Head Roc – The Return of Black Broadway (Odara Productions, 2004)
Head Roc maybe the most well intentioned person in hip-hip, if not in all of music. But, alas brethren, that does not translate into the most exciting recording. Instead, there are moments of pure unfettered dissatisfaction courtesy of Washington DC. Let’s just review the first track since there’s not another point on the album that reaches such a height as this. In the first few moments of The Return of Black Broadway crossing the threshold of your ear hole, getting at your brain, you loose control. It instantly-aurally-pleases. It improves your mood, the day brightens. Immediately the horn grabs your attention as a smooth sounding gentleman begins rapping about his childhood: cheap candy, goin’ to school to be socialized – but then the drum. It’s instantly-aurally-saddening. The patterns being played on the drums aren’t sub-pinhead, however they aren’t gonna make listeners turn to this slab again. Head-Roc continues talking about the downtrodden, critiques public services and politicians. There’re moments of talent sounding out through the mediocrity, but then it’s only a moment. Head-Roc enjoys his position in the underground, which is an overriding emotion from this guy. It seems that he values the independence from what the pubic deems as acceptable, and that’s important. But that doesn’t excuse the winces that this man bestows upon listener’s cheeks. Eventually, Head-Roc will put out something that doesn’t make one contemplate producers needing new drum machines. When that time comes, it’ll be that much easier to agree with his views on American culture and what needs to be done with it.
Tracklisting:
01 – The District
02 – Introduction
03 – Maulistic Animals
04 – Honeys
05 – Eggsquisite
06 – Dedicated
07 – ReunionListen
08 – Inna Time
09 – World Premier
10 – The Skills
11 – Young Jefferson
12 – Hip-Hop
13 – Lord God in Heaven
14 – (202)SKIL(L)S-4U
15 – These Motherfuckers!
16 – America!
17 – Enough!
18 – Sermon on The Metro
19 – Message To The Elders
20 – Groove Wit It
21 – Black Bird
22 – Introduction (DLee Remix)
23 – Crack-a-Dawn (DLee Remix)
24 – Young Jefferson (DLee World Mix)
2008 Interviews: cleveland folk interview jason molina london magnolia electric skyscraper songs: ohia
1 comment
Jason Molina: Panning for Gold
(This originally appeared in the Spring ‘08 issue of Skyscraper)
From hearing the man’s songs, Jason Molina should be stoical and or perhaps, perpetually kinetic – unable to remain sedentary for more than a moment. Only the second is true.
Molina, who for the present calls London home, sounds eager to talk. Regardless of the fact that since the mid nineties, part of his job has been answering questions that strangers ask him, he never recedes from a line of discourse. Despite being in constant demand, since December Molina has taken time off, which might belie the perspective he on has on his career, which he perceives as a skill set – he is correct.
Molina is candid and unsparingly anecdotal. Assumingly this comes from touring for a decade. If Dylan wasn’t a mid-Westerner, Molina would be the mid-Western Dylan. And since Neil Young is Canadian, a fact that is endlessly confounding, I guess that could make Molina the American Neil Young. These comparisons aren’t original, but hardly are they fallacious.
Coming from places I know, he seems familiar, although I’ve never spoken with him. Growing up on the far west side of Cleveland has indelibly effected the outlook he possesses on life. At times it seems that the surroundings of his childhood are exaggerated, but I recall seeing Songs: Ohia flyers in my home town and only fleetingly felt that I lived in a wasteland. Molina is relentless on this topic, insisting that there was no sort of positive creative force at work in Northeastern Ohio nor rural West Virginia. I must concede the second point. But while Cleveland isn’t a hub of industry or creativity, it still has Dennis Kucinich. Adorable, environmentally friendly gnomes must count for something.
During the hour I spent on the phone with this gentlemen, who has created a life-time of work in just over a decade, one subject that didn’t arise organically was that of his bassist. Evan Farrell, who died late last year in a fire, left behind his wife and two sons. Molina implored that some mention be made of this and pointed me to a memorial fund for the man who he described as someone that, “just never stopped doing music from the minute his feet hit the floor in the morning.”
I have an idea of the landscape that you grew up around. There are a lot of place names in your songs, or they’re related to landscapes in some way. Is that something that you cultivate? Are you trying to write about setting as opposed to girls and cars?
Well, girls and cars need a place to go, don’t they? I definitely concentrated on the idea of putting a place into a song. Just because mentioning a word or a place doesn’t mean that that’s what the song’s about. It might be about a very specific sliver of time and it’s maybe about something that happened there or an impression that I got. And I travel so much and I move so much. I guess if you pick it apart, I’m more firmly grounded in the songs, which are these intangible things and not so much connected to one specific place, because I’m always really on the move.
You’ve always been compared to uniquely American singers. Do you see yourself in some sort of progression from Woody Guthrie to Ramblin’ Jack to Dylan?
I look at it this way. I’m not a music historian by any means. I don’t really keep up on many contemporary bands, and it’s not because I want to lock myself away and be a hermit. It’s just that I find if I’m listening to a lot of contemporary stuff, I gravitate quickly and a little too easily to accidentally sounding that way. If you want to look at it as a progression, I feel comfortable in a line of songwriters. And I happen to be an American songwriter, but it’s entirely beyond my imagination to see how exactly that progression really goes. It definitely helped me, I just wrote songs out of the blue since I was a small kid. I didn’t grow up around a musical family, no one showed me how to play the guitar. I have no strict concept of how a song should sound. I never sat down and tried to learn other peoples songs. I never learned cover songs.
Then how did you acquire knowledge if you never paid attention to other musics? Or does that not even matter?
It has a lot to do with being very isolated. So, people who are from bombed out towns or middle of nowhere towns or places where there is no spark of any artistic scene – these are the places I grew up in. Getting music was like searching for the Holy Grail, because we didn’t have record shops. None in Lorain and definitely none in Southern West Virginia. Some teenager would have a seven inch from some SST band. We would make these mix tapes of all of this music and it was all over the place. It was pretty much any music that you could get that wasn’t the shit on the radio. At that time, I was specifically rebellious about things like Hank Williams Jr. and that kind of stuff because, the stigma of that, especially in the mid to late eighties, was pretty heavy.
There were many hundreds of hours sitting around a turntable, late at night in someone’s basement, plowing through all these classic rock records to find a song that was really great instead of really stupid.
You mentioned SST. Apart from Sonic Youth, I’m hard pressed to think of another popular band that uses alternate tunings.
Well, My Bloody Valentine.
I guarantee if you walk down the street and ask random passers by who My Bloody Valentine is, nine outta 10 people would have no idea. At-least Sonic Youth was on the radio in 1994. But how did you get into using different tunings?
Well, I still do. My first guitar was a little Harmony acoustic. My parents picked it up at a garage sale or something. It sat in the house and I never saw anyone play it. But as a kid I started to mess around with it. This thing was so beat up and had been neglected for so long, you couldn’t actually tune it. The tuning pegs were so rusted and bent, the gears were totally shot to hell. I got a can of WD-40 and sandpaper and toothbrushes. I tried to get the keys to turn a little bit and had to use pliers to get them to turn. And when I could get it to a relatively decent sounding open tuning, I’d leave it like that until, on its own it changed. Probably, with the same set of strings, I played it for 10 years, just learning how to invent melodies and strange chord progressions out of what I had to work with. I was fascinated with that. I would even use really weird tunings when I played bass guitar, which was my primary songwriting tool for a long time.
I’ve got an answer, but I’ll go the long way.
I was at the Salvation Army in Chicago, dead of winter. Snowing like crazy and I’d never found that Holy Grail instrument that people say they find in pawn shops. I bought some book and it was like 60 cents. I reach into my pocket and as I’m getting money out to pay for this book, I look above the head of the clerk and on a shelf, behind a bunch of decorations and shit is a Harmony Sovereign, which is an excellent mid-grade guitar. Jimmy Page used them. They’re a great sounding guitar. I was like, ‘Holy shit, how much is that?’ It was 40 bucks or something. The guy gets it down and the thing is a fucking train wreck: someone pulled the bridge off and using big wood screws, screwed the bridge back into the guitar. It split the body and the neck was all warped. It was a disaster. But I strummed it and it was in this insane tuning, ya know? The most rusty, destroyed strings – the thing hadn’t been played in years and years, but this tuning was amazing. I paid the 40 bucks and ran out in the snow with this guitar with no case and sat down and wrote a song without touching the tuning.
Axxess and Aces, which I was listening to yesterday or the day before, is all in one tuning right?
Right, the first record is all one tuning, although there are a handful of different instruments. It sounds as if there’s one guitar, but sometimes there’ll be a tenor guitar and an acoustic guitar – they sound very similar because of the way it was recorded. Sitting around a microphone, it bleeds together and makes it sound very complicated, but it’s actually not. Axcess and Aces is one tuning all the way through. Actually, most of them are except for Protection Spells.
When you tour, are you restricted by what you can bring with you?
Absolutely, I can bring pretty much one guitar. The Magnolia songs are basically in standard tuning and it’s just by necessity. But if we get to point where we can each have several guitars in working order, I’d be able to introduce a lot more material into the set.
There are a lot of things to overcome. Especially when you’re playing with a traditional bass-drums-guitar arrangement, there’s no way you can switch guitars for every single song unless you have a guitar tech and you have some serious backing. I’m not trying to make spacey music, I’m trying to make it tight and melodic. It’s not like I’m hitting the distortion and strumming an open chord, I’m trying to make it sound fluid and it should naturally sound that way. So it’s difficult in a live setting to do a lot of Songs: Ohia material.
Part of that problem is that you release an album every year. You must constantly be working with your instrument. Can you keep the same kind of output going until you’re 70?
I could, if I had the desire. I think so. I mean it’s January 17th. So, I’ve written 40 songs since January 1st. That doesn’t mean that I feel like I should record 40 of them and do complicated demos of them or work up arrangements for the band.
Immediately before that I hadn’t written a ton, since I’d been on tour so much. My last show, last year was December 15th. Magnolia toured a lot and then I toured solo a lot last year – literally went around the world. When I’m on the road I just write lyrics, nothing really gets finished. There’s no time on the road, it’s work. Trying to find an hour where I’m not obligated to be doing amps, moving gear, shit like that – just finding a place to be alone to work is a huge thing that’s almost impossible to find.
Do you need isolation to write? Do you need to be sedentary to finish an entire song?
I need peace and quiet. I can’t just sit down with a guitar in a loud club, where there’s music going, it just doesn’t happen that way. I prefer to write very early in the morning. My ideal writing situation is I get up at about four and just write for a few hours. Sometimes it’s just like mechanical exercises, I’m just writing, there’s no song in mind. After an hour or two of that, I start to concentrate really hard and pick out what seems interesting. That’s the time that I sit down at the keys or get the guitar. Then I ignore the song that I just wrote, the lyrics. I try to see if I can come up with something musically interesting. So, I’ll try to see if they fit together and if they don’t, I just give up right away. I move on to writing a new song, because the best songs, for me, were a quick and easy match.
I was just completely blown away that you said you get up at four am. I don’t know how many other musicians can say that, but it almost sounds like farm work to me.
Yeah, it’s definitely like that. It’s sorta like farmer’s time. I’m lucky because I don’t have to work nine to five. The reason that I’m able to do music is because I keep doing music. This is me going to work. It’s a tool that you need to keep sharp and if you don’t, you have to take a lot of steps back to get it sharp again. After doing this for many years now, I’ve trained myself. If I have a free hour, and I don’t have to run across town to do something crazy, some weird errand or something, I can sit down and start to have something if I just concentrate. I have tons of ideas already just sitting there.
Does that perspective on work make it less fun?
Songwriting – there’s a tremendous amount of joy that I get out of being able to do music and I’m always surprised by it and excited by new things that I come across. I wouldn’t call it fun. It’s not like riding dodge ‘em cars or something like that. Like that’s fun.
I do approach it like work, but it’s my name over the door. So, it’s not like I have to report for duty everyday and do something that I don’t want to do. This is something I want to do and something I need to do. This is a skill I’ve developed and now I’m putting it to use. I never wake up and say ‘Awww, now I have to write a song!’
You did the artwork for the Sojourner box-set. Is the process for you doing visual art the same?
Yeah, it is. Although, the little paintings in there aren’t really representative of what I do. Normally, I do more abstract stuff. I wanted these to be specific images that paired up with the music. That’s why I used some noticeable images like people. There are actual objects: there’s a canoe and there’re animals. But the way that I do that is pretty much the same. I start with no idea. I don’t say that I’m going start with a picture of a house. I don’t work that way. I just start drawing and maybe a house will come out of it and maybe something else will. It’s the same process.
One way that I’ve explained it to myself is that it’s so difficult to produce the same level of artwork as music, because it comes from the exact same place and it’s so draining to do either one. I have to say, ‘Today I’m just going to do art.’ The idea of picking up a guitar and writing a song after working on something all day and night, is just mind numbing.
You’ve been in England and traveled around Europe for while now, has that been beneficial for the process that you’ve mentioned – creating stuff; music or art? Or does it not matter as long as you have time?
It doesn’t matter so much as long as I have time. I put a lot of value in just having a little notebook and writing. It could be as simple as starting with the name of a town. I’ll see that we’re 20 miles outside of some town and I know that we’re going to stop to get gas or eat or something. I’ll get out of the van and try to see as much as I can about the town. Grab a local newspaper, go into the local coffee shop and listen to what the people are talking about in that town, see what they’re driving, see what their houses look like. 30 minute later, we’re back on the road. But out of that I get an impression of something. And that goes in the notebook.
I mentioned this before, you’re seen as a uniquely American figure. But, you’ve been taken out of your natural setting. Are you as comfortable in London as you are in Chicago?
There’s no comparing London to Chicago. I love Chicago and I wrote so many records there. Actually most of the material I’ve written over the years was in Chicago. I don’t know what about that place made me write so much, but a part of it is that, everyone there in the musical community is always working. No one ever seems to be just sitting there. All the Chicago bands are always gone ‘cause they’re internationally and nationally touring bands. There’s a high standard set for doing good work, getting it out there and working your ass off.
I’ve always said, it didn’t matter if I lived in a city or the country, I’d still be writing songs. I maybe sometimes more happy in the quiet or the calm of the middle of nowhere, but it doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop writing.
I haven’t been here very long, I don’t really have a sense of how the local and regional musicians work. Culturally, it’s night and day. In that way it’s a very difficult adjustment. I’m burying myself in work, because that’s a good way to adjust to the change. Pretty much every time I’ve done a record, it’s been right on the cusp of a move to another city, to another state, to a different apartment.
There is a small community of people here that I’ve gotten to know. I live just a couple of blocks away from Rough Trade. I go in there and kinda have gotten to know some of the people who work there. They’ve shown me some good records. Like I said, I just moved here, so it’s hard to really say. We’ll see how it goes.
When you went to the record store, did they know you?
I’ve been recognized on the street here a few times. And at Rough Trade there were a few people who recognized me. It’s not totally surprising, because I play in London once in a while. Also based on what I buy, they probably figure, ‘O.K., this guy buys shit loads of folk and special orders obscure blues and country music. It’s probably that guy.’
Mac Blackout – Self Titled (Dead Beat, 2008)
At this point in the history of recorded musics it’s supremely difficult to examine a disc in a micro sense. Everything is related – it’s past the point of being ‘seemingly’ or ‘tangential.’ Even ignoring the output of Max Blackout as a part of a group, this self titled album forces the question, “Does this need to be disseminated to the masses?”
I dunno.
As unsettling as other projects that Mac Black out has been associated with – Functional Blackouts and Daily Void – this easily trumps his other discs in that one area. It’s creepy. It’s even more disquieting that the unlikely city this all sprung from was Indianapolis, where Mac attended art school during the late ‘90s. And despite the date of these recordings, there is an obvious ‘80s influence. How these songs have thus far avoided comparisons to the Screamers is beyond ludicrous, but there is a unifying sewer dwelling nihilism amidst each track.
Beyond that comparison, the lead off track “Everybody Rock”, still immediately recalls the Ramones’ “Happy Family.” It’s not that funny or poppy, but listeners may still extol a chortle. Ideally, there’d be a stand-out, alas there’s not. Lyrically, “Baby Face Killer” is easily recalled by simply leaning upon its Oh Brother! related title – or maybe “Nowhere Man,” because it’s a bloody Beatles song.
Mac Blackout (the album, not the man) should not cease existing, mostly because it’ll easily make a buck, but there are sporadic redeeming qualities throughout the solo offering – occasionally summoning Jay Reatard. Unfortunately, the scant rewards of Mac Blackout can be found elsewhere in a group setting – and occasionally in the same song – “You’ve Lost Your Eyes.”
John Ellis – Dance Like There’s No Tomorrow (Hyena, 2008)
While this is ostensibly an organ trio, regardless of the inclusion of the sousaphone, the glaring lack of low end detracts even from some of the strongest moments on this disc. Other groups, like Soulive for example, are able to pull off bass-less ensembles with a bit more panache and perhaps that can be credited to Neal Evans. Not to detract from the skill and passionate performance turned in from Gary Versace on keys, but a more prevalent bass figure in most of the compositions here, especially the lead off “All Up in the Aisles”, would have propelled this album past standard soul-jazz fare.
What Ellis and his group do is use NOLA concepts within a danceable, more cosmopolitan voicing. There’s a hint of lounge, but the eerie organ pulls that back a bit. You really do know what this album is headed for immediately. It’s re-stated every six or seven minutes and not too difficult to determine. That being said, what makes this album a good soul-jazz disc is the fact that Ellis was raised in the church. The soul and elegance that he brings to his quartet is indicative of playing sacred music at one point. By no means is the Holy Spirit invoked – this is mostly a party album, but there is a sadness as evidenced during Ellis’ fondly recalling a friend on “I Miss You Molly”. Attempting a bit of adventure, the group synthesis varied styles, but on “Three-Legged Tango in Jackson Square”, “Tattooed Teen Waltzes with Grandma” and “Zydeco Clowns on the Lamb” occasionally awkward tempo shifts explain why that isn’t always a successful endeavor.
If one owns a handful of MMW, Galactic or Soulive discs, this may be a bit disposable, but it shouldn’t be written off – there is certainly a great deal of enthusiastic, if not innovative playing on here. The sheer audacity of the instrumentation points to the inventive thought exerted in summoning these compositions.
The Izzys – Self Titled (Kanine Records, 2004)
Since the blues and country music birthed rock and roll there have been countless invocations of both the parents within the vernacular of rock music. The Izzys proudly carry on this conversation between the past and the very distant past. The self titled full length from The Izzys sounds authentic; it could’ve been released anytime within the last 30 years or so. But it wasn’t. It’s new, which can’t bode well considering the slew of throw back groups that currently transform your local dive bar into a juke joint. But, Mike Storey sings as if there’s something to say, and the production overall on the slab here is pretty warm. The songs are even arranged to bore you with the filler (“Change Your Mind”, the bands version of “Climb” by the Meat Puppets) and then let the good ones jump out and make you feel something deep inside, something akin to satisfaction. Actually, there are moments of groove on each and every track on here, just not continuously throughout. “Stand Up Laughing-Falling Down to Cry” (the bands version of “Dead Flowers” by The Rolling Stones) doesn’t make me what to commit random violent acts but, the just makes me wanna keep moving. The stand out from the New York trio here is “Morning Bells”, which is pushed toward the end of the album to reinvigorate the listener with interest. Each song includes an above average chorus, but there are guitar solos on here while a rhythm guitar chimes chords. And while that sounds less than suspect, there’s only one guitar player in the band (like the Meat Puppets), so live shows may prove to be less entertaining then the recording. But if the Black Crowes regroup, these guys should open up for ‘em and take over the nation.
Tracklisting:
01 – Little Sally Water
02 – Turning Round
03 – Highway Blues
04 – Lonely
05 – Stand Up Laughing-Falling Down To Cry
06 – You Got Me Crying
07 – Strange
08 – Change Your Mind
09 – Morning Bells
10 – Velocity
11 – Dreaming
***As a disclaimer, their newer stuff isn’t up to snuff, but how ‘bout that foresight in the closing line…