Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

HNIA: By George, I think I've got it

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 04:52:37 -0800

A lot of those bands who are critics' darlings, I just don't "get." That's odd, considering that such bands are usually the brainchild of an obsessive music geek, and as an obsessive music geek myself, shouldn't all of music geekdom appeal to me? It doesn't, though; all too often I just can't find anything in the music that I can hold onto, or remember, or get excited about. Sometimes I just need a key, whether it is a single work that then unlocks my understanding of the whole oeuvre, or someone else's keen observation. (Somewhere in there is a private key/public key encryption metaphor, but I can't quite work out the translation.) I gleefully ridiculed Jackson Pollock until my art history professor mentioned the "rhythm" in Pollock's paintings, and then I saw it, and that's all I needed to appreciate Pollock. (I've seen Lavender Mist countless times in the East Wing of the National Gallery of Art; I prefer to call it Purple Haze.) So it is with His Name is Alive, the Michigan-based project of music geek Warren DeFever, who keeps shortening his name so that on this year's Xmmer album he is credited as simply "War." Unlike his previous albums, Xmmer connected with me, to the extent that "How Dark Is Your Dark Side" is one of the two songs stuck in my head this week:

04 How Dark Is Your Dark Side

His Name Is Alive

Maybe it's that War's work with Michigan Afrobeat band Nomo, of whom I'm a big fan, has bled into this album and given it a vibe I can handle. (Nomo bandleader Elliot Bergman plays a little on it, and War has taken up the mbira, a staple of Nomo's sound.) And I can never resist a fat synth riff like the one on "Dark." Whatever the reason, I really like this album, and now I look forward to listening to the back catalog with new ears.

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Shelleyan Orphan returns!

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:04:11 -0700

A few months ago I decided to make a renewed effort to keep track of my favorite bands and musicians, and MySpace seemed like an easy way to do it: make friends, sit back, and watch their bulletins roll in. So I friended everyone I could think of, and I was surprised to find that a lot of bands I thought were defunct had MySpace pages anyway. In some cases the band had reformed, in others the page is maintained by a former member, and in still other cases the page is maintained by a fan. The page for Shelleyan Orphan, the duo of Caroline Crawley and Jem Tayle, who haven't released an album since 1992, is fan-maintained. So it was quite a thrill yesterday to see the bulletin that Shelleyan Orphan would be performing again! It's just one show, and it's in London (across the Atlantic from me), at an environmental conference with an exorbitant admission fee, so I can't see it, but the knowledge that they are still together and making music is comforting. I remember when their first album, Helleborine, arrived at the Record World in Ballston Common (where I was manager) in 1987. This was back in the days when if you wanted to hear an album, you had to buy it first. But the album cover (shown below) was so enthalling--two plaster life-masks set in a wispy sea-green (that's Crayola sea green) background with Brian Froud-like faeries peeking through--and the instrumentation so appealing (violin, viola, cello, oboe, flute, cor anglais, clarinet, bassoon, harpsichord, piano, double bass, mandolin, harp) that I bought it unheard (with my 30% employee discount). And I was not disappointed: Helleborine is the finest orchestral chamber pop album ever made, not to be confused with indie milquetoast "chamber pop" like Belle and Sebastian and their ilk. It is the musical equivalent of a Pre-Raphaelite painting, concerned with myth, love, and death, substituting gorgeous, sumptuous musical arrangements for gorgeous, sumptuous images. It is a masterpiece of English pastoral music. Here is a beautiful song about tombstones, "Epitaph and Ivy Woe":

02-Epitaph Ivy and Woe

Shelleyan Orphan

And here's a video for "Cavalry of Cloud," also from Helleborine:

I give them extra points for not misspelling "cavalry" as "calvary," as just about everyone else does. Shelleyan Orphan dropped the chamber orchestra for their two other albums, Century Flower and Humroot, which is not surprising since Helleborine wasn't a big seller and it must have cost a lot to pay all those musicians. The results were still pleasing, but not on the level of the shining beacon that is Helleborine.

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Sports

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 15:37:18 -0700

This post was suggested by my old partner in record sales, "B.B. on Mars," a.k.a. Platters That Matter Records, who sent me some mp3s he ripped from vinyl. Sure enough, while I've been concentrating on cop and spy music, I've been overlooking sports show themes. (Maybe because I never watched sports shows.) But they fit! "Score" by Bob's Band was the theme for ABC's NFL Monday Night Football in 1972. "Bob's Band" was actually composer/ conductor/ arranger/ orchestrator/ songwriter/ record producer Charles Fox, according to blaxploitation.com. Among Fox's other credits are the theme songs to Love, American Style , Laverne and Shirley, and The Love Boat; Jim Croce's "I Got a Name" and Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly With His Song;" and a whole slew of movie and TV scores, including the hysterical Strange Brew, Barbarella, and... "lesser-known films" would be the polite way to put it. He is still active, having written the score for a Zorro ballet (!) in 2003. Here, then, is "Score," which gets my vote as his crowning achievement:

02 score

Bob's Band

That reminded me that I was a big fan of another sports theme; a fake sports theme, actually. In 1986, British studio wizards (and 4A.D. odd men out) Colourbox took a shot at coming up with a new World Cup Theme for television. It wasn't accepted (officially), but it made one heck of a dance platter:

01 - The Official Colourbox World Cup Theme 12'

Colourbox

And then they disappeared. Reminiscing back to college radio days (again), I remember the sports guys asking me for some "energetic" music to lead into their lacrosse coverage. This song hadn't come out yet, but I did hook them up with extended-version intros from Blue Zoo's "Cry Boy Cry" and The Puppets' "The Way of Life." Must look for those...

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