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Re: Reviews, we’ve got a few. - The Oblivion Records Blog

Jason_Chervokas — Wed, 16 Feb 2022 07:46:14 -0000

Is there a reason why this album, which is being promoted as "available on all streaming platforms" in fact is NOT available on all streaming platforms? For example, "Autumn/Parade" only appears as a 10-minute excerpt on Deezer and Qobuz.

Re: Tales from the CD Changer, 1Q09

Jason_Chervokas — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 20:40:47 -0000

Tony, love that Lou Reed story....he's so notoriously anal and a control freak, that's just beautiful. I got a chance to see The Smiths on their first US tour, kinda by accident---my brother had an extra ticket, I wasn't really familiar w/ them--and the band rocked my world. The Morrissey solo stuff has never approached The Smiths stuff--he's never had another great band or great songwriting partner--and I've blown hot and cold with it, but when he's clicking his records are a joy and I can play them over and over again. I love the new one. Dan, you will too.

I love the feel of the McLagan record, my kind of sound, esp the title track. Cigarettes & Wine from the Isbell album also has great feel and some excellent imagery in the lyrics. I'm big on bands w/ feel. Astral Weeks live shows had better feel than what's on the album. Kinda wish Van had save the release for after they had done a bunch of shows so they could pull from the best of 'em since that show is all about just kind of summoning a moment.

Heard a bunch of other good records in the first quarter--the Jim Hall/Bill Frissell duo twofer, which really came out in late 2008 I think, that's why I didn't include it in the survey...and looking forward to a coupla new releases I haven't heard yet--the concept album from The Decemberists and the live album from my fave band of the moment The Hold Steady.

Re: Astral Weeks Live: Back to Caledonia

Jason_Chervokas — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:22:51 -0000

Howard, no end of speculation about the sources of all things Astral Weeks... Whatever the reason I'm glad he took it up. (Wait 'til you hear Slim Slow Slider, which maybe takes on some additional significance in the context of sobriety.) I'm sure that having an historic, marketable kickoff to his "Listen to the Lion" imprint played a role, dunno if that relates to sobriety either. That said, the project has kinda been poorly marketed. Lots of internet buzz but Morrison has struggled to get his website positioned to take advantage (the revamped site has a "coming soon" page in place of forums). And the tickets are being sold at pre-recession prices. I heard there were empty seats in LA and that the NY shows aren't sold out (and I had one friend cite price as the reason he's not going).

Re: Willie’s World

Jason_Chervokas — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 12:19:26 -0000

Kathleen, it's true, Ray Charles was really Willie's only peer in terms of their enormous and encompassing visions of American music.

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Jason_Chervokas — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 12:14:50 -0000

Yeah, I'm not making a judgment about The Who, more about my own changing tastes...when I was a kid I loved bananas, can't eat 'em today...and The Who, it seems, suddenly I don't have a taste for.

Re: Bruce Springsteen’s Dream

Jason_Chervokas — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 09:47:06 -0000

Sean, I don't mean to condescend, just reacting to a widespread response a lot of people have to Springsteen's unabashed romantacism.and the corny stuff in the Super Bowl set. I'm a romantic I guess (my favorite Springsteen album is "The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle," second fav would be "Born to Run"), so I dig it, and this is Springsteen's most romantic album in years. It think its long past time to make it cool to be romantic. What the world needs now is love, sweet love.

I didn't like "Devils & Dust " either; I agree w/ your comparison of "Radio Nowhere" to "57 Channels;" and I didn't like "The Rising" either which sounded mostly forced, and in places very much rehashed ("Mary's Place").

"Tom Joad" took me a while. Didn't like it on its release then years later came back and fell in love w/ it--I think it's chockablock w/ well crafted story songs about contemporary America in a folkie tradition so that's almost perfectly designed to ring all my bells. It ain't "Nebraska," but it's a fine piece of work.

I liked "Magic" quite a bit--loved "Summer Clothes," "Your Own Worst Enemy," and especially "Gypsy Biker," which I think is classic Springsteen ("Long Walk Home" sounded good but also seemed like the kind of quickie Springsteen song the Boss could knock out in his sleep). On this new record I particularly love "What Love Can Do," which offers a pretty heavy sentiment about love--not sacchrine or banal pop song love but the real power of love--familial and not just romantic; "Queen of the Supermarket"--which is just the kind of crafted pop number built around a single trope that I like; "Kingdom of Days," w/ which, as a 45 year old guy married for almost 20 years, I identify; "Surprise," which is a light, quick song, but honest and touching, different, fresh; "Life Itself;" and "This Life." I also dig "Outlaw Pete" which is nothing but a modern version of the kind of western gunslinger ballads Marty Robbins made famous but weird, overly grandiose, quirkie, all characteristics which make me like it more. It's certainly a better western movie than Baz Luhrmann's "Australia;" and at 8-minutes it's a lot shorter.

I'm a Springsteen fan of more than 30 years, and on a more intellectual level an admirer of his songcraft. I'll check out anything he does, but haven't loved a lot of the stuff he's done over the last 10 years. I do, however, really like this new one. It just feels good and even the slight songs like the title track are earwormy for me.

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Jason_Chervokas — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 07:24:42 -0000

I don't really feel like listening to The Who at all--aside from Substitute which I still seem to dig. A coupla months ago I tried to listen to Live at Leeds (I had put a set of new pickup in an SG clone I have and I was going back to listen to a lot of classic SG playing) and I just had to shut it off. I used to love "A Quick One While He's Away," now I can't get through it. Maybe that'll change some day, but for now I'm off The Who.

I dig electric Miles (actually, I dig almost all Miles)--esp. Agharta, Pangaea and Black Beauty, (that stuff Chick Corea plays w/ the ring modulator and the electric piano is amazing) but you're right @ this point the discography is endless. How many live sets from the 50s and 60s bands playing Walkin' can one listen to? I mean, I can listen to it all, but the quantity is numbing.

Tell me more about that Franco set (talk about a guy w/ a daunting discography). I picked up the 2 CD 20th anniversary collection a coupla years ago at Stern's when I was in London. The music was great but w/ no notes or detailed info the collection wasn't that helpful in giving me any kind of context or understanding.

Braxton huh? Another guy w/ a mega discography. I've dabbled in Braxton over the years and saw him once at the Knitting Factory but haven't gotten to the point where I'd be willing to invest in an 8-CD Mosaic set.

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Jason_Chervokas — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 10:25:46 -0000

Interesting about "Kind of Blue"...I always heard a lot of jazz in the Allmans. "Les Brers in A Minor" always sounded like a rip thru something like a variation on "You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To" changes the way a jazz band might do it. It seems like modal jazz really appealed to rock musicians in the 1960s, in part , I suspect because it offered an approach to soloing that was familiar--kind of like soloing in a single blues scale over a I-IV-V--but also different. I know Coltrane's "India" was in part the inspiration for "8 Miles High" for example. I'm a huge jazz fan and a huge fan of improvising rock bands, tho, sad to say, many of 'em aren't that imaginative. The Allmans were always a great improvising rock band, tho. The Grateful Dead too. And Television if you ever got to see them live.

I'm not too interested in the battle of the bands kind of approach--all good music is a gift as far as I'm concerned and I give love and props to all inspired musicians. Just because these days I probably enjoy (and listen to much more frequently) old time Charlie Poole or Dock Boggs records, or Soul Stirrers or Staples Singers records (the gospel stuff from VeeJay and Peacock) than I do Revolver--which really taught rock bands how to arrange for two guitars bass and drums--doesn't mean I need to pit one against the other. But the whole discussion leads me to think about listening habits.

In my experience tastes and listening habits change over time--for example, I've kind of lost my taste for The Who. I have nothing against the Beatles. I devoured their catalogue in my early teens, and again when my now 17-year old discovered the band. I've got Geoff Emerick's memoir and a great book that catalogues what equpment the Beatles acquired year by year on my bedstand. But I find I rarely listen to the band's records these days. Part of the problem of course is that it becomes impossible to hear old favorites w/ fresh ears. (Sometimes I'll play an old favorite on "random" to give me a chance to hear it in a fresh way.) So as much as I adore, say, The Shape of Jazz to Come, or Highway 61 Revisited, The Bridge,or Reiner and the CSO playing Beethoven's Pastoral symphony, etc., I find I'll always listen to a new album or new discovery more frequently these days. There ARE some records I can play over and over, year after year--like Sam Cooke w/ the Soul Stirrers singing "Jesus, Wash Away My Troubles." But even still months go by when I don't spin it.

My listening habits involve jags--like last summer when Joe Nick Patowski's book on Willie Nelson came out and I spent a coupla months listening very deeply to Willie. Or this fall when I fell in love with The Hold Steady and played their catalogue over an over. Or at the end of last year when I went on an jag involving early rock and roll guitar heros and spent a lot of time w/ Cliff Gallup of Gene Vincent's Blue Caps, Paul Burlison w/ the Johnny Burnette Rock 'n Roll Trio, and James Burton w/ Ricky Nelson.

It's true, my bias is for all things American because as a cultural critic and observer my principal interest is American culture, so, I'm much more attached to Elvis' Sun Sessions, or Chuck Berry's Chess sides, or the Soul Stirrer's Aladdin singles w/ RH Harris than I am to anything the Beatles ever cut. But you know, my fascination w/ American culture doesn't keep me from digging, say, the literature of Salman Rushdie or the great music of Kiran Ahluwalia.

I'd love to hear about other folks listening biases/habits.

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Jason_Chervokas — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:52:01 -0000

Oh, and PS, the way Speedy West and Jimmy Bryant played guitar and steel guitar was like brothers from another planet...all that crazy swooping stuff, huge leaps up and down the neck...yeah, it was clean, precise, round tone, but it was definitely not like even other players in the hillybilly boogie vernacular.

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Jason_Chervokas — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 23:43:13 -0000

It's not an either/or alternative to me, all part of a single continuum, and particularly interesting in the case of the anglo-american feedback loop--you know that twin guitar stuff in western swing and proto rockabilly comes out of fiddle jigs and reels which came to the new world w/ anglo europeans...etc.... I don't really hear radical departure, I hear evolutionary adaptation to a new environment--new zeitgeist, new gear.

To me all the distorted guitars of rock were in some ways an evolution of the buzzy, square wavish sound of the bar walking tenor honker of the chitlin circuit ripping loose anyway. Before there was the thrill of the buzzy, midrangey thick guitar solo, there was the thrill of buzzy, midrangey tenor solo.

On the one hand every player has a role in changing the history of the sound of an instrument, on the other hand I think there are precious few you can point to and say--that guy single handed altered the vocabulary of the instrument--or precious few moments you can point to and say--that moment changed the sound of music forever. The Beatles, particularly in the studio, changed the sound of music. But pretty much for anything you point to in terms of electric guitar in the rock of the 1960s you'll find antecedents in electric guitar pioneers of the 40s and 50s. Only time led us to raunchy saturation (I still love that bit from Back to the Future where Michael J. Fox plays his way through the history of rock guitar)., time and new gear (for the Beatles the Vox AC30, later the Marshall variations on the Bassman circuit for the other Brit rockers). But have you watched Sister Rosetta Tharpe ripping on the triple pickup SG? http://www.youtube.com/watc....... The SG didn't debut until 1961 so this is 15 or more years into Sister's career. Her playing is similar to what it was in the 40s, but now w/ the hotter PAFs and cranked up she's got more hair on her tone. Like I said, evolutionary change, adaptation to environment.

The Beatles (and Geoff Emerick and George Martin--I assume a lot of that chimey, sound related to the Vox amps w/ their EL84 output tubes and the compressors Emerick was using) brought their new flavors to the vernacular american music they mixed w/ english music hall stuff and all those hawaiian novelty records george harrison loved and tin pan alley pop, and out came something new. It was cool. All I'm saying is as a matter of history, the sound and style of twin lead electric guitar starts 20 years before Revolver. Twin Guitar Boogie by Bob Willis is the earliest instance that springs to mind for me, there may be earlier stuff on record or lost to time from live performances or radio shows, but 1946 or 1947 places it pretty early in the history of electric guitar as a whole, and I definitely see a pretty straight line from Twin Guitar Boogie to And Your Bird Can Sing.

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Jason_Chervokas — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 21:30:58 -0000

No doubt the Allmans sound descends directly from western swing, rockabilly and that whole thread among other sounds in the southern stew. Tho the Brit invasion also had an impact on their sound I'm sure.

I dunno that Lennon and McCartney heard the Texas Playboys or anything specific, but I don't think the idea of lead guitars playing in harmony is any more novel than say, a fiddle and mando playing in harmony at an irish pub or something.. or a trumpet and sax playing in harmony....and to stick w/ electric guitar antecedents: speedy west and jimmy bryant playing in harmony on records the beatles probably did hear from the 1950s, or all that overdubbed close harmony guitar lead guitar on the les paul mary ford records, which they almost certainly would have known (forget "And Your Bird Can Sing," is there anything cooler sounding than Les Paul and Mary Ford famous version of "How High The Moon"?, which btw doesn't have any double lead lines as I remember)

BTW, little fragment of video of Speedy and Jimmy here (http://www.youtube.com/watc... from 50s US TV, dig not only the solos but the fragment of the double lead head at the end.

Not to take anything away from the artistry, beauty and imagination of And Your Bird Can Sing which is an amazing record. But in terms of historic milestones in double lead guitar, it came along 20 years into the development of that sound, a sound which came right out of western swing and straight into the rockabilly and 50s pop that directly inspired the young English lads.

Re: Learn Something New Every Day

Jason_Chervokas — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 13:35:11 -0000

Dudes, just a point of historical info, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys, for one, were doing double (and even triple) lead electric guitar parts in the 1940s. See, for one, the aptly titled "Twin Guitar Boogie" which I think is circa 1946.

Re: Rabbit, Fuck

Jason_Chervokas — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 16:02:49 -0000

Dennis, this is brilliant. Best post-mortem on Updike anyone's written. Bravo.

Re: Vampire Weekend: Roar, Lions, Roar

Jason_Chervokas — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 10:45:21 -0000

w/ a spam ID and an off topic comment you hardly invite conversation, but I must say anyone who begins a comment writing: "everyone believe in free speech but..." doesn't believe in free speech.

Re: The Rolling Stone Of Our Time

Jason_Chervokas — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:38:18 -0000

Yeah, I should have mentioned both indie rock and dance music, seems to be heavy on those genres.....I dig both, but I also dig country, classical, opera, jazz, blues, standards, etc... Have no real beef w/ Hype Machine (except the name), and I don't think we're going back to a "network tv" kind of central music discovery universe that radio, MTV, Rolling Stone, etc represented...but personally I'd love to find (or make) something broader & maybe a little more "curated."

Re: The Rolling Stone Of Our Time

Jason_Chervokas — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 09:34:58 -0000

I dunno, Fred. I've been hoping for a killer music discovery solution for years and for a music blog aggregator too. Hypemachine just doesn't do it for me.

First of all it seems too narrowly focused on indie rock---I can't be the only one who listens to dozens of genres of music but all the music stuff online is extremely siloed. Second, I find the interface all but impenetrable--not enough info up front per post to give me a hook to enter, nothing as functional as Techmeme. Third, I despise the name--"hype" has nothing but negative connotations for me.

One other thing, w/ respect to the Rolling Stone comparison, I also think that our cultural relationship to pop music is different than it was in the heydays of Rolling Stone. Culturally pop music is not nearly as central or shared as it was in the late 1960s, early 1970s. Also there's so much more music and so many more kinds of music available today (like the differences in TV programming between the network TV era and today) that my favorites and your favorites might have little overlap. Finally, we actually listen to music more privately than before thanks to portable players. Finally, the kind of magazine that Rolling Stone was when it was good (and that Playboy was when it was good)--w/ an editorial gatekeeper's package of content beyond just music reviews and infographics--was something that worked for a format and time that no longer exists. Not mourning its passing or bemoaning the difference, just noting that I think the comparison is apples to oranges.

Good luck to the guys. Glad it works for so many of you. As for me, I'm still looking for a solution.

Re: The Undiscovered Country

Jason_Chervokas — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 10:39:13 -0000

Just my $.02 but I saw Australia this weekend, and, to tell the truth, I'm amazed that a film that takes so much time telling one of the most banal tales ever filmed even got financing.

This coulda been a John Wayne studio western--rough trade ranch hand and snooty upper crust dame drive a heard of cattle across the desert w/ the predictable romance ensuing (and despite the best efforts of a villan so formal he could be twirling his moustache ends tho' you're right, it's two John Wayne studio movies--it's also a war pic). It would have been a predictable, trite piece of subfluff in 1951 (complete w/ its "big theme" subtext of racial tolerance).

Characters? Ha. Archetypes slapped into place to fill their formal roles so thinly drawn that the male lead has a job title not a name. Now, I don't have anything against genre fiction, but this is genre fiction at it's most unimaginative and rote. Whatever appeal this movie has, I don't understand it.

Re: 2008 Year in Music: The Best of the Rest

Jason_Chervokas — Fri, 02 Jan 2009 12:43:55 -0000

Kit, yeah, that's a great performance. Dylan's definitely at home w/ the high lonesome sound and old time harmony singing. Fantastic track.

Re: The Newcritics Year in Review

Jason_Chervokas — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:46:55 -0000

BTW, I also thought Quantum of Solace, well, frankly, sucked....Now I don't get James Bond in the post cold war world anyway, just seems dumb and meaningless to me...but QofS brought the whole Bond franchise to a grinding halt--as trite, insipid, conventional and lifeless as any other generic action adventure movie. What little plot existed was both convoluted and slight. Qof S was to Bond movies what those producer-driven, girl of the moment disco singles are--airy, empty, indistinguishable from other contemporaneous drivel. Might as well hire Dwayne "the Rock" Johnson to be the next Bond, or Vin Diesel.

Re: The Newcritics Year in Review

Jason_Chervokas — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:36:17 -0000

For what it's worth, I tried a couple of episodes of the first season of Mad Men and found it a yawn--a show only an art director or someone with a fetish for myths of a never-existent culture of the early 60s could love. Give me Larry Tate and Darren and Samantha Stevens any day.

Re: Best of 2008: These Miracles Work

Jason_Chervokas — Thu, 01 Jan 2009 00:30:58 -0000

MS, Ha!...I must confess to having little to no familiarity w/ Pee Wee Herman--never saw the movie or his TV show...so I don't hear what you hear. I will say, the singer, Craig Finn, is almost more of a talker than singer tho' I hear he's been taking singing lessons. I hear a lot of Bob Mould in Finn's style myself (no surprising since Finn came up as a teenager in the Minneapolis scene when Husker Du was at or near the top of the heap). I also don't hear faux-snotty, or, really, snotty at all, unless it's in character...tho' I definitely hear a voice that's affected...but all great rock singers make up a voice for themselves and usually its a voice that sounds silly on close inspection (Mick Jagger anyone?). Glad you checked out the album and liked it. You might like even more their previous record, Boys and Girls in America, which was a breakthrough for the band. It's a great album and most fans probably prefer it to Stay Positive, tho I think in every way Stay Positive sounds like a solid step forward from that excellent breakthrough.

Re: 2008 Year in Music: The Best of the Rest

Jason_Chervokas — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 10:36:01 -0000

What can I say guys, I AM a Dylan diehard and I think his shit is better than just about anyone else's diamonds. Hell, I think he's the best and most influential writer (not songwriter, writer) in English of my lifetime. I just think the latest collection was a mess. I'm also of the opinion that a) TOOM isn't a great Dylan album (good, a couple of cannonical songs, a return from the abyss for sure, but not great) and b) Modern Times is actually a fairly mediocre Dylan album so it's not surprising that I'd find the outtakes from that album less than inspiring. Sure, sometimes Dylan outtakes have outclassed stuff on released albums (think, "Blind Willie McTell"), but I don't think that's the case with anything here. I find nothing revelatory on the record at all. But beyond that, the real essence of my criticism is that the anthology is an incoherent jumble offering neither chronological, thematic, or aural unity and possessing nothing indespensible.

Re: Private: It’s Such a Shame It’s Only One Day Every Year

Jason_Chervokas — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:14:00 -0000

Nice job guys. Rick 12 string huh? I hear those are a bitch to tune and intonate.

Re: Willie’s World

Jason_Chervokas — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 16:12:15 -0000

Kathleen, it's true, Ray Charles was really Willie's only peer in terms of their enormous and encompassing visions of American music.

Re: Best of 2008: These Miracles Work

Jason_Chervokas — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 23:49:54 -0000

Chuck, yeah, Boys and Girls...is pretty great. Can't get enough of "Southtown Girls," "You Can Make them Like You" or "Massive Nights"...and "First Night" is a minor masterpiece. But I think the new album is even better--more hooks, better lyrics with wider concerns, and lyrics that better fit the melodies.... Sounds to me like a band at the height of it's powers.