FRESH BAKED
Emmett and Mary
Emmett and Mary
2008 | My Idea of Fun
A

Johnstown, PA is mostly unremarkable in the exact same way as nearly every other small American city. There’s local representation of every major fast food and grocery chain, and a handful of local businesses doing their best to stay afloat. The percentage of cool, progressive artists in Johnstown is staggering. Miles off the interstate, you could cross Pennsylvania on road trips between Philly and Pittsburgh a hundred times without even driving through Johnstown. You would probably think you had seen everything you needed to in a random suburb town like this one. You’d be making a big mistake.

Johnstown, PA is home of one of the most vibrant, dedicated artist collectives in the United States. Quite a bit like the Elephant Six group in structure, the My Idea of Fun collective is united not so much by sound as by common interests: to make art and music together, without the pressure of record labels and management waiting in the wings to swing down and commodify the fun out of it. The most prominent of the My Idea of Fun groups is Endless Mike and the Beagle Club, a pop group with anywhere between one and fifteen members, depending on the day you see them. The Beagle Club tours often, and while one might think that a fifteen-piece pop group is surely as adventurous and grand as independent music can get, lifelong Johnstownians Christopher Bell and Brandon Locher’s new band, Emmett and Mary, have trumped the Beagle Club in terms of size and scope with their debut long player. Arguably, My Idea Of Fun #64 is the logical extension of In The Aeroplane Over The Sea, Jeff Mangum’s 1997 homemade psychedelic pop masterpiece that has yet to be challenged, even by the man who wrote it.
More on Fresh Baked: Emmett and Mary

Hidden Gem:
The Sir Douglas Quintet
The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!
2000 | Sundazed Music Inc.

Just looking at the cover of The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!, you’d be excused for mistaking The Sir Douglas Quintet for a cheap Animals or Herman’s Hermits knockoff. Everyone’s doing their approximation of a young British Invasion sensation of the day: leader (and namesake) Doug Sahm doing his Pete Townshend and drummer Johnny Perez looks an awful lot like Keith Moon, albeit a Keith who’d spent a little more time at the beach. Organist Augie Meyers (later famous for his Vox work on Dylan’s Time Out Of Mind) could have been replaced by Mick Jagger, he’s got the look down pat. It’s almost as if somebody in a position of power thought they could make a quick couple of dollars fooling American teens into buying Is Back! based on cover photo, in hopes that Sahm and Co. could pass as lesser UK popsters. What a shock those kids would have suffered when they set the platter on the hi-fi and The Sir Douglas Quintet’s brand of weird “cosmic” country barreled through the speakers.
More on Record Review: The Sir Douglas Quintet Is Back!

Local Spotlight:
Tarrah Reynolds
“Burden”
2008 | Self-released

Photo by Ethan White

Heaven bless the internet. For, however against the odds, it remains not only a superlative source of penis enlargement opportunities, but also a conduit for discovering the new, the intriguing, the beautiful, and, yes, sometimes, even the sublime. And lately, amidst the literally depressing economic mayhem around me, I’ve been surfing around quite a bit, trying to discover the latter, particularly in music.

Fortunately, a few days ago I happened upon Tarrah Reynolds’ Myspace page out of this simple curiosity. A friend had mentioned that Reynolds, a wonderful violinist, has been making her way in the local singer-songwriter circuit. This is a very good thing. Reynolds’ music possesses a lush earthiness, like something subterranean that (for the best) can’t shake its fresh and tectonic nature even after having been brought to the surface and molded. An acute sensitivity burnishes her melodies, lyrics, and guitar playing; the story told through their composite has purpose.
More on Song Review: “Burden”

Vince Guaraldi Trio
“Christmas Time Is Here”
A Charlie Brown Christmas
Music by Vince Guaraldi; Lyrics by Lee Mendelson
1965 | Fantasy Records

It’s strange to find myself wishing for the triumph of uber-consumerism to help the economy, especially when unchecked capitalism in many of its incarnations is what got this country into financial dire straights in the first place, but here I am, albeit sheepishly, doing exactly that, especially once Black Friday officially kicked off the season. Perhaps this uncomfortable irony explains the greater than usual cultural significance of A Charlie Brown Christmas, even to a nice Jewish girl like me, with its counterleveling message of the import of spirituality and community over commercialism and greed, all graced, of course, by Charles Schulz’s humor. The opening track of the second side, “Christmas Time Is Here,” with music composed by jazz pianist Vince Guaraldi and lyrics by television producer Lee Mendelson, sets the more serious undertone, particularly in the last stanza with children’s voices singing “Christmas time is here / we'll be drawing near / Oh that we could always see / such spirit through the year / such spirit through the year.” More somber than the other songs on this soundtrack scored by Guaraldi in 1965, it has just the right amount of Americana nostalgia without overdoing it to render it a classic, palatable to even the cynical. It’s also a beautiful melody, with a delicacy that matches Schulz’s underlying sensibility. Initially, CBS didn’t want to air the show and particularly disliked the music. They believed that it would be over the heads of younger audiences. Apparently not, since this project has proven to be one of the most successful of the 17 projects on which Guaraldi collaborated with Mendelson until Guaraldi died in 1973.

by Alicia Dreilinger

Fresh Baked:
Andre Williams and the New Orleans Hellhounds
Can You Deal With It?
2008 | Bloodshot Records
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Andre “Mr. Rhythm” Williams, a mainstay of the Motor City R+B scene for over fifty years and hands-down owner of his own style of “talk-singing,” churns out new new records semi-annually, and to varying degrees. Early hits for the Fortune label, such as “Bacon Fat” and “Jail Bait,” felt like a much bawdier cross between Screamin’ Jay Hawkins and early Motown-era Stevie Wonder. Best renowned for more popular performers’ (such as Ike and Tina Turner and Parliament/Funkadelic) versions of his songs, Williams earned a great deal of money and respect for his songs in the 50s and 60s, spent the 70s and 80s semi-retired and resigned to poverty, then reemerged in the 1990s for a third act varying between hokey and transcendent.

Can You Deal With It?, with its slicker-than-owl-shit production, falls into the former category. And it’s unfortunate, because when Mr. Rhythm’s, well, rhythm stick, is firing on all synapses, an Andre Williams record can sound like a sweaty, grimy dancefloor packed with hedonists bumping and grinding to archaic R+B grooves that reek of sex and never even approach irony. 1999’s country-inflected Red Dirt, which featured the ever-present Sadies as backing band, is the best platter of recent Williams tunes, but 2001’s Bait and Switch (featuring a duet with Rudy Ray Moore, of Dolemite fame) isn’t far behind. Can You Deal With It?, backed by a crackerjack team of New Orleans soul musicians, just doesn’t generate the same sweaty, sexy sound as those earlier, superior efforts.
More on Record Review: Can You Deal With It?

Fresh Baked:
“Love Letter To Japan”
The Bird and The Bee
Ray Guns Are Not Just the Future
2009 | Blue Note
A

Recently, I’d been jonesing for some new music to check out, particularly something offbeat, and asked a musician friend of mine for some suggestions. He mentioned Los Angeles-based, Blue Note label-signed The Bird and The Bee, aka vocalist Inara George and instrumentalist Greg Kurstin who plays, as they put it, “everything else.” My friend has steered me in the right direction. Checking out The Bird and The Bee’s music has been a real blast, and “Love Letter To Japan” quintessentially embodies their addictive aesthetic.
More on Song Review: “Love Letter To Japan”

Fresh Baked:
Kanye West
808's & Heartbreak
2008 | Roc-A-Fella
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The title to Kanye West’s latest release, 808's and Heartbreaks refers to the TR-808, one of the first programmable drum machines. Kanye West used the TR-808 on every track "for a more 'tribal drum' to add more tribal feeling to his music" according to Wikipedia. The Heartbreak part of the title is more obvious, especially with songs like “Bad News”, “Welcome to the Heartbreak”, “Heartless” and “The Coldest Winter” (which unfortunately is a shameless rip-off of Tears for Fears' "Memories Fade"). Not to say it’s all despair. On “Paranoid,” 808’s most solid track, it’s obvious West is smiling throughout. And how can you not with the canned drum beats and Stevie Wonder-esque synth?
More on Record Review: 808’s & Heartbreak

Hidden Gem:
The 5.6.7.8’s
Teenage Mojo Workout
2008 | Time Bomb

Otherwise known as “that rockabilly band of Japanese women in Kill Bill,” the 5,6,7,8’s occupy a niche all their own. Their obvious competence at their instruments keeps them squarely out of the realm of “outsider music”-a group of “differently-abled” musicians represented most infamously by talents like the “minimalist dance music composer” Wesley Willis, the raw confessional folk songs of Daniel Johnston and the absolutely-untalented-but-hard-working Shaggs. Yet singer-guitarist Yoshiko Fujiyama and singer-bassist Yoshiko Yamaguchi’s grasp of the English language seems trepidations at best: the ladies seem often to be sing-speaking the lyrics phonetically to R&B classics like “Harlem Shuffle” and “Hanky Panky.” Perhaps tellingly, the 5,6,7,8’s biggest hit to date is “Whoo-Hoo” - a simple rockabilly jam who’s only lyrics are the title repeated ad nausea - that has been used both to provide background for the bloodiest swordfight in recent American cinema and…a Yahoo! commercial. So, versatility and simplicity are key.
More on Record Review: Teenage Mojo Workout