A Wandering Grayhead in the Millennials’ Swamp, Vol 1: Jams You Need Today

That the music industry is in full disruption mode should surprise no one. More likely, it’s in full dissolution mode. And as per usual, the suits didn’t see this monster coming. They rarely do, probably blinded and deafened by their golden parachutes and bonuses. (Like Sears department stores closing 100 locations while its CEO gets a $25M bonus. Failure rewarded: It’s almost as if these bosses write their own rules.) We’ve being seeing these corpses of entertainment empires piling up for a while now: Blockbuster, Rhapsody, Beats Music, Tower Records, Grooveshark, on and on. Streaming is only the latest disruptive blow of a long swinging hammer. Forbes says music industry death is only a matter of time.

Shed no tears for the giants though: They’ve been quietly buying shares of the digital service startups and offering access to their large music catalogs. And guess who’s (still) getting screwed on the deal? See below.

And, as per usual in Capitalism, it’s the artists – erm, content developers, who’re getting pimped out of existence. The corporate predators, in this case the streaming services, are doing well. In fact, Spotify’s first earnings report for 2018 claimed revenue of $1.36 billion. The artists are now little more than buskers on a seasonal, corporate entry-level salary. (To prove the point, check this mid-level metal band’s income for a 30-day tour.)

We’ll have to wait and see if the parasites actually kill their hosts this time.

The Era of Streaming: Forget the Era of the Album – that’s long gone. Who even listens to anything but self-curated playlists anymore? No cult of fanatics will ever be enough to sustain an albums industry.

Just an FYI: It takes 1,500 streams for an artist to recoup an equivalent of the royalties afforded by of the sale of one album. Even royalties from digital downloads from songs via iTunes – not streamed, but bought – are pathetically scant. The only real wage available to artists is touring – great if you’re Smashing Pumpkins (who came from a pre-Napster era), not so if you’re the average garage band starting out. So, this is what music is being reduced to: An amateur’s enterprise.

As per tradition, even today the heavyweights are feeling the burn: It’s reported that Drake has brought in $100 million in revenue for Apple and Spotify. At a royalty rate of $0.005 per stream, that makes his take $500,000. Even by old record royalty standards, a legendarily chiseling system, that’s an egregiously pathetic rate.

For those who’d flip back through the earlier posts of this blog, they’ll note the slavish attention I’ve give to the hoary old nuggets from long bygone eras. Well, No more! I vow to concentrate only on (mostly) Millennial Era music from here on in.

With that in mind, enjoy the selections below before the talented tenth bail and the whole music industry becomes overrun with hobbyists and amateurs: These I submit for your playlist delectation. Think of it as your savory Swamp Sausage for the day:

1) Mr. Jukes (AKA mr jukes), Angels/Your Love (2017):



A solo/collaborative project from Bombay Bicycle Club's Jack Steadman. Speaking of sausage, this is very much a sound file Pro Tools sausage in a sweet skin brass. This track could fit in nicely with those old Verve Remixed collections. Nice horns, nice vocal, an incessant, driving and hypnotic groove – as George Clinton would say, it’s all good for your earhole.

2) M83, Wait: From an album released in 2010 by “French electronic musician” Anthony Gonzalez who’s currently holed up in Los Angeles, DBA M83. Originally a duo but it seems to be down to him now. M83 has enjoyed some mainstream success and institutional props – they’d a Grammy nom – but don’t hold it against them. As you’ll note, the joint starts chill, meandering a bit and patient build before ascending into the swirling cauldron of ethereal drama it becomes by the fade. Grunge tried to do this far more impatiently and abruptly (think Smells Like Teen Spirit); this is the grownup version: Measured, mature, and more heartfelt. Like the difference of screaming triggered at a loved one versus the long and carefully-crafted drag you can give someone when you really put some thought into it, loading it with all those targets that only a loved one with history can know. I know I just went dark there, and I’m not sure that’s what M83 intended for themselves, but those bird-like squawks near the end come from somewhere considerably south of heartwarming. You know what I mean.



3) Superfood, Raindance (2017): Music of the 60’s was often brash in its mixing of sources and genres – think Sly and the Family Stone, Ellen McIlwaine, Santana, on and on. Rock was still relatively infantile at the time. In that sense, Superfood is refreshing and doing that thing that Brits have a history of doing so well, colonizing music as if they were lands and people. On Raindance the Birmingham duo has mixes up American styles in way we haven't heard in a while, since, I don't know, rap metal? This is Brit-pop does best – attempting an imitation and ending up leaving their fingerprints all over it, in a very good way.



4) Bloc Party, Banquet (2005): Crafty, spunky, spirited, with hooks to grab your loins – nice production too. And they’ve got a portfolio loaded with such songs. If ours was a universe that didn't laugh at human injustice, these guys would be big as Radiohead, or at least as big as those twee bands twenty øne piløts, The Postal Service, The National, Snow Patrol, Imagine Dragons, yecch al. They may not quite have the range or ambition of Radiohead but they do make a stunning noise.



Bonus! Two More Years (MSTRKRFT Remix): One of the few remixes I've heard that far exceeds the original.



5) Sufrajett, Love Me More: From 2003 – a band so old they still have a MySpace page. The song may not offer anything new to canon of beleaguered-girlfriend-with-loser-boyfriend trope, but it does add some fire. The chorus is an ear worm of anaconda proportions. It’ll dig straight to your brain’s center without mercy if you’re not bothered by its its retro 70’s punk vernacular. As for the video, it’ll be hard to miss the central message: Check out those shorts!

The band is long gone today but singer Simi Stone is still with us and has work to imbibe, including on Spotify. Sufrajett also has three songs available (still) for download, including this one here.



6) The Knife, Pass This On (2003): An electronic music brother and sister duo (Karin and Olof Dreijer) from Sweden – and, no, that’s not them in the video: Sister Karin also fronted a project called Fever Ray. First time I heard this, I completely fell for the whole I’m in love with your brother schtick. I fell so hard I got past the whole new agey steel drum sound which usually puts me off. I love the breathy, conspiratorial vocal conceit and the layers of squeaky background vocals that sound like a squadron of haunted dolls. Also, the spam-email syntax and the generally opaque lyrics together make for a juicy ambiguous cocktail that only adds to the mystique: A seriously danceable Swedish confection bomb.



7) Deerhoof, Spiral Golden Town (2005): Another relic from the early naughties – 2005. To start, the opening horn fanfare is pure and irresistible steroid for your music nodes. Once past that, the fanfare embroiders itself into song’s circusy middle and by then you should’ve fallen deep into the juicy tiger pit. I’m going to guess the word quirky is the go-to scribes will resort to label their sound, but usually quirky isn’t propped onto a foundation as powered up and, at times, funky as they are. A lot of the debt must go to the thunder of drummer Greg Saunier, though his pounds here are chill. (Check out their live in-studio performances on YouTube.) Deerhoof hails from San Francisco and there are deep traces of local quirk are in their mix – The Residents, Mr. Bungle, Primus, Jonathan Richman, some folkrock, some horn bands, etc. Bassist and singer Satomi Matsuzaki, who’d joined the band within a week of arriving stateside from Japan, shares her native countrymen’s affinity for cutesy lyrics and precious themes and they’re mostly delivered in a kind of legato bark that befits her serviceable but unsingerly vocal stylings. What she does deliver, is well-engineered into the songs. The two guitarists intertwine well together, though they’re low-keyed here. On a hotter mix, the guitars can delve into a kind of sonic hot oil wrestling.

We need more bands like this.




8) Eels, Souljacker Part 1 (2002): I grew up a big fan of the blues but, generally speaking, I’ve moved on.  Souljacker takes the form and reworks into something fresh and surprising, even. I discovered Souljacker from the soundtrack of The United States of Tara. I knew of Eels (essentially the work of Mark Oliver Everett) from the 90’s when Novocaine for the Soul was hitting. Hadn’t paid much attention much after. For most anyone born after GenX, Eels catalog is probably going to sound like something you would’ve heard on your grandpa’s iPod. Their music tends toward the slow and ponderous though the emotions are often a little rawer and naked. Obviously, Souljacker is something else entirely – a bit out of character. Souljacker is hot, direct, succinct, and a li’l off it’s meds in the best way possible.



9) Headshy, Coma (2014): Once, long ago, I did a job at Johnny Depp’s house. On that day I’d meet Johnny and his sister who worked as his assistant/coordinator/major-domo. A fine person but, clearly, there wasn’t enough of Johnny’s ice-sculptured jaw and cheekbones to decorate the entire family tree. Music too can be like a family of siblings. Some are just prettier than others. Somehow those minute genetic adjustments can make for profound differences.

Songs can be much the same. The sources, the influences, the construction, and even DNA can be much the same but the differences can vary wildly. For Coma, the DNA of Headshy had all of the chromosomes lining up just right – Headshy is their Alex of the Baldwins or the Kim of the Kardashians. Digging through their catalog, the music seems to favor the slow and subdued. What I might call bong loaded music – too many bowls to muster up the energy to bang out a rocker. The rest of their catalog is a bit diaphanous if dark.



10) Molice, Android Said (2010): I’d guess Tokyo-based Molice hired some (American?) PR hack to craft their musical description: “... [their] East/West hybrid sound has a wide appeal by being both catchy and edgy, incorporating rock n’ roll, classical, dance, shoegaze, alternative, and post-hardcore elements.” That’s pure sales fluff and mostly fictional: I’m not hearing that. Except for the Japanese lyrics, their sound – at least on Android Said – is pure Western retro seasoned with a spoonfuls of surf punk twang. This may be why it attaches to my (very Western) receptors so hard. I’ve poked around a bit on Spotify and I can say, sadly, Android Said isn’t typical – that aside, this track kills like a ninja.

And, gawds, that riff! Taut, concise, caffeinated, sounding just incomplete enough to leave you hanging before coming around again. If that doesn’t seize your senses like the waft of McDonald’s french fries as you drive past then whatever other pleasure nuggets are to be found here, they won’t be for you.

Life Is a Rock Opera You Can't Dance to

Once, I was young and in a band: Three boys and two girls – one boy was the drummer so he doesn’t count. (He had a girlfriend.) One girl was going between the other of us two boys (and I was falling in love with her – a bad, bad idea). Both of us also had a tension with the blond singer. We boys were also the band’s songwriters so it was competition on stilts.

And 25 years later the drummer died.

Our stories are the almost exactly the same.

Banging and Scraping for the Groove

I’m going to guess that The Esbjörn Svensson Trio from Sweden are jazzers that grew up on rock. I’d throw this outfit in a bag with cool cat Matthew Shipp which I’ve posted here before. Both musicks display footnotes from hip hop, rock, trance, and here – when that double bass (Dan Berglund) drops in with the bowed fuzz tone – metal. I think the band has moments when it wants to traipse off into New Agey Fairyland, or rural folk as they’ve called George Winston, but that bass player and muted piano hammering brings it all back.

I’ve long argued that bebop, like abstract painting, are movements that want to take the art away from the people and lock in the tiny rooms for an academy audience. If bebop had rich benefactors like fine art does with collectors, there might be a bigger audience for jazz. (People do worship the rich. Even the things they collect.)

Maybe this is what it’ll take to save jazz and make it relevant again.

When the Tragically Cool (& Others) Get Popped: Pt 1

First, The Tragically Cool:

Presenting a tribute to those whose mug shots were worthy of a Ralph Lauren ad and a shout out to the style and elegance that never abandoned them – even in what might be, for most, one of life’s most dire humiliations.

The First Place All-Time Hall of Fame Award: Who could top David Bowie in his Station to Station, Man Who Fell to Earth period? Never will you see a ice-colder, more I’m Rick James, bitch! look coming from a mug shot on anyone – certainly not from Rick James. 

The arrest was in a downtown Rochester, NY hotel following a performance. Along with Iggy Pop and another person, all were charged with marijuana possession. Two months later the charges were dismissed and Bowie and Rochester would never meet again.

The always fine Jane Fonda in her wife-of-Congressman-Tom Hayden activist days. Also from the same period she won the academy award for Klute: She worked the Shag (the name of her hair style) like no one else.

Beiber just knowing that he’s The Beeb – with rock-hard abs, a porn star’s package (noted in those poolside paparazzi pics), all while crashing Lambos for fun – and has an Armani army of attorneys at his disposal who’ll get him released long before he reaches the hold, shows himself to be completely unperturbed – jolly even. 

In 2014 at 20, the Beebs admitted to police that he was blazed with a prescription drug chaser. Justin was able to avoid jail time but only after a plea agreement to take an anger management course and make a $50,000 charitable donation, in addition to paying court-ordered fines. Three years later, a contrite Beiber walked back from his sparkly pimp mugshot and admitted a desire to never go through that ordeal again. He also posted a couple of decidedly less pimp pics to his Instagram. (See below.)

Steve McQueen, the star of such films as The Magnificent Seven and The Great Escape takes the bravado one step further: Flashing peace and figuring as long as he’s buzzed, the party ain’t over. In 1972 McQueen was brought in for drunk driving while in Anchorage, AK. Once released, he left town and charges were filed in absentia. 

If you’ve ever seen Bullit, you’ll know that if they caught him, it’s only because he let them. 

Frank Sinatra: Ol’ Blue Eyes showing the piercing stare and a wig of hair thick enough stay put during a Jersey squall. Also, he reveals why the flaps of the bobbysoxers’ may’ve gotten moist back in the day: The pic was taken while Frankie was still toiling in the obscure clubs of New Jersey mob land. He had just begun singing on New York radio that year but was still unknown nationwide.

Even at this early stage, the 1938 charges against him were worthy of an idol: Sinatra was arrested twice that year for “Seduction” and “Adultery.” Apparently the crooner had banged a broad “of good repute” by letting her think he might marry her: Such a devil.

In the cad department though, a few years later Blue Eyes would pay a doctor $40,000 (a good sum in those days) to “bribe to doctors in New Jersey in order to escape the draft.” It worked. He was declared 4-F “because of a perforated eardrum and chronic mastoiditis and that his mental condition was one of mental instability.” Also:

During the psychiatric interview, the patient stated that he was “neurotic, afraid to be in crowds, afraid to go in the elevator, makes him feel that he would want to run when surrounded by people. He had comatic ideas and headaches and has been very nervous for four or five years. Wakens tired in the A.M., is run down and undernourished. The examining psychiatrist concluded that this selectee suffered from psychoneurosis and was not acceptable material from the psychiatric viewpoint.”

Apparently, the above had been secret until 1980 when it was released under a Freedom of Information Act request.

Phil Spector, legendary music producer, impresario, shitty husband, and gun enthusiast is currently serving 19-year term for the murder of his live-in girlfriend. At 74 in 2013, he looked rather unintimidated considering his likelihood of ever seeing the outside again.

Nicki Minaj, another weapons enthusiast, was arrested in 2003 for criminal possession of a strap (with intent to use). At the time she was 20, known as Onika Maraj, and working as a Red Lobster waitress in Queens. You’ll find no sweat on her concealer-free brow.

John Belushi, brows totally on fleek: 

And, The Others:

I was once detained and issued a two tickets for trespassing and an open container. I’d to sit on the curb with my hands on my head until the police arrived (all of this in front of my girlfriend at the time). I wasn’t yet 21 so it all could’ve been much worse. Still, I’ve never actually been sent to jail. Gawd no: I’ll straight up admit, I’d wet myself like a poodle pup in pen with pitbulls and cry bitch tears. I would. So, the look of fear and humiliation on the faces below, I totally get. Just note that the fear on the faces below only serves to make the faces above appear all the more heroic.

Not moving like Jagger: Sir Mick Jagger, as seen in his famous arrest of 1967. According to the band, a party at Keith Richards’ country estate had been tipped off to the police by The News of the World for possible drug activity. Jagger was suing the paper for slander at the time. Among the guests were Marianne Faithfull and George and Patti Boyd Harrison. 

Waiting until the Harrisons had left, the police would enter the house and arrest both Richards and Jagger. The two would be issued harsh sentences but the charges would later be overturned.

Here, apparent repeat offender and future Axl Rose was 18 in the top photo, and probably not much older – but a li’l harder – below. At top, his face looks like it may’ve serious doubts about turning 19. Welcome to the Jungle, Rosebud.

Dale Bozzio from Missing Persons: Just for some context, this is what Dale used to look like;

Earlier in her career she did some, er, modeling if you’re interested. In any event, despite her early promise she appears to have ended up somewhere else entirely. Most recently, Ms Bozzio was still touring with some version of a “Missing Persons,” so it seems as if she’s mostly functional. However, her recent run-in with the law might seem to indicate otherwise. Not knowing her full story, I don’t want to play the possibility of any substance or mental health issues for yucks.Still, she appears to have gone full cat lady: Bozzio tried to rescue sick and feral cats from the woods of New Hampshire, but she evidently didn't take very good care of them. Two of the cats were found dead and 12 were put down after being neglected while Bozzio toured with the band last fall. Later, a judge found her guilty of one count of cruelty to animals and sentenced her to 90 days in jail and 250 hours of community service. She was also ordered to pay a $2700 euthanization bill.

Another repeat offender, Jim Morrison, and arguably one of the history’s great faces: • Top: Morrison looking as cold-blooded as a Lizard King in 1963 – this would’ve made him 20 and two years away the formation of The Doors. The charges against the rambunctious lad, made in his hometown of Tallahasee, FL were petty larceny, disturbing the peace, resisting arrest, and public drunkenness at a football game. After making fun of the footballers, Jimbo stole an umbrella and helmet from a squad car’s open window. The charges were later dropped for a small fine. I’m sure his Rear Admiral father was not amused. • Middle: Morrison’s infamous New Haven arrest for an expletive-laced tirade issued from the stage against the police who’d just maced him in the face while waiting backstage. The claim was he was trying to incite a riot.• Bottom: On the occasion of his even more infamous Miami arrest in which it was thought he’d exposed himself, in a Dionysian frenzy, to the audience. (According to what I’ve read, the general consensus is that he probably didn’t. Iggy Pop, OTOH, brings his glory all out in this video, probably around 1979-80, and while the result is impressive, the law – and YouTube, so far – was uninterested.) After the Miami arrest, the now bearded, paunchy, and dazed Morrison would find himself dead within a year.

Aerosmith’s and American Idol’s Steven Tyler at 19 looking like Shit’s gonna get serious when my dad finds out. The lips appearing not to have reached their full efflorescence as of yet. 

In high school Tyler played drums in various bands before composing Dream On in 1969. He’d meet Joe Perry and with Brad Whitford they’d form Aerosmith a year later. Tyler would be 22.

Here, Kurt Cobain at 19, but the troubled pubescent Kurt would’ve previously been popped for spray painting God is gay and ain't got no how watchamacallit on various cars in Aberdeen, WA. This shot below was for the occasion of a trespassing charge – police found him climbing on the roof of an abandoned warehouse. (Who hasn’t done that?) In 1986 he would’ve been 16 and already living on his own.

Dennis Hopper (1936-2010) used to live around the corner from me. My wife and our two kids were crossing at the corner of his street when he, possibly channeling his huffing psycho character from Blue Velvet, wasn’t about to slow his Jaguar down for no punk ass, non-celebrity family. I felt the wind of his Michelins on my heels. We all of us stared him down. He didn’t look back.

Hopper’s brush with the law came in 1975 and the story goes that after winning some LSD in a poker game, he walked outside and shot a .357 magnum into a tree because he thought it was a grizzly bear. In a turn of Hollywood kismet, Hopper ended up in the same jail where Jack Nicholson’s introductory scene was filmed for Easy Rider.

Attending Rock Concerts Adds Years to Your Life!

So says a recent study. And that's nine years they’re claiming.

Just to note:  This new behavioral science study was commissioned by O2, the UK’s most popular music and entertainment venue. Can you smell confirmation bias?

For us oldsters, that’s asking a lot. I mean, do I really want to go and sit through two (often questionable) opening bands, stand for hours on end, etc., etc. And does this figure include the offset necessary for all of the second hand cigarette smoke (a big part of my early club years experience), the drinking, drug-taking, mosh pit injuries, the horrible toilet bacterial counts, and what not?

And you’ll love this part:

Research indicated that 20-minutes spent at a concert actually increased people’s sense of well being by 21 percent, their self-worth by 25 percent, closeness to others by 25 percent, and mental stimulation by 75 percent. This in comparison to 10 percent for activities like yoga and a mere 7 percent for dog-walking.

Those who attend live concerts once a fortnight and more were the most likely to score their happiness, contentment, productivity and self-esteem at the highest level (10/10), suggesting that regularly experiencing live music is the key to building a long-standing improvement to well being.

Polishing a Springsteen Jewel for the Haters

I’d never heard of Amy MacDonald. Didn’t know anything about her other than the sinister algorithms of YouTube thought they could bait me with it. I know now that she’s Scottish, an Anglo-folky style performer, kind of in middle of the road – her edges are all well polished. Not really my cuppa. But, she does have spunk. That she’s loaded with.

Listen to her solo cover of Born to Run and notice two amazing things: One, she challenges a golden chestnut that no one has any business challenging. What could be added or revealed to the original? A song already so mined of all its ore what could be left behind but dust? A song also so completely riveted into our brains in its original form, it’s no longer a song so much as an ideology. It's not a Bruce Springsteen song; it’s the embodiment of Bruce Springsteen himself.

But, she does challenge it and in doing so reveals something within that we hadn’t heard before. Doors of perception opened: She adds pages to the composers original script, all those things we’d hope from anyone with the courage to confront such a hyped up chestnut – a song we already know too well. Part of this is accomplished by her distinguished voice. You can’t buy that: Either you’re born with that or not. And you don't even have to care for Born to Run to love what she’s done here.

I never really heard this line until she sang it:
Together... we can live with the sadness
I'll love you with all the madness in my soul

What makes hers work is exactly all of your preconceptions: A suicide mission for lesser artists but – somehow – she prevails. It’s her mouth. When she pulls back the muscles in her face, spreads open her jaw, it seems to add a fuel to her voice. Watching her present increases the pleasure of the hearing. Maybe that’s her secret.

Anyone looking to “unfold your wings” by singing and playing songs, yours or anyone else’s, listen up: There’s a deep lesson to be had here.



For those of us alive at the time, Born to Run is the song that made Springsteen a fetish of American pop at the time. He would later say the song was an attempt to alloy Bob Dylan, Phil Spector, and Roy Orbison. With all of the critical fawning it got – he got the covers of Time and Newsweek the same week I believe – it was as if he’d just brought pop music’s tablets down from the mountain. And for all of the hype and more it was easy to be skeptical. I bought the album for my older sister based on that drooling praise culture was heaving on it at the time. My sister would be completely disinterested. For me, the main interest was She’s the One, Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, and mostly, Roy Bittan’s considerable piano. One of the best in rock, ever.

But it was this song that made me pay attention. This was stripped down, guitar-based rock. The kind of music that was my cuppa. Later, in interviews Springsteen would speak about his complicated and mostly unpleasant relationship with his father. This song may be one of the greatest dad disses ever recorded: