Tag: Fantastic Negrito

Favourite “New” Music – February 2023

I’ve ranted about the Grammys previously, and it remains as futile an endeavour now as it was then. The Grammys (and, really, all awards in the arts – I mean, have you seen “Bohemian Rhapsody”?) have never entirely been about rewarding creative achievements – commerce and personal relationships (with voters) also play a large part. But, somehow, the music industry’s leading prize has a stronger record than any other when it comes to rewarding blandness. Why is that?

Here’s my theory: it’s largely thanks to white men. (We get blamed for so much these days, but stick with me on this.) The music industry, like pretty much every business in the 20th century, was run by white guys, many of them not exactly youthful. And their collectively bland tastes are reflected in who was nominated for and then winning awards. If you doubt me, let’s start by taking a look at the nominees for the Grammys’ top prize, Album of the Year, for 1964, the year The Beatles took over the world. I have nothing against any of the chosen artists, but folks like Al Hirt and Henry Mancini were not on the cutting edge of contemporary music. (Barbra Streisand is an outlier from that year’s nominees, and even she was old school in style but with the kind of outrageously undeniable talent that is often honoured.) Now, take a look at the top 5 albums for 1964 at Acclaimed Music: Stan Getz & João Gilberto (the one Grammy nominee in the pack) made the cut (have to check that album out), as did some guy named Lee Morgan (ditto) and Eric Dolphy, along with The Beatles and The Rolling Stones. It feels like a transition year, with album-oriented rock on the rise, but jazz still a strong player. Surely, the Grammys would start to reflect this reality in years to come.

They did not. The Beatles remained a sure thing to pick up a nomination, but other nominees over the next few years included the likes of Eddy Arnold, Vicki Carr and Ed Ames while all-time great albums from Bob Dylan, Otis Redding, the Stones, the Beach Boys (yes, they failed to nominate “Pet Sounds”), Jimi Hendrix, Van Morrison and The Band got passed over.

And my point is . . .? Pop music changes fast, but the music industry changes very, very slowly, as the old order is replaced by the new, who have their own soon-to-be-fossilized opinions. It’s happening right now, only with a different (probably still mostly white) group at the top: it’s the only way to explain why Kanye West (forget the crazy for just one moment), Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé have a total of zero Album of the Year awards, but Taylor Swift has three and Adele two. No knock on either of those women, but even they have to be wondering about this imbalance. And it will continue to happen in the major categories, because whatever the hot new thing is of a given year will always run up against the monolith of everything that came before.

Which brings us to Harry Styles. I like Harry as a singer. I have mixed feelings about his public persona (the “Don’t Worry Darling” publicity cycle was not kind to him), but his talent is significant and I enjoyed his first two albums. But, other than a few tracks (“Music for A Sushi Restaurant” sticks in my head), I found “Harry’s House” bland and unremarkable. Its win at the Grammys would suggest I am largely alone in feeling this way. I didn’t have a horse in this race – of the albums I know among the nominees, I would have voted for Kendrick, and I didn’t even like “Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers” that much – but when your choice as a voting body is this dull, let’s just give the damned thing to Beyoncé so we can stop talking about why she doesn’t have one. If anyone other than Harry Styles fans is playing this album 50 years from now, I’ll be shocked. Maybe we should check in with today’s Ed Ames fans (still over 25,000 monthly listeners on Spotify) so they can know what to expect.

And, with that, I turn to some music that I do love. After a fallow January, I had a good February, as I got my emotional mojo back. Did I love music last month because I was feeling like myself again, or was I feeling like myself again because I was listening to great music? This is my personal chicken and egg scenario. Hopefully, some of these will help you through the blah month that March will likely be.

  • Throbbing Gristle – 20 Jazz Funk Greats (1979) (All the power pop that I listen to can start to blend together after a while. That is NOT this record, a delightfully weird mess with a very misleading title.)
  • Cake – Fashion Nugget (1996)
  • Fruit Bats – Mouthfuls (2003)
  • Hurry – Guided Meditation (2016)
  • Gentle Hen – Be Nice to Everyone (2018)
  • Sobs – Telltale Signs (2018) (Probably my favourite band right now – a lesser record than 2022’s “Air Guitar”, but it shows the pop masters that they were on their way to becoming.)
  • 2nd Grade – Hit to Hit (2020)
  • The Boys with the Perpetual Nervousness – Songs from Another Life (2021) (Some bands you just know you’re going to love based on their name.)
  • Ovlov – Buds (2021)
  • Coco & Clair Clair – Sexy (2022)
  • For Tracy Hyde – Hotel Insomnia (2022) (Of course, I discover these Japanese shoegazers just as they’re calling it quits. Luckily, there’s a back catalogue to fall in love with and fuel my regrets.)
  • The Foxies – Who Are You Now, Who Were You Then? (2022) (Also check out the video for their 2020 single “Anti Socialite” – does the gym teacher look at all familiar to the over-50 crowd?)
  • Cakes da Killa – Svengali (2022)
  • Ladytron – Time’s Arrow (2023)
  • Fantastic Negrito – Grandfather Courage (2023)
  • RAYE – My 21st Century Blues (2023)
  • The Men – New York City (2023)
  • Beauty Pill – Blue Period (2023) (A bit of a cheat – this is a reissue of two records from the early 2000s, but I would have listed both separately, so this combo frees up a spot for someone else for you to discover. You’re welcome.)
  • Young Fathers – Heavy Heavy (2023)
  • Karol G – Mañana Será Bonito (2023)

Favourite “New” Music – June 2022

I tend to assume that people of my own generation have similar cultural touchstones. Depending on your interests, it may be where you were when Paul Henderson scored the winning goal in the Summit Series (I’ll save for another time my tale of Valentine’s Day, an English-style pub and the relationship that my friend and I almost ended by drawing the male partner into a discussion about said event, together with “Seinfeld” “second spitter” on the grassy knoll reference), having your mind blown the first time you saw “Star Wars”, your pride when the American diplomats escaped Iran with the assistant of Uber-Canuck Ken Taylor, or the sorrow when you learned John Lennon had been murdered (lying in bed after one of the greatest weekends of my life, still). I am, of course, wrong in that assumption, and received another reminder of this yesterday.

Let’s step back a moment, shall we. I own a lot of t-shirts, which are my go-to casual wear of choice. These are largely related to pop culture: movies (“Pulp Fiction”, “Star Wars”, anything Marvel), television (“Community”, “The Last Kingdom”, “WKRP in Cincinnati”), even literature (Haruki Murakami) and art (Roy Lichtenstein), the latter two courtesy of Uniqlo. Most were purchased by my wife as gifts, but last year, after the Festivus giving of cash stretched to include my mother, I invested said funds in another batch of my own choosing. And high on my list of choices (thanks to RedBubble) was this one:

Ah, yes. K-Tel. The source of so many of the records that I listened to as a child and young adult. 20 songs crammed into a space that usually held 10, so some of them were edited down to make room for the others. 20 songs when you at most wanted half of those, never knowing that some of the songs were on there because they were either (1) Canadian and helped fulfil CanCon regulations or (2) forced onto K-Tel in order for it to get the rights to a song it actually wanted. I can’t complain too much about either: as a lifelong hunter for new sounds (I always listened to the “B” sides, and sometimes ended up preferring them to the “A” track), those deep cuts certainly must have occasionally (I can’t say for certain right now) revealed to me a few songs that I might not have encountered otherwise, to my misfortune.

I would expect someone of my approximate generation to have had some K-Tel records, or to at least be familiar with them from endless television ads hocking their product. I was wrong. I wore said t-shirt to work yesterday, and ended up having to explain what K-Tel was to two colleagues who aren’t so much younger than me that the company could have been completely off their radar. Speaking to another colleague shortly after, he was shocked to be told this about our co-workers.

Anyway, I loved those records, and am glad to have had K-Tel in my life when I was young. 20 singles would have cost me around $25. For less than a third of that amount, I could in one blow increase exponentially the stock of my music collection. It’s too bad my colleagues missed out on that opportunity.

Which brings us to my favourite “new” music of last month. I try to avoid including compilations, so I mention here two such beasts:

  • Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel – Make Me Smile: The Best of Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel (1992). This guy was something of a big deal in Britain, though I’d never heard of him before. It’s career spanning, and thus sort of all over the place stylistically, but always a delight.
  • XXXtentacion – Look at Me: The Album (2022). He was not a very good person – serious issues with impulse control paired with a violent temperament – but a brilliant hip hop artist. A good subject for one of those “do we throw out the art because the artist is a piece of shit?” discussions. I fall on the “keep the art” side, but get the other perspective, because listening to Michael Jackson still makes me feel a bit squeamish.

And here is the actual list. Enjoy!

  • Paul McCartney & Wings – Red Rose Speedway (1973) (Critics are not fans of this record, which likely proves that most critics are more interested in being clever than being right.)
  • The Only Ones – The Only Ones (1978)
  • Aztec Camera – High Land, Hard Rain (1983)
  • Tiger Trap – Tiger Trap (1993)
  • Steve Burns – Songs for Dust Mites (2003) (Yes, it’s the “Blue’s Clues” guy, and he absolutely deserves more attention for his work as a musician. Glad those PBS paycheques freed him up to make this record.)
  • The Flat Five – It’s A World of Love and Hope (2016)
  • Tacocat – Lost Time (2016) (A perfect blast of pop punk – I will stan for any band that makes me forget my baseline anxiety for 29 beautiful minutes.)
  • Ratboys – GN (2017)
  • I Am the Polish Army – My Old Man (2017) (Frontwoman Emma DeCorsey put out a decent EP, “The Dream”, the following year, but nothing since. I’m waiting.)
  • Spoek Mathambo – Mzansi Beat Code (2017)
  • Nicholas Jameson – NJ (2018)
  • The Beaches – The Professional (2019)/Future Lover (2021) (Apparently, these two EPs will be repackaged as an album sometime soon, and that will likely also be a favourite listen when it comes out.)
  • Slothrust – Parallel Timeline (2021)
  • Ryan Pollie – Stars (2021)
  • Rosalia – Motomami (2022)
  • FKA twigs – Caprisongs (2022)
  • Caracara – New Preoccupations (2022) (A compelling emo-esque record that would fit nicely on your Jimmy Eat World or Dashboard Confessional playlists.)
  • Fantastic Negrito – White Jesus Black Problems (2022) (This feels like a recovered Sly Stone record.)
  • Sharon Van Etten – We’ve Been Going About This All Wrong (2022)
  • Ethel Cain – Preacher’s Daughter (2022) (Very disturbing record (umm, ritual murder and cannibalism), but you can’t shut it off. Still a bit haunted by this, several weeks later.)