Where are the Songs?

This blog features links to songs hosted (for free) on E-Snips. My use of E-Snips to host copyrighted material has always been in violation of their policies, which offer people something like 3 GB of storage space for storing their uncopyrighted materials – whatever the fuck that might be. So I’m wrong from the outset to use E-Snips that way, and have lived in light-awareness that I might lose that privilege at any time. But I’m still annoyed now that it’s happened.

Who knows which artist flagged which file I was sharing? Nobody, but I suspect two things: one, that it was nobody at all, but rather some sort of robot-file-troller, and two: that it was because of a Billy Joel song. Because that was the most recently put-up thing. Fine: no Billy Joel articles – like he cares, like you care, like there was much of a point to that proposed series in the first place.

Too bad, however, that now none of the stuff I posted that was obscure, okayed, or helpful is available. The whole folder is locked up and to-be-deleted. My own fault – I know! But funnily enough, I can still make a NEW folder on E-Snips and repopulate with everything but the Billy Joel, if I want to. I have to be caught twice to get really banned. Not that I’ll bother – the internet is ephemeral and all that.

Equally anonymously, and more annoying, some dumb bastard (or perhaps a morality-trolling robot) flagged one of my OWN songs as “innappropriate” – the one called They Fuck You Up – and now that file is also locked, without recourse or explanation. My own tune (if not my own phrase, being that of Philip Larkin)! I’ve half a mind to go flag a bunch of religious music as Offensive, just to balance the scales.

But there are no scales, are there? There are just unenforceable laws, unaccountable “flagging” and robots. If you were looking to hear any of the stuff I’ve posted prior to this date, sorry. Lots of it – the stuff that I had permission or tacit permission to post – is worth purchasing. The obscure stuff is worth finding. And the dinosaur stuff, the stuff that’s already sold 10 million copies, you can help yourself to on torrent sites or via filesharing, or you can tape it off the radio, or you can borrow the CD from the library, or buy it used. Billy Joel you can get for a dollar at Goodwill on any given day.

We’ll start again tomorrow.

Billy Joel, Part One: Songs in the Attic.

Having to be defensive about Billy Joel is not new – he was never acclaimed by critics, although he certainly had the popular vote for a long time. But here in the New Millenium, unless you still like Billy Joel from back when that was alright, you probably don’t listen to him now, and the mention of his name or the sight of a CD will get a raised eyebrow or a laugh much of the time.

To be clear, I think the critical dismissal of Joel was only so much group-think bullying. Was he cutting edge, or radical? Nope – but who cares? He was a solid songwriter (occasionally brilliant), a great player/bandleader and a top-notch rock singer. He was VERY popular, and that never helps with credibility – once your songs are so well-known as to be boring or annoying, you’re critically fucked, aren’t you? See Born In the USA – not a terrible record, but widely seen as a low point. To set the bar where we can all see it: musically, Joel isn’t any more dismissable than Tom Petty or Bob Seger or any of those 70s rock and roll bandleaders. But somehow he gets the bigger sneer. (This may all be due to Just the Way You Are – I’m not about to defend that tripe.)

Billy Joel’s going to get a week-long reconsideration here for the following good reasons:

1. Groupthink sucks – especially that part of it that perpetuates the set-em-up, shoot-em-down “that was last year” phenomenon.

2. Billy Joel was never anywhere near as bad as critics implied or said aloud, and doesn’t deserve the sneer unless you really hate popular rock music.

3. Billy Joel was primary in the development of my taste and my love for rock and roll.

4. He deserves props for STOPPING, which he never gets. Every time we hear of a new album by Sting, Rod Stewart, or Elton John, we should all say a thank you to Billy Joel. Shortly after he started to seriously suck, he stopped making records. That’s classier than he gets credit for being.

5. I’ve been in a certain mood. Reflecty, let’s call it. Digging the old things.

Let me start Billy Joel week with Songs In The Attic - the best of all his records, from beginning to end.*

A collection of live stuff from small clubs and theatres and Madison Square Gardens, the record is brilliant – big, tough, moving. The band is powerful, and Joel’s vocals and piano are top-notch.

Tracks that didn’t work as well in the studio – Miami 2017 , Captain Jack, Say Goodbye To Hollywood, Streetlife Serenader – are all rendered in their fullest glory. If you haven’t heard this, you should. And if this didn’t gain him credibility among the critics and wider public when it was released (after Glass Houses), then they weren’t listening. Says me.

More to come. Here’s a taste.

Miami 2017 (I’ve Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway)

—-

* except for one line which knocks me out of the zone every time. In You’re My Home he describes a woman as being his castle, his cabin, and “instant pleasuredome”. Maybe that was nice to say in the 70’s, over a meal of spray cheese and Tab, but JESUS, that’s a bad line.

I’ve Been Thinking About the Old Things

I like to go on and on about filesharing and what a potentially wonderful thing it is – speaking specifically of album-oriented sites like Soulseek. I think linking to those articles would be lamer than lame – find them yourselves if you care.

Last year I started using the new (I’m sure) Torrent thing, generally used for much larger files-sharing, like movies or tv shows or games. But a new music-transmissional beast has raised its head on the torrent sites – the downloadable discography. They’re not massively available, and in the new singles-era, probably not hugely popular, but the one-click-career raises new interesting issues: how much is too much? (That’s on the downside.) And wow, that was easy! (On the upside).

I wouldn’t think it a good way, myself, to get into a brand new band – new to oneself. That’s no compliment to a band, and it doesn’t make sense: if we want music we must pay people so they can eat and make a living while making music.

But most of the torrents I’ve seen have been of a dinosaur persuasion: Floyd. Rush. Etc.

So I HAVE been using it to get stuff – stuff that I already own on vinyl, for ease of iPoddery. And unusual stuff like a box set of early Canadian Folk Songs. And crap my sister asks me to find for her, for which any amount of money would be too much money spent. If anyone with a radio and a tape recorder could get all of those songs in a day – who gives a shit how you get that? It’s free because it’s paid for.

I had a wonderful bit of luck when – after looking for years for Max Webster records on Soulseek – I found somebody (a Rush fan) who had posted all of the Max records. I own them all – so despite misgivings about its being too quickly done, I downloaded digital versions of a catalogue I’ve had for years. I’m happy as a pig. If Max Webster put out TShirts or played gigs, I’d spend my money there for sure. But I don’t want to buy the albums again – I just want to put them on my iPod.

Recently, I have been reconsidering Billy Joel, whom I loved as a young person and fell out with later on; I have all of his records – the ones that I want – so I didn’t feel bad about downloading that discography. I want to write about Billy Joel for a week or so, soon. But to finish the Discography Torrent thing:

Recently I used the Discography Download to explore aspects of a band I wanted to know more about but didn’t want to invest much in: Genesis.

I grew up with Genesis in their Abacab era, when they were (I say) pretty great, running alongside the pretty great Peter Gabriel solo records, and had always wondered what the band was like with him as singer. But after picking up those early records 100 hundred times and then putting them back down, I had to admit that I am not interested enough to wager the cost against the odds of it being good. But “Click!”? That’s worth it. I have it all on MP3. I’m putting it on my iPod. Tra la.

It worked out well for me. I’m trucking through the Genesis discography, unlocking some memories and getting an impression. I’m thinking they’re about 50% great – half the songs I really like – maybe 40% – and the rest I want not to hear. I’ll report back when I know more.

I still dig Abacab, I can tell you that much.

To close, I’d like to share an Ohhhh moment I experienced while listening to The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway: check out the genes shared by these two songs. I knew that the Soft Bulletin was well-soaked in prog rock (with injections of The Who) – but I was thinking more about YES.

Anyway: Enjoy this free music! And go to a Flaming Lips show.

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway – from The Lamb Lies Down On Broadway album, by Genesis (1974)

Race For the Prize – from The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips (1999)

Shit Eating Grins, part 1.5

I had intended to share a bunch of tunes that titilated me as a pubescent – but, I suppose unsurprisingly, many of them are hard to find online. And I only have the LPs for things like

Sammy Hagar’s “Dick In The Dirt“,

the Tubes’ “Tip Of My Tongue“,

April Wine’s “If You See Kay“, which I’m lightly embarrassed to have ever graced with a laugh, but there you have it: kids are dumb.

Undifficult to find is the following, which I still dig:

Dirty Love, by Frank Zappa, from Baby Snakes.

I actually have a very ambivalent opinion of Zappa – he annoys the shit out of me most of the time, but he has moments I love. Mostly those moments are short – his jokes rarely warrant a long song.

His humour and music always remind me of Comic Book Store humour – overly articulated and rehearsed, oddly aggressive, and equally smart and retarded.

But his short funky things are hard to deny the quality of, and I will always love some tracks – Let Me Take You To The Beach is an all time favourite; I’d like to see Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance become a children’s anthem (but not the following What’s The Ugliest Part of Your Body?); and Baby Snakes is worth something just for its crazily bent Bayeebee Snayeeyakes chorus.

Anyway. If you have any of the crappy but funny to twelve year old songs above, do share…

JM Barrie: Sad Peter Pan Man

Wow: I am just now listening to a podcast (Radio Lab) about Stress, and learned this: JM Barrie, author of Peter Pan, a book I love, saw his older brother die in front of him, then watched his mother fall into “a Victorian swoon” and take to bed for ten years. She never acknowledged him again – if he brought her food, she’d imagine she was seeing the dead brother, and she said repeatedly that at least the dead brother would never grow up and move away.

Barrie stopped growing, developed a beard but few other secondary sex characteristics, and had an unconsumated marriage. And he wrote Peter Pan (and apparently a lot of much more fucked up stuff on similar themes – endless youth and oedipal thingees).

Crazy, eh? Here’s the relevant song:

Sad Peter Pan - Vic Chesnutt (from Is The Actor Happy? 1995)

If you’re interested, the next story in the same podcast is about Linda Thompson’s hysterical dysphonia experience (I’d be at least hysterical having to deal with a dickhead like Richard Thompson) – it’s an interesting piece too.

Here’s a link to the podcast.

Another Right On Podcast, About Jazz

Not much to say, except that I’m digging this podcast, from NPR:

Jazz Profiles

Episodes focus on an artist each, and for artists about whom there is more to say, multiple episodes happen. A lot of the scholars and talkers who participate are recognizable from the Ken Burns JAZZ series from earlier this decade – Stanley Crouch etc. I just took in the Charlie Parker two parter, and as I’ve been devouring his music out of context, it helped put things together. Episodes are an hour. Oh, and the host is Nancy Wilson (no, not the Nancy Wilson from Heart). I know nothing about her, but hope to hear a good hour on her career at some point on the show.

Cheers.

The Best Story and the Best Joke

Seriously, all you need to hear today, right in one handy post! How great is that? The story is from the podcast/radio show I mentioned last week, Radio Lab, from WNYC, an NPR station. The episode of the show is on Detective Stories, and the story is the best story since that one about God. What? Go here to read about the episode, and to hear the whole thing, and to donate money to them. I’m gonna.

The Best Story.

I edited this with a free software thingee called audacity, from this site.

The joke is among the best-ever jokes, but it’s even MORE best-ever when it’s told by monkeys wearing clothes. Dig it:

Hi Dee Hi Dee Hi Dee Ho

Minnie the Moocher by the incredible Cab Calloway starring miss Betty Boop.

And about 500 years later, in The Blues Brothers: