If you’re looking for something to listen to, NPR is streaming Owen Pallet’s live set from Webster Hall last week. I’ve seen him live a few times and he strikes me as one of the rare, gigantic geniuses of music currently working. He’s not just a fully accomplished and completely wonderful orchestral arranger, he’s got the soul of a pop songwriter. The two meet in the middle in the most striking and beautiful way possible. His live sets are always a special treat- He never seems to play a song the same way twice. Big songs get a minimal treatment and quiet songs get a little lusher. Add in a couple of live-only songs and it’s always a thrill when a full set pops up. Give it a listen.
Bonnie Prince Billy is bar none my favorite live performer ever. He always looks like he’s about to lunge off the stage. I’ve seen any number of unhinged avant-garde performers in the past, none of the conjure Will Oldham’s strange gaze. Here is he is playing with one of my very favorite guitarists in the universe, Emmett Kelly. They just put out a record together and it is predictably wonderful. Murray and I saw them play together last year at the Apollo, where they were joined by Jim fucking White and Cheyenne Minze, which means it was like the X-Men of weirdo Appalachian folk music.
Anyway, definitely stick around for the second song in the video. It’s my favorite thing this year.
Doesn’t it just look like the song is leaping right out of him? Amazing. I’ll never get tired of it.
The Replacements wrote a song about him called “Alex Chilton”, here’s Paul Westerberg singing it some 15 years later:
“Children by the million sing for Alex Chilton/ when he comes ’round
They sing “I’m in love. What’s that song?/I’m in love with that song.”
I heard my first Big Star song when I was 15 and I didn’t really get it. It was years until I really dug into Big Star, until it really made sense to me, but a song like is. It’s one of those songs that when you get it, it’s like someone wrote it for you:
RIP Alex. Seemed like a nice guy.
Alex Chilton died yesterday which is the saddest celebrity death of my young life. He was in a whole mess of bands, scoring a big hit with The Boxtops in 1967, then going on to start Big Star. Those Big Star records are absolutely legendary, but they’re the kind of thing you listen to and go: “Wait, this sounds like everything else” until you realize this was the FIRST time anyone had made music sound like this. Later in life he was a mercurial figure and dedicated his time to a lots of blues stuff, awareness etc. But he was also a genius songwriter and a fabulous guitarist. He’s been an influence on everyone who’s ever written a pop song after 1975. A serious bummer, through and through.
To be blunt about it: I’ve been busting my ass the last few days. I have a hellish afterschool class that is best titled “Me Vs. 25 1st Graders”. I don’t blame them (THOUGHT EXPERIMENT: You are 5 years old. A weird Korean guy walks into the room and tries to teach you Korean, but he only speaks Korean. What do you do?), but it has quickly become the most difficult thing I have ever had to do. My spare time has evaporated as I scramble around trying to think up new ways to keep them from tearing ass around the room, ripping everything off the walls while I futilely attempt to hold back the torrents of trouble that are amassing. I’ll recount the finer episodes later. This is about “In C”.
“In C” is the piece of music that puts my head back together when it has been rearranged. It is the piece of music that almost single handedly sponsored the American minimalist movement in contemporary classical music. Dudes like Steve Reich and John Adams might not be about were it not for Terry Riley’s harebrained idea to change music by destroying it. Radiolab (The 100% foolproof barometer for how much I like a person is how diehard of a Radiolab fan they are) recently did a small piece on it. And it was wonderful.
Anyway, the original recording of In C, part one, here:
Those of you with ambitions can find literally dozens and dozens of covers, remixes and performances of In C. They are almost all totally lovely. They put me back together.
We went to Mokpo this weekend. We slept in a 500 year old Buddhist temple! We meditated with monks before dawn! We went back to sleep! Then other things happened. We’ll catch you up this week. School starts again tomorrow which is a goodbad thing. We’ve been slow to update the last few weeks as a couple of other projects have consumed our free time. I’m not going to talk about them yet- The best way to make sure a project never gets finished is to start talking about it to other people and then it’s like INEEDTOGETTHISDONEOREVERYONEWILLBEDISSAPOINTEDINME and you get to a point where the PRESSURE IS OVERWHELMING and you get to that “Whatever, dude, I don’t need your approval!”/”NO DAD WHAT ABOUT YOU” point and then you get to the “I’m an adult, I do what I want!” phase and you’ve CANCELED YOUR PROJECT over an imaginary concern.
Does anyone else do that? Chew on this, gnarly finger-tapping action around the 2:00 mark:
Yo La tengo – A Take Away Show – Part 1 from La Blogotheque on Vimeo.
I am bad at skiing, and that’s a story that will tell itself in due time, but first: At around 3:45 mark. Our Way To Fall is one of my very favorite songs, ever, +5. This is a particularly lovely rendition of it.
