Farewell.
Alex Chilton gave me the creeps.
In the two or three times I saw him perform in the late '80s, his reputation as a dark presence overshadowed his sporadic brilliance as a musician. Sordid stories about Chilton's recent behavior were more interesting than the music the cult hero was making during that era.
Chilton then favored deliberately amateurish Slim Harpo-style swamp rock and odd interpretations of standards instead of the classic power pop his fans so desperately desired. "Volare" is typical. It's on the out-of-print High Priest. His musical choices make more sense in hindsight, but I sure didn't get it back then. In fact, I felt cheated. I even wondered if an impostor was on stage the first time I saw Chilton.
As has been noted by hundreds of music blogs, Chilton died last week.
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Johnny Maestro of The Crests and Brooklyn Bridge died Wednesday.
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How is it that many of the people who clamor to praise Goldfrapp wouldn't be caught dead listening to pop music by the likes of Shakira, Pink or Katy Perry? The difference is negligible.
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Tim Finn chats with Wanda Jackson about her collaboration with Jack White.
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I recently rediscovered Lone Justice's "Sweet, Sweet Baby (I'm Falling)". The song still gives me chills in spite of Jimmy Iovine's dated production.
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Kansas City Click: The Original Wailers come to the VooDoo Lounge Friday. Joel Francis previewed the show for the Star.
Details are sketchy, but Slim Thug supposedly headlines at Memorial Hall on Saturday.
Mike Moreno and Peter Schlamb perform Sunday at Jardine's.
4 comments:
Re: Goldfrapp - Alison Goldfrapp has a long history of involvement in UK dance music, stretching back to her appearance on the Orbital classic "Are We Here" (and later the InSides and Middle of Nowhere albums), as well as Tricky's Maxinquaye album, not to mention the successful Goldfrapp albums that rode the early 00's wave of downtempo and AOR-electronica that the rest of the world has been listening to for a decade+ now. We here in the States are(not quite just) now getting the Euro-press push.
Whereas Katy Perry, Shakira, et al are tarted up, media-created divas intended to sell records to pubescent teenagers.
Btw, this is Ben from thespeedofsilence.com, thanks for the link!
I'm going to give you a pass, Ben, because you regularly dissect this sort of thing in great detail at Speed of Silence.
That said, I'll bet a good portion of Goldfrapp fans would fail a blindfold test containing 12" remixes of said artists.
ah thanks, well if it were a ricardo villalobos or scuba or floating points remix of whomever i don't think it would be bad. just make sure there's a dub and we'll all be happy
Here's my idea to save (what's left of) the music industry, Ben: Purchasing an album would automatically entitle the buyer to a free download of a dub or chopped and screwed version.
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