I Hate When Things Are Over

 

The above picture is from the last song ever to be played at Oklahoma Scotfest by the North Texas band the Selkie Girls. Band members will still make music (singer Alli Johnson already has a solo album), but the sextet will disband in a few months. I first caught on to the Selkie Girls at a Scottish festival in Sherman, Texas, a few years after they had begun to play. The jazz-influence percussion, dual vocalists and harp were an instant draw that set them a bit apart from a lot of Celtic bands, and their live performances were worth catching whenever possible.

This photo is not from the last song the Tullamore trio played at Scotfest, but it is from their last set. My journey with them, as friends and as a fan, has lasted almost 26 years since I first saw them play at the Medieval Fair in Norman, OK in 1997. The band will call it a career after a Celtic Cruise in 2024, making this their last Scotfest also. Tullamore has morphed several times over its career, but the mainstays have been Mary the hammered dulcimer player and Mark the guitarist, and they are good friends. Between shows of theirs I have caught in Norman, Edmond, Arlington, TX and Tulsa, I've literally never been disappointed with a performance. I've also always been happy to see my friends Mark and Mary (I liked the other band members too, by the way, but they were as I said the constants).

The post title comes from the early '90s one-hit wonder Deep Blue Something. Their song, "Breakfast at Tiffany's" includes the line. Despite the fluff that was Deep Blue Something, the song's always stuck with me and the line sums up my reaction to endings of good and pleasant things.

Sláinte to both bands, and thanks for all the music.

Biiig Music

Today I received my gift for my investment in a Patreon project for a long-beloved but semi-defunct band named Caedmon's Call. They did write mostly for the Christian music market, but the primary songwriters had a telling gift for imagery and ideas that had wide appeal. Recently, for an anniversary of their initial album, they decided to reunite and re-record it. Through Patreon they offered several different gifts to help fund the project. My choice included, among other things, a vinyl double album of the release.

I'm not the guy to tell you that vinyl is superior to a CD. For one, I'm not sure there's that much difference and for another, too many loud shows in too many small clubs make sure I'll never hear whatever difference there might be. There's also the way vinyl records were pressed as CD sales rose. The records themselves became thinner and thinner -- cut a hole in the middle of one and glue it to the bottom of a top hat and you could set yourself up as Oddjob forthwith. I sold my collection about 15 years ago because I move too often and I owned about 700 heavy albums. I just kept a few and have added the odd title here and there.

The album I was sent today is a double album, gatefold cover. It's a big old chunk of memory. The ginormous photos, compared to a CD cover or worse, a digital music thumbnail. Checking out which disc is the first half and which is the second. Sliding it into place among some other remaining albums. All things that take me back to a world where cassettes were OK for cars and 8-tracks had their day, but if you wanted to listen to music the right way, you laid it on a spinning platter, cued up the needle and let it play.

Here's hoping Caedmon's Call does their second album the same way -- the first one is good but the second was my favorite. Either way, this evening sounds real, real good.

Small, as in Town

The recent Jason Aldean song "Try That in a Small Town" has caused a stink. Because some people can stretch any idea into the territory of evil thoughts, country artist Aldean is now accused of preaching the idea of lynching as a proper response to civil unrest and rioting. Most of the dust-up happened when the video was noticed, since it played scenes from recent unrest and rioting projected onto a small-town courthouse while Aldean sang about the contrast between urban and rural life. He focused on the difference between the kind of unrest and rioting recently prevalent in cities and the firm resolve to "act right" held by small town people -- specifically, "good ol' boys raised up right." CMT, the country music video channel, pulled the video from rotation because some people decided Aldean was, indeed, singing the praises of lynching. The video currently has 16 million views on YouTube and the song is one of the top downloaded tracks on several music sites.

Some folks see proof of the lynching call by the video's use of the Columbia, Tennessee courthouse - the site of the 1927 Henry Choate lynching. I don't think Jason Aldean knows that much history. While the song doesn't promote lynching, it is awful. Although Aldean is a star, few, if any country musicians of the 2050s are going to be singing a song called "Jason Aldean" the way Aldean covered the song "Johnny Cash."

Kathryn Jean Lopez, writing in National Review, points out that "Try That in a Small Town" picks up none of the small-town attributes that could actually help make our nation and culture better. She cites John Mellencamp's  "Small Town" from 1986's Scarecrow as a song that proclaims the kind of gentle, slowed-down vision of small-town life that actually counter the Instant Rage that is so easily created by people on every side of every issue at any time.

As a bona fide X-er, I'm also on board with Mellencamp's understanding of the actual virtues of small town life, although I think Alan Jackson's semi-biographical ode to his father, "Small-Town Southern Man" from 2008's Good Time, is just a hair better. Neither shows the whole picture. But which has the best potential of helping people heal the hurts society and hatred have put on them? Being "raised on ways of gentle kindness" (Jackson)? "Yeah I can be myself in this small town/and people let me be just what I wanna be" (Mellencamp)? Or "See how far you make it down the road" (Not actually Aldean because he doesn't write his songs)?

Neither Mellencamp nor Jackson dwell on the totality of small-town life (for that, check into Lora Webb Nichols photographs of her life in small-town Wyoming). And neither spend any time on the underbelly of rural life. They do in fact leave out unemployment, racism, cronyism, alcoholism and drug abuse, the sexual assaults covered up to protect the "good boys who made a mistake," and other such sins as may be found wherever there are human beings. And the way a small-town can twist such sins by everybody cementing their evaluation of a person based on the worst thing they've ever done or that everyone thinks they've done.

The virtues they extoll are not the whole picture, of course. But "Small Town" and "Small-Town Southern Man" do extoll virtues. All "Try That" does is tell you, "We'll beat your ass if you do stuff we don't think is right." That's the message that rioters and anarchists know well, and adding fuel to that fire helps nobody and nothing.

Plus, as mentioned above, it's a lousy song and it's tough to believe it took four guys to write it.

Blue Texas?

The post title does not represent the biennial wish of the Texas Democratic Party -- at least until they realize they might be saddled with Governor Beto. No, it's helping me point you to a link on Ted Gioia's Substack newsletter, The Honest Broker.

Gioia describes how a couple of books let him to give a talk on Mississippi Delta blues music while in Austin, and how thoroughly he was then castigated by another speaker for omitting any reference to Texas' own blues history and tradition. In the post, Gioia helps you avoid his mistake by offering some representative and potentially defining tracks of Texas blues for your listening. Which you should, by the way, do.

Much of the time, writing about music gets to be a little tiresome once we wander outside the purposeful realm of the review or critique. The difficulty of describing something aural with words links up with the malleability of the words themselves to create what's just as likely to be fannish fog as focused insight. Check out any of the blurbs for entries from the old Daytrotter Sessions at Wolfgangs.com for numerous examples.

Gioia, however, seems to have been granted the gift of fog removal and sharpening focus and is, as usual, worth reading on the subject while listening to the tracks he suggests. As mentioned before, as long as Substack puts Ted Gioia's thinking and writing about music within my reach, it justifies its existence.

Old vs. New

I'm late to the party (pal), as Ted Gioia has made a couple of TV appearances talking about his essay on how older music is crowding out new music. 

I think it is, and not just because a huge percentage of new music is, um, gunk. A few years ago a band called Walk the Moon had a very catchy hit called "Shut up and Dance With Me." In addition to being a neat reminder of the classic Pearl Harbour and the Explosions "Shut up and Dance," it was a fun 80s-sounding throwback that topped the US rock charts and hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100 pop chart. The next single managed #4 on the rock chart and #65 on the Hot 100. Two subsequent releases cracked the top 20 on the rock chart but showed up nowhere else.  "Shut Up and Dance With Me" would probably have earned Walk the Moon a couple of top 20 albums back in the 80s and a career that would last at least as long as Loverboy's.

Gioia offers a much more detailed take, but it seems to me the upshot is that the modern audience attention span isn't long enough to keep new bands or performers on top for much more than a song or two. And the music industry responds, which means we never really get to hear how a group or a singer might sound after maturing or gaining experience with songwriting and playing.

Kind of depressing. Think I'll go play some Meat Loaf. Which might mean I'm part of the problem, but since the new music I hear is usually very niche-y in style, there's not much chance of them falling from the charts.

Ouch

Peter Jackson's recent documentary The Beatles: Get Back shows hours of footage shot as the band prepared its final album, Let It Be. The film was shot at the time and only a very truncated version appeared, but Jackson took the many hours available and created a far more complete picture in his eight-hour documentary.

Contrary to the widely-held opinion that John Lennon's second wife, Yoko Ono, broke up the band because of her intrusive presence, Jackson suggests that she didn't have that much impact at all. Although she's frequently around during recording, writing and the rest of the process, she's not pushing her ideas or whatnot into the discussion. 

At least one article I read shows that the band broke up not because of anyone's significant other, but because as the four members grew older they found that they had less and less to say together. Their respective muses no longer pulled in the same direction and in order to follow them, "The Beatles" had to become John, Paul, George and Ringo once again, separated from their common milieu. Given the leeway to exercise their own creativity with, say, solo albums or working with other bands, perhaps they could have stayed together when the ideas or the mood struck. That option, for whatever reason, wasn't explored or maybe wasn't even considered possible.

Other reviews have said different things. Amanda Hess, writing at the New York Times, suggests that Ono is actually engaged in her own work of creativity as a performance artist. By being ever-present but always silent, she was offering commentary on how women were marginalized by the rock music culture. Hess thinks this is of a piece with Ono's public comments on that matter and the dedication she puts on her song "Potbelly Rocker."

Folks, can, of course, think what they want about Ono's artistic ability. The idea that she broke up the Beatles overlooks the robust ability of all four men, especially Lennon, to be arrogant elitist asses all on their own. For her 1971 "show" at the Museum of Modern Art, Ono had released flies on the museum grounds which the public was invited to track as they dispersed across the city. I think that says most of what needs to be said about her work (The flies were also sprayed with her perfume to carry her scent, but in reality liquid sprayed on insects often suffocates them).

But the article subhead says that in Jackson's documentary, "Ono is a performance artist at the height of her powers." That's just mean.

Wisdom From Online

Now and again, someone says something smart on the internet.

Such as Kate Mossman, outlining the importance of the 1980s for pop music in this New Statesman article.

If You Want to Defeat Your Enemy Sing His Song

The above title is taken from the 1987 Icicle Works album and it came to mind when I read this entry at Ted Gioia's Substack that talks about the connection between music and the way it may have motivated and fueled human rights movements. Since it's one of his free articles I'll just suggest that you read it if you're interested in learning more of the possible connections.

Substack, like most internet platforms, has its ups and downs. I've sampled more than a few that would weigh against it if it were required to justify its existence. But so far the extensive output from Gioia is tugging the marker in the good direction.

Self-Destruction

One of the best things about the growth of the Substack newsletter format and one of the reasons I hope for its longterm success is the way certain writers that have previously leaned heavily on the book format now produce new content in between book releases. The shorter format gives a reader a chance to appreciate something important that they have to say that might not by itself be long enough for a book but is still good to grapple with.

Recently, for example, music and culture writer Ted Gioia put out an article on his The Honest Broker Substack about Columbia Records' purge of its old-school jazz roster in the early 1970's. For someone like me who is much more of a skimmer of jazz music than a deep-sea diver like Gioia, it's a great piece of history of the music to learn. But it probably would make a very thin -- or very padded-out -- book. This way, it need not be either. For the writers, of course, it turns out better because instead of a blog post that pays nothing they can produce content that people might subscribe to and pay them for. And no, I'm not considering a Substack model. I don't need confirmation of what this blog is worth in real monetary terms; my own feelings of inadequacy confirm it just fine, thanks.

I haven't yet subscribed to any of these newsletters, although I'm considering a few. My gut tells me that the company is probably trying to work out a system whereby you could bundle some of your preferred writers at a slight discount and I'm waiting to see. I'm also waiting to see newspaper publishers see that happen and kick themselves for not coming up with that model of online content before they collapsed. But as Gioia's article makes clear, sometimes large media corporations are not nimble thinkers and they have a gift for making the wrong changes.

Imaginariation

After a 15-month delay brought on by personal illnesses, a pandemic and probably plagues of frogs and locusts, the husband-and-wife duo The Imaginaries release their debut album today across a variety of streaming music platforms and physical CD sales.

Both members of the band are probably familiar to Oklahoma music fans. Both guitarist/vocalist/husband Shane Henry and pianist/vocalist/wife Maggie McClure have solo albums to their credit; Henry in singing and playing guitar-based blues and McClure piano and vocal pop. And although their collaboration is probably a little closer to Henry's basic style than McClure's, it clearly brings out both of their strengths.

Over the last few months, the duo have released some music videos for a few tracks, giving a preview of the whole album being released today. The first, "Revival," was entered as a short film in some regional film festivals; its surrounding story of a Bonnie-and-Clyde-like duo who decided to change their ways gave a good background for the track. It's also a good guide for the way the combination mixes their strengths and draws them out past their respective comfort zones a little. Although Henry lays down acoustic blues licks to open the song it moves into a full-band gospel mode. McClure's always been a lovely singer but here she adds touches of brassy belting that match the story of two sinners seeking redemption from their dead-end path.

That same willingness to experiment with what her voice can do beyond just flawlessly nailing a note help propel other songs as well. The swampy declaration of faith "Geronimo" and funky rocker "Enough of You" meld Henry's rawer tones and electric work with her style as each pulls the other a little more their way. And that openness to experimentation lets them put a range of songs on the album as well. "Blue Sky" dances and trickles around as the husband and wife reminisce about their move to California from their native Oklahoma as well as their return.

"The Imaginaries" is not overtly an album of religious music but both band members are people of faith who draw on it for song themes as well as language and imagery. "Geronimo" references an untameable lion and the falling walls of Jericho, and the album closer "You Remind Me" gently swings through a list of reassuring qualities of a partner -- who could just as easily be a savior as a spouse -- and "One Life" declares a conviction that today's hard times are in tomorrow's rearview mirror and the power to survive them can be given to us.

Publicity for the album categorizes it as "Americana," the catchall gumbo category that leaves room for bluegrass, country, southern rock, blues and at least a half-dozen other genres. Since it crosses through most of those boundaries it's as apt a description as any. What's certain is that even as enjoyable as the pair have been as solo artists -- and in their livestreamed shows they've played several of each other's tunes as well as some good covers -- this collaboration adds up to more than the sum of the two considerable parts.

Double-Barrelled

North Texas Celtic band The Selkie Girls offers a St. Patrick's Day story that combines two of Ireland's major interests: "God and Guinness." Found on the Running with the Morrigan album, for those interested.

Did You Ever Hear a Wailin' Sax?

I missed this article when it first came out and only found it because of the random assortment of suggested reads that pops up when I open a new browser tab.

In 2017, writer Kelsey McKinney published a piece in The Outline that asks, "Where did all the saxophones go?" in pop music. The thesis is that the sax was a pretty common feature of Top 40 music up to and into the 1980s but has fallen into disfavor, to the point that the Top 40 songs the week she wrote had nary a hint of a honk.

Now, the article's premise is not untrue, as far as I could tell. I had to look up close to three-quarters of the modern songs that McKinney mentions, but that's not bad for a middle-aged guy considering top 40 music. And when I sampled them, she is indeed correct that they didn't have saxophones playing. As to why, McKinney aims higher than she hits, muddling around until eventually deciding that computer-generated sounds provide the tone that older bands used the saxophone to add. The extensive audio processing that affects every aspect of a top pop song leaves acoustic-based instruments like the sax flattened into unrecognizability. That could be true, but it doesn't necessarily follow from the sketchy history of the instrument she gives in the article. A lot more likely explanation comes from a music professor she talks to, who thinks that it may simply be the way that musical fads run these days.

I also have trouble taking this treatment of the situation seriously when it names "Rockin' Robin" and "The Pink Panther" as "two of America's biggest songs." The former peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 and held the top slot of the Billboard R&B chart for only a week. The latter managed three weeks on Billboard's Adult Contemporary chart back when it was released in 1964 and although it's certainly easily recognizable it would have to go a long way to become one "of America's biggest songs."

Even more fatal to the article's credibility is this: McKinney wrote an entire article about the saxophone being everywhere in 1980s pop music and never...mentioned...Clarence...Clemons. The Big Man may not be among the ranks of the top saxophone players in recorded music -- the average jazz reed man has to be at least twice as fluid for dozens of measures at a time. But omitting the E Street Band's prime blower from a story of the saxophone in popular music means inserting so many caveats in the article that it becomes mostly useless. It's hard to trust conclusions derived from a fatally flawed presentation of the problem.

Would You Like to Try Again?

This article is a couple of years old but still worth scratching your head over. Slate magazine assembled a panel of voters who ranged from writers to musicians to nominate the songs they thought would be added to the so-called Great American Songbook in the coming years.

The "Songbook" concept is pretty malleable -- it's not an actual book but instead a more or less widely accepted canon of jazz and pop music standards frequently covered and reinterpreted by vocalists. So it could pretty easily accumulate new songs even though there's no set criteria for inclusion. Some general characteristics include relatively more complex lyrics and a kind of flexible character that can be adapted by a wide range of singers and stir a wide range of emotions.

So the Slate panel nominated its own candidates and the article at the link gives the top 30. It's a pretty dumb article and not only because of some of the songs -- which we'll get to in a minute. Whoever wrote the intro rightly pointed out that the Songbook acquires new tunes according to no set formula. But then the writer whiffed by calling Journey's "Don't Stop Believin'" "a commercial disappointment from a critically derided band." Journey may have been critically derided during its late 70s and early 80s heyday but "Believin'" hit #9 in the Billboard Hot 100 and sold a million copies. The article hadn't been published for very long before someone -- probably someone old enough to listen to the radio in 1981 -- engineered a correction that suggested "Believin'" was a commercial disappointment compared to the other singles from the album. But considering that "Stone in Love" didn't chart and "Still they Ride" barely cracked the top 20, some more correction is in order.

In any event, when we get to the songs themselves we have to first confront the question, "Wha," as in, "What were you people thinking?"

Included on the list are several rap and hip-hop tunes -- I'm a big fan of some old-school rap, in which clever rhymes and even cleverer wordplay elevate a rapper and his or her tune above the wannabes and competitors. But the panelists, exploring mostly music from the last 25 years or so, include songs with a blizzard of unrhymed free-form sexual boasting and FCC non-compliant verbiage unlikely to be covered on any wide basis.

A few suggestions make sense, like Idina Menzel's Frozen soundtrack smash "Let It Go," but for every one that does is another that makes none. Like Liz Phair's "**** and Run," in which the singer laments awakening next to yet another in a long string of one-night stands instead of being in a relationship. I'm no professional music critic or writer who can make Slate's list, but I think one pretty strong indicator a song won't make the Great American Songbook is that you can't sing it in front of Grandma.

It's hard to say what exactly the panelists thought made their suggestions a good fit for the Songbook concept and maybe that's the problem, that they didn't really know themselves. Either way the idea that someone is going to karaoke or re-record a version of Eminem's "Lose Yourself" in, say, 2065, means these suggestions may be filed and forgotten.

Inferia Criteria?

A couple of years ago Mental Floss writer Rebecca Pahle created a list of the most annoying holiday songs ever, which was updated this past week. I'm not sure what the update was since the story doesn't identify it, but the notice is right there next to the date so I'm sure there's a change in there somewhere.

What there isn't are songs that really matter. I won't say Ms. Pahle is wrong about their annoyingness because I've heard of one or two and they are indeed annoying. But the bulk of them are completely foreign to me and it seems that to be annoying a Christmas song should have the potential to be heard. I've delved before into which Christmas season music I find annoying and why so there's no need to rehash that mess -- or bring "Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire" into my brain again.

But even if you disagree with me and find it to be a wonderful song, I think we'd probably both say that it's hard to be all that annoyed by Sean Banan's "Gott Nytt Jul" because I had literally never heard of it until reading Pahle's article. Seems like another reason to stick with hymns for Christmas.

Artificial Tunage

So the Spotify music streaming service is trying to develop a system in which an Artificial Intelligence algorithm will compose music with no human input whatsoever.

I suppose that the proper way to phrase the question is something like, "Why?" or "What do they want to accomplish?" or something equally measured and polite. And avoiding the comparison jokes that imply how a significant percentage of the pop music released today seems to have no human input whatsoever either. So I'll do both.

Nah, I can't. I'll ask the question in the way I think it is best phrased: "What the hell do you want to go and do that for?"

Blue Tunes

Although Melody Gardot has experimented with several styles and rhythms of music during her career, her roots in quiet, reflective jazz have always remained, sometimes more above the surface, sometimes less. With her fifth studio album, Sunset in the Blue, Gardot circles back to those roots but expands her palette to add orchestral arrangements to the spare drums, keys and bass that brought her into the business on Worrisome Heart. The result is a wonderful time tunnel to the middle of the 20th century; a simultaneously relaxing and recharging visit to the era when vocalists reigned supreme in the craft.

Sunset opens with "If You Love Me," a plea to the potential lover to declare his feelings and intentions -- but gently and carefully, as might befit a couple who have both seen their share of hurried heartbreak: "Come in close but come in slowly, now." "C'est Magnifique" follows, mostly in Portuguese and easily  one of the most beautiful performances Gardot has ever recorded -- her voice light enough on the ear it wouldn't leave tracks in the snow as she and Portuguese vocalist António Zambujo trade back and forth in a duet that sounds for all the world like the opening theme to a lost Audrey Hepburn movie. The title track is a wistful lament on the inevitable passage of time, and Gardot tucks two more numbers in Portuguese into the middle of the album, the dreamy "Um Biejo" and peppy "Ninguém, Ninguém." The latter's upbeat rhythm belies its   wistful reflection on a past relationship -- perhaps one of the same ones that brought the singer of the first track to her caution about going slow.

"From Paris With Love" is a sketch of an afternoon in one of that city's cafés, moving then into the reflective "Ave Maria" and delicately lovely covers of Henry Mancini's "Moon River" and Frank Sinatra's version of Sammy Cahn's "I Fall in Love too Easily."

"Little Something," a duet with Sting, closes the album with a bright dance floor rhythm the covers up the two protagonists promising each other that they "could be a little something," a playful kind of fling without the baggage and attachment that weighed down the relationships that each of them had before. But both have a hint of desperation in their words. On the one hand they try to convince the other that such a fling would be a fun, no-strings-attached time together. But on the other they sound as if they're trying to convince themselves that they can enter such a relationship without developing the attachments from the past -- and trying a little too hard, at that.

Although her experimentation yielded some good music, the return to this style of quiet jazz makes it clear where Gardot's strengths as a songwriter and vocalist lie. Sunset offers evidence that even within that style there's plenty of room to stretch as an artist and still make one of the year's top vocal albums.

Edited on 10/27/20 to correct lyric quote.

He Done Told You Once

Charlie Daniels will probably forever be best known for his tale of a wager and music contest between a young man named Johnny and the Prince of Darkness. He may not have been the best fiddler in modern country, southern rock, gospel or bluegrass music, but it's hard to imagine anyone else who's in the top 10 in all four of those categories.

Here, performing at a church conference in Jerusalem in 2013, he opens by playing the Israeli national anthem, "Hatikvah" before segueing into a blistering performance of "I'll Fly Away." We thus have the spectacle of an audience singing along in Hebrew accompanied by one of America's proudest rednecks, proof that music bridges a lot more divisions than do politicians, activists, screaming in people's faces and pulling down statues because they can't fight back.

Daniels closes the Alfred Brumley classic with a little call-and-response testimony about how "one of these mornings" he's going to spread his wings and fly away. The little chuckle and grin this promise brings to his face makes this clip a highlight listen on YouTube today as the fast fiddle is stilled and the crown of an enormous hat breaks through the clouds at the Pearly Gates.

Daniels was 83.

Ivories, Tickled

The best way to appreciate what "Little Richard" Penniman meant to the creation of rock and roll music is to listen to some of his hits, like "Good Golly, Miss Molly", "Keep A Knockin" and so on. He didn't write every one of his hits but whenever he did a song the resulting version was his and his alone, even when the original might have been pretty darn good as well. Bobby Troup may have written "The Girl Can't Help It" as the title track for the Jayne Mansfield movie, but it took Little Richard to make you believe it.

Penniman passed today at 87. His death leaves the 84-year-old Jerry Lee Lewis, Penniman's fellow piano man, as just about the final rock and roll pioneer still living. And no, nobody saw that coming.

Spot, Marked

Sheltering in place and stuff has put your humble blogger in something of a punk mood (despite some unease with some of the lyrics to "Anarchy in the U.K.," I have never understood Johnny Rotten's snarled "I wanna be/anarchy" so well as I do right now).

So surprise! One of the original Los Angeles punk voices, X, dropped a brand-new album earlier this week, several months earlier than planned. Alphabetland is the first time all four of the original members have released anything since Ain't Love Grand in 1985. Despite the fact that the youngest original members are 64, the 11 tunes they rip through in 30 minutes can best be described by the sentence that several of them repeat in the above-linked Randall Roberts' Los Angeles Times story:

"It sounds like an X album."

It does. Hope my neighbors like it.

Internet Justifies Existence

For most of my adult life, I held it as an iron rule that nobody but Ray Charles should be allowed to play the song he'd made a hit, 1959's "What'd I Say."

Then, during one of the random playlists I cued up while working this afternoon, YouTube offered this:



I stand corrected.