Album Review: Maggi, Pierce & E.J., Silver

Thanks to smart web radio site Pandora.com, I've discovered an intriguing and incredibly good band: Maggi, Pierce & E.J. Steve Huey at Allmusic sums them up as "hugely eclectic folk-rockers", which is pretty near the mark. The band themselves suggest "Abba meets Zappa", "Fleetwood Mac meets the Pixies", "Ween meets Joni Mitchell", "Bette Midler meets Wilco" and "Sonic Youth meets the Beatles".

The trio is based in Philadelphia and has issued eight self-published albums since 1995. They still don't have a record deal, which, judging from the songs I've heard so far, must be intentional. The release I'm listening to now is their 2005 triple album, Silver, and I don't know where to begin to tell you, Dear Reader, how much it rules.

Maggi, Pierce & E.J. are two men (basso & tenor) and a woman. All of them write songs. In all kinds of styles. And they switch instruments among themselves between songs. And they sing three-part harmony. And much of their lyrics are excellent stand-alone poetry. And they score their own string arrangements. And the three discs of Silver sound like they might be from three different bands! I am, frankly, in awe of their musicianship.

The first disc is titled Morgen, (German for "morning"), and carries six soft folky songs with acoustic guitars, mandolin, piano and the sweetest singing. I'm really taken with the way MP&E harmonise, and particularly by Maggi's reedy soprano on her "Big Falls, WI".

Then you put on the second disc, Mittag (German for "mid-day"), and you're treated to "Kennison", a rousin' & rockin' power pop number about gender-bending. This disc also has the song that turned me on to the band in the first place, "Snowed In With You", which is a really druggy psych song with lots of Hendrixy guitar, but whose lyrics actually speak sweetly about how nice it would be to be snowed-in in a cabin with someone you love. The Nacht (German for "night") disc starts with a bawdy punk rocker with a raucous Maggi yelling about not remembering her bed-fellow's name, and goes on to a metal song about a depressed E.J. staying in bed all day and whacking off!? I haven't listened to all of Silver yet, but I'm sure looking forward to it. Judging from the liner notes, there's jazz and hip-hop there too, and a song with a tuba part.



Even if all I knew about MP&E was the music, I'd be really curious about them. But then there's the image they cultivate and the messages of album covers, liner notes and the web site. Silver has something that looks like a "Parental Advisory" sticker on the cover, but it actually says "Governmental Oppression Despised". Environmental concerns and gender issues keep popping up in their often humorous lyrics. And judging from the materials the band's made available (as a smoke screen?), they seem to live together in a ménage-à-trois household, keeping a dog. Pierce and E.J. look really gay at photo shoots, though there's nothing fey about their music, and Maggi has the heroin-chic looks and emaciated muscularity of a starving model. They're touring all the time, writing songs in Paris, recording in Berlin, posing for silly pics in Glasgow, playing several gigs a week at small venues. In the summer of 2006 they took a two-week walking tour of the 350 km from Philadelphia to Washington D.C., playing spontaneous gigs in the evenings, being covered on video much of the time to make a film, all in a bid for peace.

Maggi, Pierce & E.J. are musical virtuosi. The image I've formed of them is also that of social and political activists: they would fit excellently on a double bill with Roy Zimmerman. Or Fleetwood Mac. Or the Pixies. Or the Beatles. And nobody I know has ever heard of them!

Update same evening: says Maggi, "this review cracked me up! i loved it. as for starving model, you should see me now. i got a big fat belly. see you on the road somewhere....."

[More blog entries about music, review, maggipierceandej, rock, pop; musik, rock, pop, recension, maggipierceandej.]

I'm Your Man

A friend of mine asked me if I could find Leonard Cohen's "I'm Your Man" on-line somewhere. So I did a search on Allmusic to see if I could at least find a snippet of the song. Unexpectedly, this search generated an instant poem consisting entirely of song titles. Try reading it out loud without laughing! I didn't get any further than the third line before cracking up.

I'm Your Man
I'm Your Boogie Man
I'm Not Your Man
I'm Your Man '96
I'm Just Your Man
I'm Your Big Man
I'm Your Yes Man
I'm Your Love Man
I'm Your Main Man
I'm Your Loving Man
I'm Yours Man
I'm Your Candy Man
I'm Your Handy Man
I'm Your Lover Man
I'm Your Lovin' Man
I'm Your Pussy Man
I'm Your Taboo Man
I'm the Man for You
I'm Your Fellow Man
I'm Your Rockin' Man
(I'm Your) Hoochie Coochie Man
I'm Your Puppet
I'm Your Angel
I'm Your Country Man
I'm Your Money
I'm Your Woman
I'm Your Man (G.Ü.N.T.H.E.R.)
I'm Your Travellin' Man
I'm Your Fan
I'm Your Man (Stringbean)
I'm Your Man in the Streets
I'm Your Mechanical Man
I'm Your Santa
I'm Your Sure Thing Man
I'm Yours
I'm Your Man, I'm Your Gal
I'm in the Market for You
I'm Your Master
I'm Your Monkey
I'm in Your Hands
I'm Your Fantasy
I'm Your Monster
I'm Your Man (Don't You Know?)
I'm Your No. 1 Fan
I'm a Young Man
I'm Mad at You
I'm Mad With You
I'm on Your Side
I'm Your Hoochie Coohie Man
I'm a Fool to Want You
(I'm Your) Hoochie Koochie Man [DVD]
I'm Your Hocckie Coochie Man
I'm Your Hoochie Couchie Man
I'm Your Mate
I'm a Hog for You
I'm Your Biggest Fan
I'm Your Oilman
I'm Your Sex Machine
I'm Your Superman
Baby I'm Yours
I'm Leaving You
(I'm Your) Jellyman
I'm Your Greatest Fan
When I'm With You
I'm in Love With You
I'm a Fool for You
I'm Your Girl
I'm the Zydeco Man
I'm Yours Anyhow
Baby I'm-A Want You
I'm an Ordinary Man
(I'm A) Southern Man
I'm Madly in Love With You
I'm Your Natural Woman
I'm Your Sideman

[More blog entries about music, humour, surrealism; musik, humor, surrealism.]

Swedish Psychedelic Rock

Believe it or not, Dear Reader, but Sweden has produced a number of great psychedelic rock records. I'm going to tell you about three of my favourites, all of them with lyrics in Swedish, although the music is Anglo-American in style. But first some background.

The word "psychedelic" originally had nothing to do with music. It's a 1950s neologism meaning "mind manifesting". When hallucinogenic drugs began to become common, there was a debate among American psychiatrists about terminology. Should the drugs be seen as psychotomimetic, that is, do they mimic or cause (temporary) psychosis? This was the wary position. Or should they be seen as unlocking and manifesting a hidden positive potential in the human brain? This was the enthusiastic position, taken by people like Timothy Leary. Medical literature currently simply uses the word "hallucinogenic", since it's an accurate description of the substances' effect without entailing any hypotheses about the neurochemical nature of psychosis. And stoners say "psychedelic", particularly stoner musicians and their fans -- like me.

Psychedelic music was born in the 60s when rock and pop musicians discovered LSD and expressed their experiences with the drug through music. Albums commonly cited as the first examples of psych music are the Beatles' Revolver and the 13th Floor Elevators' Psychedelic Sounds, both released in 1966. One defining characteristic of the style is of course hallucinatory lyrics. But musically, it is largely a matter of the era's rapidly improving sound technology being used to produce weird otherworldly sounds, portraying the sensations produced by LSD. The Beatles' first psych song, "Rain" is heavily processed on all channels, some vocals even running backwards. "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a pounding, gibbering nightmare of tape loops. It would be very hard to produce convincing psych music using only acoustic instruments. It's music fulfilling Rimbaud's 1871 dictum that the poet should proceed through "long, immense and rational derangement of all the senses". Good psychedelic music can't be made while the musician is tripping, it takes a calculating artistic mind. Rational derangement.

So psych was born as pop. But a heavier streak was apparent already with the 13th Floor Elevators. Guitarists in the blues tradition quickly picked up the influences, along with new guitar effect pedals and amp feedback (which had first been committed to vinyl by the Beatles). Thus Jimi Hendrix, the great innovator of psychedelic rock, could make completely insane sounds live in a way that the studio-dwelling Beatles would never even attempt. His debut album Are You Experienced? from 1967 completed the sonic psych palette as we still know it. And people in Sweden were listening.

Our first great psych record is Pugh Rogefeldt's Ja, Dä Ä Dä from 1969. (The title means "Yes it is" in an exaggerated rural dialect, from one of the songs where Rogefeldt plays the part of a jilted lover who tells us through gritted teeth that he feels JUST FINE now that his girlfriend's left him. IT'S FINE. YES IT IS.) And Rogefeldt hadn't just learned the psychedelic lesson: he's funky as all hell too, with the great Georg Wadenius on bass and Janne Carlsson on drums, who had jammed with Hendrix and formed a duo with Bo Hansson. Dear Reader, Steal This Record.

Swedish 70s music unfortunately got bogged down in leftist political correctness and a misdirected concern with authenticity that made sure that ABBA (who were roundly denounced as commercial studio trash at the time) and a few punk acts were the only bands that came out of the decade sounding good. And the 80s were a psychedelic wasteland, no Paisley Underground here. But the 90s saw renewed interest in psych and progressive rock (no, Swedish readers, I'm not referring to Swedish progg). And so we reach another one of my favourite albums.

I'm very proud to say that I was down with Qoph before they even had a record deal. I heard them at a band competition in Stockholm a year or two before they released 1998's Kalejdoskopiska Aktiviteter, and they absolutely blew me away. The album's title means "Kaleidoscopic Activities", and they truly are. This is Hendrix territory with a lot of early 70s prog influences, particularly Captain Beyond whom Qoph outshine entirely. The blues roots are proudly exhibited, and though most of the material is way trippy and experimental, one song is a straight electric blues number. This album is a national treasure.

One of the redeeming qualities of the Swedish 70s obsession with musical authenticity was that the country's ethnic music (mainly fiddle-based) was rediscovered and reimagined by young people. There were good psychedelic takes on this stuff already at the time, notably by Kenny Håkansson and Kebnekaise who are still a great live act. But in my opinion, the best Swedish ethnic psych album is Dungen's Stadsvandringar from 2002 (it means "Strolls through the city"). And the band leader was born only in 1979, after the records that would come to influence him had been in the stores for years. But I don't need to tell you about Dungen, they were on Conan O'Brien a year ago. And they have a new album due next year.

So: Pugh Rogefeldt, funky Swedish psychedelic rock. Qoph, bluesy Swedish psychedelic rock. And Dungen, ethnic Swedish psychedelic rock. You know you need them to finally manifest your minds.

[More blog entries about music, rock, pop, psychedelic, Sweden; musik, rock, pop, psykedelisk.]

Another Bog Body Song

I've talked before about a great song about a bog body, The Triffids' "Jerdacuttup Man". Now Markus Andersson has pointed me to another song in this lyrical niche, The Mountain Goats' "Tollund Man". It's from the 1995 disc Sweden. The Goats are actually mostly one Californian guy named John Darnielle, and the music is a wistful little piece with just an acoustic guitar, a bass and vocals.

Tollund man
by John Darnielle

I was sitting at the edge of the marsh
when the council came to bring me the news.
They handed me a bowl of cooked wild grasses and they
gave me the ceremonial shoes.

Goodbye young Danish women.
Goodbye Danish sky.
Goodbye cold air I am going away.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye.

The Tollund man is an uncommonly well preserved Danish bog body found in 1950 near Silkeborg in Jutland. He was hanged and his body buried in a bog some time in the 4th century BC.

Why these people were killed and bogged is a matter of dispute. Some point to something Tacitus wrote and suggest they were army deserters or gay men, which cannot explain the many female bog bodies. Others contend they were simply criminals, sacrifices or criminals used as sacrifices. Most recently, Allan Lund has suggested that some bog bodies are victims of witch hunts, as occur still in some African cultures. This would explain the often extremely violent deaths of these people, as well as the unusual disposal of their bodies. Bogs may have been seen as safe for getting rid of dangerous bodies with uncanny powers.

[More blog entries about music, mountaingoats, archaeology, denmark; musik, mountaingoats, mosslik, arkeologi, danmark.]

Music Review: Roy Zimmerman, Faulty Intelligence

Roy Zimmerman's new disc Faulty Intelligence has fifteen songs. The playlist is carefully composed with one rootsy revival song, "Glory Bound Train" split into three recurring interludes (it derides Bush II's millennarism). But who listens to albums any more? The first thing I did with the CD when I took it out of the case was to stick it in my PC and rip it to MP3. Then I listened to the songs on my handheld computer: slowly, at intervals, one song at a time, like one would eat a box of expensive chocolate. And since the files were on the handheld, I listened to some in alphabetical order and others on shuffle. I guess my message to musicians is "Forget about song order, just put the files on-line and give me a PayPal button on your web site, please".

Musically, the album is extremely varied, with each song performed and produced in an appropriate style. Zimmerman and his band easily adopt the instrumentation and voice for every occasion. I found myself waiting in vain for a reggae tune. Maybe next time.

Spy spoofing "CIDIAFBI" sounds like the theme from a lost 60s Bond movie. "My Conservative Girlfriend" is a John Denver love song. "Chickenhawk" is an honest-to-goodness country tune about armchair jocks sending the neighbours' kid to war: "I didn't walk the walk but I can talk the talk -- bawk bawk bawk". "Creation Science 101" is a rousing Jerry Lee Lewis number where Zimmerman assumes the role of a teacher at a Christian college. "Hello, NSA" is an early Elvis ballad: "I love you because you really... listen".

"Intelligent Design" is another Bush-bashing country tune, but not directly about evolution as one might expect. "Saddam Shame" is a folkie guitar strummer with exquisite lyrics. "When the Saints Go Marching Into New Orleans" is a perfect-pitch roots blues tune about NOLA -- with a complete horns section. "That Is The War On Terror", sets the album's most seriously angry lyrics to an 80s FM radio rocker.

"Ingles" comments bilingually on the Mexican immigration situation with much Chicano guitar-strumming. It forms an interesting companion piece to Tom Lehrer's slightly chauvinist "In Old Mexico" where the country south of the border is simply somewhere grotty to go on vacation.

The album also offers an astonishingly accurate Al Green impersonation to genuinely soulful accompaniment -- pretty fly for a white guy! Croons Zimmerman in a falsetto so libidinous it'll give you instant bed head: "Abstain with me baby, all night long..."

"Turn Off The Hubble" is a cabaret tune about how much easier it would be for everybody to deal with the Universe if we didn't actually have to know anything about it. This Central European oompah vibe also underpins the sublime "Defenders of Marriage", about how shocking it is that gay people might want to do something so decadent and perverted as to exchange vows and settle down. "It's unnatural!"

Toward the end of the disc, "America" sounds a lot like a token "I'm not a traitor to the nation" number after all the cynicism and satirical vitriol of the other songs. "God bless America – it just might work!" But maybe I'm misreading some layer of irony here.

The bottom line on Roy Zimmerman is that we have a new Tom Lehrer on our hands. But this time he hasn't just got a grand piano and a razor wit, he has a full band, and he's doing every song in a new style. If you like music, if you like satire, and if your politics are even the tiniest bit left of Rush Limbaugh, then this a record for you.

[More blog entries about music, review, satire, politics, royzimmerman; musik, recension, satir, politik, royzimmerman.]

Your Friendly Music Critic

Marketing a work of art through reviews in the media is a risky business. If you're manufacturing vacuum cleaners, all you have to do is make sure your product works well and isn't too expensive, and the media will say so when they test vacuum cleaners. But art is all about taste. Your product may end up in the hands of a reviewer who simply doesn't like vacuum cleaners at all, as it were, and pans them because they aren't toasters. If that happens you haven’t just lost money by sending out stuff for free – the negative publicity may also hurt sales.

But all artists need media exposure to survive. So what do you do? You identify reviewers who like your kind of art, and who have access to media with a reasonable number of readers, and you send them your product. This happened to me for the first time today.

Metaphor Records in San Anselmo, California, knows (from Google) that I’m a Roy Zimmerman fan and (from Technorati) that my blog has a not inconsiderable number of daily readers. They’re gambling that sending Zimmerman’s new album to people like me will help create the all-important buzz among potential buyers of the album. Such people are likely to be vastly overrepresented among the readers of a blog like mine, and so the blog functions as a highly selective marketing channel. If you can just get information about your product past the blogger and into the channel.

In my new-found role as part of the music industry, I will in fact review the album soon. I haven’t listened to it yet, and I don’t know what I’ll say about it, but come on – what am I likely to think about an album of songs ridiculing the war on terror, abstinence pledges and creationism? Metaphor Records certainly seem to know pretty well what I’m going to say. And I have a feeling I'll be furthering their purposes with a smile on my face and a chuckle in my belly.

[More blog entries about media, marketing, music, royzimmerman; media, musik, reklam, royzimmerman.]

Zimmerman

Ever heard of Zimmerman the singer? No, not Bob -- Roy.

Every time we think about same-sex marriage
Makes us sick to our guts
I mean, two people who want to commit to a
stable monogamous life-long relationship --
What are they, nuts?
It's unnatural!

Now a man should not lie with a
person who is a guy
He should only lie to his wife,
the Bible is clear

We're --
Defenders of marriage
In three-button suits
We'll raise our double standard
and see who salutes
Defenders of marriage
Defending the institution against people
who want to get married

(From "Defenders of Marriage")

You like Tom Lehrer? Has it been a long time since you heard any good new satirical songs? Get thee to Roy Zimmerman's web site. He's not only smart, lefty and evilly fun, he plays a mean guitar as well.

[More blog entries about music, royzimmerman; musik.]

Surfer Girl Acrostic

On the penultimate Pixies album, 1990’s Bossanova, there’s a beautiful dreamy surf song named ”Ana”. Its lyrics are simple and appropriate.

Ana
By Frank Black Francis

She's my fave
Undressing in the sun
Return to sea - bye
Forgetting everyone
Eleven high
Ride a wave

Now, why is this surfer girl named Ana? Well, basically, because Frank Black dropped out of college to become a musical genius before he'd learned the difference between an anagram and an acrostic.

Look at the first letters of the lyrics' six lines. Yes, Ana is a s.u.r.f.e.r. But this is no Ana-gram, as Black believed when he named her. "Grow a penis" is an anagram of "Spiro Agnew". Instead, Black's lyrics are an acrostic.

Here's another one, by Michael Collins, culled from Poetry Free For All.

Believe it or not,
acid can really
damage your brain.

Days after my first tab,
rainclouds started following me,
usually this wouldn't bother me but,
goddamn, my head got really wet.
Strange huh?

Still, I can pick as many nits as I want in Frank Black's lyrics. I won't be able to write a song like "Ana" anyway.

[More blog entries about poetry, music, Pixies; poesi, musik, Pixies.]