Now this is surprising — I can, with confidence, fill most of the slots on the Favorite Edition 2011 list in the first quarter. Usually I’ll find at most five albums that may become year-end favorites, and of course, no rank is guaranteed this early in the year. But after SXSW, I had what felt like an abundance of good listening, and in compiling this list, that sense became more concrete.
For my birthday, I bought myself a smartphone. Talk about toys for grown-ups …
I’ve been hearing about mobile development this and mobile development that, but I couldn’t empathize because the phone I had was state of the art for 2004. You should see me try to compose a text message with a numeric keypad — hilarious!
But now I’ve got an Android phone with Swype and a web browser and Kindle and Grindr … and more storage for music than my 2GB iPod. (I like having such limited space on my iPod, but that’s pontificating for another day.) It’s great.
Until I visited this site on a mobile browser. Yes, zooming would make it readable, but I noticed other sites such as Amazon and Google make sure their mobile visitors have an experience optimized for their devices.
So after a bit of research and a lot more hacking, I’m glad to announce Musicwhore.org has now been adapted for mobile browsing. At the moment, I just tweaked the current template to look decent on my new phone, but in the future, I anticipate actually changing the design to suit mobile devices.
Now pardon me while I go play with my new grown-up toy some more …
As much I like my new-ish job — I’ve been there for nine months now — it doesn’t have any down time. There’s maybe enough time to check news feeds and a smattering of social media but nothing beyond that.
When I get home, I’ve got other things brewing — mixing and remixing Eponymous 4 tracks, learning HTML5, Flex and Ruby on Rails, reducing my body fat — and they eat whatever time and energy I could have spent writing an entry.
And writing takes quite a bit of energy.
So once again I make a half-assed list of all the music about which I should be writing more in-depth.
"The End of the World" referred to in Murakami Haruki’s Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World is not an apocalypse. Rather, it’s a point where "the world can go no further."
MO’SOME TONEBENDER was the end of SXSW 2011 for me. I snipped my wristband on Saturday afternoon, skipping out on the final night of the festival. Part of it was exhaustion, but mostly, I didn’t think anything else could top MO’SOME TONEBENDER. And I didn’t really want anything else to try.
I’ve known about MO’SOME TONEBENDER for a long time, but I was too enamored of NUMBER GIRL to pay much attention to them. I wish I had because they fill a void that NUMBER GIRL’s dissolution left. Not content just to hammer at their riffs with single-minded precision, MO’SOME TONEBENDER throws in sampled strings, garage rock riffs and sometimes even a dance beat into their music — sometimes all in one song.
A lot of bands on the Japan Nite bill had impressive sets, but MO’SOME TONEBENDER topped them all. Diving from one song to the next, the band didn’t give the audience a single moment to catch its breath, and by the end of it, the only thing that could be said was, "Holy fuck!"
MO’SOME TONEBENDER sold a custom-made compilation for the show, containing that night’s set list. Some live bands don’t translate well in the studio, but that’s not the case here. MO’SOME TONEBENDER has recorded 13 albums and is about to release a career retrospective. That’s a lot of music to explore.
SXSW runs a tight ship — your set had better be finished in time to set up the stage for the next act. But when you’re country royalty like Emmylou Harris, exceptions are made.
Harris was given free reign over her allotted time, and she used it to perform her forthcoming new album Hard Bargain in its entirety. Album producer/guitarist Jay Joyce and multi-instrumentalist Giles Reeves, who did triple duty on drums and keyboards/bass, joined Harris, who informed the audience the trio on stage is the same on the album. Reeves in particular did an impressive job juggling two instruments, keeping time on a minimal drum kit while providing bass lines and pads on the keys.
Hard Bargain puts the focus once again on Harris’ songwriting. As she told the audience, she’s fond of a sad song, and the quiet set she performed is chock full of songs she loves. It’s the kind of aching beauty that permeated Red Dirt Girl, an album that I thought was heavy-handed with the aching and the beauty.
A question for select members of the audience — why go to a quiet acoustic show if all you’re going to do is yak yak yak all through it? I probably could have paid more attention to the music if youth and extroversion didn’t combine in such idiotic fashion. Not all of us love to hear you fuckers talk.
I’ve seen Duran Duran live a number of times in various line-ups — with Warren Cuccurullo, without John Taylor, with the original line-up, without Andy Taylor. Their set list hasn’t deviated much since 1999, and even the inclusion of "Friends of Mine" dates as far back as 2000.
So no, I can’t say I was much surprised to hear straight-forward interpretations of "Hungry Like the Wolf", "Wild Boys", "A View to a Kill" or "Notorious", crowd-pleasers all and songs that got the audience at Stubb’s BBQ jumping. Duran Duran is at a point where even they are respectful of their own canon. There’s no messing with what works, and they dash of their classics with an effortlessness that comes with three decades of experience.
Sometimes, I wish they would shake things up, similar to the way they drastically remodeled their oeuvre in the mid-90s. Track down the Gemini bootleg to understand what I’m saying.
The new songs didn’t exert a strong presence, not the way "Come Undone" or "Ordinary World" did back in 1993. If anything, they camouflaged themselves too well, sounding like the missing Rio b-sides that never accompanied "Like an Angel"
But I’m just a picky long-time lapsed fan. Duran Duran on a bad day could school the thousands of young bands at SXSW on their best day. Roger Taylor flubbed early in the set, and Simon Le Bon asked for a do-over on a new song. Neither incident impeded the live juggernaut that is Duran Duran.
I started writing this entry a few days before the earthquake hit Japan, so two titles listed in this round-up have been pushed out while the country recovers.
SXSW was also days away from starting, and while I fully intended to see Emmylou Harris’ showcase, I didn’t realize it would turn out to be an album release listening party.
Also — new Kate Bush! Almost …
I’ve been pretty mum about the situation in Japan, mostly because there isn’t anything much I can add to what’s already been said. I’ve also tried to avoid reading and watching coverage of the quake because it would just break my heart.
So I instead donated $50 to the Red Cross, although Steve over at Engrish.com suggests making donations directly to the Red Cross in Japan through a special landing page by Google.
As for the tsunami that hit Hawaiʻi as a result of the quake, I can report none of my family were affected by it. My mom’s house is located inland, and I doubted she would be up at 4 a.m. walking by the beach. Still, I was up at 7 a.m. in Austin, watching the news coverage on the web as the waves struck Honolulu.
At some point, I’ll report on SXSW 2011, Japan Nite in particular. Till then, I’ll repeat a sentiment that pervaded the festival in the wake of the news: かんばって！
The last time I bought a SXSW wristband was 2008, when I could really afford it which isn’t to say I can afford one this year either.
But when news broke that Duran Duran would be performing at the festival, I decided to cough up the cash. I know already my chances of getting into that show with a lowly wristband are slim, and if the band stops by Texas in support of All You Need Is Now, I might travel some distance to see them. (They are actually performing in Houston on April 6, but I’ll be out of town in San Francisco for a work conference.)
Duran Duran came to Austin in support of Red Carpet Massacre a few years back, but I didn’t go. Partly because I thought the album sucked, but mostly because they played at the Austin Music Hall, which sucks even more.
I have to admit — this year was the first I bought a wristband for a reason other than Japan Nite.
Here, then, is where the bulk of my listening in 2010 resided. I find myself in an odd position of championing albums that are already well vetted. Almost defeats the purpose of keeping a weblog.
Unless, of course, my opinion rubs against conventional wisdom, which it so far hasn’t.