Deliliah is a moldy peach.

From what we here, Kimya Dawson is deservedly selling well in the back-catalog department these days, thanks to the perfect placement of “Anyone Else But You” in Juno. And, what’s best, she just announced some last minute dates in these parts: Saturday, Jan. 26 at Schoolkids Records-Chapel Hill and Sunday, Jan. 27 at Bull City Headquarters. Both shows are at 7 p.m. And, if you just want to hear the songs, listen here.

UPDATE: Kimya will also play Chaz’s Bull City Records at 4 p.m. on Saturday, Jan. 26. Nice.

Last week Blend manager Idan Eckstein regularly used the club’s “mixing it up” tagline while talking about about his Rosemary Street space. That was a tad distracting. You know, blend, mix it up, see what he did there and all? But he’s holding true, after all: Dead Kennedys frontman and Alternative Tentacles frontman Jello Biafra will do his spoken-word set at Blend on Sunday, May 6 at 7 p.m. Totally weird. This Biafra video is great. Also, our own blogger Rich Ivey hit the road this past week as the lead singer of one of his favorite bands, Order of the Dying Orchid. Here they are in Raleigh, doing “Wooly Bully.”

Lorraine Ellison: Deserving more light

With a nodding acquaintance at best with mainstream-ish music and a low tolerance for presenters’ forced banter, I don’t have much use for the Grammy Awards these days. I checked in for no more than 15 minutes total on Sunday night, mostly to see how the locals were making out. (Not well, turns out.) One of two performances that I saw was Mary J. Blige’s “Be Without You,” a turn that I’d describe as ornate but uninvolving—at least, that is, until its final minute. That’s when my 15 minutes of viewing was rewarded and anyone both attentive and curious got a history lesson: Blige segued into “Stay with Me” and brought her time in the spotlight to a dramatic, high-emotion close.

I’d wager that most of the people who recognized Blige’s “Stay with me, baaaay-beeee!” ending know the song from the Bette Midler movie The Rose and/or that film’s soundtrack recording. However, “Stay With Me” actually dates back to the mid 1960s, to the days—for better or worse—when divas didn’t have tattooed biceps. The song was co-written by the prolific Jerry Ragovoy, and it was originally recorded in 1966 by the under-appreciated and rather under-recorded vocalist Lorraine Ellison, who died young of cancer in 1983. Let loose to display the full range and power of her voice, Ellison made “Stay With Me” one of soul music’s greatest high-drama pieces. She seemed to be prying the words from the most anguish-ridden corner of her soul, suggesting nothing less than dead-of-the-night desperation.

Here’s the payoff: In two weeks, a three-disc Ellison set titled Sister Love: The Warner Bros. Recordings will be released. (The collection originally came out on Rhino Handmade, from whom I bought it, late last year. WEA has apparently picked it up now that Rhino’s limited-run release has run its course.) Its centerpiece is, of course, “Stay With Me,” and there are a couple other cuts in that same smolder-to-full-burn vein. But the set also makes clear that Ellison was far from a one-style performer, as she moves from standards such as “Heart and Soul” and “Cry Me a River”—which boast sophisticated arrangements and adventurous vocal flights that have more in common with jazz and big band than with soul—to gorgeous covers of “Caravan,” “He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother” (both recorded in Muscle Shoals), and “Many Rivers to Cross.” The package paints Lorraine Ellison as a gifted and, more notably, inventive soul singer who’s ripe for (re-)discovery almost 25 years after her passing. Maybe Blige’s tip of the hat to Ellison (whose spirit I hope she had in mind during that finale) will be the spark.

“You guys wanna hang out in 2008?”

If you happened to see our 2006 cover story on Carolina beach music culture, The Infinite Shag, you may remember our guide, Steve Rogers. Steve is still an avid shag dancer, but he also once played in a rock band, The Night Riders, in Alamance County from 1963 until 68. Their record was made for the famous Justice label and was reissued in recent years. They played some originals and modern rock songs that became timeless—you know, the sort-of guidebook for early rock teens like The Kingsmen, The Swingin’ Medallions, and of course, a little bit of the Beatles.
This Sunday, January 20 from 8:30-11:00 p.m, Steve and the members of The Night Riders will talk about those teenage garage rock days on the Triangle’s radio repository for such things, WXDU, 88.7’s “Who’s Got the Cuckoo.” It’s an extended version of the one-hour show for this special reunion, with the heart of the program somewhere around 9-10:30 p.m. Robby Poore will chat with the band, while Stephen Conrad plays records throughout. The show is also celebrating its own three-year anniversary. Don’t miss it.

Addendum: The Night Riders now have their own web site: www.introducingthenightriders.com. Go check it out.—Chris

Strong pitches (for songs, to batters).

The word that the next Yep Roc album from roots- & soul- rockers Marah will have songs titled “Bruce Sutter,” “Gaylord Perry,” and “Phil Neikro” (sic) provides more oomph to two beliefs that I hold to be true about baseball songs. First, I contend that there are more songs about pitchers than the other eight positions combined. (Designated hitter is not a position, and who’d write a song about a DH anyway? It’s not like anything rhymes with “Travis Hafner.”) For instance, former Pittsburgh Pirates hurler Dock Ellis has been the subject of two songs, one by the Barbara Manning-led SF Seals and one by Chuck Brodsky (more on him later). Throwing a no-hitter on acid? Now that’s something a songwriter can work with. There have also been two recordings about John Rocker, so apparently being a lunkhead is also prime song fodder.

Others that spring to mind are Jonathan Richman’s “Walter Johnson,” “The Ballad of Denny McClain” from those diamond-loving SF Seals, and the late Warren Zevon’s tribute to the Spaceman, “Bill Lee.” Even Dylan has written a song about a pitcher: “Catfish,” his ode to Jim Hunter, a tune that Hunter famously couldn’t stand. For various reasons, there have been songs about Satchel Paige (simply one of the coolest guys ever), Vida Blue (fun name), Hoyt Wilhelm (old knuckleballer) and Ron Guidry (Cajun). If there haven’t been songs written about Mark “The Bird” Fidrych and Al “The Mad Hungarian” Hrabosky, then a couple writers are missing perfect opportunities to, um, step up to the plate. And one of the ten baseball-themed CDs from the DC-based organization Hungry for Music (www.hungryformusic.com) was released to coincide with Nolan Ryan’s induction into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and it featured several songs about the fireballer.

Belief two is that North Carolina is Baseball Song Central. Two of the pitchers mentioned above are North Carolinians: Catfish Hunter is from Perquimans County and Williamston’s spitball wizard is Gaylord Perry. (It’s worth noting that a 45 titled “The King of the Old Rawhide (The Ballad of Gaylord Perry)” came out of eastern North Carolina long ago, beating Marah to the punch by some 30 years.) Raleigh’s Kenny Roby has penned two bittersweet, and outstanding, baseball songs, “Ace, My Radio & Baseball” and “The Sweep.” The latter is the tale of a fictitious Jewish ballplayer, and it plays out like Ring Lardner backed by The Band. With references to the House of David team and Hank Greenberg, Roby shows he knows his national pastime lore, and with lines like “Used to sing hallelujah, and often I would sing/ Had a sweetheart a long time ago, but we wanted different rings,” he demonstrates, as always, that he knows his way around a chorus. Another one of my favorites is “Big Foot in the Door,” written and sung by Greensboro artist Bruce Piephoff about Greensboro ballplayer Tom Alston, the first black player on the St. Louis Cardinals.

But making North Carolina the center of the baseball song universe is Chuck Brodsky, a folk-leaning singer/songwriter who was raised in Philly and now lives in Asheville. Brodsky’s been called “baseball’s troubadour poet laureate” by Tim Wiles of the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library, earning that praise for his wonderful Baseball Ballads, an album that sounds like it was recorded by the light of a transistor radio tuned to a Phillies game. In addition to his Dock Ellis number, Brodsky has songs about catcher/spy Moe Berg, white Negro League player Eddie Klepp, and the star-crossed Eddie Waitkus, the inspiration for the fictional Roy Hobbs. And you can be damn sure that he knows how to spell Phil Niekro’s last name.

It’s too easy to hate hardcore in 2007.

The genre is synonymous with either fake suburban gangbangers sporting brass knuckles and camo shorts or mascara-clad faux metalheads with jeans that look like body paint. Group A wears jock mentality with XXL jerseys and dog piles. Group B boasts hair-metal riffs, kickboxing and pillaged underage girls. There are a few intricacies subdividing the jock stuff and the glam stuff (straight edge, veganism, Christianity, Nikes, whatever), but the embarrassing sects still make up 95 percent of current hardcore.
Raleigh’s Double Negative is not only part of that select five percent: They’re about to dominate it. Their debut LP, due out in the next few months on Richmond’s No Way Records, is a ringer. People had better go ahead and take notice. The 18-minute scorcher may be the best NCHC record since Corrosion of Conformity’s 1983 classic, Eye for an Eye, and it should be required listening for anyone that has anything to do with hardcore, especially the kids dropping big bills on Guns Up! t-shirts and bootleg Underoath wifebeaters.

This isn’t an album review. This is a heads up for anyone who cares about hardcore 21 years after its supposed death. This is a call out to the cockroaches who survived hardcore’s dark days and the newjacks who make it worse. Don’t miss this record. Sure, I want to hate hardcore in 2007.

Damn Double Negative. They won’t let me.

Here’s the transcript of Superchunk/Portastatic/Merge co-founder/founder/co-founder Mac McCaughan talking with the U.S. Senate’s Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Wednesday. More to come on this, for sure. Thanks to Pitchfork.

Here’s the link.
Vote away.

Finally, a little light.

Okay, asked and answered: my favorite new album thus far in 2007 is Nick Lowe’s At My Age, his second release for Yep Roc and his first release in a half-dozen years. It picks up where 2001’s The Convincer left off, and then some. You can call the new one crooned pop for now-people, with Lowe mixing obscure country and r&b-ish covers with like-minded originals and giving the whole thing a country-soul overcoat. It’s the aural equivalent of chasing a pint of ale and a martini with a smooth bourbon on the rocks. A friend calls it “like Frank Sinatra singing country,” and I occasionally call it pubapolitan. I could go on, but you get the idea by now.

But it’s worth noting that there’s even more for Nick Lowe fans to celebrate in the first half of 2007—chiefly, the release of a collection by the guy who Lowe cites as his main musical influence: Jim Ford. And there you have my favorite reissue of the year, The Sounds of Our Time on Bear Family. Odds are that you don’t recognize the name Jim Ford, and that’s to be expected and OK: He released only one album in his day. But Ford’s is an interesting story, and as it unfolds, you’re not sure whether to paint him as the Zelig of the music world or as its version of Kevin “Mr. Six Degrees of Separation” Bacon. Ford grew up with Loretta Lynn as a neighbor. He had relationships with former Ikette Bonnie Lynn (before she became Bonnie Bramlett) and with Bobbie Gentry, afterward contending that he wrote “Ode to Billie Joe,” which the latter then swiped and tweaked. There he is in the photo collage adorning his close friend Sly Stone’s There’s a Riot Going On and in a studio writing songs with Bobby Womack and Ronnie Wood. That’s him recording in London with Brinsley Schwarz and the Grease Band. Aretha Franklin recorded his “Niki Hoeky,” and Elvis had it on his jukebox. I could go on, but, again, you get the idea by now.

But Bear Family doesn’t typically let you star in one of its handsome CD collections just for being a fascinating character, and The Sounds of Our Time puts Ford’s complete-package talents on display. It pairs his only full-length release, 1969’s near-masterpiece Harlan County, with 15 additional cuts that include his earliest singles to previously unissued masters. Ford’s hybrid style draws on roots-rock and country soul, quite possibly inventing pub rock in the process. In namedrop terms, he’s Dan Penn meets Tony Joe White meets Joe South, and on a couple songs, there’s even a little Van Morrison around the edges. You want range? Listen to Ford move from a brilliantly reworked version of Sam Cooke’s “Chain Gang” to the pure honky-tonk of “Happy Songs Sell Records, Sad Songs Sell Beer.” No wonder Nick Lowe loves the guy.

Turn the page for some more thoughts on the first half of 2007….

(more…)

I caught The Devil and Daniel Johnston Sunday night at Galaxy Cinema in Cary, and I thought it was beautiful. Unfortunately, like most small-budget music films in Triangle art houses, its Triangle run is meant to be short. The movie closes at Galaxy Thursday, June 22. Go see it. I suppose I don’t have much to say about the film that’s not been said, other than to note that it is an endearing, honest portrait of a grand songwriter turning his manic depression into a powerful muse. Also, I couldn’t disagree more with a line in Godfrey Cheshire’s review of the film for the Independent: “The music we hear is quirkily engaging, nothing more…” David Menconi, though, makes an interesting point about the film in his blog for The N&O.