I'm back on the right side of the digital divide. To celebrate, I did a new muxtape just of stuff I listened to in my first couple of hours of plugging the thing in. The opening song is a Mexican cover of Quinn the Eskimo.

That is all I want to say about anything.

Here's the trailer, the headphones here don't work but I suppose it sounds good:

I did a sample search for Townes Van Zandt and got some impressive listening back, featuring TVZ himself and related artists.

I first sought out jazz great and all round hoyden Anita O'Day ( real surname: Colton. As she explains in the movie O'Day is Pig Latin for "dough" - "and I wanted to make some!") earlier this year after picking up a remaindered copy of Da Capo Best Music Writing 2002 and reading Matthew C Duersten's article "The Moon Looks Down and Laughs: The wonderful, horrible jazz life of Anita O'Day." Jazz has never been my main thing but it seemed odd I had never even heard of her, especially as at the time of her 2006 death she was described as the "greatest living jazz singer" and one of the only deemed special enough to be spoken about next to Ella and Billie.

The doco on her which sceened at the Sydney Film Fest on the weekend (official trailer at YouTube here and a longer version here) was highly enjoyable, informative and lovingly done. I hope it makes its way to the telly so everyone can see it, and I can see it again. It covered her musical career - including the innovations she brought to the role of swing band "canary" and her unique singing style - plus her embrace of not just jazz music but "the jazz life." Early busts for marijuana got her tagged "The Jezebel of Jazz" (a boon for PR and ticket sales) and a long period of heroin addiction followed. This is an important part of the story but I'm glad it didn't dwell voyeuristically on other aspects of her personal life. I've ordered her autoiography High Times, Hard Times so I'll get the rundown then. Opening lines: "Getting pregnant while single was something I don't think my mother ever got over. That was a really heavy situation in 1919. Girls killed themselves, became prostitutes or got married and carried the guilt with them all their lives. Mom took the last route." Dad left and married ten more times after that.

Interspersed with excellent archival footage, comments from jazz musos, jazz critics and friends there is Anita herself on home video at about age 85 or 86 larger than life, hanging out at a dusty Californian racetrack, detailing Charlie Parker's prefered method of prepping dope, and narrating the improbable story of her survival. Footage of her smackdown of Bryant Gumble in an 80s interview brought cheers from the crowd. She's pretty much a full blown James M. Cain character, and loving it. That would be fun, but she also happens to be an endlessly fascinating and moving musician too. There's a lot of interest music talk in the doco, stuff about singing on the eights and vibratos and beats and whatnot which poor little me doesn't get fully, but there is much enlightenment. For instance how she would study each instrument's part until she could improvise each one. They feature this Four Brothers example, a piece written for four saxaphones but performed with three plus Anita. After rock and roll swept aside the jazz vocalists in the early 60s, she recorded and toured extensively in Japan through the 1970s and it's this period which I know best (because that era is on eMusic but the earlier Verve stuff isn't - still much exploring to be done.) She does a fantastic version of Leon Russell's "Song for You" on one of those records.

If I ever get my computer back I'll post a couple of my fave songs.

Shaun and and Phineas and Phineas' mixtape collective all have Jesus-themed comps.

I quite like this one from We Are Color.

Radio Milwaukee has a Mixwit of "black rock" for Black Music Month.

Randomly I found this from a French blog: "psychpopyéyésoul'njazz." "Better Change Your Mind" by William Onyeabor is on a Luaka Bop compilation of 70s African psychadelia/funk but only got to listen to once before computer death. Noice.

"Some Jazz #3: 1954-1964" with notes here.

The muxtape of Congo music I posted about before (from Extra Extra) is still there and still awesome

It's typical Emmylou, which is to say quite sublime in places.

Comment moderation is still on so please continue to leave comments but be patient about them appearing -- especially over the weekend as I am still without my beloved Mac at home. ;-( Most of my music listening is done via the computer, either the digital files or the inbuilt CD. Without it, the only CD player I have is the DVD which I haven't tried but I don't expect the TV speaker quality to be that great. I'm still going to try and pick up the new Emmylou Harris record today or tomorrow. Particularly keen to hear her version of Old Five and Dimers Like Me, one of the great country songs. I've also heard good things about the new Al Green record.

Go Socceroos! and hope you all have a good weekend.

This made me laugh.

However, I no longer have a working computer and since pretty much all my music is on my computer ... sigh.

So I have done a stupid meme instead. This is called Your Debut CD I got it off the Whirlpool forums.

1. Go to Wikipedia random page. The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2. Go to Random quotations.
The last four words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3. Go to flickr's "explore the last seven days"
Middle picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

My Band: Claribel Alegría
My Album Title: Liberties than standing armies.
Album Cover: Cool pic but a bit tween punk album-cover wise.

Have at it yourself. Or not.

The band title/album is very post-rock. I don't do "post-rock." A friend once tried hard to get me into Godspeed You Black Emperor, Sigur Ros, all that stuff. Didn't take. At all. Write some godamn melodies, why don't you. And get to them in under 15 minutes. I'm doing a Schembri I realise. Shame on me.

But, I don't do post-rock. Pre-rock, of course. Peri-rock, always. There is nothing post-rock for me.

Lots of YouTube goodness to choose from. Let's try this one:

And a New York Times slideshow.

And a Stones cover:

Apologies to anyone and everyone who got a spam email from my personal Gmail account this morning. That is, everyone I've ever had email contact with in three years of using it because Gmail stores 'em all. I have Googled (irony) about the problem and there are conflicting reports of cause and what can be done. Well, the cause of course is the EVIL that lurks in the breasts of men and the CONTEMPTIBLE RAT FRACKING BASTARDS who waste their precious time on Earth with this EVIL RANCID EVIL BULLSHIT.

I have done what I can to eliminate the risk of further hijacking, which included deleting my entire Contacts list. Which I did in a fit of panic and raging fury before saving the actual addresses so now I can't actually email many people individually to apologise. Le fracking sigh. Moderation of comments is still on here because of spam and all up I would like to do violence violently to someone. Many people, preferably.

If you were affected, I apologise.

You can see the attraction for the label. Here's someone who can be a lightweight-but-far-less-troublemaking cross between Ryan Adams and Steve Earle, with alcohol-soaked ballads and punchy mid-tempo country rock. It's easy to digest and has more grit than the Nashville-Tamworth axis but the trouble is when you take away the "troublesome" parts of Adams and Earle, you get by-the-numbers-alt.country.

The SMH reviewers, including BZ, generally do a good job in giving coverage to Music I Like and props to them for it, but I have a serious pet hate about their some of their critical MO. Namely: The constant and utterly unnecessary relating of everything slightly rootys to top 40 country and taking up space with irrelevant comparisons instead of talking about the music. In his excellent jazz reviews, John Shand never feels moved to mention that Mike Nock is not like Kenny G, but the blokes on the country/folk beat can't resist but shoehorn a reference to Keith Urban into damn near everything. Long time readers know I have ranted about this before. End the country critical cultural cringe!

I like this record (review coming this weekend) and he doesn't: fine, I'm not talking about that. The Adams/Earle comparisons while on the surface more appropos than Urban are misplaced too. Firstly, talk about the damn record. You've got about 50 words, why waste two of them on "Ryan" and "Adams", especially if you're not going to provide a meaningful comparison for potential purchasers? Hayes Carll is really very little like Ryan Adams musically, even when Ryan was at his most country. It seems Ryan is only mentioned because he provides a drug abusing songwriter bookend to the Earle reference which is more fitting, but still a waste of precious words. Why are we even mentioning drug abuse again? Ugh, who the hell knows.

Secondly, I strongly doubt the stated motivations apply to Lost Highway. It's just another the imposition of a random narrative that suits a lazy journo. (cf. the political op-ed columns every day of the week.) The easy-too-see attraction for the label is not that he isn't an vainglorious junkie, it is that he had already released a couple of critically acclaimed, award winning and successful Americana records and something of a reputation for being a genuine heir to the Texas country/folk songwriter tradition of Townes Van Zandt. These are the qualities that drew me to Hayes Carll three years ago.

If the new album doesn't live up to the promise, by all means say so. Don't just make shit up.

A further pet hate is the insidious definition creep of the term "alt.country." I see not the slightest reason to call Hayes Carll that, unless "alt.country" now simply means anything that doesn't chart on CMT and if that is what it now means then: over my dead body it does.

All the records on this late, lamented muxtape, except for the John Hiatt and Hayes Carll (will post about those this weekend at the latest). Listed here for completeness but notes o'er there. I put up a new muxtape of highlights from these acquisitions.

Country and Folk and Blues etc
Recapturing the Banjo-Otis Taylor
Creedence Country-CCR
Reunion Hill-Richard Shindell
Somewhere Near Patterson - Richard Shindell
From the Reach-Sonny Landreth The star studded (Eric Clapton, Dr John, Jimmy Buffet, Vince Gill, Robben Ford) new album from guitar hero sideman extraordinaire Landreth. I find it a bit generic. I mean, awesome guitar chops and all but it's just in that rock-blues groove that all sounds the same to me. You would think the track which features Dr John AND Jimmy Buffet (together at last!) would at least stand out with a distinctive style but it really doesn't. They're quite anonymous on it. It's perfectly pleasant background music and guitar nerds might get more out of it than me.
You Can Name It Yo Mamma If You Wanna-South Filthy
Hacienda Brothers-Hacienda Brothers RIP Chris Gaffney.
The Complete Sun Recordings-Little Junior Parker's Blue Flames I would say this is a must-have, so I don't know why it took me so long to get it. Historically important -- "Mystery Train" -- but also musically seven great cuts of rhythm and blues.
The Little Darlin' Sound of Jeannie C.Riley-Jeannie C.Riley Pre-"Harper Valley PTA" tracks finds Jeannie mining the sub-Loretta vein of country girl power. Nothing here matches Loretta output (goes without saying) but it's a very listenable collection of classic country. It's 60s but fewer strings and a little rawer than a lot of the Nashville sound. At least half the songs have Jeannie as the other woman, in the other half she's being dumped. Just how I like it! The album was originally released in 1968 as Sock Soul. "Sock Soul"? No, I can't imagine why either.
Now and Again-Daryle Singletary This is the third and last Singletary album there, a compilation of his mainstream hits or attempted hits (couple peaked at #2, another one in the top ten, the rest a fair way further back) back in the '90s. I really love the two later albums which are tradition hard core honky tonk, while still neo-traditional, this one doesn't quite have that edge. Still better than most anything I see when I turn on CMT though -- EXCEPT for the cover of that Bryan Adams Robin Hood song. Ufg. FAIL, Daryle.
Back to the Front-Bob Neuwirth I need to listen to this one more, he can be quite the intricate songwriter. Very good folk-country singer songwriter with a wry eye.
Afrissippi-Fulani Journey Guelel Kumba from Senegal (Fulani is the local lingo) hits the Delta with very fine results. Website. I'm gonna buy a t-shirt.

Rock and Indie etc
The Golden Hour-Firewater
The Monks-The Monks

Jazz etc
A Grand Night for Swinging-Mary Lou Williams
Roots and Grooves-Maceo Parker
Brilliant Corners-Thelonious Monk
Steamin' With the Miles Davis Quartet-Miles Davis
All Members-Don Sleet
The Sequel-Mulgrew Miller and Wingspan

African and Soul and Funk etc
Children-Famous L.Renfroe
Si, Para Usted - The Funky Beats of Revolutionary Cuba Vol. 1-Various I've been listening a bit to the podcast of the radio show Waxing Deep (click on "Radio"), whose presenter Dan Zacks produced this set. I tried sampling a lot of the jazz/soul/funk/afrobeat podcasts and found a lot of cool stuff but I think this is my favourite. Again, the downside of downloading is the lack of liner notes which for a lovingly assembled and niche topic like this are pretty essential. I'd pay extra for them in cases like this. In the end Ithink I'll end up buying the hard copy of the CD from their website. Very reasonably priced (including intl. shipping) and it's nice to support folks like this. The Jan 26 2007 show has some tracks from it.
Nigeria 70, Lagos Stomp-Various
Texas Thunder Soul 1968-1974-Kashmere Stage Band Not your mother's high school combo.
If Loving You is Wrong (I Don't Want to be Right)-Luther Ingram
African Rhymth and Blues-The Remixes-Mombassa I like these a lot, the "remixing" is done very sensitively.
Booiay!! A Compilation of West African Funk-Various Companian to The Danque!!! which I got last month. When I listened to the previews I liked that one more for some reason so I got it first but after listening to all of Booniay! it might be my favourite. You guys, I am so into African funk right now.

Classical and Shatner
Brahms: Sonate Für Klarinette Und Klavier Es-Dur, Op. 120 Nr. 2: II. - Peter Daum, Dieter Klöcker, Josef Suk & Werner Genuit
Exodus: An Oratorio in Three Parts- William Shatner Dude, it's the Shat reading from the Bible. As if I wasn't gonna get it.
Strauss: Also Sprach Zarathustra & Tod Und Verklarung-Andre Previn and the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra I had two credits left and this was two credits (for 60 minutes of music.) I don' think I can take Also Sprach Zarathustra seriously really, or at least the famous 2001 refrain but Tod und Verklärung (Death and Transfiguration) sounds promisingly moody.