Friday Utilitarian Music: Me and Your Cigarettes

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I have conflicted feelings about Miranda Lambert, but I do like this song quite a bit. There’s something about that high-gloss production and her twang that gets me, I’ll admit it.

 
And…let’s see if this works…I believe you should be able to download the file here:Me and Your Cigarettes

So what have you all been listening to this week?

14 thoughts on “Friday Utilitarian Music: Me and Your Cigarettes”

  1. Black Oak Arkansas, “Fistful of Love.” Jim “Dandy” Mangrum, Ruby Starr, an intro. from James Brown, and a repetitive, Harmonia-like groove…well, if Harmonia had come from Arkansas and had been fronted by a the direct ancestor of David Lee Roth with a vocal like “Spotlight Kid”-era Beefheart. Anyway, this just makes me happy:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jkZrEwRYwZc

    Jimi Hendrix, “Who Knows” from Band of Gypsys

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLXG6NuyWb0

    …and Van Morrison, “Fair Play,” from Veedon Fleece (here’s a link but there’s a long commercial before the tune starts):

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLXG6NuyWb0

  3. Definitely my favorite Hendrix album, and probably my favorite song from it. And of course Hendrix leads pretty directly to early Funkadelic, which is almost always on my playlist in any given week:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11_h2WHkswo

    Other than that, and since you did mention Harmonia, how about a proto-motorik drone from the great François Couperin with a selection from “Musettes De Choisy Et De Taverny”:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M_6wGtbdmxw

    Let’s wrap it up with some more motorik, British style with Hawkwind, featuring former Hendrix roadie Lemmy and Simon House, the funkiest classically-trained violinist you’ll ever hear:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5wfzGkldPnc

  4. BTW Brian, your Van Morrison link is actually the Hendrix link repeated. I know “repetition is change”, but…
    :-)

  7. @Daniel Oops! Here is the Van tune:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1vYs5LBC3c

    And I love Hawkwind. Have you read Michael Moorcock’s short story “A Dead Singer,” where Jimi’s ghost appears and another character starts describing Hawkwind to him? Good stuff.

    I’m working on a short essay on Hendrix right now so I’ve been listening a lot to Band of Gypsys. I need to break out Live at Winterland soon, too. I’m enjoying the Couperin, too–thanks for that link!

  8. Working on mostly Kpop, mostly retro-80s mix for working out. On it are:
    KIM SORI – Dual Life
    Fresh Boyz Ft. G.NA – King Kong Shower
    2AM Club – Too Fucked Up To Call
    Wink – Sabishii Nettaigyo (1989) – ??????
    CRAYON POP – Bing Bing
    Dalshabet – Have, Don’t Have
    MYNAME – Just that little thing
    SPICA – LONELY
    VIXX – On and on

    It’s not that these are the best retro-80s songs ever made, it’s that they have come out this year or I missed them last year and they’re still novel. :p

    Besides that, I’ve been tried to fix up a Vaguely Chrismassy RnB mix. The bit between Chrisette Michele and UKiss could use some work, nothing against Miguel but he’s a bit smirky.

  9. I’m in a bit of a bind re: that list because there’s a whole class of otherwise very progressive and interesting RnB that leans really heavily on this kind of like… high sheen staticky sound. It’s a pretty addictive effect but you feel hollow afterward. I think of it as the aural equivalent of a cocaine high. Brandy – Put it Down ft. Chris Brown is a good example of what I mean (I think – in a cafe with no earphones so can’t put it on to check.)

    And I like this effect, in small doses, used as another instrument, and Frank Ocean’s record is full of and that’s good (because dude also knows how to be laid-back and moody and leave empty spaces in his tracks).

    But when it’s used as a wash over the whole track I can’t really stand it. So there’s a couple songs on here – LL Cool J, Chrisette Michele – that are butting right up against the edge of what I can stand. So it’s an exercise in extending my comfort zone, in a way.

    But yes pop songwriters please use these advanced modern addictive sounds as a tool like other tools, in moderation.

  11. @Brian

    Haven’t read that Moorcock story, but I’ll seek it out! Moorcock was of course involved with Hawkwind on and off over the years. I did try to read one of the Michael Butterworth Hawkwind novels (which Moorcock was also vaguely involved in), but it wasn’t really very good. Interestingly enough, the third of these ended up as a graphic novel by a guy called Bob Walker. It’s kind of insane and for some reason the stupidness of the whole concept of the members of Hawkwind as heroes of some sort of cosmic saga works better in comics form than in prose. Here’s a page reviewing of all the Hawkwind books: http://www.starfarer.net/hwbooks.html

    Hawkwind is a great band, particularly in their seventies incarnations. Despite having some smart lyrics, they were kind of an odd fit among the prog-rockers. Kind of proto-punk in many ways. (Johnny Rotten was a massive Hawkwind/CAN fan). And their graphics always seemed to owe a huge debt to sixties/seventies comics, both mainstream and underground. There’s a particular type of pre-Star Wars seventies fantasy/SF aesthetic that really fascinates me that you got in Heavy Metal/Metal Hurlant and perhaps even some of Marvel’s “cosmic odyssey” stuff: a bit more informed by underground/drug culture, a bit more sophisticated, but with a certain cheese factor as well. Hawkwind and some of the great German “motorik” bands of that era (CAN, Amon Düül, etc.) seem like a perfect soundtrack for that aesthetic.

    @Steven

    “Zazz Turned Blue” is great and is actually a longtime favorite of my dad. Was (Not Was) had a pretty good run in the eighties, with a real gift for coming up with totally perfect material for various singers, including Frank Sinatra Jr!

  12. The two things I’ve been listening to this week are jazz from 1959 (Kind of Blue, Mingus Ah Um etc.) and this playlist:

    Devil Town– Daniel Johnston
    Can’t Stop Thinking About It– The Dirtbombs
    Elephant– Tame Impala
    For Your Heart– Divine Fits
    Galang (MIA cover)– Vijay Iyer Trio
    Din Ya Sugri– Christy Azuma & Uppers International
    Nowhere Again– The Secret Machines
    I Only Have Eyes For You– The Flamingos
    Albatross– The Besnard Lakes
    Here Comes The Sun (beatles cover)– Nina Simone
    You’re Goin’ Miss Your Candyman– Terry Callier
    I’ll Slip Away– Sixto Rodriguez
    John Allyn Smith Sails– Okkervil River
    Derek– Animal Collective

    Of those songs, the one I’m most likely to hit repeat on is “Albatross.” The Besnard Lakes aren’t that great, but that song is amazing.

  13. I’ve mostly been listening to audiobooks (Viriconium by M. John Harrison; still on the first book of the series, which is a fairly straightup post-Tolkein genre product, but with a lot of the landscape description indicating the direction Harrison was gonna go in), Annie Jacobsen’s Area 51 (totally scratching my X Files itch) and Idylls of the King (haven’t gotten to the actual poetry yet; there’s a 45-minute bio note first).

    But I did listen to Van der Graaf Generator’s Pawn Hearts, a tasty blast of challenging prog to fit with Hawkwind, and Firesign Theater’s How Can You Be In Two Places At Once, which isn’t exactly music any more than the audiobooks are.

    BTW an HU podcast would be well received at my end.

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