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December 18, 2009 06:17 PM UTC

Friday Jams Fest

  • 72 Comments
  • by: Middle of the Road

(Soon these will be their own institution – promoted by Colorado Pols)

This one is for Ralphie and in honor of Twitty and the fine job he did as an FPer.

Enjoy and post ’em if you got ’em.  

Fleet Foxes – White Winter Hymnal

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72 thoughts on “Friday Jams Fest”

  1. I thought they had a different kind of sound, more prog rock-esque.

    That said, I enjoyed the video. I like how the twang guitar works with the minimal drum sound, the vocals. A charmer.

    1. I heard them on NPR and went, “who are these guys?” They are from Seattle area and have been compared to a cross between CSN&Y and a bluegrass band. I love their sound–very Appalachian in a way.  

  2. (This was originally posted last night at junctiondailyblog.com.  I suppose it’s OK to plagiarize from myself, isn’t it?)

    I was browsing YouTube the other day, looking for a song to post, and I came across one that was a favorite of mine nearly 40 years ago.

    Listening to the song once again made me very, very sad.  Let me tell you why.

    When I say “we” or “our generation,” I’m talking about boomers.  People my age, plus or minus 5 years or so.  I’m 60.

    The song is “What’s Going On” by Marvin Gaye.  As much Bob Dylan and Joan Baez as we listened to back in the day, this song was perhaps the most important social anthem of our generation.  The second song in the video is “What’s Happening Brother,” which was about Marvin’s brother’s return from Vietnam.  Another song on the same album, “Mercy Mercy Me,” was about the damage we were causing to the environment.

    What made me sad is that everything Gaye sang about in 1971 is still just as valid today as it was then.  Nothing has changed.  Remember when we were going to change the world?  We knew what needed to be done, most of it was there in those songs.  We were going to end racism and social injustice.  We were going to end war for all time. We were going to save the planet from pollution. But we didn’t get it done.  Any of it.

    What happened?  We grew up, got jobs, got married, had kids.  We bought houses in the suburbs, new cars, and stock in Enron.  We got complacent.  We started worrying about 13,000 todays instead of that one tomorrow that we all knew how to fix.  We took our eyes off the ball.

    Our generation gave the U.S. two Presidents.  One couldn’t keep his pants zipped.  The other was so dumb he couldn’t pour piss out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

    Did we let our kids and grandkids down?  I don’t know, but it feels like we did.  We could have given them a better world, but what we gave them was much worse.





    Musical stuff:  footage of legendary Motown bassist James Jamerson is extremely rare.  This might be the best there is.  Jamerson is first seen at 1:25 and again once or twice more.

    If you don’t know who James Jamerson was, you aren’t alone.  Almost nobody did until after he was dead.  The Motown session musicians were never credited on records until Marvin Gaye did it for the first time on this album.

    But you should know who Jamerson was, because he played on more #1 songs than the Beatles or Elvis.  A partial list of the hits he played on is here.  Go to Netflix and rent the movie “Standing in the Shadows of Motown” to learn more.  If you’re a musician, buy the book of the same name.  It’s a biography of the most influential bassist in pop history and has many of his most memorable parts charted out.

    Jamerson’s bass parts were often the “hook” that drew people into the Motown hits and got them dancing.  He was usually mixed pretty hot in the mix and that’s why those old tunes sounded so great on the big jukeboxes of the day.  Try to imagine The Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love” or the Four Tops’ “Bernadette” with a different bass line.  But it wasn’t all pop and bubblegum.  It was artistry, too. Jamerson wrote almost all of his own parts.  On the spot. He’s the man carrying the Marvin Gaye tune above–it’s almost all him, a drummer we never see, and the congas, which were played by fellow Motown session musician Eddie “Bongo” Brown.

    I don’t want to belabor the music trivia.  However, if you want to hear more of Jamerson, I have prepared a short YouTube playlist with a few of my favorite Jamerson bass parts.  Turn up the bass, listen, and try to imagine what pop music would be like if bassists were still playing just root-fifth, root-fifth, as most of them did before Jamerson came along.

    1. This is fantastic. I just put the documentary in my Netflix que.

      As to your comment, I feel the same way and I’m only 42. I was so active in political causes (not political parties) in my 20s’. I feel as though I’ve taken my eye off the ball or have settled for something I never would have settled for 20 years ago. Yes, I’m politically active but I don’t see it making much of a difference–not in the greater scheme of things. I know the wheels of justice and change grind slowly but all of the major issues you mentioned above are still major issues today, only they are all getting worse. Watching the happenings in Copenhagen this week just reinforces how little actual action is taking place.

      I don’t have children so my question is to myself–have I failed myself and have I failed the causes I believe in? I think the answer is yes.

    2. I always thought of him as a vocalist. Some nice jazzy moments on the keys. Gaye sure had charisma — it’s like there’s a sun shining inside of him.

      I can just picture him saying to James Jamerson, “Now I want you to stand right beside me, so I can feel — as well as hear — you playing.” Propulsive bass lines from that man. Nice part in the song where Gaye just sings with just the congas, too.

      Bit of Jamerson trivia: I read that he never changed his bass strings, if he could help it.

      Thought that was Chicago when I saw the gang-graffiti names. Fashions of the times: not just the bell bottoms, but the “high water” pants, too.

      1. Gaye was a session drummer at Motown before he became a solo artist.

        The Standing in the Shadows book says the same about his strings.  Jamerson never changed his strings.  He said the dirt was “where the funk was.”

        The book says that it ultimately cost him his career.  When Hitsville shut down in 1972 and the whole Motown recording division moved to LA, Jamerson became just another bass player.  His old strings were often out of intonation.  The West Coast producers had no patience for it.  Eventually, he stopped getting calls for sessions.

        I also think that was Chicago.  Did you see the Chicago police car in the video?

    3. I was going to link to it, Ralphie.  And as I fall a few months outside your “boomer” parameters, I’ve always considered myself part of the generation.  (Winston Churchill and Dwight Eisenhower were still at the helm on the day of my birth)  While I agree with your assessment on the political side,  the “boomer” generation did have many accomplishments in other areas, the opportunity to do what we are doing here for starters.  I’ll buy you a mug and discuss the other accomplishments of the generation some other day.  

      After reading your entry last night, this song came to mind.  Why, I’m not sure.  And as I’m not happy with the live versions available on youtube, this will have to do.

    1. And I think I’m the one that has the pleasure of doing it to you, if I recall correctly.

      I have to say, I really like this and I didn’t think I would–then again, I dig Irish music and this is a nice twist on it.

      I heard a great new sound today on Morning Edition–called Cumbia–it’s a combination of Colombian music with African slave rhythms brought to the Caribbean coast of Colombia  and it was fantastic. My embed isn’t working for the audio player but here’s the link to the page–scroll about 3/4 of the way through the page. It’s right after Avatar.

      http://www.npr.org/templates/r…

    1. I liked the Russians (Dvorak, Stravinsky, Tchaikovsky, Rimski-Korsakov)  so much better. That said, Ode To Joy is also in the “music I want to die listening to” category. Not to sound incredibly sentimental, but I have a difficult time listening to this without tearing up. I finally broke down a few years back and bought his Ninth Symphony so I can crank it full blast at home and lose myself to the music.

      And that is one of my favorite movies. Gary Oldman was incredible in it.

      2. They have a lot in common since Beethoven was much more about the emotions of the music than technical tricks (which is why I can’t listen to Mozart or Bach).

          1. although my wife has been trying to get me to listen to the Requiem, which is supposedly different. But every time I hear a Mozart song, it makes me think of music written to entertain royalty with short attention spans. Could be I just haven’t heard the right stuff.

            1. Mozart is king. Not only did he write some of the most sophisticated music of all time, but he wrote for a variety of different orchestrations: chamber music, solo piano, violin sonatas, and symphonies orchestras. Not only that, but he also wrote some of the most beautiful opera ever composed.

              But I understand what you’re saying sxp. From an emotional perspective, Beethoven is better.

              And you’re both going to need a Bach lesson or something, because without J.S.B. there wouldn’t be any W.A.M. or L.V.B.

                1. Than between animal bones and Bach. Keyboard instruments and whatnot.

                  Ok, ok, I get it. You don’t like Bach, but maybe you like Glenn Gould?

                  Organ sounds better on piano anyway. I always liked playing my Well Tempered Clavier tunes better on the piano.

            3. But hopefully you reach a point with Mozart where you realize that his proficiency and brilliant meshing of different instruments and parts really allowed him to communicate with incredible passion.

              Interestingly enough, Requiem was a piece that he probably only wrote a small portion of.

              http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M…

                1. If there’s any composer whose music can be called “beautiful” in the truest sense of the word, it’s Bach. The Second Brandenburg Concerto, the Concerto for Two Violins, the Second Partita for Solo Violin, almost any one of his catatas… The only other composer who came close to this kind of beauty was Schubert.

                  Mozart’s detractors need to give his 41st symphony (the “Jupiter”) a listen. Never has anyone so deftly woven so many different lines of melody into a perfect tapestry of sound than in this work.

                  My favorite Shostakovich pieces are his 5th, 8th and 10th symphonies; his 4th, 8th, 10th, and 12th String Quartets; his Preludes and Fugues, op. 87; the first cello concerto and the first violin concerto. Also, his Piano Quintet and Piano Trio (sometimes numbered as # 2, but his first trio was a rarely performed student piece).

        2. I just discovered Shostakovich a couple of years ago and I’m still learning about him. What an interesting and amazing artists who created music during such an oppressive regime. His work was denounced several times and banned and his family lost most of their privileges due to his outspokeness against Antisemitism.  

          1. Actually I think there’s something to be said about Soviet music. Especially this century, very few Western composers produced anything really beautiful or emotionally compelling. Perhaps it’s partly due to the constraints that a lot of Russian music ended up better: hard to perform brilliantly when you’re not really struggling. Or it could just be that the Soviet commissars had better taste than the Western art-patron heirs.

            2. I’ve never heard of Khachaturian–what a great tip. Thank you!

              I agree with you–their is just such passion and beauty and sadness in Russian music. And constrained joy, too.  

                2. although if you ever saw “The Hudsucker Proxy,” Khachaturian’s suite for Spartacus formed pretty much the entire soundtrack. I’d advise both the Spartacus and Gayaneh suites, as much as you can get. (And since it’s relatively recent, you can even find Khachaturian conducting it himself, which is cool.)

          2. When a friend and I were testing speakers for a major purchase, we took along the Symphony No 10 in E  Minor CD. We always used the 2nd movement for tests, since it was only 4 minutes long, but it always brought a crowd over to ask “What is that?”

            The Jazz Album is awesome, but the Concerto No 1 for Piano Trumpet and Strings is a great intro as well.

            And any composer that would devote an entire symphony to the Battle of Stalingrad is pretty groovy in my mind. I wonder if any modern composer would dare do a Battle of Fallujah?

            1. Rigth on. I’ve never heard the Jazz Album. Great tip.

              I’ve always meant to ask you if you have read Generation Kill, Dan. I just started it–I bought it years ago but lost it when I moved and just refound it. It’s a pretty intense read and I’m starting to really get into it.  

              1. Here’s a way-too scholarly writeup on wikipedia:

                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S…

                While it was first performed in 1943, there’s discussion that he was writing it as early as 1937. However I had heard (no citation, pure speculation) that he finished it in memorial to one of his pupils killed during the siege in 1941 (Fleishman.) He did get an orchestration specifically devoted to him in 1944.

                1. If you have anything showing that Shostakovich himself thought of this work that way, I’m interested in seeing it.

                  Shostakovich allegedly called all his symphonies from the 5th on tombstones for Stalin’s victims. That’s from “Testimony” but much of that book is under doubt as to whether it really was his memoirs or not.

      3. loves him some Beethoven.  Well, that and chewing amphetamines.  And explains Mozart, also.

        One of movie history’s greatest villainous portrayals.

          1. did outstanding work in that movie.  The hair on the back of my neck still stands up when I watch that pizza/bathroom scene with Portman and Oldman.  

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