A friend of mine recently sent me this video by Yael Naim. It's been out awhile, so maybe you've seen it, but I really liked how it deals with the act of creating and how lovely and fun the process can be.
It also made me think about how there are so many ways in which we can create our own reality, and how *that* is really like creating a work of art or music or a new space. It starts with imagination. What would you like to see, do, be? And then you can begin to create those things around you. And soon enough, you might just be able to push down the wall and *be* there...right in the middle of things.
Well the news is out that the new Sam Phillips CD, Don't Do Anything, is now set to be released on June 2nd. Well, that's not February, but I'll take it.
In the meantime, you can browse around her newly revamped website, complete with a couple short, silent films and a blog.
My friend Carter sent me a link to the new Measure for Measure series on songwriting over at The New York Times. It's a very cool blog with posts by musicians Rosanne Cash, Andrew Bird, Darrell Brown, and Suzanne Vega, who each post a song and discuss the songwriting process that went along with it.
I found Monday's post by Rosanne Cash, So It Goes: How It Went to be a fascinating read. She writes about the process of co-writing with Joe Henry and even posts the emails they sent back and forth with various iterations of the song. It's a great glimpse into the way a song comes together, and super fun to be able to listen to the final product.
Here's an interesting bit on her feelings about co-writing:
A note: It is not in my nature to co-write; I would rather go deep into the underworld alone, like Persephone looking for the pomegranate. The solitude and the simple satisfaction of having my own phrases laid out like beads on a necklace, while fine-tuning my melodies, suits me entirely. But I have pushed myself to be a co-writer more often in recent years and to force myself to forgo both the arrogance and the insecurity of the solo voice. My songwriting style is a synthesis of my strengths and my limitations, and occasionally it behooves me to borrow from someone else’s strength, and offer a key to the locked door of someone else’s limitations. I had to give up the pride of thinking myself only a journalistic songwriter, in order to become a better writer overall.
What a cool idea for a blog. I'll definitely be working my way through the archives on this one!
My mom and I were just talking about how much we love Doris Day and her clear, no-frills delivery. My favorite Doris Day songs are the ones that she sang with the Les Brown Orchestra in the 40s, and my all-time favorite is My Dreams Are Getting Better All the Time (iTunes link update: Strangely, iTunes has this song labeled "Parental Advisory/Explicit Lyrics" which, in case you were seriously wondering, is an error...and a pretty hilarious one at that). Sadly, I didn't find a version that I could post here, but you can also find the song on the 2-disc Columbia Records Golden Girl collection.
Instead, here's a 1946 recording of Les Brown's Orchestra with Doris Day singing "Good Blues Tonight":
I've been on a Sam Phillips kick recently. Probably because I had heard that she was coming out with a new album in February 2008, and I'm not ashamed to say, I've been checking her site every week or so for news. So when I found out that Don't Do Anything won't actually be out until June (sigh), I've been digging out all her old stuff, just to get my fix.
Last night, it was her 1994 album, Martinis & Bikinis, which Kevin had to finally ask me to turn the volume down on since I *was* kind of blasting out the whole neighborhood. But 1994 was the year I graduated high school, and I Need Love was one of the songs playing full blast in my head back then.
I've been a Sam Phillips fan since about 1986 (if you don't want to do the math, I was 11). Only she wasn't Sam back then, she was Leslie Phillips, a CCM ("Contemporary Christian Music") pop star who was billed by her record label as the "Christian Cyndi Lauper." Her album Black and White in a Grey World was one of the first cassette tapes I bought with my own money (and yes, I tried to wear my hair like that, too).
But Leslie Phillips' lyrics weren't the kind of warm, fuzzy mainstream CCM that was the norm in the 80s. She sang about spirituality in poetic and challenging ways and tackled the tough issues of both faith *and* doubt. In her songs, she called out the holier-than-thou, judgmental attitudes of the Christian community ("You smoke-screen with your judgmental words/But when the air clears you're just a scared little child/You smoke-screen, but you're fearful inside/That God doesn't love you/You let fear run you wild"). Her lyrics spoke so clearly to the world I lived in, and the ideas and emotions I was trying to sort through in my pre-teen years. I would listen on my pink portable tape player, liner notes in hand, following along word for word. Eventually in the late 80s, Leslie "went secular," changing her name and her record label, and I rooted for her all the way.
So that's all to say that if Leslie Phillips was the conduit for my pre-teen contemplations, by the time 1994 rolled around, Sam Phillips' I Need Love was the outlet for my particular brand of teen angst, blasted at full volume in my room on my very first CD player. It said everything I wanted to say:
I need love Not some sentimental prison I need god Not the political church I need fire To melt the frozen sea inside me I need love
NPR's Song of the Day has recently been featuring some lovely projects by former members of Band of Horses. I always love to see the projects musicians take on after they leave a band, so it was fun to come across these.
Yesterday's Song of the Day was "Sleepdriving" by Grand Archives, a band started by former Band of Horses guitarist Mat Brooke. The song is lush and hazy, a dreamy pop song that doesn't stray too too far from the Band of Horses mold. (Listen to Sleepdriving here.)
Earlier in March, NPR featured "You're Not Broken," a dreamy, country-tinged song by former Band of Horses drummer, Sera Cahoone. Cahoone made a bit more drastic change, coming out from behind the drums to write songs, sing, and play the guitar, but she too retains the dreamlike wash-of-sound aesthetic. (Listen to You're Not Broken here.)
2. Oksana (age 6) wrote a hit song! Oksana, from Great Falls, Virginia, is our newest I Wrote a Hit Song! Contest winner. Please visit her song page to read the lyrics and comment on her sweet song: Since My Friend Moved Away. You can find information on how to submit your own song here (ages 12 & under only, please).
3. Songwriting for Kids Club is moving to a quarterly format. The Spring newsletter is now up with a new Songwriting Challenge and a new quiz. And of course, feel free to browse any of the previous Songwriting Challenges, and use the ideas to enter your song in the I Wrote a Hit Song! Contest.
Woohoo! It's time for Zooglobble's annual March Madness KidVid Tournament! I *love* this tournament. Here's the official sum-up from the Zooglobble site:
It is time once again for the KidVid Tournament, the 2008 edition, where families come together by watching videos the way they were meant to be watched.
On the computer.
Over the next 2+ weeks, we'll be pitting 16 of the best kids' music videos from the past year or so head-to-head with readers voting to determine the best video of the year.
Contest One: Orange Sherbet vs. Eric Herman (It looks like voting is already closed on this one, but that shouldn't stop you from watching and choosing your favorite in anticipation of the next round.)
There's an interesting interview on Morning Edition with both Harper Simon and Edie Brickell. It's fascinating to hear them talk about their songwriting process, which basically consists of Simon playing guitar riffs and Brickell imagining the images the music invokes and just singing the lyrics that pop into her head.
I was glad to hear songs like Dynamite Child, on this album, which is probably my favorite on the disc. It's a little more rocking, which allows Edie Brickell to really let loose on the vocals. Some of my favorite songs from her early work with the New Bohemians were the songs that had an edge, and I missed that in the solo albums Volcano and Picture Perfect Morning (though I still love them).
Other highlights include the peppy, feel-good Better, and the quirky 60's-tinged (something about it reminds me of Charade) indie pop song Henri...which you can download for free at Amazon.
Since The Heavy Circles webpage says that videos are "coming soon," I thought I'd post up an older video of Edie Brickell singing the lovely "Once In a Blue Moon"--not a song with an edge :) Enjoy!
I don't know how I missed it for three whole weeks, but this morning I woke up and realized that the new collaboration between Edie Brickell and Harper Simon is out! The Heavy Circles was released Feb. 12, and so far this morning, I've listened to two songs:
Confused, which plays automatically when you go to The Heavy Circles website (not much to see on the website yet, but I'm hopeful for more soon)
So far, the vibe is cool, Edie Brickell's voice is engaging and startling and lovely as always, so now I'm off to Rhapsody to listen to the rest. I'll do a full review next week after I've had time to listen to the whole thing and process it all, but in the meantime, let me know what you think!
Billie Holiday often said that she tried to sing like Lester Young's horn. In an article called Lester Young: Master of Jive, Douglas Henry Daniels quotes Holiday saying:
I always try to sing like a horn--a trumpet or tenor sax, and I think Lester is just the opposite. He likes to play like a voice...Lester sings with his horn. You listen to him and you can almost hear the words.
That's definitely apparent on these live recordings. Young's smooth, sweet, lyrical sound is unmistakable. The disc is peppered with announcements encouraging listeners to invest in U.S. Savings Bonds (the radio series was sponsored by the U.S. Treasury, of all things), and the gooney announcer cuts in with his own 1950's flourishes like "Ca-rraaaa-zy!" which give the recordings a nice blast-from-the-past feel. I like imagining what it would have been like tuning in each week to Birdland on the radio. I suppose years from now people will say the same about old American Idol (or hopefully even Austin City Limits) episodes.
Here's another little taste of Lester Young. He's missing his porkpie hat in this one, but you can't miss the charming, cockeyed way he holds his sax:
ESP Music recently put out a 5-disc set of Rare Live Recordings from Billie Holiday. Now, I laughed when I read the opening comment of Ted Gioia's review of the set on Jazz.com:
"When I see the words 'Rare Live Recordings' on the cover of a jazz CD, I generally run in the other direction."
It's true. The sound is generally awful, performances sometimes subpar, and the material can be too obscure, repetitive, or just plain lame. But with these recordings, I found myself listening with rapt attention to each disc.
First off, the sound quality is great. So that worry can be relieved.
As for material, yes there are a fair number of song repeats. Fine and Mellow shows up four times. But they're repeats worth listening to. The way that Ms. Holiday sings "Fine and Mellow" when she is 22 is not the same way she sings it toward the end of her career. In one of the short interview bits included in the set, she says:
There are two kinds of blues: happy blues and sad blues....Blues is kind of a mixed up thing. You just have to feel it.
I loved hearing the differences in the song depending on how she "felt it" that day.
But I think what I enjoyed the most about this set was the *performance* aspect of the live recordings. Not just Billie Holiday's incredible voice, intense delivery, or ability to give Count Basie's band a run for their money. I loved hearing the crowd go crazy. Really crazy. Screaming, shouting out, being moved by the music. I've listened to Billie Holiday's *voice* for so long. It's easy to disconnect that voice from the real person who was up there on stage, doing a sound check, trying to keep track of the set list, and singing her heart out to try and make a connection and share something with her audience.
In one song, her voice is drowned out for a while by a plane passing overhead. It was just a short moment, but it made me stop and imagine the scene. It gave me a second to think about history not just as something that is preserved and remembered in a book or on a CD, but as a living moment that happened once to living people. That's what things like Black History Month are really supposed to be about, right?
Here is another live video. This one is with the Count Basie Orchestra in 1952. It starts with Billie Holiday's own heartbreaking composition, "God Bless the Child," and moves on to the swingy "Now Baby or Never." Enjoy!
My favorite jazz duo of all time has to be Billie Holiday and Lester Young. I swear there was something magical in the way the mellow tone of his saxophone mixed with the melancholy in her voice. In the next couple weeks, in honor of Black History Month, I'll write a bit about some new Lester Young and Billie Holiday live and rare recordings that were released last month.
But to start things off, here's a great video of Billie Holiday singing "Fine and Mellow" in 1957. Lester Young is the second sax solo (though he's missing his signature pork pie hat). The rest of the amazing line-up of musicians includes: Coleman Hawkins, Ben Webster, Gerry Mulligan, Roy Eldridge, Doc Cheatham, Vic Dickenson, Danny Barker, Milt Hinton, and Mal Waldron. It doesn't really get much better than that...
Those of you from the Northwest will certainly know KEXP since it is hands-down one of the coolest radio stations out there. It's listener-supported, the djs actually help pick their own music, play requests, and support local bands. You know, a *real* radio station!
I've been a fan of Andrew Bird since I first saw him play violin with the Squirrel Nut Zippers. I was (and still am) completely addicted to his quirky, swing-tinged 1998 album Thrills. I once had a poetry professor who advocated that great poets can "look at the world strangely." Andrew Bird is a master of that skill.
The KEXP live performances were recorded in September '07 and include songs from his newest, very gorgeous album, Armchair Apocrypha. I love his strange uses of the violin, odd tonalities, and strikingly beautiful melodies. Live, the songs are even more sparse and dreamy than they are on the album.
Listen to Andrew Bird live on KEXP here. Click "concert.wma" or "concert.rm" to hear the whole performance straight through. Or click on the song titles to hear them individually.
I haven't seen the movie Into the Wild yet, but I was pretty excited to hear that Eddie Vedder was doing the soundtrack. In high school, I have to admit, I was a pretty die hard Pearl Jam fan. I even had a picture of Eddie Vedder in my locker. *swoon* :)
If you've read the book, you'll know that Into the Wild is a true story is about Chris McCandless, a young man who decides he doesn't want to be a part of society anymore. He gives all his money and belongings away and begins hiking to Alaska. I think Eddie Vedder's voice was a brilliant choice for the soundtrack...it has that perfect blend of loneliness and determination, a soft, intimate tone that can be absolutely raw with emotion and quiet (or not so quiet) rage. Not all the songs on the CD are amazing songs, but they all fit the mood exactly.
This one, Society, hits the mark particularly well. Beautiful, determined, and heartbreaking.
Jon Krakauer's book is a fascinating (if a bit devastating) read and Sean Penn directed the movie, so I think it has potential to be pretty good (have any of you seen it yet?) I've saved it in my Netflix queue. In the meantime, I'm just enjoying the music.
For those of you who've wondered whatever happened to the quirky, fun, indie-pop duo They Might Be Giants, you might be interested to know that they are now actual *giants* in the kids-and-family music scene. They took the scene by storm with their first kids' album, No!, in 2002 and followed up in 2005 with a supercool CD/DVD set Here Come the ABCs (which I *highly* recommend).
Sorry for the slightly sporadic posts this last week. I've been traveling, and there were a couple days there when I was simply too busy looking for shells and surfers, working on crosswords and puzzles, falling asleep during movies, and playing Uno and Spanish "I Spy" with my nieces and nephews to write a blog. Thanks to all my family for the great visits. I miss you already!
So, last night, just before Barack Obama gave his eloquent and inspiring speech at the New Hampshire primaries, the Obama campaign blared The City of Blinding Lights by U2. I had the song in my head all day today, and it reminded me of 2 things:
1. How much I like U2. I tend to just take them for granted as one of the "given" megabands of our time. Their songs come on, I turn the radio up, and that's that. But when I take the time to really pay attention, it never ceases to amaze me how seamlessly and consistently they can pull off such catchy riffs, soaring melodies, and moving lyrics that always manage to be both melancholy and hopeful. Like:
The more you know the less you feel Some pray for, others steal Blessings are not just for the ones who kneel… luckily
It's that last line that gets me in this song. I love that it ends there. Luckily.
2. I'm going to a mega-concert! I have two TicketMaster gift cards (ugh, I know, the corporation I can't stand). Now, I have never in my life been to a huge stadium concert with lights and staging, smoke and screaming crowds like in the U2 video below. (Ok, I went to a White Heart concert in 7th grade, but that *really* wasn't the same thing.) I've always gone for the intimate, folksy or indie-rock venues. Belly in a dive bar. Alison Krauss in a small, tasteful auditorium. Badly Drawn Boy in a space the size of a living room.
So I've decided that in 2008, I'm going to use those blasted gift cards to see something BIG. Problem is...what's worth seeing? Seen any good, huge shows lately? I've got 12 months to pick something...and I'm up for taking suggestions!
It's time, it's time for KCRW's Nic Harcourt to make the judgment call on the best songs of 2007. Last year's show got me hooked on Band of Horses. What will this year bring? You can listen to the entire show here. It aired on Sunday, but I'm just getting around to it today.
Well, what do you think? Agree? Disagree? What are *your* favorite songs of 2007?
Off the top of my head, mine would have to include:
Ah, do you remember this one? How could you forget? But I bet it's been years since you've seen it last (at least it was for me)and it's *worth* watching again just to see the hair-dos! The Poop recently reminded me of this by posting the video, and Peter's comments are hilarious. A small taste:
"I remember when this came out, I couldn't go out and buy the single fast enough. Sting AND Simon Le Bon AND Boy George AND Phil Collins wanted me to do it, which pretty much made it 13-year-old law. How could I say no and keep feathering my hair with a clear conscience?"
Light of the Stable is absolutely gorgeous with guest appearances from Linda Ronstadt, Willie Nelson, Dolly Parton, Neil Young, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, and more. It combines well-known traditional songs like O Little Town of Bethlehem and The First Noel with lesser-known songs like the beautiful There's a Light and the country-blues twinged Angel Eyes. This is the kind of album that makes you want to sit around a crackling fire with eggnog and the whole traditional kit & caboodle. Definitely going in my permanent Christmas rotation.
Since I couldn't find an Emmylou Christmas tune on YouTube (if you know of one, please pass it along), here is a video of Stephen Foster's great song "Hard Times Come Again No More." That's a youngish Rufus Wainwright, if you couldn't pick out his voice! Also Emmylou Harris, Kate & Anna McGarrigle, Mary Black, Karen Matheson, and Rod Paterson.
There are some things in the world that are better than others. Chocolate cake. Kites. Movies that make you laugh out loud. Songs that make you cry. Books that transport you to another world. I'll try to share some of the things that daily renew my "sense of wonder," and I hope you'll share some with me, too.
Please, come flying. You can see what I'm up to and listen to my music at www.josephinecameron.com and on MySpace
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