As I sat at the Pressed And concert at the Mill on Feb. 7, I watched a couple of young men rock the stage. “Rock” might be inaccurate as they were sitting cross-legged for the show. Anyway, the spacey, hip-hop styled instrumental music that the two were making live fit well with the videos of […]
On The Beat
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On the Beat: New friends
Hello reader and welcome to On The Beat, a monthly column that will explore and comment on the local music scene as well as highlight some solid shows coming up during the month, exactly like The Haps previously. From what I see in this month’s shows, 2012 is coming out the gate strong. On the […]
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On the Beat: Will rock for food
In February 1852, John Sullivan Dwight, a transcendentalist and graduate of Harvard Divinity School, decided to start a music magazine. In a pamphlet outlining his ideas, he wrote that his journal would cover the developments of “the Musical Movement in our country, of the growing love of deep and genuine music, of the growing consciousness […]
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On the Beat: Counting down
Seemingly no one hates Counting Crows more than Guided by Voices frontman Robert Pollard. An oft-cited gem from his 2005 stage-banter album, Relaxation of the Asshole, goes something like this: “I wanna know how the guy from the Counting Crows used to fuck everybody from Friends? How the fuck’d he do it? He’s an ugly […]
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On the Beat: Summer earcation
In his 1992 book A Sound Education, Canadian composer and theorist Murray Schafer made this observation about contemporary life and listening: “As people have moved to cities over the past century they have developed a preference for close-up sounds…”
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On the Beat: F’n A, It’s May!
On May 1, 1965, at an annual celebration in Prague, Allen Ginsberg was crowned the King of May. The tradition of May Day and its royalty was founded back in who-knows-when for reasons of who-knows-what (pagans or something), but on this particular May Day, ’60s counterculture and communist oppression met head-on. After Ginsberg was paraded […]
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On the Beat: It's Raining Shows
In Langston Hughes’ 1921 poem “April Rain Song,” the thing that everyone hates about April–its big problem–is instead turned into a point of celebration, ending with the lines, “The rain plays a little sleep song on our roof at night / And I love the rain.” This point was totally lost on Billie Myers, who borrowed the phrase “Kiss the Rain” (taken from the poem’s first line) to create…
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On the Beat: Great things, small packages
Architecture in Helsinki’s brilliant 2003 debut album, Fingers Crossed, kicks off with a short, Casio and drum machine instrumental called “One Heavy February.” Unlike so many ultimately forgettable album intros (noise pulses, voice mails, carnival barking, string quartets, what have you), the song is a deliciously melodic twee dance number, and at just under a […]
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On the Beat: January 2011
In 1953, a guy named Pat Best wrote a song for his band The Four Tunes, called “I Understand (Just How You Feel)” a Pop/R&B crossover that broke into the top 10 on both charts. The original recording is fine, if a bit basic, but soon the song was covered by a slew of pop groups–Elvis even did a demo of it at one point. My favorite version is by The G-Clefs, who, in one of the world’s greatest (and earliest?) mashups, combined the song with that traditional New Year’s jam, “Auld Lang Syne.”
