Who knew that's how it would turn out. I was in for the biggest rockstar moment of my life. Bigger than Andy even. I started out on the Sunday before, January 18, hopping the train down to DC which, miraculously, was on time. That alone seemed like a pretty good omen. Once we pulled into Union Station, as luck would have it, our train parked right alongside the vintage train that [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

By Ed Hamell, a/k/a Hamell on Trial

When I'm on the road I like to nap in my car. People think it's weird. (At least G-Love did, but...um...who cares?) But it's nice in there. You're getting rested up for the gig. You turn off the cell phone, nobody bothers you, out like a light.

Occasionally somebody will rap on the window. “Are you okay?” I like to scream back at them, “I'm trying to kill myself! Could you leave me alone?!”

I'm good at scouting a place off the beaten track that is inconspicuous. I'll even pay to park in a parking garage, (well, not in Manhattan, Jesus, you might as well get a hotel room at those prices), but I learned the hard way that are some parking lot security guys that take their job very, very seriously. At least in Toronto.

I was napping, out like a light, and it was hot so I had the air conditioner running and sure enough, three, you saw it right, three cop cars came with their lights on wanting to know just what the hell I was doing.

I don't know how many of my readership has been on the show Cops, but I suspect a large percentage and you know how when you just wake up and there's a cop in your trailer and you don't remember what you did to get him (or her, as in my case there were two male cops and a female) there, and you're kinda mumbling sleepy-eyed, reaching for your gun?

Well, one cop was pissed! So I got pissed back. Bad move.

We worked it out. I promised never to do it again. Of course when they left I fell back to sleep.

Overzealous employees always get my goat. It's just a job, for chrissake. And in light of the current economy, you're probably not gonna have it for very much longer anyway, so relax wouldja?

There's only two states that you can't pump your own gas. Jersey and Oregon. I didn't know about Oregon. So I got out of the car and started pumping my gas and the attendant charged out of his little room and yanked the hose out of my hand.

I don't like people yanking shit from me.

Ask politely. I would.

So I had to ask him, “Why can't you pump your own gas? Why is there a law?!” And he told me straight-faced, “People blow up.”

Now, I travel a great deal people. All over the world. And I'm usually driving. I've been to a lot of gas stations. I've slept in a lot of gas stations. Rarely, like so rarely, never, have I seen anybody blow up. Never ever. Never even on the horizon do I see a torch-like glow and think, “Yep, there goes another pumper. Bet his fried ass wishes he had been in Oregon or Jersey.”

Now I know many are thinking, “Hamell sure is confrontational, he's got no one to blame if people are afraid to come to his show.” Well, let me tell you about a positive run-in I had.

It was an Arab taxi driver taking me from my hotel in London to Heathrow airport. True story. I really, really like taxi drivers. 99% of the time they're amazingly cool. I've had some of my best conversations with taxi drivers.

It's a cinch. Wanna try it?

Just go like this, “How long you been driving today?” Typically they'll say, “Since 4 a.m.” And it's like noon, then. So you ask, “How much longer you gonna drive today?” And they'll say, “Until midnight.”

That's 20 hours, people. Then you ask, “How many days a week do you do that?” And they'll say, “Seven.”

And you ask if they have a family, and they invariably do, and then you ask, “Doesn't your wife mind?” And they'll respond, “She drives a cab, too!”

That's a tough gig, I think. More often than not they're working their butts off, when they used to work as a doctor in Africa, or India, or Saudi Arabia.

You get the idea.

Anyway, I can't remember what we talked about, this Arab cab driver and me. I mean, I'm sure it was world politics, but I really don't remember specifically what was said.

I was riding in the front. I do remember that.

When I got out, not only did he hug me but he gave me the ride for free. C'mon, cool or what?

So you see, I'm not such a bad guy. Remember, an indictment is not a conviction.

Ed Hamell picked up the guitar at age 7 and started writing songs not long after. In his early 20s, Mr. Hamell was the front man and writer for an original band, but local bands were a dime a dozen in the tough, working class neighborhoods in Syracuse, NY. So he launched a one-man act called Hamell on Trial. Six albums (plus a live one) and countless shows later, Hamell himself is one of a kind. Catch him on tour this summer in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

YAP: NEW YEAR'S REVOLUTIONS

1. Don't Drop My Cell Phone In The Toilet (Anymore)

There's a lot of reasons you might want to adhere to this resolution. Let's say hypothetically that it was in your sweatshirt pocket and you were standing up taking a pee. (Ladies, you might want to skip this unless you're Melissa Ferrick fans. In that you might stand up to pee. I love Melissa Ferrick, she's wonderful but her audience prides itself on being bull dykes. Many of them are reading this now and saying,

"How did he know I like to stand up and pee? How did he know I dropped my cellphone in the toilet?")*

(BTW: See Milk, it's incredible.)

Anyway, your cell phone goes down in the water, you got to fish it out and then:

voilà, no more light-up, no more speed dial, no more communication. The thing is, not dropping your cell phone in the toilet is a lot easier to resolve than losing weight. Or quitting smoking.

2. Grow A Lot Of Hair

This is going to be troublesome. But I'm tired of too few options. I'd like to look like Christopher Walken. Or Maybe Mickey Rourke in The Pope Of Greenwich Village. Or Joe Strummer circa 1979. Elvis, for God's sake. It's too late for Rogaine, and wigs look bad.

3. Keep My Car Clean

My wife won't ride in it anymore. Very few people will. I'm turning over a new leaf. The only thing is, in my defense, is that I have to live in it, kinda, when I'm gigging. And you know how it is, you're late for the soundcheck, you drink a cup of coffee, you down a Red Bull, you eat a protein bar, you do an espresso, you chew some caffeine gum, you do your last few pep pills, you got to put the wrappers and empty cups somewhere, right? So you toss them on the floor. Then you get to the club and you gotta run in do the check, blast through the gig, drink six or seven more cups of coffee, get back in the car and drive six hours, drinking seven or eight Red Bulls. Okay, you got a bit of a pile on the floor.

But when you pull over to sleep, whaddaya gonna use for a pillow? Isn't the trash ideal?

I rest my case. And I rest my head on the comfy junk.

But I'm turning over a new leaf. Some of those leaves are on the floor of my car.

4. Stop Screaming At the Audience

No one enjoys this. It isn't helping. Who do I think I am? I've tried to get out but they keep pulling me back in. Some audiences are getting hip to my idiosyncrasies and when they see my threshold clearly on the horizon they stand up and scream. "INCOMING!"

This is doing no one any good.

5. Stop Reading The Comments Under My Favorite You Tube Music Or Comedy Videos

People have too much time. And the ones that do are usually young, I know, and they write stuff under videos about say, Bill Hicks or Jack White or Burroughs or anybody but Gene Vincent and it's adolescent or asinine or something so off the mark that I think "Geez, this depresses me."

That's not why I watched the video. It was to entertain, or inspire or study. And it's like messing with a bad tooth. I can't not look.

No more scrolling down on '09.

6. Fun! Fun! Fun!

Let's face it. These are tough times. The economy sucks and it affects all of us. It's hard to keep a brave face and a stiff upper lip. But Gosh darn it, life's too short. Unemployment is up. And this new administration isn't going to help certain vocations. For instance: torturers.

What's an unemployed waterboarder going to do in this new administration? I guess they could get a job at the DMV. Now that I think about it, I've often waited in line three hours to be told that I didn't have the right paperwork and it felt like somebody had attached wires to my testicles.

But I digress.

I think that I forgot to have fun. So... I'm going to make a effort to seek it out. Tonight I'm going to a nightclub in Manhattan to check out some live Brazilian music. I'll let you know. I might ride around in the car with a Beach Boy, maybe Brian or Al. Certainly not Mike.

Anyway thank God 2008 is behind us. That goes double for the last eight years. (Hey, was it my imagination or did Obama absolutely refuse to play the lowest common denominator card? Was his whole platform, "I know you're better than this? I'm going to appeal to your intellect and compassion? Your greater humanity. Not just as Americans, but people. Oh, you know he did.)

Anyway, that's it for now...until next time I think I'll listen to my Beatles Live At The BBC. Fun, see?

I realize that you can't see the twinkle in my eye when I write this stuff. It's a joke. Don't write me. See #5.

Ed Hamell picked up the guitar at age 7 and started writing songs not long after. In his early 20s, Mr. Hamell was the front man and writer for an original band, but local bands were a dime a dozen in the tough, working class neighborhoods in Syracuse, NY. So he launched a one-man act called Hamell on Trial. Six albums (plus a live one) and countless shows later, Hamell himself is one of a kind. Catch him on tour this summer in the U.S., Canada and Europe.

Muslimgauze

In the annals of the insanely prolific, Bryn Jones, aka Muslimgauze, may stand alone. Having produced close to 100 releases between 1982 and his death in 1999, that number (including re-issues) has now more than doubled. That puts him up (and beyond) in the rarified category of Sun Ra, Duke Ellington, Bill Laswell, Bill Nelson, Jandek and other pathologically prolific musicians, most of whom can't touch the coattails of his discography.  It's actually even more impressive considering that the others were either much older at their passing or are still around and releasing records. The man was clearly driven by a profound need to create.


The volume of Muslimgauze's work is just a small part of a complex scenario. The urgency of his prolifigy was at the very least least double-edged. Obviously he had an unquelchable mass of music bottled up inside and the means to let it out. But Bryn Jones was also a man with a Cause; he was intensely, some would say militantly pro-Palestinian, and Muslimgauze was viewed by some as virtually the musical wing of the PLO. Wading into the on-going Israeli/Palestinian conflict is obviously a thorny path, but it became one of his choses ones. Jones' interests were, in fact, much broader, and included an on-going concern for issues of sovereignty, freedom, equality and justice throughout the world at large, especially in the Third and Muslim Worlds. He was a long-time student of the politics of oppression, and vocal in his support of groups that some consider freedom fighters, other terrorists. This was a stance that garnered him huge respect in some quarters and, naturally, great enmity in others.


You won't find any voices extolling any particular political cause on a Muslimgauze record, other than a occasional sampling of a newscast, speech or "ethnic" voice or snippet of music--in fact, you'll find almost no human voices at all. The politics are more inferential, but also show up prominently in song-titles and on cover art: Cout D'Etat features images of Ayatollah Kohemani on the front and Moammar Kadafi on the back, willfully provocative (some would say naive) images guaranteed to exhilarate one audience while alienating another. I certainly don't know his deepest beliefs, but we can only hope that they included a wish for freedom from oppression for ALL peoples, everywhere, irregardless of...well, anything.

 
One of electronic music's true visionaries, Muslimgauze produced a multi-tiered body of work that would take a devoted musicologist years to grapple with. As likely to be percussive as electronic, he created a new language that sucked together everything from dub, ambient, tribal and house to industrial, electro-acoustic, cut-and-paste and drone. Particularly striking are his extensive, body and soul altering forays into a highly personal fusion of Middle Eastern and North African (but also Asian, Native American, etc.) sounds, sometimes sampled and sometimes not, sometimes percussive, sometimes electronic, sometimes both; frequently harsh, sonically provocative, frequently unsettling, almost always intense, by no means for the timid. Muslimgauze's low end could cripple a crap sub-woofer, while the high end could set dogs barking blocks away. His recording mastery was intuitive and highly evolved, his musical vision seemingly endlessly hungry to create new variations.


Although he evidently spent most of a decade and a half holed up in one studio or another, he occasionally collaborated with contemporaries, including Systemwide, Apollon, Bass Communion and Sons of Arqa. He also DJ'd a bit, occasionally played live and gave interviews now and then, but it was really all about making and releasing music. He released 16 albums in 1998, and in the year of his death, 1999, there were a total of 22 releases marked Muslimgauze. He had releases on at least 32 labels.

 
Bryn Jones died suddenly, quickly, unexpectedly from a rare blood infection in 1999. Over 100 Muslimgauze records have been released since his death, some as reissues, most of it previously unreleased material. Even in death, the obsession continues. 

Well folks, please forgive the less than thoughtful musing this week. Still digging out from the holidays! Plus, it's my birthday on Friday (shameless self-promotion). And then it's off to DC for the inauguration! In the meantime, this is perhaps the funniest thing I've watched in the long time, oh my GAWD: [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentation of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Guest post this week from a new fave, singer-songwriter Denison Witmer (his 2008 CD Carry the Weight made the Cut through the Noise Top 10). Astounding [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.

Episode Fünf

FUCKED UP

You know what's fucked up? The fact that this band plays almost exclusively to the hardcore scene. I understand why, having witnessed frontman Father Damian heartily and heavily take on a crowd of mauling Berlin punks. However, the guitars behind the man in front anchor the madness in a beautiful—gorgeous, even—wash of sound and glory that makes this just really really good music. Listening to their records at home, I could well imagine Fucked Up being backed up by a philharmonic some time in the future.

The band originates out of Toronto, Canada, and has, over the past 8 years, built an unassailable legacy out of ferocious live shows, incessant touring, informed, articulate interviews, an impeccable singles output, and two brilliant full lengths, the latter of which, The Chemistry of Common Life, is on Matador Records.

For more information, see lookingforgold.blogspot.com or www.matadorrecords.com.

"Dude, have you been to Berlin yet?!" covers the music, art and fashion scenes in Berlin, as witnessed by Jenna Young, recent transplant from New York City and guitar player in the rock band Ghetto Ways.

Chuck Eddy dusts off his old vinyl and scratches his head. We all win.

Greetings, BLURT readers. This column's theme is fairly simple: Basically, I sort alphabetic ally through my shelves for dusty old 7-inch vinyl indie singles from acts that aren't household names, and try to figure out why I wound up keeping them in the first place. This is the 10^th installment (first two appeared at Idolator.)

***

THE LIDS - "No Fool For You"/"Too Late"/"Nothing To Do" (Die Slaughterhaus, 2003)

Garage-punk brats from...somewhere (there's basically no information about them in the Internets), seemingly singing into a toy microphone and hoping to be picked up by the hand-held tape recorder down the hall. Fast, primal slop for hip young caveboys and cavegirls. One chord and one sentence per song, if that. Guy tells us he's no fool for us; girl chimes in randomly in the background, seemingly responding boy's monosyllabic ramblings but lagging behind the beat. "Too late too late too late." "Oh yeah oh yeah oh yeah." Oddly, or maybe not (how easy or difficult would this be?), all three songs are hooky anyway. "All I want is something to do," he sings bored through the blur; then...a time change, which sends the music careening toward some semblance of climax. Which makes "Nothing To Do" the Lids' epic, almost.

(www.grunnenrocks.nl/bands/l/lidsthe.htm)

LOVE AS LAUGHTER -"Hall and Oates Have Disappeared"/ "Looks Like This City's Broken" (SubPop, 2000)

The Stones to Pavement's Beatles? Whatever that means. Anyway, they're from Brooklyn, and "Hall and Oates Have Disappeared" - which, as far as I can tell, has absolutely nothing to do with the Philly blue-eyed-soul duo in question - does have a certain lower-minor-league Exile On Main Street muffle to its shuffle. Doesn't really rock; not much drummer push, but it's got a little roll to it - and in 2000, and maybe even still now, a little roll was at least a step in the right direction for notoriously scared-to-dance indie rock. High-registered stuff about finding a parking spot in the parking lot, then the music switches into a sort of vamp, even almost a hint of disco throb at one point (did they think that was the Hall and Oates part?), with whimsical noises gurgling out of it. Just sort of meanders on and on, but it does quote "Space Oddity" by Bowie at one point. "Looks Like This City's Broken" has more of an apparent low-grade attempt at a boogie riff. Given the city's busted state, the singer suggests, we should just turn around and go back. But to where? (www.myspace.com/loveaslaughter)

MATMOS - "On And On"/DIE MONITR BATSS - "Black Out Cross" (Ache, 2004)

Baltimore-via Frisco duo Matmos work plinks and urps into some robotic semblance of extended funk-like repetition; drum-like objects of some sort double the rhythm, and then a bassline enters -- almost phat, in its own geeky way, though presumably unrecognizable to Curtis Mayfield or Gladys Knight fans who know the original song supposedly being covered. Thing is, when the melody picks up, you can actually hear remnants of a mournful "Freddie's Dead"-style soul melody for a couple minutes; the emotion really accumulates. And then it's back to space-age robot wars. Die Monitr Batss, meanwhile, manage a distant memory of boogie chug in their own post-punk way, with Contortions-or-Lora-Logic-style free-jazz sax splat fleshing out the field. "You can't see me/I can't see you" (or "can," maybe - hard to tell.) "I'm not gonna watch you do it" - so they're not voyeurs. They have more instrumental than vocal energy, though - Die Monotone Batss, they should be called. "Ho Wave," the Portlanders (somehow tangentially related to theoretically dancefloor-unscared indie band the Gossip) call themselves on their Myspace page; har har. Climaxes in yer usual Wagenerian post-Sonic Youth drone-clank. But first, extroverted instrumental parts lead to a nervous breakdown, suggesting an old woman falling out of a wheelchair during a magic show.

(www.myspace.com/matmos1)

MEANEST MAN CONTEST - "Contaminated Dance Step"/ "Feelin' Pretty Psyched (About Love)" (Weapon-Shaped, 2002)

Another San Fran duo; this one via L.A., and rapping. Or at least talking, or reciting poetry, or whatever you call it, with a matter-of-fact diction, about logos and crescendos and managerial positions, words coming at you way too fast for note-taking unless you remember way more shorthand than I do. Not much attempt to use the voice as rhythm or maintain a groove - and the background music sounds more like a movie soundtrack than dance steps, contaminated or otherwise -- but they sure pack in a lot of syllables. Eventually the A-side song turns into some subliminally familiar spiel about how "hyphenated Americans mean divided Americans." An opinion that goes back at least to Teddy Roosevelt, and which may well make Meanest Man Contest unreliable narrators. Then there's another spoken word sample: an intro to Louis Armstrong playing trumpet. Then on the flipside, another long collage suite, returning to what I assume to be the Mean Men's own voices, talking about a male professor who "wasn't fired, he was let go." More changes of direction, more monotonous verbosity, different voices out of each speaker: "It was hidden in the cardboard and the cobwebs, it is not dead." "The stories suffer from deadline pressure." One guy starts almost actually rapping, sounding legitimately underground (rather than under-underground), rhyming about rising like a phoenix something material venereal MCs get murdered in cereal. Pretty sure he's joking. "Aren't we bitter little people, we ought to be unable to say anything except sardonically." Or something like that. He may not be joking there, but then I may not be following him.

(www.myspace.com/meanestmancontest)

DAN MELCHIOR - "Instant Love"/"That's No Way To Get Along" (Smartguy, 2000)

Fuzzed-up megaphone grumbling over blues chords; arty by virtue of production (or lack thereof) not structure. At times he just beats his guitar, the only instrument here I think. One of those eternal eccentrics, hunting for something to kill the pain. From London; now apparently in North Carolina. Yet despite its surface weirdness, "Instant Love" sounds too average. Needs more of a hook, or something, to justify its normality. "That's No Way To Get Along" opens with Delta picking, and is marginally more interesting by virtue of sounding more antiquated. "I'm goin' home/Don't tell my mom." Why not? Would she move before you show up? An old song, I assume. Those lowdown women treat a person wrong, and there's no way to get along. Keeps returning to the same place -- circular like a roundelay, or round like a circle.

(www.myspace.com/dasmenace)

Chuck Eddy is the former music editor of the Village Voice and the author of several books, including the greatest book on heavy metal ever written, Stairway To Hell. He won't admit it, but he knows more about rock ‘n' roll than the entire accumulated BLURT brain trust.

By Martin Bisi

When telling a story about a time in history, what does the teller owe society? Can a small truth about a time in history, contradict the larger, socially progressive, educated truth? What if the story teller wades into the small-scale, inter-personal stories that are the back drop to any moment in time? Can there be a conflict? controversy ? Yes.

Gone With The Wind, the 1939 mega-blockbuster Hollywood movie, romanticized the old South and glossed over the great injustices of that era. One subject of controversy, was the image of a slave crying in sympathy for her masters. The view of history Gone With The Wind projected, is not the one we want to teach our children, or put forth as a society, especially in 1939.

But that does raise a difficult question. With the millions of slaves in the old South, is it not a certainty that some slaves cried for their masters? It's the tip of a small iceberg. There were likely love affairs, elopements--many kinds of relationships under the radar, that an artist may want to elaborate on.

But what if the artist lived in that era?

Phillis Wheatley was a slave, and poet, living in Boston in the colonial era. She was first published in the 1760's, at the age of 14. Her masters placed a high premium on education in their home, and having recognized Wheatley's talent in writing early on, they introduced her to the literary elite of Boston, and helped advance her career. Wheatley barely mentioned slavery, or race in her poems, even after she was freed later in life. And there was a positive tone in her writings, in regards to Boston and the colonies in general. She was later sharply criticized within the civil rights movement of the 1960's, for presenting a flattering picture of her world.

General opinion on Wheatley has been more forgiving in the last few decades. It reminds me of how some scenes in Schindler's List ('93) may have been unacceptable 60 years ago - particularly the one where Schindler, still wearing his lapel-pin swastika, even after the fall of the 3rd Reich, suddenly grasps it and collapses in tears, not because of what the symbol may have meant to him, but because he realizes he could have saved one more life, had he sold it. We can accept now that there was a gray area there, and it's valuable to depict it.

How interesting that in the present, we can accept that most artists are like Phillis Wheatley. Most current artists don't include the wars and injustices of our time, in their creative expression. And most of us know that a lot happens between the bad headlines, that needs to be expressed. But when the battle is on, for defining an era in history, art is expected to serve the writing of history. History needs to be taught in blacks and whites. One group invaded the other --period--not, some people fell in love, a barbarian hugged a child, things were nice temporarlily in a certain week, and, a woman eyed her reflection in a store window. Why am I suddenly giggling (stop that)?

Martin Bisi is an American producer and songwriter. Visit him at www.myspace.com/theendcredits.

Before we get to the list, a little self-indulgent get-to-know-me holiday montage.... Full disclosure, last year I actually set my parents house on fire Christmas Eve. No one was injured. The Harrington's ham was saved. We had to do a lot of cleaning though... damn, oven smoke is insipid. This year, however, although we did set off some smoke alarms, it was all for a good cause [...]

A Triple-A radio programming veteran, Kate has served as Music Director of the Loft at XM, Midday Host at WYEP, Evening Host at both WNCS and WUIN, as well as Content Supervisor for Pump Audio. Currently, she's the CEO of Outlandos Music, a new-music discovery service for grown-ups. Kate has been nationally recognized for her ardent presentati on of music and her ability to champion talented, compelling artists.