“Monster Magnet” has been sampled by Z-Trip for his “Rock Star,” but he only used the line, “this is the voice of your consciousness” in that track. DJ Spooky also sampled “Monster Magnet” in his “Galactic Funk,” but neglected the beats for that proto-Funkadelic-like chant of “ah AH, ah AH.”

As far as I know, though, nobody’s sampled that rolling, martial funk rhythm the late Jimmy Carl lays down with utmost poise while Theremin squiggles and myriad vocal weirdnesses blossom over it. It’s a problematic one, but somebody—Madlib, maybe?—should pounce on it.

After five years of busting up dance floors across America the Trucks have decided to call it a day. Tonight at Chop Suey will be their final Seattle performance, followed by one more show in Portland on November 7th and a finale in Bellingham the following night. The Trucks are living proof that if you are motivated enough you don't necessarily have to be a great musician to start a hit band, you can just learn how to play as you go along (having your band consist of four attractive ladies may help expedite the process, however). Strangely enough, the first time I met Kristen and Marissa was the night before the Trucks first show, at a friend's apartment in Bellingham. They told me they were starting a band, and that they were going to go on tour and be famous. I took their delusions of grandeur with a grain of salt and agreed to go check them out the next day on the Western campus. They told me they had written a song about Marissa's ex-boyfriend, my audio recording teacher at Fairhaven, and how he refused to pleasure her orally. I was intrigued. At this point the band had no drummer, only simple casio beats, and it was pretty clear Kristen was the only member who actually knew how to play music. Regardless, they were charming and fun and full of promise, and before long my audio recording teacher was at the show too, standing next to me. Their closing song was the one about him, and as they all chirped, "Why the fuck won't you go down on me?" I looked over to find his head sinking farther and farther into his hands. It was a priceless moment I'll keep with me forever. Thanks Trucks, you've been all sorts of fun.

Tonight is also a CD release show for A Gun That Shoots Knives. They promise new costumes and fun surprises. Awesome opens.

Mauricio Kagel was a trickster, inventor, and filmmaker always attuned to the theatrical elements of music making. He not only understood that all performance is theater, but in his films and scores Kagel magnified tiny, interstitial musical elements into grand gestures (e.g., the madhouse cackling in the Improvisation ajoutée for organist and two assistants).

Unlike Kagel's better-known peers and colleagues including Pierre Boulez-who back in 1954 told him to ditch Buenos Aires and come to Europe-Kagel remains comparatively unknown in the U.S. Many of his works require custom-made instruments or unusual (and thus in America impractical) configurations. The duo Zwei Akte calls for a harpist and reed virtuoso equipped with sopranino (not soprano), alto, and baritone saxophones.

Kagel helped pioneer electronic music; by having performers record custom-made tapes to perform Transición II (1958-59), he helped establish the tape recorder as a musical instrument and legitimate component of chamber music. Kagel also fashioned outsize and at times prankish musical schemes. His hefty Exotica for "extra-European instruments" remains gorgeously difficult listening while Tactil deploys long throbbing tines and louche guitar strums in a sideways homage to Jobim & company.

By the late 1970s, Kagel had consolidated his avant garde tactics with more traditional techniques, and masterfully so; in the sheaf of pieces from 1981's Sankt-Bach Passion to Auftakte, sechshändig of 1996 and after, Kagel commingles the new and the old seamlessly.

To listen, UbuWeb is an excellent place to start and check The Avant Garde Project too.

Tonight on Flotation Device, I'll air Transición II and several other works in tribute to Kagel along with Annea Lockwood's World Rhythms, perhaps the first piece to layer unprocessed field recordings live.

Catch the on-line stream or tune in to KBCS 91.3 FM from 10 pm to midnight.

Bad week for music legends. First Pink Floyd’s Richard Wright died from cancer; now the prolific, genius Motown composer Norman Whitfield has passed away at age 65 from diabetes and other ailments. Whitfield wrote—often in tandem with his creative partner Barrett Strong—several of the greatest soul songs of all time and he played a crucial role in psychedelicizing Motown’s sound in the late ’60s/early ’70s through tunes like the Temptations’ “Cloud Nine,” “Psychedelic Shack,” and “Ball of Confusion,” and the Undisputed Truth’s “Smiling Faces Sometimes.” Among many others. Time constraints prevent me from elaborating now, but the man was a muthafunkin’ immortal-hit machine.

Fill your iPod with Whitfield’s compositions and try not to feel like your life is immeasurably richer.

The Temptations’ “Can’t Get Next to You”

Last week, I was in NYC. I walked by Other Music, Victory Records, various little vinyl boutiques, and while, on some abstract level, I wanted to support all these businesses, I didn't come home with a single record. At my kind host's stylish but small railroad apartment, we listened to music on a nice set of speakers plugged into mp3 players and laptops. They had maybe two boxes of records. I can't remember whether or not they had a turntable set up (I don't think so).

At home, I have the same brand of shelving as every other vinyl owning young person, the one made out of 16 squares perfectly sized for 12"s (your model may have 25 squares if you're fancy). It's half full of vinyl, half full of books and other media. I have a few crates worth of records on additional shelving or in actual crates on the floor, but I'm lately convinced that I'm never going to fill the rest of this shelf up with vinyl, let alone have to someday spring for the 25 square model.

I find no joy in this conclusion. I would love to live in a house lined with shelves of records. I would prefer my living room to look like these. I just don't think it's going to happen.

Vinyl is relatively big and heavy. Airlines are charging for extra baggage, and even when they weren't, traveling with vinyl (say, enough to DJ with) is grueling compared to traveling with mp3s or even CDs. Shipping is apparently a drag as well. Apartment space for record shelving is limited.

Music is expensive. We're diving headlong into what looks to my admittedly not economically expert eyes like a serious recession/depression, and records just aren't a necessity as much as food and shelter (Segal will likely debate this point with me). Rising fuel prices only aggravate the flying/shipping issues as well. As much as I want to support these small business and be a parton of artists, I just can't give any more than I can afford. Before this job, that meant buying records as carefully as possible, downloading what I couldn't afford to buy, and supporting artists at shows and by buying other merch. Now, it frequently means building my collection through promotional copies. Both means meant more CDs and mp3s than vinyl making their way into my collection. Morgan Geist might complain that I'm not listening to his records on the proper hi-fi setup in the ideal format, but audiophile gear is a luxury that most music fans probably can't afford. Hell, even Sasha Frere-Jones is selling his record collection.

These are gloomy, doomy times—every time someone in New York asked me how work was going, I would reply that it's great, the music business is tanking, print journalism is tanking, so print music journalism is the most exciting place you could hope to be. In seriousness, it's an awesome job, I feel fortunate every day to have it, but I'm not sure it'll ever launch me comfortably into the middle class. I think I may never own a home; maybe I won't be able to hold on to all the music I love for posterity either. Maybe formats—or other, larger paradigms—will shift and force people of my class situation to leave certain things behind. I think record collections, as opposed to mp3 collections, will only become increasingly a thing of class privilege rather than of ardent music fandom (I suppose it was always this way; perhaps music fans of less means have just moved from dubbed cassettes to mp3s).

Sacrilege, maybe, but as much as I love the look and feel of vinyl, records are only of marginally more value to me than the equivalent mp3s. Or: If I have to, I can let record collecting go. At least it'll be easier to move when rising rent finally prices me out my current place.

“Remember a Day” from A Saucerful of Secrets

Richard Wright, a founder member of Pink Floyd, has died at the age of 65 after battling cancer, his spokesman said.

Wright played the keyboard with the legendary band and wrote music in classic albums such as Dark Side Of The Moon and Wish You Were Here.

His spokesman said: "The family of Richard Wright, founder member of Pink Floyd, announce with great sadness, that Richard died ... after a short struggle with cancer. The family have asked that their privacy is respected at this difficult time."

Wright's spokesman did not say from what form of cancer the star had been suffering.

It's always sad to see a good band call it quits, but at least Ice Age Cobra got to go out on their own terms and throw one final, wild show. These dudes wowed me the first time I saw them a few years ago, and to my delight, every other time I caught them from then on. Their final show is no exception - they rip though an awesome set of garage, grunge, classic rock, and party riffs to a crowd of dedicated fans big enough that even back at the bar people know the words and are signing along. About an hour into the set the band stops playing and wanders away; singer/guitarist Jordan West announces: "Before we engage in any more shenanigans, we have to all become one. We don't have any bread or wine, so this will have to do." He holds up a leopard print bandana he just finished using to wipe down his gleaming wet torso and hair. He balls it up and holds it over a guy's mouth, who almost unflinchingly takes the sweat communion. There are enough drops to save four more disciples, then the rag is crammed into the last guy's mouth. For the second to last song the band pulls up original bassist Brad Kauffman to sing their timeless international #1 hit "Acid Pony," and everyone goes wild. Though their Myspace touts this show as their last "until our reunion show," West spray paints "Ice Age Cobra RIP" in huge letters across his guitar cabs in a declaration of finality. The band dies as it lived, in pure rock and roll revelry.

photo by hordis

Cross-posted to Slog because it's just that important, dammit.

Below, Shikany plays a cover of ZZ Top’s “La Grange” with Spike & the Impalers.

Saxophonist LeRoi Moore died yesterday at the age of 46. His death was a result of injuries he suffered from an ATV accident back in June, although the press statement did not specify exactly how he died.

There is not an instrument I despise more in the rock and roll context than the saxophone. For example, my least favorite song of all time is “Old Time Rock and Roll” by Bob Seger, thanks mostly to that sax solo. I’m sure Clarence Clemons is solid enough guy, but he’s kept me from ever truly appreciating the Boss. Don’t get me wrong, the saxophone is not inherently shitty – I love me some Coltrane. And there are several rock bands that have used the sax tastefully and interestingly (Plot to Blow Up the Eiffel Tower, Mars Volta, to name a few), but 99% of the time the rock/sax combo is all Bob Seger, and it makes me want to stab out my ears.

I know it is monumentally uncool to admit to it, but there was a time deep in my adolescence when I could get down with some DMB. It was short lived, only until I was introduced to the wide world of independent music, but there’s still a soft spot. The pro-DMB outpouring on the Stereogum message board is a bit baffling considering that site’s usual indie commenter snark, but it would seem that “soft spot” is more commonplace than I would have thought. Though I haven’t listened to their records in years, and don’t plan to ever again, I can remember back to the time when I did, and realize that my feelings toward LeRoi Moore’s saxophone are decidedly out of step with my opinion of rock saxophone in general. When it came time for me to leave DMB behind and never speak their name again, it had nothing to do with the saxophone of LeRoi Moore.

Soul singer Isaac Hayes died today in Memphis. He was 65. (LA Times)

Do you fondly recall the remix of Elvis' "A Little More Satisfaction" and the 1997 era of big-beat techno? Have you been wondering just what the guys behind The Sopranos' theme song have been up to? Do you think Snoop Dogg needs to rival Diddy in the "ruining old music" department? Do you hate yourself?

Then you'll surely get a three-fourths over Cash Remixed, set for release in October but now streaming at JohnnyCashRemixed.com. First bad sign? The tunes stream in the cumbersome RealPlayer format.

The only song that gets out relatively unscathed is "Folsom Prison Blues," its basic instrumentation left mostly intact with a Pete Rock beat crazy-glued on top. But otherwise, this album will give new meaning to "no stars" and "0.0" review scores. "I Heard That Lonesome Whistle Blow" has been run through a trip-hop grinder to sound like a B-side from The Saint's soundtrack. "Rock Island Line" collides with percussion straight out of a Jock Jam. "Sugartime" has been trampled by the ghost of Kid Rock's midget. But nothing-no-nothing is worse than Snoop Dogg turning "I Walk The Line" into a G-Funk duet, inserting 16 bars, Death Row-style vocoder, and plenty of interrupting mumbles ("tell 'em why, Johnny") and "uh"s into the song.

I'd like to say the result of the Snoop duet is funny, but it breaks my heart. Johnny Cash did so much to unearth new meaning in older pop and rock songs in his American series, and his estate deserves nothing as low as this "turn in kind." How odd that people saw the song title "Leave That Junk Alone" and didn't come to their senses. Sorry, Johnny.

From a Myspace bulletin:

After a little over four years of playing music together, we've collectively decided to move on to other things. We're all extremely grateful to everyone that's supported us over the years. To all the bands we've played with, the folks that helped us make our records, and the fans that've come out to our shows and picked up our music, thank you. You've made everything worth it.

Love,
Siberian