Jam of the day, late-night TV, music discovery, SXSW, and left-handed guitarists: Gary Clark, Jr. / "Bright Lights"

This song is a straight jam, no ifs ands or buts or becauses or what-have-yous about it. I don't know much about Gary Clark, Jr., though. I stumbled on this tune via a message board a number of months ago, and I remember really digging it when I heard it (and it was this specific video, too, not a studio recording). I didn't investigate the guy further, though, for whatever reason, thinking him too "mainstream" or something silly like that, then totally forgot about it until earlier tonight.

I was watching late night TV because the featured bands actually piqued my interest: Sharon Van Etten (*swoon*) was on Conan playing "Leonard", and then The Shins were on Letterman playing "Simple Song". I flipped over to Fallon to catch Jon Hamm (I find him hilarious whenever he's on 30 Rock and SNL) and left the TV on in the background as I came back to my laptop to do some more writing work. Eventually, Carson Daly's show came on and he said that this episode would be devoted to artists they saw and loved at SXSW.

This brought to mind a couple of things. First, it made me think about how people discover music these days, who we view as "go-to sources" for music discovery, who we trust as musical litmus tests. It's strange to think of times when, I dunno, Rolling Stone might be your one and only print publication by which to judge new releases. Or shit, the radio, even! What was music discovery like before the internet?! Personally, I didn't discover any music outside of classic rock radio that my dad played in the car up through high school, so I can only imagine what kind of dark ages the 80s and 70s and … well, fuck, there was some great music coming out back then, right? And people were finding out about it, I presume. Is the internet actually a good thing? My vast digital music collection says, "Hell yeah motherfucker!", but my exploding inbox of "Listen to my music pleeez!" says, "Hell no, motherfucker!". Only time will tell, I suppose.

Second, this reminded me of a Tweet from some friends who were down in Austin at SXSW last week. Apparently, Carson Daly was onstage playing drums with Thee Oh Sees?!?!?!? I love that band and their garage rock awesomeness, and it's hard to imagine Mr. TRL drumming along to such tune-age at all, let alone live with these dudes. Still, it makes me wish I had been there to see it, because I'm sure it was a spectacle, an experience, something interesting to witness. I've never been to any kind of music festival, so that's something on my agenda for the future.

What else was I talking about? Oh, you'll notice that the second guitarist in this video (the first guy you see in the first frame) is a left-handed guitarist. As a staunch ambidexterian (if you ask, I can list all of the things I do lefty and all of the things I do righty; there are plenty of each), I find it particularly interesting to see people doing something lefty that is vastly more commonly done righty. Guitar-playing, golfing, hand-writing, masturbating … just kidding. No really, I'm kidding, don't show me. Jimi Hendrix and Paul McCartney stand out as striking left-handed guitarist examples. Do you have any others? Famous or otherwise?

Where were we … back to this Gary Clark, Jr. tune, right! This was recorded at Eric Clapton's Crossroads Guitar Festival, and it has some great footage of Clark singing and guitaring, plus his backing band of guitarist, bassist, drummer, and brass. His voice is outstanding. I think that's what really gets me, that he's belting out these lines while strumming some sweet licks and solos. Not to mention how cool those shades are …

"You're gonna know my name by the end of the night"



Gary Clark Jr. on the web: Website Facebook Twitter YouTube

Jam of the day, road trip radio, and the semantics of "classic rock": Bad Company / "Feel Like Makin' Love"

I made a six-hour drive from New Jersey to Pittsburgh last weekend with some college buddies who I hadn't seen in a while. In my friend's rental car, he had a couple of CDs that we played a few times through: Can's Delay 1968, which is great driving music; Devendra Banhart's Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon, only half of which we got through after playing the 8-minute, slow-burning jam "Seahorse" three times in a row; and the debut, Gros mammouth album, of Montreal's French-speaking indie pop-rock band Les Trois Accords (The Three Chords, which is an accurate description of their melodies). We chatted, we napped, we snacked, and we played a fizzling round of "more like a rock or a theory of justice", everyone's favorite, wacky binary search game.

Eventually, I suggested turning on the radio as we got closer to Pittsburgh, and we found a classic rock station. Within a few minutes, Bad Company's hit single "Feel Like Makin' Love" came on. We all groaned. We laughed. But I'll be god damned if the chorus didn't come around after a minute and find us all singing at the top of our lungs. Just try it:



This has to be the cheesiest fucking song known to man. (Watching it with the lyrics displayed makes it even more obvious. Who writes this stuff?!) After we caught ourselves singing along with gusto, we chuckled at the thought of some mustachioed dude in a leather jacket putting this song on the jukebox in some dive bar and strutting down the dance floor with his arm outstretched, pointing at some "hottie" at the other end of the room and singing along. What an image. Who else is this song for?

While we're on the topic of classic rock radio, I should mention an interesting debate I had on Twitter yesterday with some Pittsburgh folks. I tweeted a link to a Tumblr blog that compiles great 90s indie rock hits with the description "90s rule". The Post-Gazette's music critic Scott Mervis wrote back that the 90s were "Maybe the 4th best decade for rock". Yowza. I asked where the 50s were in his ranking? What followed was an interesting debate about what decades were best for "rock music", what "classic" actually means, and some good-natured ribbing. Here's my favorite exchange from the whole thing: Hugh says this, I say this. Check out the thread on Twitter and join the conversation, or leave your thoughts here. I'm listening.

Jam of the day: Ultimate Spinach / "Ballad Of The Hip Death Goddess"

Psychedelia epitomized, that is the name of the game for Ultimate Spinach. This Boston band put out three LPs in the late 1960s, full of awesome psychedelic rock gems. You might hear a few strains of their songs and write them off as too "typical" or something; they really do make in-your-face druggy jams, which isn't exactly inventive, but these jams are such perfect examples of this style, and who are we to not give them credit and laudation for epitomizing an epic style of rock music? Ultimate Spinach songs are generally languid yet mind-expanding instrumental adventures, with some female/male vocals peppered in, and they are endlessly listenable. They make you want to turn on the lava lamp, slouch into the couch, and drop out, and this is strongly encouraged, but not necessary. They have some poppier psych-rockers, like "Funny Freak Parade" and "Dove In Hawk's Clothing", but Ultimate Spinach should be recognized for their powerfully evocative jams. This song, "Ballad Of The Hip Death Goddess", is the example I've chosen, but don't let that stop you from exploring their catalog.

The reason I bring this song up now is because of a couple of random occurrences related to this song from a couple weeks ago. I just had to share. First off, though, I should say that I found this band also randomly, on the internet (via eMusic, I believe) and really dug the two albums of theirs I heard, Ultimate Spinach and Behold & See. I listened to those mp3s quite frequently for a while, and when I saw a used vinyl copy of Behold & See at Red Onion Records in D.C. over New Year's this year, I had to buy it. I spun it a number of times right after buying it, but kinda forgot about it until recently. Comedian Andy Kindler tweeted some random hashtag stuff about #BadCoffeeShopNames, which morphed somehow into #badbandnames and #comedianbands and #confusingbandnames and #badcomedyclubnames and so on. Silly stuff, but that's the Twitter-verse for ya! Anyhow, Andy sent out this tweet that mentioned Ultimate Spinach as a #badbandname and I "politely disagreed while not really disagreeing but merely qualifiying the claim" by saying this back to him, and he deemed it worthy of a retweet. Huzzah! And it was about this jam I'm featuring now, in particular. Double huzzah huzzah! Thus far in my short Twitter life, I've been retweeted by Todd Barry and Andy Kindler, both funny comedians and Home Movies voice actors! Now I just gotta track down Brendon Small, Ron Lynch, Jon Benjamin, Laura Silverman, Mitch Hedberg, . . . uh oh.

Anyway, the other coincidence with this song involves a compilation album I just bought (on eMusic, even, whaddyaknow?) last week. I had been looking through the Dungen catalog (trying to research/listen to write a New Classic on Ta Det Lugnt) and saw they had an instrumental version of "Satt Att Se" on a compilaton album, called A Monstrous Psychedelic Bubble Exploding In Your Mind. I saw this album had a gigantic amount of music for a cheap price, and was intrigued by ... well, the title. I downloaded the whole thing and listened through most of it in one inspired and lethargic sitting. It was great for that mood. And somewhere in the middle, I heard Ultimate Spinach come on! How could I mistake those opening chiming bells, so melancholy yet enticing, for anything else? In a way, the tune is kinda formulaic—repetitive bass groove, reverby vochals, ethereal lyrical themes, tinges of feedback on the lengthy guitar solo—but this song is so much more than the sum of its constituent parts. It's about a mood, a sense of existence, and powerful emotions. It's evocative, it's scary, it's groovy, it's psychedlic, baby. Check it out.



See the glazed eyes
Touch the dead skin
Feel the cold lips
And know the warmth of the hip death goddess

---

On an only slightly related note, the guy who put the compilation together (and whose band, the Amorphous Androgynous, also has a couple songs on the compilation, strangely enough) seems to be really ... interesting. While reading about the band I stumbled on this video of his featuring a crazy religious lady at Speakers' Corner in London. If you've never been there, and you're in London, you have to see it. Somehow, the northeast corner of Hyde Park has been designated as the spot where anyone can just show up and start shouting at the world. It's weirdly fascinating.