd-awful Cockney accent is grounds enough for a legal action.)
She appeared performing on her glasses in the '80s Woody Allen film "Broadway Danny Rose," about a talent agent whose clients are all overlooked hard-luck novelty performers. Guess that makes me the Broadway Danny Rose of music bloggers.
r
...I've heard on the internet lately: the latest (Week 119) ofA private recording made in the "...late 1970's of our local zoo's carousel, whose calliope had fallen into dreadful disrepair, making for some wonderfully warbled versions of Moon River, 76 Trombones, The Sound of Music and many others." If there is a circus in Hell, this is the soundtrack. (Of course, coming from me, that's a compliment.) For example, Henry Mancini, like you've never heard him before:
dying carousel: "Moon River"
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...sang Bowie. Not many music blogs been around this long, have they? 650 posts! At first, knowing very little about computers, I used to link directly to other site's mp3s. I was so naive! Sorry for any bandwidth I sucked. I suck. We went from the generic look to a more custom design. Then started adding pictures, YouTube came along, then file-storing sites so I could share entire albums for free. And so it goes...So, tell me: Likes, dislikes? Intense hates? Any life-changing events associated with this here web-log? Your band ever cover/you ever sample a tune you first heard here? Just how are you celebrating?.
Whilst listening to another fine episode of The Bopst Show, I was struck by a song called "Baby" from The Phenomenal Handclap Band. They sounded like a '70s group, but it turns out that they are a new soul revival band from New York. It was the ending part of the song that stopped me in my tracks: "Hey, that's 'Swopepusha'!"
"Swopepusha" is an almost-decade old track from Poopoo Varmint, a side project of mashup pioneer Evolution Control Committee. After downloading it back in the earliest days of such activities, I played it constantly. Still do, in fact. I couldn't get enough of what sounded like a brilliantly catchy melodic bit of '60s E-Z kitsch obliterated by a blizzard of pummeling electronic beats. That catchy melodic bit? You guessed - the same tune at the end of "Baby." Coincidence? Did the Handclap Band steal it from Poopoo Varmint? But where did they get it from..?
TradeMark G., the president of the Committe, informed me that they sampled it from "...Putney Swope, an awesome 1969 movie is it. It appears the soundtrack music is by Charley Cuva, and although a soundtrack album was not released at the time of the movie, an after-the-fact soundtrack was made later (and the LP of that would make a great birthday present for me... ahem). The music's from a commercial in the movie for Go Lucky Airlines; that soundtrack webpage includes a 45-second preview of the music that ECC sampled."
Our chats on this subject led Mark to go back and remix "Swopepusha." It possibly kicks even more butt then the original, but you can get both old and new versions HERE, as well as all the juicy details abut the song and Poopoo Varmint's brief history. But I'm just gonna post the new version, with the Handclap Band song, for your comparing and contrasting pleasure. (Remember, it's the end part of "Baby" we're talking about.)
The ECC/Poopoo Varmint "Swopepusha (2009)"
The Phenomenal Handclap Band "Baby"So, did the Handclappers swipe the tune from the "Putney Swope" soundtrack? Or maybe they are ECC fans, or maybe it's a big coincidence. Or maybe the "Putney Swope" soundtrack guy got in a time machine and stole it from the Handclap Band. Or...
Oh, and in "Swopepusha," "by the way, that's Mae West moaning in the background."s
Cutting-edge composers started off the century playing with classical music traditions, then moved to electric rock sounds and electronics. But recently I've noticed (am I the only one?) how many experimentalists are drawing inspiration from years/centuries gone by, writing things like sad accordion waltzes.
Chris Butler is an unlikely pioneer of the antique-garde movement. Veteran of wacky '70s proggies Tin Huey and superstar new-wavers The Waitresses, Butler recorded a series of singles in the '90s compiled on a fine 2002 collection called "The Museum Of Me" that featured original songs recorded with everything from primitive technologies such as Edison wax cylinders and '40s era wire recorders to modern methods. He's still an alt-rock 'n' roller at heart tho, filling his songs with the kind of biting observational lyrics that made Waitresses hits like "I Know What Boys Like" so memorable.
Chris Butler "The Man In The Razor Suit" - totally killer twisted intense kinda-sorta-Delta blues, recorded onto wire; in a perfect world, this song would be as big as "Christmas Wrapping"
Chris Butler: "Thinking About Them Girls" - fun, catchy tune with Butler's voice and 12-string guitar recorded onto a wax cylinder, other musicians on jug (!), banjo, slide whistle, kazoo and spoons recorded with modern technology; as disorienting as watching, say, old footage of Buster Keaton trading lines with modern actors in a current film. The non-antique 
garde songs are cool too - I like the Beach Boys-ish summer tune, and the spooky surf instro amusingly entitled "Bad Moon Over Mel Bay."
The handsomely packaged album comes with a booklet featuring photos of the tools used, and more technical information then a '50s hi-fi album, as well as 10 bonus tracks not listed on Amazon that feature the songs in various stages of construction, as well as "talking bits from a used spool of wire. I found it at a flea market. I think it dates from the Korean War era, when a NE Ohio family sat down at a kitchen table to play cards on a Saturday night..." He says he'll make a cassette tape of the entire recording for you if you write to him. Don't know if that offer still stands. "they marry young down there"I recently wrote about Ergo Phizmiz' amusing demolition of '90s club hits, but the astonishingly prolific British nutter has been posting plenty more free sounds, including an album described as "Instrumental music from the forthcoming 10 part Ergo Phizmiz radio-art cycle "The House of Dr Faustus." Instruments include "Harmonium, Toy Piano, Melodica, Balinese Xylophone, Messiah Box (huh?), Ukulele, Euphonium, Bagpipes, Didgeridoo, Desk Bell, Mechanical Birds, Pixiphone (wha?), Tibetan Flute, Kazoo, Autoharp" and about a zillion others.
For me, this haunting song is not only the album's standout track, but, as experimental sad accordion waltzes go, one of the best. Ergo Phizmiz - Music for an Underground CircusThe band Piñataland are responsible for the phrase "antique-garde" actually - a V
illage Voice review of this intriguing New York combo described them thusly. Their debut from a few years back, "Songs For The Forgotten Future Vol. 1" mixes samples of early recordings with original songs performed on tuba (no bass!), strings, slide guitar that suggests country music without actually being country music, and, on this song, theremin:
Piñataland "Devil's Airship"The lyrics are true stories about overlooked oddities of American history - the above song deals with the "phantom airship" scare of the late 1800s. The song sampled in the intro is a 1912 Edison cylinder called "Mysterious Moon."
They released "Vol. 2" more recently, which I haven't checked out yet. But this one's another well-packaged product: photos, historical news-clippings, sample info, lyrics. And, yes, the album features sad accordion waltzes.
Staff Benda Bilili are a truly remarkable find - their debut album is possibly both the African and outsider music release of the year. Qualifications:
Outsider: this large group is comprised of homeless street kids and handicapped adults who live in a park. They not only feature homemade instruments, particularly a buzzy one-string invention made from wire and a tin can played brilliantly by one of the youngsters, but the disabled guys make their own wheelchairs out of bicycle tires and plastic lawn furniture. Their album was recorded live in the park using power bootlegged from a snack stand's electrical lines.
African: The Congo produced a seemingly endless parade of sound-alike soukous bands throughout the '80s and '90s. No predictable Kinsasha cliches from Staff Benda Bilili - they're all over the map, literally, from Cuban rhumba (long a Congolese influence) to American James Brown-type funk (one song finds them shouting "sex machine!") to the Carribean, e.g.: the highly energetic calypso/ska-inflected insta-classic posted here. But the junk instruments give everything a slightly alien sound, ensuring originality.
Unlike a lot of so-called "dance music," listening to this stuff make my legs uncontrollably twitch like a spastic (which, yes, sadly passes for dancing for me).
Staff Benda Bilili - Sala Mosala
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here's some ace tunes on it as well. Singing in a high'n' lonesome twang, playing guitar, harmonica, and...piano, Finster's music should sound familiar to anyone who's heard the "O Brother Where Art Thou" soundtrack."
