The wait is over. After 17 years Mazzy Star are about to release a new album, Seasons Of Your Day. Hope Sandoval and David Roback remain the core members of the group. One song on the album, “Spoon,” features a guitar duet with Roback and the late English guitar legend Bert Jansch (he dired in 2011).
Also playing on the album: Suki Ewers, keyboards; Keith Mitchell, drums and multi-instrumentalist Colm Ó Cíosóig.
Track listing: “In the Kingdom,” “California,” I’ve Gotta Stop,” “Does Someone Have Your Baby Now,” “Common Burn,” “Seasons of Your Day,” “Lay Yourself Down,” “Sparrow,” -“Spoon” and “Flying Low.”
The album will be released September 23, 2013 on the group’s own Rhymes of An Hour label.
In an interview with Canada’s The Globe And Mail, Patti Smith offered five tips for success.
Tip #1: Cher is already Cher
“Early on in my career,” Smith told the paper, “I got a lot of different offers. There was one producer who saw me do a sort of musical poetry reading. i guess I was funny and I had a wry sense of humor and he had this idea to shape me into a seventies-style Cher. Of course it was an honor that someone wanted to invest time and money in me, but this guy had a specific vision for me and it wasn’t what I wanted to do. People often get tempted by success, celebrity, but I’ve always tried to sidestep the opportunities that aren’t in keeping with my personal vision. Everyone has to make a living – I worked in a factory, I was a really bad waitress – but in terms of your art, that’s not something your should compromise. You might think you will only compromise for a while, but that’s not the way it works.”
Other tips:
#2: Be selfish every day.
#3: Screwing up is good for the soul.
#4: I’m a girl…get over it.
#5: There’s no “I” in performer.
To hear what Smith had to say about the last four tips, head to The Globe and Mail.
As you probably know by know, Replacements guitarist Slim Dunlap suffered a serious stroke in 2012. Since then artists have been recording and releasing an EP and singles for the Songs For Slim campaign to raise money for Slim, who will likely need round-the-clock care for the rest of his life, according to the Songs For Slim website.
For the final single of the campaign, Jeff Tweedy recorded Slim’s “Ballad Of The Opening Band” at Wilco’s Chicago studio; it’s backed with Tennessee rock band Lucero’s version of “From the Git Go.” Cover art is by Replacements’ drummer Chris Mars.
Starting today (Sept. 15) and running through next Sunday (Sept. 22), 250 copies of the single are being auctioned here. For more into go to SongsForSlim.com. A CD of all the songs is being put together. Artists who have contributed recordings to the campaign, in addiction to Tweedy and Lucero, include Replacements’ members Paul Westerberg and Tommy Stinson, Frank Black, Jakob Dylan, Lucinda Williams, Deer Tick, Patterson Hood, the Young Fresh Fellows, the Steve Earle and The Hold Steady’s Craig Finn.
Here’s a sample of the song. It’s enough to know you need it!
Leonard Cohen premiered a new song, “I’ve Got A Secret,” at the O2 Arena in Dublin, Ireland, on Thursday evening, September 12, 2013.
Some of the lyrics are from another song, “Feels So Good,” that Cohen played during his 2009 tour, but has not released on record, according to Rolling Stone.
Cohen often spends years working on a song before he’s comfortable releasing it, Sylvie Simmons reported in her superb biography, “I’m Your Man: The Life Of Leonard Cohen.”
An excellent video of the performance was uploaded by a fan.
I saw wonderful art at the San Francisco Art Institute yesterday, and it reminded me that life, or should I say LIFE, the need to be creative in a world that values conformity, goes on. Sometimes I forget that people continue to struggle with finding, oh what is it, a kind of freedom, or maybe a point of view, or, bottom line, some “truth,” as John Lennon put it (“gimmie some truth,” he sang), amidst the lies that parade before us as reality.
Guy Debord called it “the Spectacle,” a kind of religious monolith that consumer societies have made of working your life away in pursuit of the next purchase. The art I saw is raw, violent in it’s opposition to mindless conformity.
All of that and more was colliding inside me as I looked at work made by a group of artists now known as the “Mission school,” since they lived or worked in San Francisco’s Mission District.
The show is called “Energy That Is All Around,” and it’s in the Walter and McBean Galleries. The artists whose work is on exhibit: Chris Johanson, the late Margaret Kilgallen, Barry McGee, Ruby Neri and Alice McCarthy. Most of it was made between 1992 and 2000.
“Untitled” by Margaret Kilgallen, 1997, paint on wood with coins, 29 x 15 x 5 inches.
Kilgallen and McGhee (who were married) I know from the excellent documentary film “Beautiful Losers.” While Kilgallen worked in a kind of Americana style influenced by hand made signs, old trains, carnivals, Appalachian music and the like, McGhee’s down-on-their-luck characters slumped inside wine bottles portray a darker reality.
“Untitled,” by Barry McGee, 1994, mixed media on driftwood, 16x 22 inches.
Chris Johanson offers social commentary in some of his work, mocking the Hallmark cards idea of true love, or simply documenting San Francisco’s outrageous housing prices, and the homeless that can be found throughout the city.
This is a kind of outsider art, though in this case I’m using ‘outsider’ to mean something akin to the Occupy movement. Those of us on the outside of a world that the .01 percenters have erected.
If there is a soundtrack to the art I saw yesterday, it would be the dissonant guitars of Sonic Youth, or the home made sounds of indie rocker Jason Molina’s Songs:Ohia recordings.
One of the cool things about Bob Dylan’s website, bobdylan.com, is that you can stream all of the songs on Another Self Portrait, including all of the Isle of Wight album. So even if you don’t want to pay $100 for the four-CD set that includes the Isle of Wight show, or buy the individual MP3s, you at least listen to the songs, Not bad.
Neil Young showed up at his wife Pegi’s gig at Johnny D’s, a 300-capacity club in Somerville, MA last night, Sept. 11, and played this rocking new song. No word on the official title, but the lyric “drive my car” is in the chorus. So for now it’s “Drive My Car.” Sounds pretty great.
Onetime Motown recording artist/songwriter Barrett Strong, 72, is at odds with Motown over the song “Money,” according to a recent story in the New York Times. Strong says he wrote the song, and he was originally listed as a writer, according to the United States Copyright Office in Washington. Motown says it was a mistake that Strong’s name was on the song, which rose to #2 on the Billboard rhythm and blues chart in 1960, and reached #23 on the pop charts that year. The Beatles and the Stones recorded versions of the song, and it’s generated millions in publishing royalties over the years. Strong’s name was removed from the song, three years after it was written, according to the Times.
This is a story worth reading if you care about the people who make the music.
I’ve been sitting in on an art history class recently, specifically it’s a history of Modern Art, which, I was surprised to learn, began in the 18th century and ended in 1945. I hope that’s not something everyone else in the world but me has known for years, but like they say, whatever makes you humble…
Another big piece of Art knowledge that got laid on me from the guy teaching the class is the idea that everything has already been done. Nothing is new. All an artist can do is variations on what’s come before. So you don’t have to sweat it to come up with something ‘new.’ You can just get to work writing or painting or conceptualizing or shooting videos or making music, and not worry about being original. I mean did Robert Johnson worry about whether the songs he sang were ‘new’? Muddy Waters? Junior Wells? T-Model Ford? I don’t think so. They just made the best music they could. The force of their personalities gives the music they made a unique quality, even if the words and 12 bar structure are the same old same old.
Recently I read a terrific novel by Paula Fox, “The God of Nightmares,” that was published in 1990, and in the intro I came across this quote:
It is a fact that, very broadly speaking and with some exceptions, there are only two structured models for novels: The status quo is established; someone arrives or something happens to shatter it. Thus Anna Karenina; thus Sula. Or – it’s converse – a character impelled by any number of forces from boredom to a crisis in a distant place, goes forth into the world and discovers complexities undreamed of at home; thus Tom Jones; thus Moby Dick. – Roselyn Brown, writer, poet, auther of Tender Mercies.
As a writer working on a second novel, it’s reassuring to know there are, big picture, only two plots. And every writer you can think of, from Homer to Elena Ferrante, are spinning out variations on those two plots. What a relief.
Sounding like a throwback to the post-punk days of the early ’80s, only with some Heavenly thrown in, Joanna Gruesome call their sound noisepop, which is fine by me.
The group comes from Cardiff, England. The five members are Alanna McArdle on vocals, Owen on guitar, Max on bass, George on guitar and Dave on drums. I haven’t been able to track down the guys’ last names.
