Recent listening
I skipped several days there, so here’s to catching up.
Tribe Called Quest: Beats, Rhymes and Life – Extremely underrated. The Tribe gets angry over the whole East Coast/West Coast feud bullshit going down at the time. A clear-eyed, conscious rap album well worth hearing. See video for “Stressed Out”
Jeff Beck: Blow by Blow – Jeff Beck is a fabulous guitarist. Too bad his backing band sounds like they’re doing the soundtrack to a bad seventies comedy or a porno flick most of the time.
Jawbox: For Your Own Special Sweetheart – A pitched battle between melody and noise. Very, very good. Check out the videos for “Savory” and “Cooling Card”
John Williams: Jaws – Unassailably brilliant in the film. Listening to it alone, it’s kind of hokey and the non-shark sequences are way Disney.
Electronic: Raise the Pressure – Electronic not so much. Scanners detect no pressure. Collaboration between frontmen of Echo & The Bunnymen and New Order has flashes of greatness but is overall pretty lacklustre. Check out the video for “Until the End of Time”
Jedi Mind Tricks: The Psycho-Social, Chemical, Biological, and Electro-Magnetic Manipulation of Human Consciousness – Sci-fi hip-hop about new age religions. References scientology and Food of the Gods and chakras and chis and all, but also Voltron, Transformers, Star Wars, Hellraiser, and so forth. Extremely interesting.
Jad Fair & Yo La Tengo: Strange But True – An album of songs created by taking a tabloid headline as the title and writing a song about it. Weird, eerie. Pretty cool.
Ivor Cutler: Ludo – Ivor Cutler was the old guy in Magical Mystery Tour. He is awesome. So incredibly awesome. I really love “I’m Happy!” – ‘I’m happy! I’m happy! and I’ll punch the man who says I’m not!’ and “Good Morning! How Are You? Shut Up!”
James Carter: Gold Sounds – Jazz tribute to Pavement! JAZZ TRIBUTE TO PAVEMENT!
Jethro Tull: Thick as a Brick – I generally hate prog. Because it so rarely sounds like this. Viva la flute music!
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