Return to Michael
K. Bourdaghs homepage
For the log of “What I’m
Listening To” for the year 2004, click here. For the log of “What I’m Listening To”
entries for the year 2003, click here.
Posted on 12/4/05:
The new maxi-single CD by head Kink Ray Davies, Thanksgiving Day, is an exciting preview for his
solo album, due out early next year. The title song apparently got some
radio play in the States over the Thanksgiving holiday. It's a typical
Ray sweet-and-sour combination of irony and sentimentality, all built around a
lovely melody.
I read one reviewer complain that the song
was too cheerful. Do reviewers' bother to listen to the music they write
about it? The lyrics here are remarkably ambiguous. Ray
builds his chorus around the phrase "all over," but it shifts meaning
with each appearance: Thanksgiving takes place "all over" the
country, it's happening "all over" again this year, but it's
"all over" for the depressed widower who misses his wife and
children, while across town an isolated spinster wishes she were kissed
"all over her American face." Then, in typical Ray
fashion, the melancholic elegy on the death of the American dream transforms
itself into a swelling celebration. A hearty chorus joins the singer and
invites the whole audience to "come on over" to celebrate
Thanksgiving Day--which, of course, is what rituals like turkey feasts give us
a chance to do, to stop the ugly course of history for just a moment and allow
us to enjoy the company of our loved ones.
Musically, the song brings back horns, ala the great
Kinks' records of the early 1970s, and referencing among other things
Posted on 11/13/05:
A year or two ago, I was trying to describe Ike
Reilly to my
sister. She thought that she recognized the name and that perhaps she'd
seen him play live once, when her friend's band opened for him. But she
couldn't place his face or his music. Suddenly a lightbulb
went on above her head, and she asked "Is he that dude who thinks he's Bob
Dylan?" That's the guy.
Junkie Faithful, the new CD by his band, the Ike
Reilly Assassination, is another terrific collection, almost up to the standard
of his 2002 debut, Salesmen & Racists and a cut above the more recent Sparkle in Finish. His music is evolving:
the hiphop elements have faded away, replaced by a
new fascination with a kind of melancholic electronica
looping that reminds me of Radiohead. But his
remains unmistakably Ike Reilly, poet of the roadhouse beer joint and distinguished historian of rock music in all its
variations. And, yes, he still thinks he's Dylan, and sometimes he even
makes you believe it, too.
Posted on 10/16/05:
Killer Street, the new set by the veteran Japanese band, Southern All Stars. I have to be very careful about what I write here, since
this is my wife's favorite group, but it's easy to like this impressive
collection--two CDs of new songs, plus a bonus DVD. As the band nears the
end of its third decade of performing, it's clear they are thinking about their
own place in the history. The packaging and music here allude openly to
many musicians from the rock-and roll-canon, beginning with the obvious Abbey Road tribute on the cover
photograph. But the songs are also unmistakably the work of Kuwata Keisuke and his mates: they maintain their
distinctive, vaguely Latin-influenced sound even as they wander across a
variety of pop genres. As several Japanese friends have noted (including
my better half), they have certainly aged well, and there aren't many bands in
the world that have been able to maintain continuous chart success from the
1970s through 2005.
Posted on 9/22/05:
I've been reading for years about
the folk-rock-pop band Tulip, who were
enormously popular in
Posted on 9/5/05:
Sokabe Keiichi, the former leader of
the group Sunny Day Service, has been a busy boy of late. He's released a
live recording of a performance from last year, Shimokitazawa Concert April 3, 2004, in which he performs songs both from his old band and
from his solo career. Low tech and pleasant: easy on the
ears. Then, a month or so ago, he released a new solo album, Love Letter,
which is quite sharp: the mushy, wimpy side that marred his eponymous first solo album has been kicked aside here, and
the punk rocker inside comes charging out. There is some filler here, but
also some great songs, and the album as a whole has a good coherency. And
even in this harsher, gruffer style, Sokabe's
distinctive style shines through.
Posted on 5/28/05:
Three new albums have me
intrigued, though I haven't yet made my final verdict on any. The Eels, purveyors of exquisite pop songs for depressed grown-ups
(and perhaps for others, too), have a double CD with some really terrific songs
on it: Blinking Lights and Other Revelations. Aimee Mann seems to have made something of a comeback, too: I
never fell in love with her last two CDs, Bachelor No. 2 or
Lost in Space, but can already feel pangs of attachment for her latest, The Forgotten Arm, which is apparently a concept
album. And Gorillaz have a new one out, Demon Days, which continues their oddball mixing of cartoonish
ideas, electronica, straightforward pop and
melancholia.
Posted on 4/8/05:
I've been listening a good deal
lately to Vodka Collins, the
legendary Japanese glam rock band formed by American Alan Merrill and Oguchi Hiroshi (formerly of
The Tempters) back in the early 1970s. Their masterpiece, Tokyo New York,
was originally released in 1973 and is available on CD reissue. The band reformed
in the 1990s, now including "Monsieur" Kamayatsu
Hiroshi (formerly of The Spiders), and released several CDs, including a new
Best-of anthology, Boys in the Band,
which is quite good. I've also been enjoying the new CD by M. Ward, Transistor Radio.
At times I think he sounds like John Cale, at other
times like Wilco, and at still others like Brian
Wilson. The new Al Green CD, Everything's OK,
is also simply terrific--damn near brings tears to my eyes, in fact.
Posted on 1/29/05:
In preparation for a talk I am giving
next month (and as part of my on-going research for a book I'm writing on the
history of postwar Japanese popular music), I've been listening a great deal to
the music of Hattori Ryoichi (1907-1993), the great jazz composer and arranger
responsible for such Japanese pop standards as "Tokyo Boogie Woogie," "Aoi sanmyaku" (Blue Mountains), and "Yoru no Platform" (Nightime
on the Station Platform). His recording career stretched from the 1930s
through the 1970s, during which time he composed more than 3,000 songs
traversing a wide range of genres and styles. There are three major
re-issues of his work: the 3-CD set Boku no ongaku jinsei
(My life in music), a 3-CD set which
collects his major recordings for the Columbia label stretching from the 1930s
to the 1970s, Tokyo no yane no shita (Under the roofs of Tokyo), a 2-CD set which collects his
late 1940s and early 1950s releases on the Victor label, and Boogie no joo (Queen of the Boogie), a 3-CD career retrospective for the
Japanese Queen of Boogie-Woogie, Kasagi
Shizuko, nearly all of whose recordings were composed and/or arranged by
Hattori.
For a list
of all my recent CD acquisitions, see here.