February is Music Writer Exercise Month #MWE • Page 70

i know that's right

 

Always slip behind on the weekend. Listened to Hot Rats by Frank Zappa from 1969.

A mostly instrumental album (Beefheart does vocals on one track), it’s a a guitar heavy jazz record, or a very jazzy prog record. Somewhere in between the two. Great instrumental breaks here, including sax and electric violin solos.

This is by far the least grating or actively irritating thing that I’ve heard from Zappa.

 

that's goddamn right. check out paul's boutique, probably their only one i prefer to check your head

 

I did that one for MWE a few years ago!

 

One symptom that Twitter is broken is just how lonely MWE has been this year. I’m not even seeing Craig and Chris’ entries most of the time.

 

It’s fun having albums on your list that you just know you’re going to like. The Cure and Sam Cooke were that for me this week.

 

Engagement and visibility on Twitter is just so, so fucked. I feel like no one ever sees any of the tweets I send out, except for Chris and like five other people. I've seen some of yours, not all.

The combination of the "For You" tab and the way Twitter now prioritizes the idiots paying for verification basically makes the platform worthless. Elon Musk is the stupidest motherfucker alive.

 

Meanwhile, when I click the hashtag, I ONLY see yours and Craig’s. It’s really depressing how poorly it functions now

 

Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

Great album that I likely will come back to in the future, but that I would’ve come back to significantly more often had I heard it at any point between about 2006 and 2011ish.

“The Man Who Loves You” is probably my favorite song on here, but close runners up go to “Jesus, etc.” and “Heavy Metal Drummer,” “Pot Kettle Black,” and “Radio Cure”


Elton John - Madman Across the Water

What a great album. The one-two punch of "Tiny Dancer" and "Levon" to start the album, followed by the also very good, "Razor Face" kinda forces the album to fall off ever so slightly after that, but I thoroughly enjoyed it from start to finish. Going to be coming back to this one a lot more than I would have anticipated when I hit play.

 

Charles Mingus - Blues and Roots from 1960. I’m not sure why this made my list, I’ve 100% heard this record before multiple times. Probably just quickly copying and pasting from elsewhere.

Anyway, this is a great Mingus album. As is often the case with jazz, I feel like I don’t have the vocabulary for what I’m hearing. This is Mingus making an album echoing blues music, paying tribute to the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and co. The troupe he has playing with him are all brilliant, complementing each other really well.

 

That album is Paul Buckmaster in god mode on those orchestral arrangements. Simply the best to ever do it. You think “Levon” has the best strings you’ve ever heard…until the title track hits and you think those are the best strings you’ve ever heard…and then “Indian Sunset” is a masterpiece symphonic pop Western musical.

I need to hear this. Before I even liked jazz, I liked Mingus.

Is this your first time with Lady Day? There’s truly nobody like her. I splurged on both the complete Columbia and Verve recordings box sets and have been discovering greatness gradually for years in them.

 

Here’s a good one for the songwriter heads.

 

My first of her albums. I've heard stray songs over the years, obviously, but nothing beyond that. I was interested to read that most of the songs here are things she'd recorded earlier in her career.

 

It’s fascinating because in her prime she was one of the greatest singers to ever live. By the end, her voice was absolutely ravaged from the hard life she lived…and she was STILL one of the greatest singers to ever live. It went so far beyond “a good voice” and hearing the older and newer versions of those songs is like two totally different great artists taking a run at them. It’s fascinating.

I wanna say @George can also vouch that her final one, Lady in Satin, is utterly stunning in that way. A broken woman with a destroyed voice summoning up feeling that almost nobody else ever could. It’s Kirk Gibson hitting the HR on his hobbled leg. It’s Judy Garland at Carnegie Hall. Talk about rising to the occasion.

 

Love Judee Sill

 

Jimi Hendrix - Electric Ladyland

What is there to really say here? The album is fantastic. Best guitarsmanship (is this a word?) on the list so far.

“Have You Ever Been To (Electric Ladyland)?” should’ve been the opener. Perfect opener. Don’t know why you even need "…And the God’s Made Love.”

“Little Miss Strange” sounds like a Beatles track. “Burning of the Midnight Lamp” is the coolest song; the guitar is so dope. “1983 (A Merman I Should Turn To Be)” - a 13 and a half minute song has no right to feel this short.

 

Not an MWE, but don't know where else to even post it. I listened to the Gin Blossoms' New Miserable Experience, which I'd previously heard maybe twice, a ton over the weekend. That album is so freakin good.

And the story that follows for the lead singer after that album is such a shame.

 

A true classic. I love how both side one and side two end with a song that sounds nothing like the rest of the album.

 

incredible record. do you mean the lead songwriter tho? or is there something with the vocalist im not aware of?