Category: Episodes

604. Charles Mingus

~ ernopepper ~ Leave a comment

(September 2024) Episode 604 is CHARLES MINGUS. I feel sheepish in my jazz artist write-ups because I have such a weak foundation in the genre. Thus my reviews are mostly experiential and ill-informed by history or context. I really liked listening to Charles Mingus. There’s a wide range here from bebop to post-bop, avant-garde and big band. He is known as an iconoclast and that comes through, especially in the group improvisation dynamic which treads into the land of free jazz that I like. Centering most things (he played piano too) is Mingus’ phenomenal bass playing.

Favorite album: Pithecanthropus Erectus

Favorite song: Hobo Ho

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: I checked off the albums I liked as I went, and they turned out to be what critics rate highly, so I felt I was on the right track.  They are Pithecanthropus Erectus, Tijuana Moods, Mingus Ah Um, and Let the Children Hear Music.

603. Taj Mahal

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Episode 603 is TAJ MAHAL. You can label him a blues artist but that’s rather inadequate. That’s where his music is grounded, but he has spread widely over a 55+ year recording career, fusing with or featuring calypso, reggae, trad jazz, Great American Songbook, etc. His early recordings are a throwback to a simpler country blues style, and it’s interesting to note that his first albums came out in 1968, the year that famous rock bands pivoted back to basics (Taj Mahal hung out with the Rolling Stones). He played in fingerpick style, so the recordings in that mode, mostly early on but he returned to them, are my favorite.

Favorite album: Giant Step/De Ole Folks at Home

Favorite song: Leaving Trunk

Favorite album (later): Labor of Love

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: There’s so much diversity it’s hard to direct someone. But I think any of the first five albums (1968-72) are fine country blues offerings.

602. Harry Nilsson

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(September 2024) Episode 602 is HARRY NILSSON. He is an enigma. An immeasurably talented songwriter for whom many of his best-known recordings are covers. Fame despite rarely touring. A Beatle buddy. Having two rock stars die in his apartment. His first albums are first-rate baroque pop (no wonder Paul and John sought him out) but his style (and signing voice) shifted back and forth over the years, from Great American Songbook to childrens, soft rock, Caribbean, piano troubadour and back. “Jump into the Fire” was his only true rocker (he never did anything else like it) but its baseline* is as indelible as that scene in Goodfellas that it helped make famous. Most of all it is his amazing songwriting skills I would keep coming back to.

Favorite album: Nilsson Schmilsson

Favorite song (original): Jump into the Fire

Favorite song (cover): Without You**

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: There’s a lot here depending on your taste. Nilsson Schmilsson is his most well-rounded. The early Pandemonium Shadow Show and Aerial Ballet are peak baroque pop. Some may prefer the troubadour stuff on Nilsson Sings Newman and Little Touch but not me.

* RIP Herbie Flowers

** by Pete Ham and Tony Evans of the perennially underrated Badfinger

601. Agent Orange

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(September 2024) Episode 601 is AGENT ORANGE. They are written up as pioneers of surf-punk so I thought they’d be what The Cramps are to rockabilly-punk. And my college roommate had a big poster of them on his dorm wall. Both these things made me expect something more than I found. The surf thing seems limited to (decent) covers of “Pipeline” and “Miserlou,” and beyond first two EPs the rest bored me. Mushy pop-punk, like the Blink 182 of the 1980s, but with even less kick.

Favorite album: Living in Darkness

Favorite song: Bloodstains

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: The Bloodstains and Bitchin’ Summer

600. Tengger Cavalry

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(September 2024) Episode 600 is TENGGER CAVALRY. As I wrote in the episode on Nine Treasures, heavy metal seems a natural medium for expression of Mongol culture and mythology, similar in a way as it does for Nordic/Viking. And throat-singing and death growl provide similar vocal textures. Tengger Cavalry is fusion of genres and people: it was formed by a Beijing-born man of Mongol-Chinese heritage while a student in New York, and the band included both Mongols and non-Asians. I enjoyed their first couple albums, but after that it seemed to fall into a pattern of a drop-tuned metal riff followed by a melodic string line, repeated over and over. Thus, overall the fusion feels somewhat artificial rather than transformative. I’m going to try other Mongolian folk metal to see if I can find that.

Favorite album: Sunesu Cavalry

Favorite song: Cavalry Folk

Compared to expectations: ↓

Recommendation: Sunesu Cavalry is all you need.

599. Arlo Guthrie

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(September 2024) Episode 599 is ARLO GUTHRIE. I read one review that characterized him as a three-time one-hit wonder (“Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” “Coming into Los Angeles,” “City of New Orleans”), which is both apt and unfair. It’s always a challenge for an artist with a famous last name, and with a voice not unlike Dylan, Arlo Guthrie can never avoid comparisons to the greats. He deserves renown for his own long recording and performing career. But taken as a whole, his songs are Berkshires-based roots music, the basic fare of countless PBS specials, but not so distinctive. I think he would be more enjoyable in concert than on record. He does carry on his father’s social/political themes.

Favorite album: Hobo’s Lullaby

Favorite song: City of New Orleans

Favorite song (original composition): Alice’s Restaurant Massacree

Best late-period album: Mystic Journey

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: a best-of is enough

598. Possessed

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(August 2024) Episode 598 of the “opus project” is POSSESSED. They combined the hyper-speed of emergent thrash metal with punk rock-style growled vocals to form what, in retrospect, some call the first death metal album and band. Helping shape this legacy were their devil lyrics, which were both a cause of and lovely response to the Satanic Panic lunacy of the mid-1980s. Despite exposure by a college roommate, I was not into this stuff at the time, which is a regret. This is good stuff. They regrouped and issued a long-awaited third album in 2019, which is a quality effort.

Favorite album: Seven Churches

Favorite song: The Exorcist

Compared to expectations: ↑

Recommendation: All three albums are good, but try the first as an O.G.

597. Bo Diddley

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(August 2024) Episode 597 is BO DIDDLEY. Take just the first eponymous album (a collection of singles); the influence on rock music of those songs is as immeasurable as the number of times they have been covered. There’s the classic “chonk, chonk, chonk… chonk-chonk” rhythm that now bears his name. But also the tremolo, which anticipates the explosion of guitar effects the next decade. His scene was never confined to blues, rock or R&B. He never again had the success of those early records, but he retained fame and recognition. I did enjoy his turn to soul/funk in the early 1970s.

Favorite album: Bo Diddley

Favorite song: Bo Diddley*

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: That first album functions as a greatest hits record..

 * the first trifecta (same artist/album/song) of the Opus Project

596. John Oswald

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(August 2024) Episode 596 is JOHN OSWALD. A Canadian avant-garde composer, he is best known for Plunderphonics, a masterwork of tape editing and sound collage. While sampling existed before and would become standard as an additive within hip hop and other genres, Plunderphonics elevates sampling to the entirety of the art form. It was a sort of Bible to me, as Plunderphonics landed at a time when I was doing my own experiments with mashups on tape. Another notable work is Greyfolded, a collage made from more than 100 recordings of the Grateful Dead’s “Dark Star” over decades. Oswald’s work extends to instrumental avant-garde experimentalism, scores for dance, and other stuff.

Favorite album: Plunderphonics

Favorite song: Power

Favorite non-sample piece: Aparanthesi

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: Plunderphonics is essential; or try its extended compilation Plunderphonics 69/96.

595. The Weeklings

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(August 2024) Episode 595 is THE WEEKLINGS. I was blown away by “Little Tease,” perhaps the best facsimile of 1963 Beatles I’ve ever heard. Who did this? It was the Weeklings, a wholly intentional Beatles homage project led by songwriter, collaborator, and former Styx member Glen Burtnik. And they do homage quite well. Their recordings are a mix of enjoyable songs written in that style and (less enjoyable) covers of second-tier Beatles songs. Like the Rutles, the gold standard of Beatles-imitation, the Weeklings drop little lyrical and musical Beatles references in their songs. But they suffer from what I call the “That Thing You Do” conundrum: a song can be wonderous by perfectly mimicking the structure, harmonies and hooks of a Beatles song, but it suffers from not sounding like one due to modern recording and processing techniques (especially drums). (Of course the Weeklings covered “That Thing You Do.”)

Favorite album: The Weeklings

Favorite song: Little Tease

Compared to expectations: same

Recommendation: It’s worth checking out how well they imitate the Beatles (generally best on the first album) but there’s not much to keep you after.