Charles Thompson ‘Doolittle’ interview, 1989

Conducted by Roy Trakin, and available on Rock’s Backpages.

‘Mean Old Jews Who Crucify My Lord’

A holiday classic, by Sister Albertha Harris Lewis.

Label image from TheHoundBlog.

The sole 99¢ song on iTunes’ list of its 20 best-ever sellers

The outstanding question: Is its price an implicit admission that the song is 23 percent worse than all the others?

VHS youth: ‘Just One of the Guys’ (1985)

By a female director, who, despite this film’s decent success, didn’t go on to many great things.

Theme song, by Shalamar:

Santa Baby

Sounds of Beijing advertising bullhorns

Here’s something I’ve been meaning to post for a long time.

Two years ago I went to China and wrote two stories about the music scene there. Most of my time was spent working, but I also did some sightseeing, and one day I went to the Forbidden City.

A beautiful, arresting place, and also an example of how awkwardly the art of tourism has taken root in China, at least by the standards of a Western snob like myself. Many of the rooms in this world-famous cultural treasure are visible only through scratched Plexiglas, and are too dimly lighted to see much anyway. Absent or poorly translated display copy kept much of it obscure. There was a Starbucks in one of the ancient buildings, and scaffolding was everywhere. Surely, I wondered, the bulldozer won’t eat this like it seems to have devoured 90 percent of the rest of Beijing, right...?

I was especially struck by something near the ticket windows out front. Around a corner I could hear a loud, scratchy voice barking something in a short loop. Didn’t sound like a very friendly message. From the tone of the guy’s voice he seemed to be saying, “All hail our glorious state; move along, Workers,” over and over. I found the source in a small courtyard, where a bullhorn was strung from the roof of a souvenir/food stand. Not a soul was around.

I held up my trusty digital tape recorder and got this:

When I came home I downloaded the audio, along with dozens of interviews and some other found sounds, like this city bus:

Pretty ordinary, I know, but it still transported me when I listened, as did the megaphone message, still untranslated months later. I enjoyed fantasizing about what it could mean. A warning of some kind? “Don’t touch the power lines”?

Then I contacted my friend Qing, who helped me in Beijing. He was a relative of one of my sister’s co-workers, a Beijing native who also happened to be a SUNY Albany grad. He stands as probably the most hospitable person I have ever met, interpreting interviews, helping me get around town, picking me up in a heartbeat whenever I called, and taking me to some fabulous, fabulous restaurants. The food alone was an adventure I will never forget.

Anyway, Qing, being so helpful, thorough and scholarly, crowdsourced the audio file I sent him. Sounds like it wasn’t easy, but here’s what he came up with:

Finally, we came to this: “kuai4 can1 he2 fan4, tai2 wan1 kao3 chang2” (2 phrases, as pronounced in standard mandarin) — this seemingly makes sense.

• kuai4 can1 (fast food)
• he2 fan4 (box lunch)
• tai2 wan1 (Taiwan)
• kao3 chang2 (broiled hotdog sausage)

Then you see, it might be someone selling the fast food lunch featured with Taiwan style broiled sausage.

So it was broiled sausage, not a totalitarian commandment. I wonder how the old Yankee Stadium “cold beeah heeah” sounds to a Mandarin speaker.

One reason to get excited about the ‘Doolittle’ tour

They open with the B-sides.

Here’s “Dancing the Manta Ray” in Los Angeles last night.

UPDATE: Stereogum informs us that the Pixies have released a free live EP on their website, with four songs recorded in Paris: “Dancing the Manta Ray,” “Monkey Gone to Heaven,” “Crackity Jones” and “Gouge Away.”

Kyp Malone on Popcast

Tooting own horn dept.:

This week on Popcast, the Times’s weekly music podcast, we have a visit from Kyp Malone of TV on the Radio, who sat down for a friendly interview and played a song live from his new solo project, Rain Machine. It was pretty cool to watch his voice wake up over the five minutes or so of recording the song, “Free Ride.”

The segment also includes Jon Pareles on Gossip and Ben Ratliff on Fred Hammond. Listen to it here, and subscribe to Popcast here. Rain Machine is on tour now, coming to the Bowery Ballroom on Oct. 24 for CMJ.

Lou Reed’s little-known first album for $5

I wasn’t even aware that it was available digitally, but Lou Reed’s self-titled first solo album, which was released by RCA in 1972 and includes an early version of the song “Berlin” — as well as the first appearances of a bunch of Velvet Underground odds ’n’ sods like “I Can’t Stand It,” “Lisa Says” and “Ocean” — is on sale at Amazon.com for $5.

To my knowledge it’s long been available only as an import, which is how Amazon’s two CD versions of the album are listed (for $20.99 and $42.98). iTunes is selling it for $9.90, crediting it to “BMG Entertainment International UK & Ireland Ltd.”

It’s definitely not the greatest Lou Reed album, but it’s actually not bad, and any fan should have it. “Berlin” is especially interesting.

‘Favorite Recorded Scream’

My story about “Favorite Recorded Scream,” a 12-inch vinyl compilation of 74 screams from Black Francis to Ian Gillan to Screamin’ Jay Hawkins to Bjork, which were chosen via ballot by the employees of 42 Manhattan record stores, is up on the Times homepage now.

“Favorite Recorded Scream” is a pretty great little project that I stumbled upon one day a month or two ago at Academy Records on 18th Street. On the wall behind the counter they had taped up a map of New York City record stores, which I’d never seen before, though I’ve attempted to do the same thing myself. (Lately the stores have been going out of business too fast to keep up with.) When I asked about it, they said that it was an insert in “that scream record.” Hmm? “Um, it’s this red record, can’t remember what it was called, but this guy came around to all the record stores. Can’t remember his name...”

It took a small amount of casual hunting, which I’m sure I could have done much more efficiently, but after inquiring at a few more stores where no one could quite remember that young man’s name or the title of the record, I tracked him down: LeRoy Stevens, an extremely nice 25-year-old guy in Brooklyn, who told me about his project over some Juan Valdez coffee. For the rest of the story, you’ve got to read the piece.

Buy the record soon. He made 500 copies and only has 150 or so left.

Whoa: Alan Moore meets Mike Patton, Justin Broadrick. (Sort of.)

Billboard reports:

He may have insisted his name did not appear on the “Watchmen” movie. But legendary comic book writer Alan Moore has been enthusiastic in his partnership with U.K. indie Lex Records on the release of a new work including an audiobook and soundtrack.

Moore has already recorded the two-hour audio book for the deluxe package of the semi-autobiographical work, which is likely too appear in early 2010...

The score that accompanies the book is being worked on by Andrew Broder of alternative act Fog and spoken word artist Adam Drucker. Brown says musicians in the frame to provide key elements of the soundtrack include Mike Patton of Faith No More and Justin Broadrick, formerly of industrial metal band Godflesh.

Patton is working on separate Lex project with Tunde Adebimpe of U.S. alt-rock act TV on the Radio.

Marc Ribot on Popcast

Tooting own horn dept.:

We have another treat this week on Popcast, the Times’s music podcast. Marc Ribot, guitarist on every other album you have loved over the last 20-odd years, came in to talk about his series of 55th-birthday concerts, which begin this weekend.

He also brought along his trusty, scruffy Gibson acoustic (that’s it in the otherwise unrelated photo below) to perform in our studio. We couldn’t shut him up — although he was only asked for one song, he played four, one after another. “Got six more minutes?” Marc asked after song number two. Then: “Three more minutes? I’m just getting warmed up.” We used two songs for the show: “Saints,” the title track of his 2001 album in tribute to Albert Ayler, and “Stella by Starlight,” a 1940s standard by Victor Young.

Listen to the show here; subscribe to Popcast here; and go here for more info about Marc Ribot’s birthday shows. (Birthday is May 21, BTW.)

(Photo credit.)

Bob Mould on Popcast

Tooting own horn dept.:

We’ve had some wonderful guests lately on Popcast, the Times’s weekly music podcast: Eleni Mandell, Bishop Allen and Krishna Das each came in to perform a song, and, in a neat studio-to-studio linkup with London, Psapp demonstrated some of their kooky instruments, like the “bone-a-phone.” (Archived links, below right on this page.)

But this week we are spoiled by the presence of mighty Bob Mould, who sat for a candid interview and performed his new song “I’m Sorry, Baby, But You Can’t Stand in My Light Anymore,” which he calls one of his best in 15 years.

Listen to it here (this week’s show also includes Jon Pareles reviewing the Yeah Yeah Yeahs), and subscribe to Popcast here. (I will also review Mould’s new album, Life and Times, next week on the WFUV Music Review.)

‘Heaven Must Have Sent You’

RIP Uriel Jones of the Funk Brothers. I don’t know if he’s even playing on this track — a mostly instrumental version of a minor 1966 hit by the Elgins — but it’s a perfect example of what Motown was all about.

‘50 billion people, all deceased’

RIP Estelle Bennett, older sister of Ronnie Spector and original member of the Ronettes, who died on Wednesday at 67.

Obit coming soon here. But in the meantime, you gotta hear her incredible song “The Year 2000,” recorded in 1969, three years after the Ronettes broke up. Written and produced by her husband at the time, Teddy Vann (who later went on to write hits with Luther Vandross, etc.), it’s a bizarre apocalyptic vision of the future, something I’m not aware of from any other girl-group people. (Anybody know of other examples? Would make a great list.)

Listen here:

The song features a real or fake recording of a Hitler “sieg heil!” and, in the middle, the following spoken lines:

At last, they finally got rid of prejudice and bigotry
The rich and poor are now equal, and all men are free
At last, all religions can take a rest
They tried so hard; they did their best
That ugly, ugly word “war,” with its threatening sound
Won’t ever again be heard, won’t ever again be found
At last, all nations are finally one
Dead, under the still-living sun.

A more familiar moment of Ronettes awesomeness:

(Thanks: Photo, song, video.)

From the dustbin: ‘We’re the Jetsons (Jetsons Rap)’

It was the summer of 1990. PC users tinkered with the brand-new Windows 3.0 operating system. West Germany, seized with excitement for its imminent reunion with its Eastern brothers, won the World Cup. And hip-hop reached its ultimate punk-ass nadir, starting with “U Can’t Touch This” and leading up later that year to “Ice Ice Baby.” In between came the soundtrack to Jetsons: The Movie, which opens with this track, performed by some chumps called XXL.

The soundtrack is way out of print, but if you like what you hear, and want some Tiffany ballads (she did the voice of Judy Jetson), you can download the whole thing here and here. And you can see the YTMND Jetsons-Salt N Pepa here.

‘Ultrasonic Melody’

The Defenders/The Petitioners/Ben and Sam, July 2003. Calling Tresider Burns ...

New Jim White song, interview

Tooting own horn dept.:

For the latest Popcast, the Times’ weekly music podcast, Jim White dropped by our “studio” (converted, unsoundproofed office). When I met him in the lobby he was wearing a utilitarian green polyester jacket and an even more utilitarian white cap, like the one below (which he apparently signed for a fan). He carried a nice-looking guitar that he had gotten for a song at a Georgia flea market — a sure sign of recession, he said.

White is a natural raconteur. And although he’s often pegged as simplistic “Southern gothic” (I’m guilty of using that critical crutch), he embraces his Southernness and can articulate that muse in fascinating detail, as he did in the documentary Searching for the Wrong-Eyed Jesus.

We talked about his time as a New York cab driver, his formative meeting with Tom Waits, and how he is struggling to write happier songs. (“I’ve got a lot of happy little tugboats turning the sad ship in the direction of the port of contentment,” he said.) He also played a brand-new piece, “The Runaway Song,” and talked about the teenage relationship that inspired it.

It’s a beautiful song, and I enjoyed my conversation with White, as I have recent interviews with Charles Hamilton, Jay Reatard, Julie Fowlis and Cory Chisel. But White’s best comment was edited out. He hit bottom in his Travis Bickle days when he spat on an 80-year-old woman: she was wasted and barfed in his cab, so he gave her what-for. “That’s when I realized something was missing in my life,” he said.

Listen to the full Popcast, which includes reviews of David Archuleta and Deborah Cox, here.

Voice from beyond: Jimmy Carl Black

Eerie coincidences dept.:

A couple of days ago I wrote an obituary for Jimmy Carl Black, the original drummer of the Mothers of Invention. He’s the one front and center in a beard and white dress on the cover of We’re Only In It for the Money, on which he famously introduced himself by saying, “Hi, boys and girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black — I’m the Indian of the group.” Like the rest of the band, he was canned by Zappa in 1969.

Today in the mail I got a two-CD set by Jon Larsen, a jazz guitarist from Norway, called The Jimmy Carl Black Story. In his later years Black lived in Europe and played there with various people, including Eugene Chadbourne. Larsen’s album is a self-described “surrealistic space odyssey” that includes a fair amount of jimmycarlsploitation, like the second track, which is called, ahem, “Hi Boys and Girls, I’m Jimmy Carl Black.”

(According to the accompanying press release from Hot Club Records, the album is being released in the U.S. on Nov. 25, though it looks like as if you can get it now through eMusic.)

But truly creepy is the last number, “Jimmy-As-A-Ghost,” an interstellar love story in which Black, whose vocals were apparently recorded by phone, narrates as a space-age Casper who had a fatal dalliance with “a very, very funky Mrs. Martian.”

But people, don’t despair, I’m back as crew-on-post.
Hi boys and girls,
Now I’m actually ... Jimmy-As-A-Ghost!

Disc 2 of the set is a spoken interview with Black, who goes into a good bit of detail about his early days and the juicy misadventures of a Rosencrantz Guildenstern in the glory days of 1960s rock. Track 11, for example, is called “Miami Pop Festival/Freak out at the Cast Away Hotel/Arthur Brown/Jimi Hendrix/A helping hand from unca Mickey.”

Here’s Track 1, whose title you could probably guess: “My name is Jimmy Carl Black.”

Neat: Tim Fite Halloween EP

I like Tim Fite, a lo-fi hip-hop-folk-anticonsumerist-provocateur hyphenated dude in Brooklyn. As he did last year, he’s offering a free Halloween EP on his website. Get it today before it’s gone, and also make sure you get the treat and not the trick. (Nice of him to offer last year’s release, too.)

(Thanks for reminder, BV.)