The Red Button

01. Cruel Girl
02. She's About to Cross My Mind
03. Floating By
04. She's Going Down
05. I Could Get Used to It
06. Hopes Up
07. Can't Stop Thinking
08. Gonna Make You Mine
09. Ooh Girl
10. Free
11. It's No Secret

+++

A friend turned me onto this power pop gem and as a result, it's been in constant rotation for about a week now. After a little snooping around, it turns out this was on Jack Rabid's (Big Takeover) best records of the year as well as John Borack's best power pop records of all-time. This record is nothing short of a clinic in sheer pop velocity.

Here are a couple of quotes I found :

If The Red Button had been around in the '60's when I was producing I would have signed them to EMI. - Norman Smith
Beatles engineer (1962-1966) and record producer (Pink Floyd/Pretty Things) for EMI

Pop music the way God, Paul and John had intended.
- John Borack - Goldmine Magazine

The Best Records of 2008 (Part Two)

11. Justin Townes Earle - The Good Life
















A breezy mix of swing, shuffles, style and energy. See 'Hank Williams Senior' related artists.


12. Jonny Greenwood - There Will Be Blood (OST)














This unearthly, beautiful score adopts a personal language and in the process creates an entirely new dimension of the film experience.


13. Silver Jews - Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea














Other than a couple of tracks, this is my first 'real' exposure to David Berman's Silver Jews. Vocally, he reminds me a little of Johnny Cash but that's where it ends. As a lyricist, he may be one of the best going.


14. Calexico - Carried To Dust














While not quite as good as previous efforts, Calexico find themselves re-exploring and expanding older ideas.


15. Brent Cash - How Will I Know If I'm Awake














Impeccably arranged, this slice of 'Bacharach-esqe' sunshine pop sounds like it could've been cut four decades ago. Should Brent's lyrics ever catch up to his ear for sonics, he could end up seated alongside the greats in the pantheon of pop wizardry.


16. Sun Kil Moon - April














More than a few good songs here, but nothing startlingly different. Overall, a little long for my tastes.


17. Army Navy - Army Navy














Oh sweet jangle, it's Davy Jones fronting a watered down version of Teenage Fanclub. More than a few 'highly' infectious melodies.


18. The Botticelli's - Old Home Movies














The debut release from San Francisco's Botticelli's is an easy to listen to, 60's flavored, California in the summer, pop record.


19. Benoit Pioulard - Temper














While a thematic connection is lost in the process, I do connect with his unique musical language that's part finger-picking, part noise and space, part lonesome frontier folk.



20. She and Him - Volume One














Zooey Deschanel (vocalist/songwriter) teams up with M. Ward to create a smart, nostalgic record full of classic pop & country melodies. While there's nothing new or original here, the record wreaks of charm. Bring on Volume two.


Records of Note :
Chad van Gaalen - Soft Airplane
The Felice Brothers - The Felice Brothers
The Broken West - Now or Heaven
Catfish Haven – Devastator
Black Mountain - In The Future
Lenine – Labiata
My Morning Jacket - Evil Urges
Beck - Modern Guilt
Todd Snider - Peace Queer
Will Quinlan & The Diviners - Navasota
Prima Donna - After Hours

Props to :
Bob Dylan - Tell Tale Signs - The Bootleg Series Vol.8
Neil Young - Sugar Mountain (live at Canterbury House)


Biggest Disappointment of 2008 :

Marah – Angels of Destruction














Anytime Marah releases a new record, it's a cause for celebration. That's how big a fan I am. What we have here are a couple of good songs and a barely enormous, merely huge, disapppointment.

The Best Records of 2008

01. Drive-By Truckers - Brighter Than Creation's Dark














This sprawling two-record set is a near perfect snapshot of people living life on America's margins.


02. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes/Sun Giant














I was so taken by their 'beard' inducing performance at San Francisco's Bottom of the Hill in June of this year, I traveled up to Portland in late July to see'em at The Doug Fir. In between shows I did find time to actually listen to the record - again, again and again. While I do prefer them in a live settting (the execution of their four-part harmonies are as good as I've ever heard), I find the record to be just short of perfection. What we have is a group of guys that use cross-pollination of sound to the fullest - folk, gospel, choral, rock and what the pundits like to call,"baroque harmonic pop." Musically, they're a modern day Band. Vocally, along the lines of CSNY & The Beach Boys. As for the MMJ/Band of Horses comparisons, I don't hear it. While the utilization of a piece of outboard gear (reverb) can create vibe and atmosphere, it will not write songs for you.

A classic for the new age.


03. The Dexateens - Lost and Found














Proficient, inspired, Southern garage rock. It’s not an exaggeration to say that they just might turn into one of the next great rock 'n' roll bands.


04. Peter Bruntnell - Peter and the Murder of Crows














Terrific, sparse arrangements. Bruntnell’s voice is his second finest asset, second only to his songwriting.


05. Hayden - In Field and Town














Cutting, poignant and spiteful, Hayden's conversational, wistful voice can make anything sound authentic.


06. The Tallest Man on Earth - Shallow Grave
















With his ramshackle delivery, nimble fingerpicking, and whimsical lyrics, you get a sense that the Tallest Man on Earth has spent a lot of time absorbing Harry Smith's Anthology of Folk Music and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan.


07. Robert Pollard - Is Off To Business












As the first full release for his new record label, Guided by Voices, Inc., this record is the start of a new era and if it's a sign of what’s to come, then Pollard’s long-time fans should rejoice.


08. Blitzen Trapper - Furr














A focused collection of rustic, freewheeling tracks that sound like the lovechild of The Dead and The Kinks.


09. Dungen - 4














Swedish revivalists, 'DOONG-un', continue to make genuinely great psychedelic music that seems to go relatively unnoticed.


10. Chris Mills - Living in the Aftermath














For fans of songcraft, hooks and flat out rock 'n' roll. I still wonder how in the hell no one knows who Chris Mills is.


The Best Records of 2008 (Part Two to follow)

Teenage Fanclub News

I expect to hear any day now that The Fannies new record is in the can. I'm very excited about this and wanted to share.

Norman Blake - Mon Oct 20, 2008

We've nearly finished our new record. Still a couple of vocals to do, and the final mixes. We'll have it completed by the end of November.

Teenage Fanclub began work on a new record with Nick Brine producing in late August at Leeders Farm which is located in Norfolk, just outside of London. Brine was also the producer for Teenage Fanclub's last record, Man-Made, which was released on Merge Records in '05. Back in the fold will be original drummer Francis Macdonald. Francis first appeared on TFC's debut record Catholic Education and most recently came back on Man-Made. No word on whether the new record will be another Merge release, but it's early yet.

People Are Leaving's Rolling Top 20 of 2008

drive-by truckers - brighter than creation's dark
fleet foxes - fleet foxes/sun giant (ep)
the dexateens - lost and found
peter bruntnell - peter and the murder of crows
the tallest man on earth - shallow grave
robert pollard - is off to business
blitzen trapper - furr
sun kil moon - april
benoit pioulard - temper
hayden - in field and town
sun kil moon - april
jonny greenwood - there will be blood - OST
silver jews - lookout mtn, lookout sea
chris mills - living in the aftermath
brett cash - how will i know if i'm awake
calexico - carried to dust
catfish haven - devastator
giant sand - proVISIONS
lenine - liabata
dungen - 4

Now Playing : October '08

peter bruntnell - peter and the murder of crows
calexico - carried to dust
giant sand - PROvisions
dungen - 4
blitzen trapper - furr
catfish haven - devastator
the broken west - now or heaven
jim o'rourke - despite the water supply (7")
benoit pioulard - temper
dutchess & the duke - she's the dutchess, he's the duke
boston spaceships - brown submarine
the owl service - a garland of song
deerhoof - offend maggie

Listmania : Top 100 Records

01 bob dylan - bringing it all back home
02 miles davis - in a silent way
03 the beatles - revolver
04 the rolling stones - sticky fingers
05 neil young - on the beach
06 the byrds - sweetheart of the rodeo
07 john coltrane - giant steps
08 bob dylan - highway 61
09 elvis presley - the sun sessions
10 bob dylan - blonde on blonde

11 the rolling stones - exile on main st
12 nick drake - bryter layter
13 joni mitchell - blue
14 bob dylan & the band - the basement tapes
15 son volt - trace
16 xtc - black sea
17 the genius of bud powell
18 townes van zandt - the late great
19 leonard cohen - best of
20 the beach boys - pet sounds

21 miles davis - kind of blue
22 the beatles - for sale
23 the flying burrito bros - gilded palace of sin
24 bob dylan - blood on the tracks
25 louis armstrong - the hot fives
26 chuck berry - the great 28
27 elvis presley - elvis presley
28 gram parsons - gp/grevious angel
29 badfinger - straight up
30 bob dylan - the freewheelin'

31 neil young - tonight's the night
32 the band - music from big pink
33 uncle tupelo - still feel gone
34 jeff beck - blow by blow
35 the beatles - magical mystery tour
36 stan getz - getz/gilberto/jobim
37 elton john - don't shoot me i'm only the piano player
38 fairport convention - liege & leaf
39 tom t hall – ballad of forty dollars/homecoming
40 frank sinatra - neil hefti's swinging brass

41 charles mingus - mingus mingus mingus mingus
42 xtc - skylarking
43 the kinks - something else
44 miles davis - workin with the miles davis quintet
45 nick drake - pink moon
46 billie holiday - lady in satin
47 dillard & clark - the fantastic expedition of
48 oliver nelson - blues and the abstract truth
49 charlie parker - with strings
50 the beatles - with the

51 george harrison - all things must pass
52 xtc - english settlement
53 the replacements - let it be
54 the clash - the clash
55 guided by voices - bee thousand
56 son volt - straightaways
57 aimee mann - bachelor #2
58 elvis costello - this years model
59 bobby bare jr - young criminals starvation league
60 scud mountain boys - massachusetts

61 richard buckner - since
62 teenage fanclub - bandwagonesque
63 sparklehorse - vivadixiesubmarinetransmissionplot
64 elliott smith - either/or
65 wilco - being there
66 the zombies – odyssey & oracle
67 nick drake - five leaves left
68 the works of sergie rachmaninoff
69 the ramones - the ramones
70 the dukes of stratosphear - chips from the chocolate fireball

71 doc watson - southbound
72 mississippi john hurt - today
73 wimple winch – the story of just four men
74 relatively clean rivers - relatively clean rivers
75 tom waits - mule variations
76 the raspberries - best of
77 jon brion - meaningless
78 be bop deluxe - axe victim
79 duke ellington - such sweet thunder
80 joe henry - scar

81 pernice brothers - the world won't end
82 spoon - kill the moonlight
83 the kinks - village green preservation society
84 pj harvey - stories from the city, stories from the sea
85 tim easton - special 20
86 neko case - furnace room lullaby
87 the flaming lips - the soft bulletin
88 david bowie - aladdin sane
89 sun kil moon - ghosts of the great highway
90 drive by truckers - southern rock opera

91 jim o'rourke - bad timing
92 marvin gaye - what's goin' on
93 joe pisapia - daydreams
94 iron & wine - the creek drank the cradle
95 robert pollard - from a compound eye
96 chet baker - chet
97 amy winehouse - back to black
98 chuck prophet - the hurting business
99 bill nelson - the love that whirls
100 bob dylan - time out of mind

YEAR - ARTIST - RECORD

Recently, I was asked to compile a list of my favorite records by year. I agreed to it, with a caveat of needing extra time to peruse over my rather comprehensive list of records, cds, files (sorry), etc... I have to say it was hard. Very hard. Some years were a snap, other years, forget it. More of a daunting task. One thing I've discovered over the last year or so, is with so much new music readily available via download, purchase, or ahem, other means, it's ostensibly hard to play my old records. You know the ones I mean. They had the ability to be both moving and give some needed inspiration if that was what you were looking for. If you were lucky they'd tug on a memory and bring you back to that specific time or place when everything was good. I miss that. With little to no extra time in my day, I'll give a record a cursory listen, and if it's not doing it for me I'll move on to the next. The time spent giving a record a fighting chance of becoming transcendent has become less and less. It can take up to ten spins before a record comes together to make sense. It feels like I could miss out by blowing by things to quickly. Lately, just trying to enjoy music has given way to the business of computers, external hard drives and becoming an administrator of my own record collection. As my wife calls it, doing all that "music garbage". Going forward, I plan on taking a different approach. Have less, listen more, live life.

It's a brave new world for young moderns.

1959 - Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
1960 - John Coltrane - Giant Steps
1961 - Oliver Nelson - Blues & The Abstract Truth
1962 - Frank Sinatra - Neil Hefti Swingin Brass
1963 - Bob Dylan - The Freewheelin'
1964 - The Beatles - Meet The Beatles
1965 - Bob Dylan - Bringing It All Back Home
1966 - Bob Dylan - Blonde On Blonde
1967 - The Beatles - Sgt Pepper's
1968 - The Byrds - Sweetheart of The Rodeo
1969 - The Band - The Band
1970 - Nick Drake - Bryter Layter
1971 - Rolling Stones - Sticky Fingers
1972 - Rolling Stones - Exile On Main St
1973 - Elton John - Don't Shoot Me I'm Only The Piano Player
1974 - Neil Young - On The Beach
1975 - Bob Dylan - Blood On The Tracks
1976 - Jeff Beck - Wired
1977 - Ramones - Rocket To Russia
1978 - Elvis Costello - This Years Model
1979 - The Clash - London Calling
1980 - XTC - Black Sea
1981 - Japan - Tin Drum
1982 - XTC - English Settlement
1983 - Tom Waits - Swordfishtrombones
1984 - Replacements - Let It Be
1985 - Replacements - Tim
1986 - XTC - Skylarking
1987 - Dukes of Stratosphear - Psonic Psunspot
1988 - The Smithereens - Green Thoughts
1989 - XTC - Oranges & Lemons
1990 - Jellyfish - Bellybutton
1991 - Uncle Tupelo - Still Feel Gone
1992 - XTC - Nonesuch
1993 - Uncle Tupelo - Anodyne
1994 - Guided By Voices - Bee Thousand
1995 - Son Volt - Trace
1996 - Scud Mountain Boys - Massachusetts
1997 - Bob Dylan - Time Out of Mind
1998 - Richard Buckner - Since
1999 - The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin
2000 - Neko Case - Furnace Room Lullaby
2001 - The Pernice Brothers - The World Won't End
2002 - Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
2003 - Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts of The Great Highway
2004 - Dungen - Te Det Lugnt
2005 - Son Volt - Okemah & The Melody of Riot
2006 - Robert Pollard - From A Compound Eye
2007 - The Capstan Shafts - Her Vs The Sad Cold Eventually

Fleet Foxes

The debut long player from Seattle's Fleet Foxes has slowly been making its way up the ranks as a serious contender for record of the year. After last weeks tear inducing or should I say "beard" inducing performance at San Francisco's Bottom of The Hill they may have done just that. Absolutely amazing is what comes to mind and when I think about it, I haven't had a chance to say that for quite some time. Strong compositions, tight four-part harmonies soaking in reverb and a group of players as seamless as I've seen in five years or so. Stay tuned cuz these Fleet Foxes are onto something and remind me of a time when music was simple, eloquent and just plain good. See you in Portland on July 25th.

Robert Pollard Is Off To Business

It is no surprise that Robert Pollard’s latest solo effort clocks in at around 35 minutes. What is surprising, though, is the fact that it takes him just 10 songs to get there. Rather than islandhopping around to as many snippets of sound as he can on his new album, Pollard settles into these songs and builds them out. This makes for not only some of his longest post-GBV offerings, but also some of his best.There is a charm to the way Pollard approaches his career. He, particularly of late, doesn’t take it too seriously and spends his time building a huge collection of albums that he wants to make. And while he shouldn’t take himself too seriously, there’s nothing wrong with getting down to the business of being a songwriter. Records can be fun and carefully crafted and even serious all at the same time, and Pollard seems to have remembered that fact on Robert Pollard Is Off to Business. These songs have a presence and heft to them due in no small part, to Todd Tobias’ role as producer and multi-instrumentalist on the album. This is easily his warmest and most inviting sound yet. The warm, classic-rock crunch of “The Original Heart” starts the album off with a punch, and shows that Pollard hasn’t forgotten how to weave his love for The Who into his own off-kilter brand of power-pop. “The Blondes” is a big ol’ rock ballad, and perhaps his best arrangement since “Edison’s Memos”. There’s also the punk-tinged, infectious punch of “1 Year Old” and the five-minute-plus “Weatherman and Skin Goddess”, which melds Britpop with arena rock . The wah-wah tinged "Gratification To Concrete" contain some of Bob's best melodies this side of The Keene Brothers "Death Of The Party" and makes for arguably the best track on the record. (On a side-note I'd like to add it's one of my wife's favorite songs and when it comes to Senor' Pollard, I'd don't hear the phrase "that's a really good song" too often) These songs show Pollard’s best effort yet at tackling different genres in his songs, filtering his wide swath of influences through his own uncanny knack for melody. He doesn’t try to make a psychedelic song here, or a punk song, or craft a rock opera. What he does is give us ten Robert Pollard songs, with those elements weaved throughout, the way he used to with GBV and his best solo stuff on Matador. Of course, Pollard doesn’t lose his goofy side in all this variety. He dips his vocals into his newly found cartoony bass briefly on “The Blondes”. (Rich Turiel, Pollard's manager, said Bob had scribbled, "sound like Pete Ham" (of Badfinger) on a piece of paper before cutting the vocal track. Robert Pollard Is Off to Business is a great return to form for Pollard. It has songs just as strong as anything on his Merge releases. As the first full release for his new record label, Guided by Voices, Inc., this album is the start of a new era and if this record is a sign of what’s to come, then Pollard’s long-time fans should rejoice.

The Original Heart
The Blondes
Gratification To Concrete
Weatherman and Skin Goddess
Wealth and Hell-Being

The Rolling Best of 2008

drive-by truckers - brighter than creation's dark
fleet foxes - fleet foxes
robert pollard - is off to business
the tallest man on earth - shallow grave
sun kil moon - april
hayden - in field and town
the dexateens - lost and found
chris mills - living in the aftermath
jonny greenwood - there will be blood - OST
brett cash - how will i know if i'm awake

The Tallest Man on Earth

It’s strange to think that it took a Swede to capture the spirit of American folk music, or at least come the closest to imitating it. But with the soon to-be release of Shallow Grave, the debut LP from Sweden’s own The Tallest Man on Earth, Americana has been given the Swedish touch. With his ramshackle delivery, nimble fingerpicking, and whimsical lyrics, you get a sense that the Tallest Man on Earth has spent a lot of time absorbing Harry Smith’s Anthology of Folk Music and The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan without the latter’s overt socio-political commentary. Like Dylan, who aped the musical and visual style of his pre-war forebears but later developed his own sound, the Tallest Man on Earth is a highly gifted singer-songwriter who may be a bit derivative, but what music isn’t?

10 songs in 30 minutes. I've been playing this non-stop for a week.

Enjoy !

HERE

Now Playing :

robert pollard is off to business - robert pollard
mason jennings - in the ever
the botticelli's - old home movies
roger manning jr. - catnip dynamite
aimee mann - smilers
chris mills - living in the aftermath
bonnie prince billy - lie down in the light

He's Back

If you've been by C.O.T.M. before you would know about my unprofessed love for everything Beulah. When San Francisco's own decided to call it quits five years ago after the release of Yoko, I wondered if I would ever again hear those melodies from principal songwriter/singer/guitarist Miles Kurosky. He made it perfectly clear you can take something only so far, and the beauty of it all is knowing when to get out. So he did. Unfortunately since, he's had to deal with hospital stays, health issues, and living in a constant state of convalescence. He's better now and apparently in fine fettle these days. So without further ado, here's An Apple For An Apple, the first track from his untitled solo record due sometime this year.

HERE

The Rolling Best of 2008

drive-by truckers - brighter than creation's dark
hayden - in field and town
jonny greenwood - there will be blood - OST
the dexateens - lost and found
sun kil moon - april
brett cash - how will i know if i'm awake
fleet foxes - ragged wood
the felice brothers - the felice brothers
silver jews - lookout mountain, lookout sea
black mountain - in the future
marah - angels of destruction
nada surf - lucky
she & him - volume 1

Researchers Play Tune Recorded Before Edison

For more than a century, since he captured the spoken words “Mary had a little lamb” on a sheet of tinfoil, Thomas Edison has been considered the father of recorded sound. But researchers say they have unearthed a recording of the human voice, made by a little-known Frenchman, that predates Edison’s invention of the phonograph by nearly two decades. The 10-second recording of a singer crooning the folk song “Au Clair de la Lune” was discovered earlier this month in an archive in Paris by a group of American audio historians. It was made, the researchers say, on April 9, 1860, on a phonautograph, a machine designed to record sounds visually, not to play them back. But the phonautograph recording, or phonautogram, was made playable — converted from squiggles on paper to sound — by scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, Calif. “This is a historic find, the earliest known recording of sound,” said Samuel Brylawski, the former head of the recorded-sound division of the Library of Congress, who is not affiliated with the research group but who was familiar with its findings. The audio excavation could give a new primacy to the phonautograph, once considered a curio, and its inventor, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville, a Parisian typesetter and tinkerer who went to his grave convinced that credit for his breakthroughs had been improperly bestowed on Edison. Scott’s device had a barrel-shaped horn attached to a stylus, which etched sound waves onto sheets of paper blackened by smoke from an oil lamp. The recordings were not intended for listening; the idea of audio playback had not been conceived. Rather, Scott sought to create a paper record of human speech that could later be deciphered. But the Lawrence Berkeley scientists used optical imaging and a “virtual stylus” on high-resolution scans of the phonautogram, deploying modern technology to extract sound from patterns inscribed on the soot-blackened paper almost a century and a half ago. The scientists belong to an informal collaborative called First Sounds that also includes audio historians and sound engineers.
David Giovannoni, an American audio historian who led the research effort, will present the findings and play the recording in public on Friday at the annual conference of the Association for Recorded Sound Collections at Stanford University in Palo Alto, Calif. Scott’s 1860 phonautogram was made 17 years before Edison received a patent for the phonograph and 28 years before an Edison associate captured a snippet of a Handel oratorio on a wax cylinder, a recording that until now was widely regarded by experts as the oldest that could be played back.
Mr. Giovannoni’s presentation on Friday will showcase additional Scott phonautograms discovered in Paris, including recordings made in 1853 and 1854. Those first experiments included attempts to capture the sounds of a human voice and a guitar, but Scott’s machine was at that time imperfectly calibrated. “We got the early phonautograms to squawk, that’s about it,” Mr. Giovannoni said. But the April 1860 phonautogram is more than a squawk. On a digital copy of the recording provided to The New York Times, the anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The voice, muffled but audible, sings, “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” in a lilting 11-note melody — a ghostly tune, drifting out of the sonic murk. The hunt for this audio holy grail was begun in the fall by Mr. Giovannoni and three associates: Patrick Feaster, an expert in the history of the phonograph who teaches at Indiana University, and Richard Martin and Meagan Hennessey, owners of Archeophone Records, a label specializing in early sound recordings. They had collaborated on the Archeophone album “Actionable Offenses,” a collection of obscene 19th-century records that received two Grammy nominations. When Mr. Giovannoni raised the possibility of compiling an anthology of the world’s oldest recorded sounds, Mr. Feaster suggested they go digging for Scott’s phonautograms. Historians have long been aware of Scott’s work. But the American researchers believe they are the first to make a concerted search for Scott’s phonautograms or attempt to play them back. In December Mr. Giovannoni and a research assistant traveled to a patent office in Paris, the Institut National de la Propriété Industrielle. There he found recordings from 1857 and 1859 that were included by Scott in his phonautograph patent application. Mr. Giovannoni said that he worked with the archive staff there to make high-resolution, preservation-grade digital scans of these recordings. A trail of clues, including a cryptic reference in Scott’s writings to phonautogram deposits made at “the Academy,” led the researchers to another Paris institution, the French Academy of Sciences, where several more of Scott’s recordings were stored. Mr. Giovannoni said that his eureka moment came when he laid eyes on the April 1860 phonautogram, an immaculately preserved sheet of rag paper 9 inches by 25 inches. “It was pristine,” Mr. Giovannoni said. “The sound waves were remarkably clear and clean.”
His scans were sent to the Lawrence Berkeley lab, where they were converted into sound by the scientists Carl Haber and Earl Cornell. They used a technology developed several years ago in collaboration with the Library of Congress, in which high-resolution “maps” of grooved records are played on a computer using a digital stylus. The 1860 phonautogram was separated into 16 tracks, which Mr. Giovannoni, Mr. Feaster and Mr. Martin meticulously stitched back together, making adjustments for variations in the speed of Scott’s hand-cranked recording. Listeners are now left to ponder the oddity of hearing a recording made before the idea of audio playback was even imagined. "There is a yawning epistemic gap between us and Léon Scott, because he thought that the way one gets to the truth of sound is by looking at it,” said Jonathan Sterne, a professor at McGill University in Montreal and the author of “The Audible Past: Cultural Origins of Sound Reproduction."
Scott is in many ways an unlikely hero of recorded sound. Born in Paris in 1817, he was a man of letters, not a scientist, who worked in the printing trade and as a librarian. He published a book on the history of shorthand, and evidently viewed sound recording as an extension of stenography. In a self-published memoir in 1878, he railed against Edison for “appropriating” his methods and misconstruing the purpose of recording technology. The goal, Scott argued, was not sound reproduction, but “writing speech, which is what the word phonograph means.” In fact, Edison arrived at his advances on his own. There is no evidence that Edison drew on knowledge of Scott’s work to create his phonograph, and he retains the distinction of being the first to reproduce sound.
“Edison is not diminished whatsoever by this discovery,” Mr. Giovannoni said.
Paul Israel, director of the Thomas A. Edison Papers at Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J., praised the discovery as a “tremendous achievement,” but called Edison’s phonograph a more significant technological feat. “What made Edison different from Scott was that he was trying to reproduce sound and he succeeded,” Mr. Israel said. But history is finally catching up with Scott.
Mr. Sterne, the McGill professor, said: “We are in a period that is more similar to the 1860s than the 1880s. With computers, there is an unprecedented visualization of sound.” The acclaim Scott sought may turn out to have been assured by the very sonic reproduction he disdained. And it took a group of American researchers to rescue Scott’s work from the musty vaults of his home city. In his memoir, Scott scorned his American rival Edison and made brazen appeals to French nationalism. “What are the rights of the discoverer versus the improver?” he wrote less than a year before his death in 1879. “Come, Parisians, don’t let them take our prize.”

The New York Times - March 27, 2008

1860: The Phonautograph Recording of 'Au Clair de la Lune'(mp3)
1931: Audio Excerpt from recording of the Same Song (mp3)

HERE

The Waxwings : Collection

This now defunct Detroit quartet weren't exactly straight outta the garage. Imagine what sort of records Brian Wilson would have made if he had been chasing the Stones and Syd Barrett instead of McCartney and The Beatles.

Keeping The Sparks - Low To The Ground
While You Spiral - Low To The Ground
Fragile Girl - Low To The Ground
Sleepy Head - Low To The Ground
Firewood - Low To The Ground
Into The Scenery - Low To The Ground
Different Plane - Low To The Ground
Wired That Way - Shadows Of
Clouded Over - Shadows Of
Look Down Darkly - Shadows Of
Rifle Through - Shadows Of
Fractured - Shadows Of
Into Tomorrow - Shadows Of
Steady As Starlight - Let's Make Our Descent
Of Late - Let's Make Our Descent
It Comes In Waves - Low To The Ground

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Now Playing :

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Joe Pernice

Back in the early 1990s, songwriter Joe Pernice used to be in a little-known but fashionable modern rock band called The Scuds. Night after night, they pummeled club audiences with amplified bar chords. Then, after the club would close for the night, they would retire to their guitar player's home, crowd around the kitchen table, and strum delicate country songs well into the morning. Pernice quickly realized this was the kind of music he really wanted to share with audiences, so his group renamed themselves the Scud Mountain Boys and introduced their fans to a whole new sound.
The Scud Mountain Boys enjoyed critical acclaim during their days with Sub Pop in the mid-'90s. Since then, Joe Pernice has recorded under a number of assumed names and borrowed styles. "Musically, I think I've always been a fan of classic pop melodies," Pernice says. "Lyrically, I think I tend to get a little dark at times. But there's not a lot of thought behind trying to put them together, it comes naturally." Pernice's lyrics have been so relentlessly dark at times, that some critics have chastised him for not easing up. "My lyrics, while honest, don't really reflect my everyday mood. I love to joke, I'm a pretty happy guy." He has his fans fooled. When they meet him, he says, they're often amazed that he's not bedridden.

Working Girls (Sunlight Shines) - The World Won't End
Water Ban - Yours, Mine & Ours
The Weakest Shade Of Blue - Yours, Mine & Ours
Bryte Side - The World Won't End
Baby In Two - Yours, Mine & Ours
In A Ditch - Massachusetts
7:30 - The World Won't End
There Goes The Sun - Discover a Lovelier You
Overcome by Happiness - Overcome by Happiness
Amazing Glow - Discover a Lovelier You
Saddest Quo - Discover a Lovelier You
Crestfallen - Overcome by Happiness
The Ballad Of Bjorn Borg - The World Won't End
Somerville - Live a Little
Penthouse In The Woods - Massachusetts
Bum Leg - Big Tobacco
Clear Spot - Overcome by Happiness
Breakneck Speed - Chappaquiddick Skyline
High As a Kite - Live a Little
Everyone Else Is Evolving - Chappaquiddick Skyline
Courage Up - Chappaquiddick Skyline
The Pill - Big Tobacco
Massachusetts - Massachusetts

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Peter Bruntnell

'Normal For Bridgwater' was the record that really made people start taking notice of Peter Bruntnell. Recorded in Boston with Bruntnell's band, along with Eric Heywood and Dave Boquist from Son Volt, the album was produced by Slow River founder and Rykodisc President George Howard. It soon became something of a classic - from Lay Down This Curse and By The Time My Head Gets To Phoenix to the heart-breaking Handful Of Stars. With Normal For Bridgwater, Bruntnell's beautifully detailed songs of longing and lonesome regrets established him as one of Britain's premier songwriters.
When asked the meaning of the title track Bruntnell offered "a couple who are friends of mine ran a particularly rough pub in Bridgwater (a small town in the UK West Country), and the landlady was telling me one day that the doctors in Bridgwater use the abbreviation NFB (= Normal For Bridgwater) when describing their test results for slightly disturbed local patients." His second record, 'Ends of the Earth' is a stunning album, and without a doubt the best thing Bruntnell has ever come up with in his relatively unprolific career to date. Didn’t imagine he could follow up “Normal for Bridgwater” without compromising? Think again. “Ends of the Earth” barely treads any new ground at all, but at the same time still manages to throw up some of the best tracks you’ll have heard in a long time. “Here Comes the Swells,” the album opener is a good introduction to what lies ahead - Bruntnell’s voice is his second finest asset, second only to his songwriting.

Handful Of Stars - Normal For Bridgwater
N.F.B. - Normal For Bridgwater
Tabloid Reporter - Ends Of The Earth
Here Come The Swells - Ends Of The Earth
By The Time My Head Gets To Phoenix - Normal For Bridgwater
Cosmea - Normal For Bridgwater
Ends Of The Earth - Ends Of The Earth
Lay Down This Curse - Normal For Bridgwater
One Drink Away - Ends Of The Earth
Darling I Suppose - Loose Sounds Of The Old West
Shot From A Spring - Normal For Bridgwater
Played Out - Normal For Bridgwater
Perfume River - Ghost In a Spitfire
Rio Tinto - Ends Of The Earth
You Won't Find Me - Normal For Bridgwater
Fear of Lightning - Ghost In a Spitfire
Forgiven - Normal For Bridgwater
Outlaw (May The Sun Always Shine) - Normal For Bridgwater

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