For more than three decades, Jeff Tweedy has written about his fear of being misunderstood. First as one-half of the songwriting team in the pioneering alternative country band Uncle Tupelo, then as the leader of his genre-spanning rock outfit Wilco, Tweedy's penned songs primarily about communication. What happens when the distances between us prevent it? Or when our most honest sounds only echo back at us? What if our letters go become a member or log in.
Step right up. Welcome to the all-new Aquarium Drunkard. It’s been a decade since we last fully updated the site, and in that time it feels like most everything has shifted. Forget the sea changes in the music and publishing industries. Aquarium Drunkard readers have no doubt noticed our motion toward a magazine-style format over the years, with features, interviews, mixtapes, and sessions moving to the forefront. We are still working a few kinks out, but this new site is equipped with a fully-searchable archive featuring more than 13 years of music and culture writing . . .
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Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can now be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app.
SIRIUS 544: Jean Michel Bernard – Générique Stephane ++ Tom Zé – Dulcinéia Popular Brasileira ++ Muro – 追跡大作戦 Theme From Chase ++「ハードトレーニング」より新しい世界への旅立ち ++ Annette Peacock – Pony ++ Lard Free – Juillet Que Je Sais D’Elle Part One ++ Scientist – The Voodoo Curse (AD edit) ++ Len Platonos – Aimatines Skies Apo Apostasi ++ Jan Hammer/David Earle Johnson – Juice Harp ++ Makers – Don . . .
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Lagniappe (la·gniappe) noun ˈlan-ˌyap,’ – 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.
Max Kinghorn-Mills is Hollow Hand. Following an exceptional string of self-released 7"s last year, the Brighton, UK artist dropped the Star Chamber full-length last month, via Talk Show Records. Expanding on the homebrewed folk . . .
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Welcome back to Unearthed,
a series of thematic mixes that travel deep into dusty vintage zones to
dig up bootleg gold. For the second time around, we’re going back four
decades for a survey of various in-concert recordings made in 1978. From
tiny clubs to giant arenas, from Bremen to Berkeley, you’ll hear wild
extended jams, dark acoustic balladry and unclassifiable excursions. It
was a very good year …
Stay (Bremen) – David Bowie / Little Johnny Jewel (Portland) –
Television / Egyptian Reggae . . .
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In 1973, Charles Mingus’ career was on the upswing. After a few years out of music, some band squabbles, and even getting evicted while being filmed by a documentary crew, he was finally getting something approximating his due.
There were the lavish orchestrations of 1972’s Let My Children . . .
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This past week we lost one of the most prolific and influential French film composers, Francis Lai. Best known for his collaborations with director Claude Lelouch, as well as his Academy Award winning score for Love Story (1970), Lai scored over 130 films in his lifetime — between 1966 and 2015 . . .
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Tradition runs rampant around Thanksgiving: generations of old recipes, football, Alice’s Restaurant, The Last Waltz,
and, of course, a parade of balloons shutting down NYC. What else do
you need? If you thought you were covered in the Thanksgiving tradition
department, we did too…until a few years ago, when someone blew the dust
off a long lost tape — Doug Sahm’s Thanksgiving Jam.
Thanksgiving weekend, 1972: the Grateful Dead . . .
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Lagniappe (la·gniappe) noun ˈlan-ˌyap,’ – 1. An extra or unexpected
gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.
In the introduction of his new autobiography, Let’s Go (So We Can Get Back): A Memoir of Recording and Discording With Wilco, Etc, Jeff Tweedy confesses: I wish this book was about the Raccoonists.
“If you’re not familiar with the Raccoonists, I . . .
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Night music. Japanese chanteuse and composer Maki Asakawa’s career spanned three decades, experimenting with the forms of jazz, folk, blues and pop. And while adept at all of the aforementioned, the artist was at her most interesting when she worked her own hybrid of sound. And in the case of standards, she often elevated the original material to new heights in mood, tone and texture. Much of Asakawa’s work has yet to enter the digital sphere, though her albums are readily available via discogs and other third party sellers. And for those looking for an overview, this . . .
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Feeding Tube Records has a nice archival live series going with living legend Michael Hurley. First, we got the excellent Redbirds at Folk City, capturing the singer-songwriter at a mid-1970s peak. Now, the Massachusetts label has released an LP made up of easygoing jams taped in Slovenia in the spring of 1995. Spending a little time in the Snockaverse is never a bad idea, and become a member or log in.
There are no links here to tracks from what I suppose is now deemed, Van Morrison: Live In Boston 1968.
The title is intentionally bland, purely informational. As outlined by
Ryan H. Walsh, writer of one of this year’s best books, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968,
the whole thing is likely a copyright maneuver – some legal wrangling
to keep possession with its maker, fifty-years after its creation.
There’s some hope and/or speculation that maybe . . .
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When you hear "Goodnight, Irene" and "Wimoweh" these days, it's a little hard to believe that the Weavers were one of the most politically radical bands of the 20th century. But the pioneering folk-pop quartet (featuring Pete Seeger, Lee Hays, Ronnie Gilbert and Fred Hellerman) was tangled up in the Red Scare of the 1940s and 1950s, harassed by the FBI, called before the House Un-American Activities Committee, and attacked relentlessly by right-wing media. It's this complicated, fascinating tale that Jesse Jarnow unravels in his new book, become a member or log in.
Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can now be heard every Wednesday at 7pm PST with encore broadcasts on-demand via the SIRIUS/XM app.
SIRIUS 543: Fugazi - Lusty Scripps ++ 39 Clocks - DNS ++ Blurt - Get 3.43 ++ Deerhunter - Leather Jacket II ++ X Ray Pop - La Machine á Rêver ++ The Fall - Eat Y’self Fitter (AD edit) ++ Blurt - My Mother Was A Friend Of An Enemy Of The People ++ Omni - Sunset Preacher ++ Royal Family And The Poor - Art On 45 ++ The Fall - Middle Mass . . .
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47 years after its original release and resounding commercial failure, the Hampton Grease Band's Music To Eat stands as a crucial entry in the experimental American music canon. Roaring out of Atlanta in the late '60s, HGB was led by quixotic vocalist Col. Bruce Hampton, alongside guitarists Glenn Phillips and Harold Kelling, and the rhythm section of bassist Mike Holbrook and drummer Jerry Fields. Though the poly-genre avant-garde sounds of Captain Beefheart or Frank Zappa serve as apt comparisons, the Grease Band was its own thing, blending jazz, blues, rock, with inscrutable and demented cut-up poetry. Though the band never recorded a follow-up, Music To Eat would go on to cult status, inspiring nascent punks and the burgeoning jam band scene of the 1990s, of which Hampton was a figurehead with his Aquarium Rescue Unit outfit, which shared stages with Phish, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, and Widespread Panic.
Recently, Real Gone Music reissued the record on "Georgia Peach" colored vinyl, dedicating the release to Hampton, who passed away in 2017 after collapsing on stage. Guitarist Glenn Phillips, whose solo discography is vast and picks up the thread first tied by Hampton Grease Band, joined Aquarium Drunkard to discuss the record's baffling genesis and legacy. Our conversation has been edited for clarity and cohesion.
Aquarium Drunkard: It's taken some time for Music to Eat to get its due, but at this point, it’s a cult classic. The oft-repeated story is that it was at one point one of the worst selling records in the Columbia catalog. Were you ever able to verify that?
Glenn Phillips: There were a lot of complications when it came out. Business-wise, the way things were with the band and management. The way the deal was structured [was] through [record man] Phil Walden, who inserted himself into the middle of the deal and got a great deal of money and very little of it filtered down to the band. Columbia had put forth a lot of money to him to promote the record, which Phil wasn’t legally obligated to do. So Columbia felt kind of burned by the deal. They felt they had already put the money out to market it and they didn’t want to have to do it again. So the record didn’t get much marketing when it came out. The people at Columbia did not know what they were dealing with. The music was very eccentric, very in its own world, and they were literally marketing that record as a comedy album. They labeled it "comedy" and it was getting filed alongside Don Rickles and Bill Cosby, you know in the comedy [sections of record stores]. So what we were told at the time was, and this was just that time, we were told that it was the second worst-selling Columbia record, second only to a yoga record. And that may very well be true, that's what we were told at the time. Now here we are in 2018, and that story has gotten repeated a lot. I don’t think that’s probably true at this point in time.
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