OLD FART AT PLAY
JUNE 2001
column sixteen
By Tom McCarter

You can hear me live on my radio show at www.kusp.org Saturday mornings from 2-5am Pacific time, every other week, starting 6/23. You can check out playlists for the show at the Dreaming of Babylon link.

JUNE 2001

I am happy to report that I am not the only old fart at play out in the universe. While most of my acquaintances were tied up with their daily lives, relationships, laundry, etc., I, and a few thousand others sentient beings in my age bracket were sunning themselves at Stern Grove in San Francisco, and listening to Dr. John play his stellar New Orleans fusion piano boogie, for free. A great space and a great show, spanning his entire repertoire. If you live nearby, or are maybe just coming to visit San Francisco this summer, check out www.sterngrove.com for a full listing of the free shows they will be putting on each week. Every one is worth the trip. I also saw The Sons of Champlin perform at The Fillmore recently and I don’t think there was anyone there under 40. It was pretty cool. And the show was terrific. Here’s probably the last remaining band from San Francisco in the ‘60s that still has most of it’s remaining members, and they can still play great rock (and funk). They cooked for almost three hours straight! Amazingly, the crowd was on their feet and dancing the entire time.

Another great show was The Flatlanders, which consists of Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, and Butch Hancock, three great performers from Texas. They had apparently all started out in this one band, gone their separate ways, gotten famous, and got back together again. I have seen each of them separately, so it was a real treat to see them all together. Aqll these groups may still be on tour, so check your papers.

I apologize for not bringing out a new addition of this column sooner. I have moved, got a new job, been busy with several projects, and haven’t had time. Add to that my 5 wpm hunt and peck style of typing, which makes it take a lot of time to put these out. But I enjoy sharing music with other people, which is why I have kept my radio show, even though I live an hour away now. I will be on every other week starting on 6/23. In the process of moving and packing up and unpacking my cds, I discovered several that I was no longer listening to. Or I had several by a certain artist and liked other releases better. Or I was just holding on to it to play on my radio show. Anyway, I traded in over 100 cds and, as a result, I have been purchasing and listening to a lot of great music in the intervening months, and would love to turn you on to some of it.

I am happy to say that Secadora has a new cd out, Little Pieces of Paper, and it is a wonder. I have been following this band for a few years, and was lucky to catch them recently in concert. They have done a very courageous thing and switched gears musically. Much as I enjoyed their previous incarnation, which was similar in approach to The Pixies, one of my favorite bands, they have discarded the slash and burn guitars and become a lot subtler. And I like it. They have also stripped down and gone without a bass player. The songs an the cd start out almost minimalist, with Andrienne Robillard’s smooth vocals drawing you in, challenging you to actually listen to the words. There is barely a hint of what is to come. As the disc progresses, it builds sonically, as guitarist Daniel Lowrie adds his own special effects. Drummer Christian Serra admirably holds down the entire bottom.  The final track pulls the new directions this band is heading together. As much as I love this disc, I think it will be the springboard to some terrific music in the future. Secadora has created music uniquely their own and I invite you into their world. You can check them out at www.secadora.com.

The new Cowboy Junkies disc, Open, is an answer to a prayer. When The Trinity Sessions, their first album, came out, I loved it, but the subsequent releases were disappointing and nothing like the original. Getting a major label deal is sometimes a curse for bands. Now the family that plays together have their own label and have produced the album I always wished they had. This one is better than the original. Or, at least, louder. The sonic level is turned up a couple of notches almost throughout the disc. Margo Timmins’ vocals are almost drowned out by Michael Timmins’ squawking guitar on occasion. The singing and playing are wonderful, however. If you have lost faith, come back into the fold. If you are a true believer, here is the holy grail. If you love this band, check out their performance of  “Ooh, Las Vegas” on the recent tribute to Gram Parsons, Return of the Grievous Angel. It smokes!

Speaking of Gram Parsons, I recently stumbled another grail, Sleepless Nights, a posthumously released collection of out takes by the Flying Burrito Bros. and solo Gram recordings (with Emmylou Harris!). It is a very difficult album to find and I have been outbid a couple of time on eBay. Imagine my surprise when I found it on cd as a Japanese import! A lot of times when you get bonus tracks on a cd, you can tell why the artist left those tracks off the original album. If you are a junkie like me, you don’t care. Here, however, is a full album’s worth of quality unheard cuts, little masterpieces from one of the masters of song craft. Mixed in are a couple of his most famous tracks, but the others hold their own. Order it if you can.

In that cosmic cowboy vein, a new pioneer is Jim White. I heard about him on NPR. Now I have one of his discs, No Such Place, and while I’m not knocked out by it, it’s definitely going to get some play on the show. He’s got a great drawl, mixing country phrasing with rock, singing with spoken word, acoustic with electric, and all with a sonic wash infusing each cut. If you like the Cowboy Junkies, these tracks will take you further afield.

One of my favorite cds is Exile by Geoffrey Oryema, a transplanted Ugandan who resides in France, and was discovered by Peter Gabriel (and plays on his label, RealWorld). Oryema incorporates a lot of what I assume is his native music and vocals into compositions which alternate between fast and slow. He is a master of the mbira, the African thumb piano, which he plays extensively, and a good guitar craftsman, as well. These are all augmented with electronic effects provided by Brian Eno and Gabriel himself. But it is his vocals, especially on the slow tunes, that mesmerize me. I saw him live once at the WOMAD Festival, stripped of the sonics, and he still blew me away. Now I have his follow up to that disc, Beat the Border, and it is, on a certain level, even more esoteric than the first. It is as if he is creating his own musical language, incorporating several different elements. Most of the tracks are slow, but they don’t meander. All the sonics are there, but used to even better effect in most cases. The album draws me in slowly, like a gentle riptide. I don’t even notice, and I’m digging the groove the whole time.

Bola Sete was one of the great samba players discovered in Brazil back in the 50s and imported to America to create the bossa nova craze which took hold in the early 60s. Most of his longs out of print albums consist of short tracks in this vein. He also cut a couple of albums with Vince Guaraldi, a jazz pianist (famous for the Charlie Brown soundtracks). He cut one great album of solo guitar produced John Fahey, Ocean, which is also out of print. None of his albums have been released on cd. Until now. And it is one of his best, Bola Sete at the Monterey Jazz Festival. Recorded in ’62, Bola Sete plays his heart out on an instrument called a lutar, which is a combination of a lute and a guitar. Included are tracks not on the album from the show. It is all wonderful, with an excellent backing band. The showstopper is a 17-minute tour de force of excerpts from the film Black Orpheus. The only drawback to the disc is that the tracks do not appear in the order they were played at the concert. Do not let this minor distraction prevent you from purchasing this disc.

Last, but not least, Is a new release of an old album from Taj Mahal, The Real Thing, on cd. Taj had released his first three albums, which both exposed people to traditional blues, and then turned the blues on its collective ear. On this release, Taj playing live at the Fillmore East and takes the blues out even further, incorporating horns (including tubas!), r’n’b and funk. And he stretches these tunes out to marvelous effect. There are some great jams among the crack musicians he has brought for this gig. Even the bonus tracks rock.

Next time, I will begin taking you through a tour of my collection, starting with “A” artists, and we will slowly work through to “Z”, which will take a few years, as I explain to you why I love these discs and continue to hold on to them. I will also introduce new discoveries as they happen. I will not be posting on a monthly basis, but as time allows.

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