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Stone Rollin'

Caught this on VH1 Classic yesterday. I wasn't gaga over Saadiq's last disc, though I appreciated the retro soul vibe. His latest single hit the spot, however. Possible early contender for my summer jam.

Modernaire, Modernaire.

"When Eye Lay My Hands On U "

Among the many unreleased Prince projects is the High album from 2000. The disc was complete and ready for production, but Prince pulled the plug and opted to release it via his then-burgeoning (and now defunct) online music club.

As Uptown writers note in the exhaustive chronology The Vault, the album is accessible and straightforward, likely another attempt at a commercial comeback (1999's Rave Un2 the Joy Fantastic had a similar intent, but ultimately failed.

By and large, the music on High is far more compelling than anything on Rave, and with smart marketing and single selection, I believe it could have had significant commercial impact. Alas. Many of the songs were later repackaged in the second incarnation of Prince's online music club, but spread across a few releases, losing any sense of consistency as to what the High album may have sounded like in its initial configuration. [Note: many of the tracks were also initially released via 2-track singles sold on the 2000Hit N Run tour.]

To that end, here is the original tracklist:

1. U Make My Sun Shine
2. My Medallion
3. Supercute
4. Golden Parachute
5. High
6. When Eye Lay My Hands on U
7. When Will We B Paid
8. Gamillah
9. Underneath the Cream
10. The Daisy Chain

Standout tracks here are "My Medallion," "Supercute," "The Daisy Chain" and "When Eye Lay My Hands on U." All are accessible yet interesting enough that they could have seen some success in the musical climate of 2000. But I digress.

The main motivation behind this post is a recent late night spin of volume 5 from the mind-bogglingly comprehensive The Work set of unreleased material. I haven't heard the High tracks in a while, and I was quickly reminiscing about bumping these tracks in my Cavalier (via Discman with cassette adapter, naturally) that summer. Suddenly, it's July 2000.

More importantly, "When Eye Lay My Hands on U" is a track that blows me away. There are so many layers here, not to mention the blistering guitar work. Take a listen:



And here's a great live take from the Montreaux Jazz Festival in 2009:


Prince Montreux 2009 When I lay my hands on You by madonnacelebration

"The White Stripes Lesson"

Kembrew McLeod and Ben Franzens' excellent documentary Copyright Criminals is now out on DVD. I made a brief post about it last year when it aired on PBS as part of the Independent Lens series. The doc is still getting some much deserved attention, most recently via a very cool performance on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon. In a one-off performance, we have ?uestlove, Black Thought, Chuck D,. Eclectic Method and Clyde Stubblefield, the man behind the kit for many of James Brown's best known jams. Ladies and gentlemen, the Copyright Criminals All-Star Band:

"You might think I'm crazy, but I'm serious."

If I look that good in a skin-tight bodysuit when I'm 44, life will be grand.

It's been a while since I've done any sort of writeup for a show. In fact, it appears that the last show I blogged about was when I saw The Ravonettes in October of 2009. Rest assured, there have been shows in the interim - Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings, Yeasayer, Beach House, Lady Gaga, Crystal Castles, Hall and Oates, and probably a few others that I can't recall at the moment. This is all to say that I've been a bad music blogger. So I'm here to remedy with a report on this weekend's Janet Jackson show at the Borgata in Atlantic City.

The Borgata Events Center is shockingly small. I expected an intimate venue, but we're talking about 2,000 seats, maybe less. That being the case, I imagine that there wasn't a bad seat in the house, but the 14th row was still a good place to be (albeit not in the center section). In reality, it could have been General Admission on the floor, but I digress.

At each show on this tour, Janet dedicates a song to that city. This seems to me a simple way of giving something distinctive to each performance, though I wonder what real value the gesture has. What this amounted to was being teased with the video for "The Pleasure Principle" just prior to Janet taking the stage.



Then the band launched into their live rendition of the track, one of my favorites from 1986's Control LP.

After that, it was pretty much hit after hit, which was to be expected given that the tour is promoting her Number Ones collection (I pointed out the punctuation error while we waited for the show to start). I can't find a full setlist but they were pretty much all there - "Control," "Miss You Much," "If," "That's the Way Love Goes," "What Have You Done for Me Lately," "Nasty," "Rhythm Nation," "Escapade," "Together Again," ""You Want This," "Alright," "Love Will Never Do (Without You)," and more that I can't remember. There was even a bit of "Scream." Good stuff. There was also a nice little segment of ballads including "Come Back to Me," "Let's Wait Awhile" and "Again," the latter of which never fails to remind me of eighth grade dances. The only jams I really wanted to hear but were absent were "Black Cat" and "Go Deep." Alas and alack (though they have popped up on other dates).

At these pop shows, I'm always critical of lip syncing. It was one of the things that most bothered me about the Lady Gaga show, though it was expected. I watched and listened closely to Miss Jackson ('cause I'm nasty), and had a difficult time distinguishing whether or not she was singing live. These leads me to believe that either a) she was singing live or b) is adept at masking the fact that she's lip syncing. My guess is that ultimately, it was a mix of both.

While some of her dancing duties were relegated to the troupe of backup dancers she had on stage, Janet really brought it at key moments with the iconic moves from her signature videos ("Miss You Much," "Rhythm Nation," "If," for example). I was a little saddened that "Miss You Much" was done sans chair routine, though.



In short, it was a great show, well worth the ticket and the trip.

P-Funk Hall of Fame, 1997

As an institution, I think the Hall of Fame is bullshit, but those ceremonies do produce some interesting moments.

Bootsy!

"Hurry up and bring my space bass. I got to hurry up and play before I come on myself."



It's also worth noting that Bootzilla will be on Jimmy Fallon tonight. Bootsy jammin' with The Roots? Oh lawd....

The Wisdom of Kool Keith

I finally received Kool Keith: Global Enlightenment Part I from Netflix. It's too damn short (35 min), but it's a stellar trio of interviews with Kool Keith - a sort of "day in the life" kind of document. At any rate, I promptly ordered a copy of the dvd for $1 via Amazon Marketplace. It has gems and life advice such as the 98 Year Old Fridgerator:



Kool Keith had a great run of albums in the late '90s, both under the Kool Keith name and a series of other monikers that he wove into a complex and ongoing storyline (Dr. Octagon, Dr. Doom, Black Elvis, etc.). Matthew was the last Kool Keith record that I really enjoyed. He resurrected Drs. Doom and Octagon in the last decade, but it seemed a little desperate to be honest.

For the funk of it, here's one of my favorites from the Black Elvis LP:

"Go Deep"

Absurdly underrated latter-day Janet jam, from her last great album (The Velvet Rope).



And for the hell of it, a nice mash with 2Pac:

"I wrote this song in '94"

Bang Bang

No really, I'm trying to be productive on a Friday night. But in doing so, I was listening to Nancy Sinatra's classic How Does That Grab You? LP, which ends with this favorite, put to good use in Kill Bill.

Just because.

Poor video quality (due to the rip; this looks to be from the proshot Parade warmup gig at First Ave.), but what the hell. Still a jam.




Between the sudden urge to hear/see this and Pete's post about the excellent Makings of Rain dvd, I think it's time for me to dust off those Prince bootlegs.

Chromeo turns Conan into a Hot Mess

breakin' up is hard to do

Hot on the heels of the White Stripes' recent breakup, indie dance crew LCD Soundsystem is also about to hang it up. After only three albums, it's a little sad to see them go. But kudos to James Murphy for going out on a high note. Last year's This is Happening was one of my favorite discs of 2010, and retains its replay value after nearly a year of incessant playing. I'd like to catch the last run of shows in NYC (a series at Terminal 5, leading up to the grand finale at MSG), but I doubt I'll make it. Alas.

Murphy and co. stopped by the Colbert Report recently to chat and perform one of This is Happening's standout tracks, "I Can Change."

"Fade into You"

There are two possible scenarios when I go the used cd store. 1) I have a list of specific titles to seek out; 2) I randomly poke around to find some treasures. I've noticed that each of these scenarios shapes what I walk out of the store with. In scenario 1, it tends to be more recent items. In scenario 2, I end up filling gaps in my collection. My most recent trip was the latter.

Among those discs that I should already have owned is Mazzy Star's breakthrough, So Tonight That I Might See. I always loved "Fade Into You" (their biggest hit, topping out at #44), and my college roommate hipped me to the rest of the album. At any rate, I finally got around to rectifying this album's absence in my collection.

"Fade Into You" is a sublimely beautiful song, undoubtedly one of my favorite singles of the 1990s. It also is one of those tunes that very quickly gets the memory machine churning out all of the personal and temporal associations you might have with the song. The album as a whole is quite good, and holds up very well in 2011. It was also the perfect aural driving companion on a rainy, gray Monday following a Super Bowl loss.

There were two versions of the video. Watching the black and white clip, my thought was "this is the one that I remember." Watching the color clip, I thought "Wait, I remember this one too." Hypothesis: both were in rotation on MTV that year, or at least on 120 Minutes.





And for good measure, here is a performance from 120 Minutes.

So long, White Stripes.

As announced via the band's official website, The White Stripes are calling it quits. I don't find this new particularly surprising, and although they're one of my favorite bands of the last decade, I'm kind of glad they broke up before allowing the quality of their material to deteriorate. Get while the gettin's good, as they say. Plus, it's become increasingly clear that while the White Stripes were once Jack White's primary musical outlet, the band has in essence become a side project, or one of many side projects (the Dead Weather, the Raconteurs, the production work, the Third Man label/shop, etc.). As much as I love the White Stripes, in a way it seems like Jack is at the top of his game when his hands are in various creative pots. At the very least, it's a more interesting situation.

I admittedly came to the White Stripes party a little bit late. It wasn't until my time in Iowa that I got heavily into their music. Ergo, that time and place in my life will probably be my dominant memory association with their music. At any rate, I think it was my growing interest in garage rock (and devouring the Directors' Label Series of video compilations)that led me to look beyond the White Stripes' singles, digging into their first three albums in late 2004. The following summer they released what I still argue is their best album Get Behind Me Satan. Man, I listened to that album at least twice a day every day in the summer of 2005. I was even more stoked when I secured tickets to see them in action at Minneapolis' Orpheum Theater that fall. I remember being incredibly impressed by (mainly Jack's) ability to utilize effects and playing style to make up for the obvious lack of overdubs - and it worked.

I'm sure Jack White will continue to not sleep and compete with ?uestlove for busiest man in the music business, and I'm sure his work will continue to be interesting. End of an era for sure, though!

Someday the band will inevitably release a compilation of music videos, and they've had some great ones. Here's one of my favorites:

No Doubt salutes Macca

Their take on "All My Loving" is particularly tasty. As is Gwen, but hey - par for course.

These types of events always seem so incredibly awkward for the person being honored.

J'ai Claque La Porte

This song has become one of my favorites off of Chromeo's Business Casual LP from last year, and I just stumbled across an excellent stripped down version from a CBC broadcast:



And for good measure, here's the original: