Friday 04.16.2010 | 12:23 PM EDT

Tax Man: The Marble Tea’s Sunny Afternoon

Rock ‘n Read

To quote from How To Get Ahead In Advertising:

No one ever remembers a late delivery. They only remember a bad one.

Well, seeing as this post is one day past due, I guess I better make this one count.

One-man pop dynamo The Marble Tea is beloved here at maunet. As Sir Knight Berman mentions on his blog, the obvious choice to commemorate the most un-sunny day of the year would have been a cover of The Beatles’ “Tax Man”.  Instead, The Tea wisely favors a subtler selection: a faithful cover of The Kink’s “Sunny Afternoon.”

The taxman’s taken all my dough / and left me in my stately home / lazing on a sunny afternoon / and I can’t sail my yacht / he’s taken ev’rything I’ve got / all I’ve got’s this sunny afternoon

Look for this track appearing on the next installment of Undercover. In the meantime, check out Knight’s entertaining writeup at  marbletea.com

Related Posts

Marble Tea + Maunet:
The Marble Sleeve Covers

Undercover:
Don’t be fooled by legit imitations

Monday 04.12.2010 | 11:23 PM EDT

This Charming Man:
Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra, Joe’s Pub NYC

all photos Nikon D500s | 85mm f/1.8 3200 ISO | © maunet.com

start slideshow

Why lead off this piece with a photo of anyone other than the man who charmed the pants off all those in attendance last night? Just look at’em, why don’t cha. Ok, so you can’t really tell they’re pantless, but joyful smiles and rapturous attention suffice to get the point across.

No strangers to elated audiences, Ethan Lipton & His Orchestra performed the entirety of their third recording, Honker, at the perfect venue for showcasing Ethan’s inimitable brand of performance. Intimate. Anachronistic. Literate. Jazzy and Hep, daddy-o.

Delivered with the timing and panache of a trained stage actor, Lipton’s offbeat observations of everyday life are hilarious without being jokey, acute without being simply clever. Thrift store pants, office politics, yoga, internet dating, coffee breath, old age– no subject is too mundane for serious-ish contemplation. But ultimately, Lipton’s finely-crafted language reveals a classy cat whose love and compassion for his fellow brethren leaves his audience with watery eyes and perma-grins.

But it’s not all about Ethan. Composed of Eben Levy (guitar), Vito Dieterle (tenor sax) and Ian Riggs (stand-up bass), this classy as fuck three-piece “orchestra” delivers pro goods without douching it up with slick posturing. The band teases out old-time, gypsy jazz and bossa nova grooves with contagious glee, a mischievous trio of precocious children simply diggin’ on them selves.

The band’s trifecta of recordings are great documents in and of themselves. But they’re simply no substitute for the live performance, where the band’s old-school style and groovy body language are the essential spices that gives this broth its zesty bite.

A brief sampling from the band’s three recordings below.

Photos from the show here.

Support the band’s efforts by purchasing here.

Don’t miss the next go-round: join their mailing list.

Monday 04.12.2010 | 7:23 PM EDT

The Vocoder: New Vox for Sad Bastard Pop

The vocal-bending gizmo known as the Vocoder has made it’s voice heard in a smattering of 20th/21st century recordings. And while it’s been employed by performers as varied as Neil Young, Kraftwerk, Pink Floyd, Georgio Moroder, Electric Light Orchestra and Yes (to varying degrees of cheesy delight), contemporary usage of it’s robotic voice has primarily resided squarely in da House of commercial Funk and Hip Hop.

Last year though, I came across two unlikely contexts in which the Vocoder makes not for a gimmicky trick, but a truly expressive voice that lifts simple songs into otherworldly expressions of loneliness.

Both Robyn Hitchcock’s “Because You’re Over” and Bon Iver’s” Woods,” apply the Vocoder to strictly a capella performances. Both layer a Vocoder vox track atop a second, untreated vocal. The technique creates an imaginary friend on whom to project its protagonists’ lonely laments on exile and loss.

Pretty neat trick. listen up:
//

//

New York Magazine reviews Dave Tompkin’s history of the device How to Wreck a Nice Beach here. For you techies and sound engineers, here.

Saturday 04.03.2010 | 6:23 PM EDT

Bemoaning Digital Music: Get Over It

I think it was Gene Simmons that said “if it’s too loud, you’re too old.” Having reached that age, I must admit “it” is in fact very often “too loud.”

But the same truism can be tweaked to express disdain for old-foggie pundits endlessly bemoaning the erosion of quality music consumption by the accessibility the digital age has afforded us. Steve Almond of the Los Angeles Times writes:

“…I wonder if  [technology] hasn’t made [music] less sacred. The ease with which we can hear any song at any moment we want no matter where we are…has impoverished the actual experience of listening to music. Music is more accessible than ever, but it’s also less ‘sacred’.”"

Mr. Almond goes on to propose some well-reasoned arguments on how pre-digital listening habits fostered a ritualistic, tactile, more intimate experience, making listening to a record a “transcendent event with real emotional impact.” There is certainly something to be said for sitting on the floor in your room, taking in the album art, liner notes and lyrics, listening to every nuance of the record without any other distractions. I spent the better part of my teenage years doing exactly that (when I wasn’t pining for the foxy redhead in my Social Studies class). And today I still on occasion lament that I don’t often fully absorb every record I pipe through my computer. But, for the most part, I respectfully call Bullshit on Steve’s nostalgia.

When I was a teenager, I could recite the track for any given record; recall which songs were on side one or two; name the record’s producer; tell you where it was mixed and who engineered the sessions; I could rifle off all the member’s names of any given band I took a liking to more quickly than I could the capitals of the 50 states. And while this might still be the case for certain contemporary records I’ve consumed between the ages of 35 – 41, by and large I have a somewhat diminished command over the details and nuances of my huge music collection.

But brotha, please. Had we not passed from the golden age of the turntable (yes, the Rolling Stones pre-1974 catalog most definitely sounds better on vinyl) to our current milieu, our exposure to (or at least the viability of acquiring) the vast array of musical styles and talent available to us today would be seriously hampered by budget and time. Mr. Almond reminds us that “in the pre-historic 70′s listening to music took time and commitment.” Well sir, you are no longer a teenager, but an adult with a job, responsibilities, and, presumably, a social and family life that requires nurturing and constant attention. I mean, who other than teenagers have the discretionary time to sit around in their room devoting hours to doing nothing else than listening to records? Yes, that experience lends a certain sacredness and commitment to the act. But the portability of our music collections afforded to us by the mp3 frees us to carry vast amounts of music that can be consumed just about anywhere, at any time. This enhances, not impoverishes, our appreciation. Claiming otherwise would be like a foodie claiming he’d rather live in the woods and eat only the food you can catch, kill and cook on your own, rather than living in Manhattan, where you have access to the entire world’s cuisine within a few short blocks. The fact that I wouldn’t be able to break down and identify every subtle flavor and discern it’s complex mix of ingredients every time I sampled a new dish doesn’t mean I would not enjoy the shit out it. (Sorry, maybe that wasn’t the most appetizing phrase for the metaphor, but it does lend an appropriate ring of emphatic commitment common to adolescent opinions.)

We have without a doubt lost some of the valuable qualities of pre-digital music consumption. I commend Mr. Almond for articulating and reminding us of it. But would I trade it for the 200 gigabytes (nearly 3000 records) that have vastly broadened my exposure and appreciation of music and continue to feed my obsessive consumption of it? No. Fucking. Way.

You can read Steve Almond’s article here…

Saturday 04.03.2010 | 3:23 PM EDT

Tiltshift Timelapse: Sam O’Hare’s “The Sandpit”

I’m a big fan of tilt-shift photography and marginally so of Godfrey Reggio’s Koyaanisqatsi. Sam O’Hare has quite artfully married the two in his short film The Sandpit: 35,000 still frames of “miniature” photography sequenced as a time-lapse video documenting a day in the life of New York City. It’s beautifully shot and great fun trying to identify the specific locations (well, if you’re a New Yorker).

You can read Sam’s description of the process and equipment used to make this remarkable little film. The amount of post-production required to create gives me vertigo.

You can watch the film here, but I’d highly recommend seeing it in HD to get the best effect.

Wednesday 03.31.2010 | 2:23 AM EDT

Gone But Not Forgotten: Drummer Dan Anoff
Passes Much Too Soon

A past partner in rock n roll crime, distant friend Dan Anoff has left us much too young, dead of an apparent heart attack this Sunday. He was 38.

From the early to mid 90′s, Dan Anoff played thundering drums in Engine, a psychedelic favorite of Atlanta’s then-fertile music scene. As label mates on the fledgeling Sister Ruby Records, Dan and I became instant friends. Add Engine bassist Garrick Simmons, and we became the Terrible Three in the middle rings of the coolie scene: Terribly Good Lucking. Terribly Long Haired. Terribly Terrible Dancers.

Nightly we trolled the seamier watering holes and venues, most of which have also gone or been watered down: The Point, The Stein Club, Clermont Lounge, The Highlander, Dotties, Star Bar, the Dark Horse Tavern. Here we would trade our rent money for beer as we courted flimsy romance well past last call. Ok, sometimes our efforts played out sooner. We were just that good.

Large of eye, wide of mouth and lush of lip, Danny was cocky and brash, with an easy, charming smile. Girls loved him and boys liked scamping around with him. From him I learned how to tune toms low and dry. We sat in on each other’s sets; bickered and bantered like brothers; pranked and tormented my female band mates (the boy car always arrives first); were granted social audience with Pavement (barely avoiding coming off like a couple of teenage girls at a Monkees concert); and generally smoked lots of weed together. We belied our intelligence in favor of a slacker pose. We laughed and laughed and laughed.

And then, as quickly as our friendship began, we went our separate ways. He married young, had kids and took refuge in the ‘burbs. I holstered my sticks to pursue the “fall-back” career that would lead me to Brooklyn. Our escapades together are among my fondest memories of that period. Yet, I did not have, nor did I make occasion to speak with him since 1998. And now I wish I had.

In memory, some of our heavy rotation early-90′s favorites:

–

Wednesday 03.24.2010 | 12:23 PM EDT

Adolescent Regression: Art by Derek Smalls?

iPhone + CameraBag “Instant” | © maunet

A wife, a mortgage, credit card debt, tinnitus, back aches, insomnia and hangovers that last for days. These are the signs and trappings of grown-up life. Yet me and my 40-something bandmates can’t stop laughing like Beavis and Butthead at this brilliant piece of Sharpie artwork in our rehearsal space.

I know. We should know better. But Derek would be proud.

–