Speaking of Blitzen Trapper (last post rant), they just recently released yet another album! It is called American Goldwing and I downloaded it from iTunes. It is also available on Amazon MP3, but iTunes offers a bonus track (and yet you pay two dollars more!)
American Goldwing Album Cover
It seems that Eric Earley and the boys have been quite busy. It feels just not long ago they released the colossal work of art that Destroyer of the Void album was. Following their trail, I had noticed that they had not stopped touring, yet somehow they found time to put out yet another compilation.
The first impression of the album: 7 stars out of 10.
The album seems to be a definitive separation of Blitzen Trapper from the rest of genres that they dabbled, and further into the hardcore prog rock that they emanated throughout their previous work.
I used to enjoy their folksy and acoustic pieces, and I miss them in this American Goldwing.
The album opens with the extravagant Might Find it Cheap, an epitome of prog rock with heavy riffing and an exquisite 12-string-acoustic lead that is bound to induce flashbacks of a golden era of rock and roll.
What seems to be the beacon piece of the album, Love the Way You Walk Away, is my favorite song on it. It possesses certain elements of a country ballad, coming both from its vernacular as well as the rhythm guitar play.
As with Destroyer of the Void, American Goldwing keeps a theme throughout the album, yet with each song paying an homage to a different substyle or a different artist. For example, Your Crying Eyes (song 4), to me, resembles even some David Bowie sound.
The lyrical prowess of Earley is still heavily present, and quite enjoyable.
There are a few mellower songs on the album, but we are certainly not getting another acoustic, "murder ballad" such as Man Who Would Speak True (Destroyer of the Void), or Black River Killer (Furr). And, we are certainly not getting a grandiose folksy piece such as Furr, or even Tailor. This is my personal bias. If you are a die-hard prog rock fan, you will get more out of it. I find it somewhat monotonous.
I would still recommend it and would buy it again, knowing what it was about.
Recently, my favorite, local radio station had shut down. It was called 101.9 WRXP, The Rock Experience, and it was headlined by Matt Pinfield, and his co-host Leslie Fram.
Matt Pinfield in Village Voice
For a while, this was my main source for obtaining new music. Their show was promoting smaller bands from all over the country. They would always have a guest band or artist that would perform in the studio. We (my wife and I) learned of so many bands that we ended up going to see live in the area: Rocco DeLuca, Audrye sessions, etc. They would also promote local music, featuring a weekly session called "Local Licks" and during this time they would play bands from the local, tri-state area.
Evidently, their show was not only about new R'N'R, new bands, local bands. They played plenty of ol'school Rock and, with the musical historian Mr. Pinfield at the helm, their selection was exquisite.
Now that their gig is up and gone (Pinfield is back on MTV2 for 120 Minutes), I found myself in a very frustrating situation - here we are, in one of the most affluent metropolitan areas in The World, and I could not get a good radio station. Well, this statement should be qualified. I could not find a good station that goes out of their way to promote and preserve good music. That sounds so pompous and esoteric, but take it as you may.
When I lived down in the Philly area, my favorite stations to listen were the College radios, especially the Ivy Leagues' - UPenn and Princeton. Heck, I learned about Spoon on Princeton's 103.3. Up here, I tuned into Columbia, Seton Hall, NYU, and found nothing appealing on the waves. Nothing.
After this debacle, I turned to my trusty Pandora. Pandora had become my favorite means of obtaining new music.
However, by poking around the Interwebs, I found that there are still some good sources around the U.S. that invest themselves into preserving good music.
One such station is WNRN in Charlottesville, Virginia. I subscribed to their YouTube channel after seeing many of my favorite bands and singer/songwriters featured in their studio (e.g. Delta Spirit, Blitzen Trapper, Ellis Paul, Jesse Malin,etc.) I started checking out new artists I'd find there, and going out to see them live, when they come through the area. I, thus, discovered really cool new music like Head And The Heart.
Now I get alerts about their uploads in my YouTube account and check them out religiously. Great acts appear constantly and good music flows my way.
So, what the hell am I talking about here? What is this rant? What is this preservation and promotion of good music bullshit that I am spilling?
The way I see it, it is the modern-day radio DJ's responsibility to show us up and coming music acts, all entwined with reminiscing of what good music we've had in the past. And these reminders should consist of playing the obscure pieces of great bands as well as the most widely known ones. We've all heard "Like a Rolling Stone" on a radio show three bajillion times; play us something like "Talkin' New York" or "Masters of War". Those lesser known pieces that defined the artist in his/her era what they really were.
Surely, the media landscape has changed so much in this digital revolution and we can all recur to Podcasts, Music genome projects, instead of our local radio - but the job of the DJ is still the same.
It should also be said that I tend to not discriminate against musical genres. Though I have been lately, heavily leaning on the side of folk-rock, alt-folk, alt-bluegrass, indie-rock, indie-folk or whatever similar labels are applicable, I can enjoy anything from a good country song to a trance groove.
On another note, my cousin showed me this station in Louisville, KY that seems to be doing the exact same thing.
91.9FM, Louisville WFPK. They stream and play a plethora of great rock, blues, indie music, folk.
Why can Louisville, KY have a great station that will play Head and The Heart, and NYC does not???
The two of us were in Manhattan one day, and we visited MoMa. We made it a point to see their house collection which is impressive, since it has been a while that we'd seen it. I forgot the Marcel Duchamp pieces that they possessed. I find them ingenious, though I understand that readymade art is an acquired taste for a visual art neophyte, much like myself.
Duchamp: Bicycle Wheel (MoMa)
After a few drinks and some music, I began some ramblings on Duchamp in our taxi ride home. I elaborated with an inebriated, incoherent exploration of the genius behind Fountain (or whatever limited knowledge I had on the subject), and I kept insisting after perceiving mild indifference on her part, which pushed her to utter that epic quote above. It really tickled me that she used the word "urinal", in her outburst, because of the simplicity that Duchamp achieves in the abstraction of the urinal itself.
The urinal's metamorphosis happens somewhere between our ears, without much intervention from the artist itself, but a careful placement of the title.
Duchamp: Fountain
The truth is, without even having studied nearly the amount of Art History that I wish I would have, I am certainly curious about Dada, in the most romantic way possible. I am infatuated by its origins, and its evolution.
The movement started as a revolution in sub-bourgeois circles in central Europe, and it propagated to the US and Asia as well. The rebellion against the bourgeois capitalism and its tendencies for arousing conflict pushed artists, bohemians, intellectuals to convene in small circles and share their satires and parodies in as many forms as possible.
Thank you, Duchamp, for giving us the Fountain to drink from, for many years to come. We don't care about you, or your damn urinal.
