(part 212 in a 1001 part series)
Jaymay is a jazzy folk singer with quite the pleasant voice. This song is nice and catchy. Nothing else really left to say. It’s just a nice little song.
Month: March 2008
Old Things That Are New To Me — Rain
As a lifelong fan of The Beatles, I’m always surprised to come across a song I am less familiar with. This is the case with “Rain,” a fantastic, if lesser-known B-side found on the “Paperback Writer” single. While I have heard this song a small handful of times, it’s certainly not as ingrained within me compared to practically every other song in their repertoire.
Recorded in roughly two or three days in April of 1966, along with the aforementioned “Paperback Writer” during the Revolver sessions, “Rain” is a great upbeat jangly song. With those bright slightly crunched lead guitar lines, and the tight vocal harmonies its fairly typical for this era of The Beatles. But in many ways the song is an unsung transition point between the mod early period and the more experimental, psychedelic era to follow.
The song contains many musical elements that would be used later on such as Paul’s increasingly melodic bass lines, delicate string arrangements, boombastic drums (via close mic’ing inside the bassdrum, the droning chords (that foreshadowed the use of sitar and the influence of Indian ragas) and of course the backwords tape loops.
During this time, The Beatles, along with producer George Martin and engineer Geoff Emerick, began toying with new sonic sounds and effects. Emerick came up with ways to alter the sonic textures of a track by recording parts “faster than normal.” Then, when playing back normally, the music’s tonal quality was radically changed. Similarly, the technique was used to alter Lennon’s lead vocal: recorded with the machine slowed down, which made Lennon’s voice higher when played at normal speeds.
Also in the song’s coda John’s voice can be heard singing the first lyrics of the song “When the rain comes, they run and hide their heads” played in a reverse.
According to sources found on Wikipedia, Lennon described the origins of this idea said:
“After we’d done the session on that particular song—it ended at about four or five in the morning—I went home with a tape to see what else you could do with it. And I was sort of very tired, you know, not knowing what I was doing, and I just happened to put it on my own tape recorder and it came out backwards. And I liked it better. So that’s how it happened.*“
George Martin, though also claims to have come up with the idea:
“I was always playing around with tapes and I thought it might be fun to do something extra with John’s voice. So I lifted a bit of his main vocal off the four-track, put it on another spool, turned it around and then slid it back and forth until it fitted. John was out at the time but when he came back he was amazed.**(Emerick, p. 117)”
Emerick also noted that the “‘Paperback Writer/”Rain’ single was the first to use a new device invented by the maintenance department at Abbey Road called ‘ATOC’ for ‘Automatic Transient Overload Control.'” The invention enabled the record to be cut at a louder volume, and as he put it, “louder than any other single up to that time.”
It should be said that many of these tricks had been experimented with by a few avant-garde composers and emerging electronic musicians. But in 1966, a pop song like this was revolutionary. This recording process also helped to re-energize the band creatively as they morphed from a performance entity to a more artistic studio force. Obviously later on, The Beatles experimental vision would be realized on Revolver‘s remarkable closer “Tomorrow Never Knows,” Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Magical Mystery Tour and so on and on. (We all know this by now.)
It’s insane to think that this song, like many of the singles and b-sides by the group, were left off a proper album. While the one-two punch of “Hey Jude” and “Revolution” were hugely popular as radio hits, b-sides such as “Rain” received far less attention as they were eventually relegated to those Red & Blue greatest hits collections. But time has proven that these Revolver sessions songs are equally enduring and influential in The Beatles’ catalog, if not more so. All in all, “Rain” is an amazingly catchy pop rock tune.
Check out the promo videos (an early precursor to music videos) for “Paperback Writer” and “Rain”:
[youtube]fXOsi6gPvDs[/youtube]
**For more about Geoff Emerick’s work recording the Beatles, I highly recommend his memoir Here, There and Everywhere: My Life Recording the Music of the Beatles.
Best Song I’ve Heard All Day: Lawrence Kansas Edition
(part 168 in a 1001 part series)
Up until about a week ago, I had not heard of The Fairer Sex, a jangly indie-folk-pop group from Lawrence, KS. But then again, I was definitely interested since I know two of the members from high school and college days. Nice to see another local Lawrence band put together a pretty solid album of unassuming and mildly melancholy ditties.
Not shockingly sounds like another Lawrence band Ghosty (especially since David Wetzyl plays in Ghosty as well), but also has some elements of Elliott Smith or Okkervil River perhaps as well. Certainly not groundbreaking, but enjoyable on this rainy Washington day.
“At Last, At Least” by The Fairer Sex
[audio:https://hellocomein.com/soundbox/HelloShuffle/bestsongallday/FairerSex_AtLastAtLeast.mp3]Awesome idea I wish I’d thought of:
Premise: take videos of famously awesome musicians (namely guitar heroes) and completely replace the audio with your own terrible guitar solos. He does a really good job syncing up the timing so it looks like Clapton/Stevie are actually playing this crap:
Check it out before it gets yanked:
[youtube]iYfOp7F4RFM&[/youtube]
and this one:
[youtube]x_M9zWORBuA&[/youtube]
The Sweded Movie Revolution
In many ways, people have ‘Sweded‘ movies for years on YouTube. Whether it was those kids who did a shot by shot remake of Raiders of the Lost Ark, or Gus Van Sant remaking Psycho, or kids in the backyard playing, the idea of Sweding has been around a lot longer than the advent of YouTube. But thanks to Michel Gondry’s latest film Be Kind Rewind, it now has a name.
In the film, Jack Black accidentally erases an entire video store’s VHS tapes (due to a strange electromagnetic charge) and then goes about remaking these classic and not-so-classic movies with Mos Def. Their videos certainly take on that DIY style that Gondry is known for, but also is a nod to the countless homemade videos posted to the internet every day.
The popularity with Sweding, a term coined in the movie by the characters who tell their customers the movies higher prices and longer wait times is because they come from Sweden, is in the childlike imagination. There is no CGI or special effects to speak of, but rather a rough collage of sets and costumes made from everyday, handcrafted and household items.
This inventive, almost problem solving mentality to film making, (that is, how the characters come up with countless ways to pull off Hollywood-style movies with a retro VHS camera and some cardboard) is endearing and inspiring. It makes you want to pick up a camera with some friends and make a movie yourself.
Watch Gondry’s Sweded version of the trailer:
[youtube]-B0dJQ35rDs[/youtube]
Predictably the film has inspired many to put on their aluminum foil creative helmets and film Sweded adaptations of their own. Most are posted on the Be Kind YouTube channel, but you can check out this one here:
[youtube]_qEWhrjYg_o[/youtube]
To see some amazing trailers for the Sweded videos from the film itself go to bekindmovie.com/youtube.
Considering the Flat Top Design…
Every week, the All Music blog posts a music-related advertisement from an old magazine. Usually they’re a pretty funny look at retro ad stylings and trends of the 70s and 80s.
But this week, as a proud Fender Rhodes owner, the ad caught my attention.
All of a sudden my home keyboard rig feels mightily inadequate.
Check out past Retro Ads here.
Word Usage of ‘Swag’ vs. ‘Schwag’
Every once in awhile I think the meaning of slang words becomes so ingrained that we tend to forget the origin or evolution. Or in some cases I feel the meanings of two similar slang words intersect and become interchangeable to the point that no one knows which one to use. Such is the case with the usage of ‘swag’ versus ‘schwag.’
For a long time, I always thought that it was simple: swag is free stuff, like when a promoter sends you a cd or those gift bags they give Oscar nominees. Meanwhile, my former hippie high school days informs me that schwag is bad pot. Easy right?
So for some reason it drives me crazy when someone refers to free stuff as ‘schwag.’ Seemed to me like they were confusing the meanings. So I tried to get internet verification. Unfortunately the closest reputable source was Urban Dictionary, which is not quite official sounding, but often at least up to date on latest slang trends. Here’s what I found:
swag:
1. appearance, style, or the way he or she presents themselves.
To move over an area of surface with confidence, appearance, and style by taking steps with the feet at a pace slower than a run.
v. swagged, swagg-ing, swags
v. intr.See Swagger.
He got a killa swag.
2. Promotional merchandise for a band, record label, or other entity in the music business, usually distributed at concerts.
May include t-shirts, stickers, promo CDs, posters, etc. Often free, but not necessarily; a t-shirt or record purchased at a concert might still be considered swag, especially if it is a design or release that is not readily available in the mass market.
Many independent record labels throw in a handful of free swag when they ship out mail-order packages (stickers, sampler CDs, etc).
The chief difference between swag and regular merchandise is that its purpose is not to make a profit, but to promote the band/label, and reward its supporters by giving them something cool and unique.
I picked up some great swag at the concert last night.
1. Term used to describe low grade marijuana.
This type of marijuana is usually brown, seedy, dry. The term is also used by many pot heads to describe anything that is low grade.I hate smoking schwag, but i cant get any dank right now so i guess i’ll have to.
2. Any free or extra goods, usually given to employees or workers.
Then on the etymology blog Take Our Word I found this which discusses the potential connections between the two words:
…it did suggest a Yiddish influence on the variant pronunciations of swag AND on the derivation of schwag “low-grade [weak] marijuana”. We did not get to continue our research into the Yiddish word at the time, but we did happen to find it tonight: shvakh “weak”. The existence of that word does make plausible the connection between Yiddish and shwag/schwag. It certainly doesn’t prove the connection, but it definitely suggests that further research in this area is required.
They also reference an older article which says:
In the 17th century we find swag recorded as slang for a shop that sold cheap trinkets. Then by the late 18th century we find it with the meaning “a thief’s plunder or booty” – those same cheap trinkets? Today’s equivalent would be the plush toy animal prizes that line carnival game stalls. So it appears that the cheap promotional items one gets at movie publicity parties and auto shows were equated with the cheap stuff given as prizes at carnival game booths or the trinkets sold at cheap stores, and so named.
As you can see, while not totally conclusive, for the most part I was right… and yet the second definition of schwag implies I am ALSO wrong. This does not however even get to the fact that ‘schwag’ can be ‘swag’ if you get it in the mail from a promoter. I imagine that the pot reviewers at the classy magazine High Times, get schwag as swag all the time…much like music reviewers get free cds.
So when it comes to referring to promotional items, which is it? Can anyone else settle this debate? (Obviously I’m bored out of my mind.)
NPR Song Of The Day: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, ‘Cold Son’
Wrote about Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks’ song “Cold Son” from the new album, Real Emotional Trash for NPR’s Song of the Day. To read the full review and hear the song clicken Sie hier.
Continue reading NPR Song Of The Day: Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks, ‘Cold Son’
Sigur Ros’ Debuts Film on Web
In the summer of 2006, the ethereal Icelandic music group Sigur Ros came back home after a long tour around the world to play a series of free unannounced concerts. Heima, documents those shows… check out the film now streaming on YouTube (and linked below) in its entirety. Pretty amazing and inspirational for anyone who appreciates watching a the creation of fantastic and otherworldly music. Sigur Ros is quite simply breathtaking.
[youtube]lr4s7KeCbV8[/youtube]