Mad History

Hey kids, we're kind of on summer hiatus here.

Okay, we admit it. We've closed the offices down in favor of an epic bender. Fine. We said it. Are you happy now?

While we're gone, you should make time to read Jeff Weiss' history of the album that made Stones Throw: Madvillainy by Madvillain. Don't know what we're talking about? Read Weiss' blow-by-blow of how it came about and you'll be sold. It's hyperbolic, but that's standard for Pitchfork. And really, if it's not filled with purposely frilly sentences, it wouldn't be music writing, would it?

And now: "Searching for Tomorrow: The Story of Madlib and DOOM's Madvillainy"



We're going back to sleep for now. See you soon!

Free Music: Interpretations & Trip-hop by Any Other Name

Let’s start this three-part offering of links to free music with the double-scoop ATCO: A Tribute from Xiomara, a musician from San Francisco.

Radical re-workings of rap are a dicey game, often producing novelty (which isn’t automatically bad) but usually cringe-inducing. But once in a while, the right performer picks the right material and does something genuinely interesting with a style of pop music not necessarily suited to cover treatment.

Xiomara spritzes Outkast’s “So Fresh, So Clean” with a nearly a capella first verse to show off her Depression-era blues voice that, appropriately rides into a sort of gypsy-jazz breakdown at the end. The flipside puts a daydream drift across “Electric Relaxation” by A Tribe Called Quest. It’s a watery, soft and positively sensual reading of ATCQ’s already drowsy tune. The original is a request, Xiomara’s reading is pure promise keeping.

Get it, spin it, dig it.

***

Electric Wizard’s legend is mostly true. The English doom metal act has conjured a certain strain of creepy, occult-shaded metal sludge so filthy that listening to them can still feel transgressive. But turn off the amps and most classic metal, and a fair amount of doom, can sound like folk-blues that trades in murder-ballad imagery.

So what happens when a talented fan scrubs the druggy fuzz from Electric Wizard’s music? Acoustic Wizard answers that with some of the scariest campfire jams you’ll ever hear. The first two volumes, each with three tracks, are called Please Don’t Sue Me, which seems unlikely as we imagine the members of Electric Wizard would be all over this. It’s an act of pure love, with wonderfully gloomy results.

***

Electronic music site Earmilk calls Goldbloc’s Black Gold EP “one of the best slept on acts of our time." The term “slept on” seems to have lost its potency in this era of music consumption. After all, there’s so much new music that even dedicated genre fans are going to miss out on something. It’s just too hard to keep up. That said, Goldbloc really is a fantastic duo from Boston.

As our headline says, the four songs comprising Black Gold are trip-hop. Whether Goldbloc calls it that doesn’t matter. Don’t go in expecting the languorous, end-of-the century angst of Portishead, nor the jazz-lite chillout sound that made coffee houses seem cool in the late ‘90s. Seriously deep bass rolls with midnight menace beneath slightly glitchy treatment of vocals that recall the post-coital rasp of Elin Kastlander from jj. This is where soul music should be today.

You can download the EP for free by liking them on Facebook. We got a download error message, but that’s just Facebook being willfully difficult. You should be able to see the Dropbox link where you can grab the compressed zip file. Roll up.

Free Music: Aleph Null

Heavy metal has more subgenres than any reasonable person can keep up with. Tastes at The Typing Monkey offices skew toward the blues-based stuff from the '70s, the NWOBHM, and the nearly self-explanatory genres: doom, stoner and sludge.

It's within those last three that Düsseldorf, Germany trio Aleph Null operate. The trio can blast out riffs heavier than a bison's balls during mating season -- the classic Black Sabbath devil's chord blooze that's been the cornerstone of metal since the 1970s. And they can pull it all back to fuzzy, lingering drones that build the kind of tension that is a hallmark of doom metal. Throw in the shredded, grunge-style vocals and kids, you've got a winner.

We call your attention to Aleph Null not only because they're a good band with a strong sense of dynamics and mood, but because so far, every recording they've made is offered up for free download via their Bandcamp site. And their new LP Nocturnal is a bruiser.

If you're doom/stoner/sludge-curious, you can't beat free, and Aleph Null isn't a bad place to start. Play "Black Winged Cherub" for a taste:


We admit that Nocturnal didn't bowl us over as immediately as their previous EP Belladonna (2013). The four tracks on that collection sound looser and a little more cosmic to our ears. Check out "Solar Sail" to hear the contrast:


If you like what you hear, Aleph Null says download it, people, for this music is like Jesus' love. It is ours to accept. And if this sort of brain-melting sound pleases you, enjoy your wanderings around the Web to seek out more of the same. Many doom/stoner/sludge metal bands offer "pay what you can" downloads, so do that. And buy a t-shirt.

Stonerobixx and Doommantia, are two great websites dedicated to these subgenres. And we'd be remiss not to mention the late, great Cosmic Hearse blog, our gateway into most of this stuff.

Jazz Impressions of the Next World

We'd planned on posting something else today, honest. But then Dave Brubeck died, one day short of his 92nd birthday.

Good bye Mr. Brubeck and thank you for all the amazing music you made while you were here.


[courtesy of claudiofilippi1]

I Believe I'll Go Back Home

Celebrities die all the time, but we lost three in January that leave pretty large holes in the American musical landscape. We already waxed nostalgic on Jimmy Castor but were offline when, almost appropriately, Johnny Otis and Etta James died just days apart.

If you are alive and paying attention, you already read countless obits and rememberies of their respective contributions to rhythm & blues, soul, jazz and blues.

Instead of repeating praise into the void, we encourage you to pay your respects by getting your paws on a copy of Cold Shot! by The Johnny Otis Show.

Released in 1968, this LP boasts the leanest Otis Show line-up of them all: Johnny plays piano, vibes and drums; his son Shuggie (a grinning teen here and only a couple years from launching his brief, brilliant solo career) plays bass, guitar and harmonica while Mighty Mouth Evans handles the lead vocals.

This record will validate your puny effort to feel funky on a daily basis. Cold Shot! opens smart with the shock-and-awe enabled "The Signifyin' Monkey" replete with blue language. "Country Girl" is far filthier through pure implication. That's blues science right there bub -- stun 'em out of the gate and you can say anything you want after that.

"High Heeled Sneakers" chicken struts across the room and Otis fills the set with a fair share of classic blues sounds, all played with a smile and a wink.

Just about anything Otis recorded is worth your attention, and Cold Shot! isn't even the best entry point to his catalog. (Otis' killer r&b output from the '50s and '60s is top-shelf stuff.) But this disc cuts through the fog of whatever troubles you, a bracing gulp of potent groove juice.

A Monkey Love Round-Up

That Monkey Love column to the right of this text leads the reader to a world of wonder. And from time to time we like to call out of few of those links for showing us what's what around the intertoobs.

A person who goes by the handle Zen Tiger runs the blog Beware of the Crosseyed Cyclops!, formerly Beware, There's a Crosseyed Cyclops in My Basement!!!  Apparently this wonky-eyed cyclops has broken out of the dank basement and ditched a couple exclamation marks along the way.

The site offers more digitized, downloadable vintage comics than you have time to read. So pick a few that fit your mood and dig in. We were especially pleased by the recent batch of Marvel Tales, including this winner:

The cover kinda spoils the ending, but admit it, you totally want to read that. She's trying to be a good neighbor, but so is he. Lady, don't say the gentleman didn't warn you.

Secondly, The Typing Monkey draws your attention to the truly weird comic Tales from Greenfuzz. We found it via the always incredible Monster Brains. The issue of Greenfuzz, by artist and animator Will Sweeney is titled "Kebabylon!" and tells the a fairly traditional story of boy-loves-girl, villain-kidnaps-girl, boy-goes-heroic. Except the boy is a sandwich, as is his girlfriend, and the villain is a hot dog who wants to rule the world and make everyone wear leiderhosen.

And there's a cat with a beard:

You aren't doing anything so important that you can't spend a little time enjoying Greenfuzz or a selection from the Cyclops library.

If you need some music to accompany your read, Cosmic Hearse has taken a turn recently toward jazz. Host Aesop Dekker still posts the metal, punk and the variations on heavy rock and roll he's always dealt. But he's expanded into deep catalog Blue Note bop and killer early 20th century blues. Some of the bop proves so hard The Typing Monkey can't really get on board, but at the very least we get educated. That's the real service he provides, and it's damned entertaining too.

Yippee! Hooray!

On January 21, The Typing Monkey turned three. There were snacks and drinks and everything and in the excitement we didn't even put anything up here.

So treat yourself, as we did, and take a little click on over to Cosmic Hearse, which continues to entertain, educate and expand our musical horizons. In this case, it's The Ben Webster Quartet's Soulville album. Don't ignore Hearse driver Aesop Dekker's fun copy either. The man can put a sentence together.

We thought it was serendipitous that Ben Webster showed up on Cosmic Hearse since we just bought a copy of Ben and "Sweets" (Ben Webster and Harry "Sweets" Edison) a few weeks ago for the office. Mr. Webster's tenor sax sounds the way a well-made Manhattan tastes.

Do it. Come on. Do it.

"See you tomorrow"

Monty Stark of Stark Reality died on Thanksgiving Day, Nov 26, 2009. This was news to us. Perhaps it's news to you.

Learn all you need to know about him via his obituary on the Stones Throw label Website.

Haunted Radio

We are unashamed to proclaim our love of listening to the radio. But it's frustrating that Halloween-happy listeners are supposed to be content with the pittance offered by most stations on Oct 31, in the form of "Monster Mash" by Bobby "Boris" Pickett & The Crypt-Kickers. (It's a delightful novelty hit, though The Typing Monkey prefers "Monster's Holiday" because we like to root for the underdog.)

That's why we tune in every year to "The Roadhouse" on KEXP FM. It's an American blues & roots music show that airs Wednesday evenings from 6 to 9 p.m., Pacific Time.

On the Wednesday just before Halloween, "Roadhouse" DJ Greg Vandy usually fills his three hour show with all manner of murder ballads, blues numbers about pacts with the Devil, hillbilly songs about dead lovers and probably a fair selection of Screamin' Jay Hawkins and other early r&b and rock & roll shouters who dabbled in the dark arts.

Don't live within the station's broadcast range? You can dial it up via the Web and for two weeks after the show airs, you can listen to an archived podcast of the program. We haven't contacted Vandy, but tune in on Oct 28 and the chance of spooky satisfaction is high.

Various shows on WFMU pull out lots of good Halloween- and horror-themed music too, and we'd be reprehensible boors if we didn't also mention Dr. Demento.

If all else fails, The Monster Club hosts hundreds of old time radio dramas in the horror, mystery, supernatural and suspense genres. (You'll need to subscribe to get the download password, but it's otherwise free.)

The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

It's National Donut Month. And being October, it's also a month during which we're allowed to talk about dreadful things with abandon becasue, you know, Halloween approaches. Ostensibly we'll do so as often as possible this month with the second annual Typing Monkey Halloween Frenzy.

To start off, it is paramount that we share with you the existence of Halloween Magazine. If a print version ever existed, we would have a subscription. But that it's there on the Web, all year round, makes our hearts grow three sizes. Poke around the site and find all manner of stuff related to the holiday.

Now before we push this pumpkin down the hill, let's take a moment to catch our breath and enjoy this old jazz reel of jump-blues king Louis Jordan performing "Let the Good Times Roll." (The audio is slightly off, but who cares.)


[courtesy FourDices]

Bye-bye Blossom

Her name is Blossom. She was raised in a lion's den. Her nightly occupation was stealing other women's men.

At least that's how singer, songwriter and pianist Blossom Dearie told it in "Blossom's Blues" from her self-titled Verve debut in 1956.

The lyric is standard-issue blues bragging, but when it comes from Dearie's chalk-soft voice it takes on a comic appeal. Does this woman who squeaks and toots like an alto saxophone in the upper register really mean that? Is she even capable of leading a good man astray?

What comes next in "Blossom's Blues" provides the answer, and quite efficiently at that: "I'm an evil woman / But I want to do a man some good."

That same bad girl in school-librarian's clothing fuels her hilarious delivery of Rodgers & Hart's "Ev'rything I've Got" from the same album. In it, she details all the reprehensible things about her personality and the even worse tricks she's learning (fisticuffs, knife-play, a mouth to make a sailor blush -- even witchcraft is mentioned). It's, as the title says, all she has and she's willing to share them with the right fellow.

Her girlish tone is not the babydoll come-on of a Marilyn Monroe, but a flower-soft and unassuming sound that can just as effectively deliver the sad torch songs and genuine romantic odes from the American songbook. Blossom Dearie could sell it.

That she sang a few of her friend and frequent collaborator Bob Dorough's spiffy songs for ABC television's "School House Rock" series makes perfect sense. What kid wouldn't respond to Dearie's gentle voice?

Here she gives the number 8 all the gravitas it deserves:


[Courtesy babiekitty1978]

Dearie never reached the mainstream, which is just as well. The rest of us can keep her like a secret. She died on Feb 7, 2009 at the age of 84. The New York Times has a fine obituary where you can learn more about her, if you don't already know her and her work.

glopitaglopitaglopita ...

The Typing Monkey interrupts the seasonal festivities to acknowledge the passing of American composer, arranger and trumpeter Neal Hefti on Oct 11, 2008.

His two best-known compositions -- the theme to the television series Batman, and the theme to both the film and TV versions of The Odd Couple -- deserve all the praise they get. (And any kid who doesn't feel like fighting crime or busting out some go-go dance moves upon hearing the opening bars of the Batman theme should be regarded with suspicion.)

But Hefti's exit reminds us that he also wrote the original score for two of the better just-outside-the-mainstream comedies of the 1960s: How to Murder Your Wife and Lord Love a Duck.

Murder stars Jack Lemmon as the ultimate urban bachelor undone and redone by the shackles of unplanned matrimony. His scenes with co-star Terry Thomas suggest a comedy duo in waiting, and Thomas, always delightful, is nearly bulletproof here. Hefti's playful jazz-pop matches the film's tone perfectly.

Check out the opening narrative:


[Courtesy stutrix]

Duck pairs up Tuesday Weld and Roddy McDowall in an oddly philosophical and bleak comic attack on teen culture that remains evergreen. The ace performances from Ruth Gordon and Harvey Korman are nearly pushed aside by Max Showalter's queasy performance as Weld's father. Showalter -- better known to modern audiences as Molly Ringwald's giggling, inappropriate grandfather in Sixteen Candles -- runs away with a short scene in which he cranks up the ick factor while somehow remaining funny.*

Oh right, Neal Hefti ... if there is any doubt that Hefti possessed that rare gift of mid-20th century composers who grasped the basics of rock, blues, jazz and pop in a way that those on either side of the generation gap couldn't or wouldn't, his title track for the film's opening credits will convince.

Dig it:


[Courtesy SolarCoasterX]


*Showalter's scene with Weld is available on YouTube, but just see the movie. It's essential.

The Monkey Reads: I Have Fun Everywhere I Go

I HAVE FUN EVERYWHERE I GO
Savage Tales of Pot, Porn, Punk Rock, Pro Wrestling, Talking Apes, Evil Bosses, Dirty Blues, American Heroes, and the Most Notorious Magazines in the World
By Mike Edison
(Faber and Faber)
If the subtitle of this autobiography doesn’t make it abundantly clear, Mike Edison confesses outright in the author’s note: He’s prone to hyperbole.

Edison -- a musician and former magazine editor, publisher and writer -- spins his overlong yarn like a sometimes-entertaining attention hog at a party where the reader is a stranger, trapped by this odd man and his ramblings.

Most of Fun chronicles Edison’s career as a writer and editor of pornography, wrestling fan magazines and eventually as the editor-in-chief/publisher of the infamous weed magazine, High Times. But he spends too many pages detailing his time in various hardcore, garage-rock and experimental rhythm & blues bands.

An early section about Edison’s childhood and adolescence spews excessive vitriol about what sounds like a fairly typical life for a child of divorce. Mom and dad fought, split up, and Edison, the oldest of two boys in a Jewish family in 1970s New Jersey, sought refuge in the common outlets of music and recreational drug use. What’s he so upset about?

His rock & roll tour diaries are repetitive and ultimately dull. Vicarious drug stories always run the risk of boring and Edison's recounting of his Homeric indulgence of booze, pills, hallucinogens and marijuana hits the wall quickly. He's also the biggest fan of his own music. While not a crime, that doesn't help move the story along.

Edison’s time served in the Kafka-esque High Times offices are a bright spot. These tales would entertain readers who’ve never worked for a magazine -- let alone those who've never smoked pot -- primarily because a poisonous job situation is a nearly universal misery.

Fun could have been an insider’s history of High Times, the world of non-WWE professional wrestling, or a sharp portrait of a life lived in the twilight of a pre-internet publishing world.

Instead it's an overwritten memoir that makes everything catalogued in the book's subtitle seem boring. Edison may have fun everywhere he goes, but does he have to take us with him?

Reference materials: If you must read Fun, The Typing Monkey warned you. Allow us to suggest an alternative: Listen to some dirty blues, ingest mind-altering substances, and watch old wrestling footage yourself. Just don't tell us about it.

Put Those Shoes Back Under the Bed

THE HEAVY
Great Vengance and Furious Fire
(Counter)
In a live setting, this English quintet probably throws a good party, and inspires many embarrassing dirty dance moves. But their debut album is meticulously ragged and slightly confusing once the band sets aside the er, heavy blooze-trash in favor of a Brit-rap effort ("Girl" which is not without its charms); dirgey psychedelia ("Who Needs Sunshine?"); or just flat-out apes influences ("Dazed and Confused" and "Gimme Some Lovin'" both make a showing). Singer Swaby boasts a respectable falsetto, and the band's done all the right homework. Yet Vengance is only serviceable, not remarkable -- neither as silly as Jon Spencer's limited efforts (thankfully), nor as authentic-sounding as The White Stripes. And no, The Typing Monkey never thought we'd have to type that.

Reference materials: Give The Heavy a chance, this is only The Typing Monkey's opinion after all. But if you like modern junkyard funk and trash-blues, Chow Nasty deserves your attention.

Bonus links!
For a quick history lesson on a rock & roll colossus, read this short essay on Bo Diddley's Black Gladiator. Then click here and hear it for yourself. The Heavy is just one of many standing on Mr. Diddley's shoulders.