Kirk Samuelson » music

There are no dirty words, ever. – L. Cohen

Kirk Samuelson — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 04:40:16 +0000

A lady journalist from Winnepeg once said he had the stoop of an aged crop picker and the face of a little boy.

Pitchfork has a pre-Songs of Leonard Cohen documentary about Leonard Cohen, the renowned poet. He does some stand-up comedy, smokes some cigarettes, reads aloud much of his poetry, plays with the I Ching, speaks French (naturally), and bits of Greek. He’s a vegetarian. He plays a guitar and sings, then plays a harmonic, poorly. He talks about sex. This is Leonard Cohen before he was a musician, a star, a ladies’ man, a spiritual seeker. The surprise, if it is a surprise, is that he already was all of those things in 1964 when this film was made. He’d sold more than 400,000 copies of his novel Beautiful Losers, far more than his recording debut sold, at least initially.

As an addendum, the end of the film has a bit of self-referencing as Cohen watches footage of himself sleeping and bathing. It’s an interesting moment because it presages what became something of a trend by the late 60′s. The Rolling Stones documentary Gimme Shelter ends in an editing room. In 1969 the art film Medium Cool took self consciousness to new heights.

Speaking of metal

Kirk Samuelson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:44:33 +0000

Someone in the comments on the aforementioned NYT article found the term “math metal” baffling. Listen and it’ll all make sense.

Click here to view the embedded video.

FWIW, I believe it’s usually referred to as “mathcore”. Don’t want to piss off the purists.

Getting metal

Kirk Samuelson — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 03:34:24 +0000

This dude writes a story in the NYT on how death metal kept him sane while he was unemployed and depressed and gets blasted in the comments for mentioning bands like Anthrax and Pantera who are, as you surely know, not remotely death metal. Neither is Slayer or Metallica or probably all the other metal bands the average music listener can name. But that’s OK. It’s not actually an article about death metal, per se – it’s about music as a palliative. I’m OK with that too but I don’t think it’s really what makes (some) metal great. If it’s really good its for the same reasons that Miles Davis is good or Frank Zappa is good. Maybe metal is more one-dimensional than say, Stravinsky. Maybe, but not by necessity.

Still there is something about the madness and mayhem of extreme metal that makes it appealing to the angst-ridden and world weary. You know – teenagers. John Darnielle totally gets that part:

The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton

Click here to view the embedded video.

That Hail Satan! sends chills up my spine. Really.

But there is still Sonic Youth

Kirk Samuelson — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 18:20:48 +0000

SY is still pretty cool. Their old stuff still sounds great. And some of their newer music, the experimental/noise stuff in particular, is pretty groovy.

In the eighties:

Click here to view the embedded video.

In the aughties:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Skip when shuffling

Kirk Samuelson — Sun, 30 Aug 2009 17:46:42 +0000

This keeps happening. Every time I put iTunes on shuffle and I hit one of the songs from New Day Rising by Hüsker Dü I have the same two thoughts – how dated it sounds now and how this band is held in higher esteem than is warranted. That’s not a huge criticism because they are generally thought to have created some of most worthwhile music from the 80′s. At least in the rock/punk/hardcore vein of things. I don’t think that’s an exaggeration. I’m just suggesting they be pegged one notch lower than that.

I’m really supposed to like this band given the fact that I lived in Minneapolis during their heyday and saw them several times before they were big-ish. And I did like them. I thought I did. But in hindsight it was 80′s noise bands like the Butthole Surfers and folkies like Richard Thompson that have influenced my musical tastes more. Of course, I don’t listen to either of them anymore either. Maybe I’m just fickle.

Nice iTunes feature, by the way:

It also occurs to me that Hüsker Dü may be the only rock band whose name is supposed to have umlauts. At least, I think so – here’s the origin. I’ll give them credit for that. :)

New Skin For The Old Ceremony

Kirk Samuelson — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 17:05:51 +0000

These songs are still pretty great. Surely the best Leonard Cohen record. And his best album title too.

I’ve had most of these songs for, uh, decades, but never the complete collection. I grabbed it when Emusic added it and a bunch of other Sony back catalog stuff (and raised their prices).

Scott Walker

Kirk Samuelson — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 04:47:02 +0000

I’ve only been a fan of Scott Walker since ‘The Drift’ was released in 2006. Maybe I’m always late to the party. On the other hand, who has even heard of Scott Walker? A lot of people apparently. He had mega-hits in Britain as a member of The Walker Brothers in the mid 60′s. His first three solo albums charted too. I’ve listened to ‘The Drift’ lots but my interest was really piqued after watching the documentary “Scott Walker: 30th Century Man“. I figured that his earlier work, especially the teen-idol phase of this career was only interesting because it was so contrary to the rather difficult music he executed so masterfully on ‘The Drift’ and its predecessor ‘Tilt’. Wrong. Scott’s dark and doomy talent was there from the start. He credits Jacques Brel as the inspiration for turning away from pop and towards an uncompromising pursuit of his own artistic vision. He performed songs by Brel on albums that also featured his own songwriting.

Scott Walker had one of the most memorable signing voices in pop music. He said that he wanted the vocals on ‘The Drift’ to just denote a man, singing. Indeed, his voice occupies those songs but doesn’t completely fill them. It’s the sound, that wash of beautiful noise and the exquisite sense of terror that can’t be forgotten.

It was 11 years between “Tilt” and “The Drift”. I hope it doesn’t mean we’ve got 8 more years until the next LP drops. I’m ready for it now.

Click here to view the embedded video.