You are currently browsing the category archive for the 'riverside' category.
This is what I would throw in it on my way to work:
1) Taj Mahal, Mo’ Roots
My favorite Taj Mahal album, it’s a masterful blend of reggae and southern roots music. Clara (St. Kitts Woman) is going in my next mix tape after Akido’s Yesterday http://cousinsvinyl.com/2006/akido-self-titled-mercury-lp-1972-afro-funk/. A great Friday morning selection.
2) Jah Bunny, Dubs International
Such a sweet dub album. All the songs are well put together, and not as echoey and crazy as Lee Perry. Makes for great late-night cruisin’ music. Also good for a passenger friend who just needs to chill out.
3) Various, Electric Breakdance: The Hottest Breakdance Music On The Street
Awe yeah! This is my pimpin’ music! 1984’s freshest breakdance joints. Need to shop here to listen to this www.myairshoes.com Too bad I can’t put the poster that comes with it on the side of car.
4) T Rex, Electric Warrier
“Beneath the bebop moon, I want to crooooon, with you, Beneath the Mambo Sun, I got to be the one, with you…” Impossible not to turn this up.
5) Mel Brown, Eighteen Pounds Of Unclean Chitlins and Other Greasy Blues Specialties
Yeah, it’s what you would expect. Mmmm, mmmm!
6) Marvin Holmes and the Uptights, Ooh Ooh The Dragon and Other Monsters
Sweet happy funk. Has one of my all time favorite songs, I’ve Never Found A Girl (To Love Me Like You Do). The back cover describes this album as being as funky as barrrels of hot asphalt. This is being played as loud as my speakers will let them. I hope I don’t get a speeding ticket with this on.
UNDER THE SEAT: Wes Montgomery, Full House
OK, this is cheating a bit. But I gotta keep this in reserve in case I feel the need for some relaxed jazz cruising. This early Riverside is one of my favorite jazz LPs.
I think I’d put in a new rotation after about a solid two weeks. Better not do any off-roading though.
-Cousin Geoff
jsREVIEW:
“These previously unissued sounds from the drag strip represent a selection of the finest recoding ever done on those fantastic machines which emanate from the back yards and garages all over the country. Perhaps the builders of these machines are never put to so severe a test (or at least, so concentrated a test) as they are on this record. For here, the results of their tuning and designing are clearly and openly heard, without the benefit of a flashy pain job, or a snazzy crash helmet festooned with red, white and blue foxtails— or anything else that might distract attention.
That most of these builders and designers are successful is obvious in listening; and the ones who fail to do so, we hope, in good spirits and share our laughter at the peculiar sounds made by their goofs.
At any rate, here are the unabridged noises of a fantastic collection of automotive machinery. They deserve some careful listening.”
— From the back of the LP jacket, Riverside Records 5517.
There’s no date on this album, though my guess (based on the rest of the dates for the Riverside label) is that it came out in the late ’50s, when hot-rodding was a growing concern. The album promises “Hot new sounds from the drag strip,” and that’s what it delivers, in beautiful hi-fi mono.
In its most literal sense, this is a “noise” album. There are no songs there, no real intended sounds as such. Nothing that can really be recognized as intended as music. This was, first and foremost, an epistle to America as low media, a record for kids and gearheads to listen to as they dreamed of their own hotrods. The liner notes make it seem like there’s some way for me to tell which of these are the gallant and which the gufus based on the tunings, but I grew up too late for that. This is essentially sounds of machines.
There are three types of noise albums, and I tend to think of this as the third. The first would be those albums that sometimes get called “noise rock.” Merzbow or Nurse With Wound or Throbbing Gristle. They tend to have discrete tracks and show the evidence of being listened to as music, even when they attack the traditional signposts of music. Sounds are often layered and distorted in unnatural ways in the first type of noise album.
For the second type, there’s the sound effects put out for commercial and educational use. Think those blings and boings of a radio ad, or the Wilhelm scream. I could see an argument being made to place Rods ‘N Rails in with these, as it would be handy if I ever had to convince someone that I was at a drag strip over the phone. But for the most part, the engines rev for too long and there isn’t necessarily a good cut point between the cars. Certainly, this would be a pain to cue from.
The third type is the field recording. This isn’t that either, strictly, but it falls closer than any of the other categories. Like a birdsong guide for the freeways of the late ’50s, it reminds me more of sleeping in my grandmother’s house on First Ave., North Riverside, Il., than anything else. The surge then disintigration of cars passing a single mic, then dopplering out, is strangely soothing. It’s a lullaby imagined by Depero.
A beautiful burst of nostolgia for futures past, Rods ‘N Rails is worth listening to both as a document and as an album.
-js
SOLD OUT
