In 1982, painter Don Van Vliet stopped performing as Captain Beefheart. The two sides of the artist had always been linked: his paintings and drawings graced several of his album covers, and a few paintings took titles from his songs: "Japan in a Dishpan," "Golden Birdies," and "China Pig," a Delta-style blues about a piggy bank facing the hammer.
His paintings suggest ways to read his records. My initial impression, walking into a Van Vliet exhibition… more »
The Grateful Dead are a peculiar entity, and tough to think about critically because they exist almost entirely as their own subculture. The Beatles and The Rolling Stones are similarly successful, massive revenue-generating groups, but they defined culture at large. Everyone can find ways to wrap themselves in the subtext of those bands or, in the least, find songs that they admire. The Dead are a different thing; with fans of the group comes a… more »
James Joyce wrote that his weapons as an artist would be "silence, exile and cunning." Silence isn't generally useful for musicians, and cunning comes with the territory for anyone who wants to play the pop-music game of one-upmanship. In 2004, though, a lot of the best indie records latched onto exile as a weapon, or as a metaphor, or even as their central subject. The international political landscape had collapsed into a mess of lies,… more »
The Black Keys are easily the freshest thing to happen to blues in this millennium, but you can't really call them a blues band. But then, neither can you call the duo — drummer Patrick Carney and guitarist/vocalist David Auerbach — a rock band. Or even a blues-rock band in the conventional sense of the term. Their music is garage rock that knows that blues is at the very heart of rock, and it is… more »
The Moneywasters Social Club had sold 557 tickets (50 cents in advance, 65 at the door) to its dance at the Rhythm Club in Natchez, Mississippi, on April 23, 1940. Tiny Bradshaw's orchestra, originally scheduled to play, had cancelled when a booking came through at the Apollo Theater in Harlem for the same night. The replacement was Walter Barnes 'Sophisticated Swing Orchestra, but nobody in Natchez's black community of about 9600 people was complaining. Clarinetist… more »
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