Takin’ A Look At myTunes.
Back on my birthday, my brother, sister-in-law, and niece gave me a gift certificate to the iTunes Music Store, which I used to buy a bunch of new music. Over the last four months, Dawn and I bought a bunch of other music, but I didn’t have the opportunity to review it for you, for a variety of reasons. Thanks to all the great contributions we’ve been getting lately on Fluid Imagination, though, I’ve now had the time to put together some thoughts on each of the albums, and for this, the first post filed under the “Good Vibrations” banner, I thought now would be a good time to share a few of them with you.
Earth to America
The ninth studio album from the boys in Widespread Panic, Earth to America celebrates the fact that these boys have been pleasing their audience for 20 years now. Despite the fact that their live album, Light Fuse, Get Away, is one of my all-time favorite live albums, I’ve never been a huge Widespread fan — I love their songs individually, but they usually sound too similar to listen to as a group, whether in album form or in concert. Earth to America reiterated that fact for me.
For example, right now, as I type this, I’m listening to “Ribs and Whiskey,” which is a nice combination of down-home guitar and piano, and the lead singer’s voice sounds filtered through an old-timey microphone. It’s a nice, nice sound, and it fits perfectly with the title. On the other hand, it sounds similar to the opening segment of their tune, “Space Wrangler,” mixed with a little bit of “Diner,” which are two songs that I absolutely love. This is why Widespread kind of pisses me off, because their stuff is so good, but…it all sounds like Widespread.
I understand the issue here. I mean, why would I want Widespread to sound like someone else? And the truth is, I don’t. But what I would like is for them to surprise me every once in a while. Maybe I’m spoiled a little bit. I cut my musical teeth on Phish’s stuff, and their studio albums, while descending in quality near the end, each pushed the band a little further than the album before it. But listening to Earth to America, I’m hard-pressed to say how it differs from Ball, their last album, recorded in 2003.
For those who don’t know, Widespread has had a difficult time over the last three or four years. They lost Michael Houser, one of their founding members and lead guitarist, to pancreatic cancer in 2002. In 2003, they replaced him with George McConnell, a friend of the band who had toured with them for several years. They then released Ball to prove to their audience that they would continue. In 2004, they took a hiatus, deciding to spend time with friends and family, and didn’t return until March 2005. And just this past August, they announced that McConnell was leaving, and that he would be replaced by Jimmy Herring, a guitarist who has played with Aquarium Rescue Unit, the Allman Brothers, and Phil and Friends, to name just a few. I’ve heard Herring play and I’ve been impressed. Here’s hoping he can help bring Widespread Panic a little further down the road.
Music for Two
A live concert performed by banjo-genius Béla Fleck and and bass-master Edgar Meyer. If you’ve never seen these two play together, you might want to watch them perform Bach’s “Two-part invention #6″ on AE’s artist of the week. Either that, or get yourself a copy of the DVD, Live from Bonnaroo Music Festival 2002
Music for Two is a classical album, and it is one of two that I bought this summer. Like most people of our generation, I’m pretty clueless when it comes to classical music. I’d love to be able to get to the point where I can recognize the difference between Bach and Beethoven. I know the former is more fond of technical and formal displays and the latter is more emotion driven, but I only know this because I read portions of Godel, Escher, and Bach and because I saw Immortal Beloved. Of course, knowing this, I can hear it now, but I don’t think I could have come up with any of that on my own.
With that being said, I thoroughly enjoy classical music, especially when played by virtuosos such as Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer. There are solos on this album that just make you want to stand up and applaud in your living room. Béla has fingers that move faster than the speed of sound and Edgar stays with him every note of the way. These two play off each other so well that you stop caring whether their covering a Bach or Beethoven, because the notes go away and all that is left is the music of the men on the stage.
From the very beginning, you’re with these two men. As their fingers speed up, you speed up. As their fingers slow down, you slow down. And because it is a live album, you don’t even have to enjoy the experience on your own. Just when you want to jump up and applaud, you hear a whole crowd doing it for you. The use of crowd noise on a live album makes the experience richer, for sure. The audience is silent for almost every song, as any good classical audience will be, but once in a while, the playing is just too wonderful to not respond to, and after a particularly phenomenal solo, they can’t help but whistle and holler and clap. I can’t recommend Music For Two enough. It is perhaps my favorite musical purchase this year.
The Illustrated Band
This was the surprise hit of my summer collection. The Illustrated Band is the second effort from the band, Vida Blue, which is composed of Page McConnell from Phish, Oteil Burbridge from The Allman Brothers Band, and Russel Batiste from The funky Meters. The band is an “atmospheric-jazz and funk-flavored project.” Their first album was really good. Nothing exciting (it sounded like a bunch of Page’s Phish songs), but good nonetheless. And then I heard about this album.
Here’s the story as I know it. The keyword is “story.”
Page was walking through the streets of Miami Beach when he heard some interesting music coming out of the doors of some bar. He walked in, got a drink, and had himself a listen. The band on stage was the Spam Allstars. During one of the band’s breaks, he introduced himself and when the band went back on, he found himself playing on stage with them. At the end of the night, he proposed a collaboration. He got on the phone with his bandmates in Vida Blue, they flew to Miami, and over two days, they recorded The Illustrated Band.
The Spam Allstars are composed of “DJ Le Spam on turntables and samplers, Adam Zimmon on guitar, Tomas Diaz on timbales and vox, Lazaro Alfonso on congas, AJ Hill and Steve Welsh on saxes, Mercedes Abal on flute, and Chad Bernstein on trombone.” They have a kind of Afro-Cuban sound, funked up by DJ Le Spam. Mix that with the atmospheric jazz and funk flavor of Vida Blue, and you have a tremendously delicius treat in the The Illustrated Band.
The album is only four songs long, but their running time is (respectively) 12:24, 24:06, 4:21, and 20:48, so while it’s only four songs long, it still contains an album’s worth of music. The titular first song is probably my favorite, but that’s only because I usually listen to the album when I’m doing something else (there are no lyrics), and the first song is the only one I’ve really gotten a good chance to listen to. With that being said, the other three songs are great too. Whenever I raise my head from whatever I’m doing, it’s usually because something in one of the songs is just so exciting that it won’t allow me to ignore it.
I can’t recommend this album for everyone, however. It’s jazz foundation and jamband lineage are such that those who prefer their music to be encapsulated in 4:00 minute, verse-verse-chorus-verse-bridge-chorus format will probably find themselves frustrated with the open-ended compositions played on this album. But if you like your music to be free from industrial constraints and infused with the culture of its musicians, then you’re gonna love The Illustrated Band.
Have yourself a listen
Thanks to the wonder of the iMix on iTunes, you can sample the songs on the albums I just reviewed. For those who don’t know, iMixes are an evolutionary cousing of the mix tapes from the eighties, but instead of giving it to the girl who you’re trying to get with, you upload it to iTunes and anyone in the world can get a copy.
I created an iMix with the albums mentioned above. As the Good Vibrations series continues, I’ll add each of the albums to the iMix, and then, when ever I review something that interests you, you’ll be able to get one-click access to it. Enjoy!