Archive for the ‘Records’ Category
Rickey Wright R.I.P.
Former Washington City Paper music critic Rickey Wright is dead. Wright passed away at 4:31 p.m. on February 19 in Seattle after suffering from a series of small strokes. At the time of his death, he was working on a book about John Lennon’s “Imagine.”
Wright was probably one of the most prolific talents the Washington City Paper has ever had perhaps on par with Jenkins, and the great, beloved Joel S. I never met Wright but I was around when he was around in the mid-to-late ’90s. I marveled at the fact that he could write on just about any band or genre and not appear to sweat it. (Most of us sweat it).
Wright’s prose was effortless and to the point. He didn’t mess around with silly metaphors. Nor did he make you feel stupid (he never loaded his pieces with arcane references to deep cuts, alternate Replacements b-sides, etc.). He just wrote and wrote.
“He was a save-your-ass kind of writer,” recalls former Washington City Paper Arts Editor Glenn Dixon. “If someone didn’t come through, and there were constantly people who didn’t come through, Rickey would do the job. He’d write it well. He’d get it in on time—always. He was never without ideas and he could cover any kind of music. I can’t tell you how rare that is. I’m really sorry.”
Wright penned pieces on everything from Travolta to Ben Lee to all of pop music in 1997 to Metallica and Soundgarden to R.E.M. to Charles Mingus to Johnny Cash to Led Zep to Curtis Mayfield and Millie Jackson to Luna and Teenage Fanclub to Wesley Willis to British ska to all of ’90s rock to G. Love to Boston to the Shangri-Las to the Replacements. Wright’s final posting on his Facebook page was a list of his 12 favorite Beatles covers; he included two remakes of “I Wanna Hold Your Hand.”
Idolator had this to say about Wright’s passing:
“Wright was an editor for Amazon for some time (that job brought him to Seattle), and his work appeared in publications like USA Today, the Village Voice, Blender, Harp, and the Seattle Weekly. He also won the 1999 Rhino Music Aptitude Test, a fact that seems somewhat trivial at first glance, but if you’ve actually seen the test or some of the people who have failed it miserably, you realize what a testament to his musical knowledge that accolade really is.”
Ned Raggett wrote up a nice obit. Fred Mills has a tribute to Wright in Blurt. Matos has a deeply personal post on Wright as well. Here’s a portion of what Matos had to say:
“Rickey passed away this afternoon at 4:31. Last week he’d had a stroke–apparently more than one, all small, over a period of time–and went to the hospital for treatment. He had surgery and underwent another stroke on the table; he spent most of his final week in a coma. Our friend Rachel and I visited him yesterday. It was not as awful as I’d feared it might be: he still looked like himself, which was encouraging even if everyone knew he wasn’t going to make it. It’s hard not to second-guess how much of this I should be saying, mainly because Rickey was the kind of person who deserves whatever honor you can give him, especially in passing. I’ve seldom known a kinder person, or a better listener, or anyone more enthusiastic about music or film or whatever–and even better, his enthusiasm was catching. When I’m excited about something I yell without meaning to, or just become obnoxious about it. Rickey never did that. He didn’t have to.”
If you’d like to read more of Wright in his own words, you can check out his blog.
Wright’s last blog post had been a hopeful one. It is dated Feb. 4. It was about Obama. He titled it “I love my president.” This is what he had to say He uses the post to print a quote from Obama:
“In the past few days, I’ve heard criticisms that this [stimulus] plan is somehow wanting, and these criticisms echo the very same failed economic theories that led us into this crisis in the first place . . . I reject those theories. And so did the American people when they went to the polls in November and voted resoundingly for change.”
There is an obit from his former employer the Virginian-Pilot:
“‘He had quite a following when he was here and was influential in the local music scene,’ said former Pilot writer Earl Swift. ‘I’ve never known anyone with a more encyclopedic knowledge of music.’”
There is still lots more from his friends and fellow critics. Here’s a really personal recollection of Wright (I’m just quoting a small portion; you should really read the entire entry):
“Rickey used to literally rock and roll. He never stopped moving. Either his leg was always tapping or he’d rock back and forth in his chair like a baby trying to comfort himself. He had a repertoire of postures. Always leaning forward with his hand on his thigh, fingers pointed in and elbow pointed out. He used his hands when he talked, flipping his palms upward in a gesture of offering.
Rickey always looked cool. He was a rock critic and looked the part. He always had a good haircut. He always wore the cool black ankle boots with the pointed toes. He knew how to wear a suit. He walked on his toes a bit which sort of accentuated his little belly. He always had just the right rock ‘n’ roll button on his bag or his jacket.
Rickey loved his cats, Chet and Kettle. When Chet was sick, he went through tremendous lengths and expense to try to keep him alive. When Kettle ran away, he consulted a pet psychic to find her, and found her. He used to talk about what a good soul Chet had and how you could see it in the little cat’s big eyes….
Rickey and I only ever talked about two things: music and love. Our last conversation was about the latter. It occurred around the beginning of January….”
Elder Utah Smith: Plugging In For Jesus
Listen: Dan Deacon’s Bromst
Last night, I realized that in my mini-review of Dan Deacon’s now-leaked album, Bromst, I should have posted a few soundclips to give BPB readers a chance to hear some of the Baltimore artist’s epic creations. Well fair-use laws dictate that you will only get to hear a small portion of these lengthy songs. It’s like only reading the first ten pages of Crime and Punishment. Oh well. Here’s samples from two Bromst tracks:
“Surprise Stephanie”
Dan Deacon’s Bromst…Leaks
So Dan Deacon’s upcoming, long-awaited, much discussed, new album, Bromst, leaked yesterday. At least it’s the first day I noticed its appearance in the freebie format. Deacon has said the new album is darker. The album’s first single has already been digested. Deacon told the Baltimore City Paper that he thought of Bromst as more of an album than 2006’s Spiderman of the Rings:
“Unlike Spiderman, which was essentially a one-man, purely electronic piece of music, Bromst was recorded entirely live and written to be performed by a 15 person band.”
Apparently, the album has a narrative, too. Whatever his intentions, Deacon still knows how to build a song. The songs may feel like your walking through a Lucky Charms forest (the chipmunks return) but this time he’s figured out the low end, too. And, well, occasionally unprocessed singing. “Padding Ghost” and album opener,”Build Voice,” are beautiful examples of Deacon’s fresh use of the slow build. “Snookered” is the saddest Wham City nursery rhyme you’ll have ever heard.
“Of the Mountains” finds its footing in skewered poly-rhythms and mournful wordless chants before melting into an (indie) dance floor stomper. Midway in, the song switches up and goes quiet and tribal again as if Deacon’s raided Peter Gabriel’s drum circle. The (indie) club kids are going to lose it over this one.
DC Guitarist Cracks JazzWeek’s Top Ten
JazzWeek is the Billboard of the jazz music industry — the trade paper for the musicians, industry insiders, and ancillary folk — and its weekly Jazz Chart is also analogous, the standard gauge that the field uses to determine an album’s success in sales and radioplay. So it’s a pretty big deal to make that chart’s top 10, but as of last week D.C.’s own Steve Herberman has done it with his Ideals CD. The fact that he’s for all intents and purposes a strictly local musician, who releases his own recordings, makes the feat all the more impressive.
Herberman’s got a smoky, delicate sound that’s recognizable within one bar of his playing, and Ideals shows it off in a close-knit trio setting that plays to Herberman’s subtleties and nuances; bassist Tom Baldwin and Mark Ferber take credit, too, both of them thundering virtuosi who here show sides of rare sensitivity. Herberman is the star, though, showing off his ability to compose and play pieces as intricate as spiderwebs (”Let Go”) and as fragile (”Ideals”), but also burn through bop standards like “Delilah.” But he’s got a firm grasp on swing, too, which he joyously brings to “Soul Eyes” and “I Want to Be Happy” without compromising his dark-note style.
New Arrivals @ Red Onion
Got the latest list of new arrivals at Red Onion. They got the new Beirut LP (actually two EPs), a bunch of Numero stuff, this Elder Utah Smith CD that looks killer, plus the usual awesome finds.
T.S.O.O.L is the Cheese Beneath My Wings
I’m fascinated by the notion of influences and inspirations, especially when they’re mashed up and twisted by geographical and cultural differences. Listening to any The Soundtrack Of Our Lives album conjures up bits from the historical nature of rock n roll—how it was served like a flaming tennis ball across the pond to Britain by Chuck Berry, volleyed back by the Rolling Stones and returned again by Otis Redding.
Often they cram the entire playlist of a classic rock station into one song, other times appropriating (doppelganger-style) a signature sound, as in the Doors’ knockoff “Age of No Reply” from Origin, Vol. 1.
For some reason, and much like their fellow Swedes the Hellacopters, it works. It must be the earnestness and reverences they employ. American bands who try this approach end up sounding like Matchbox 20, or are Matchbox 20.
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Vinyl District Becomes “Blog of Record for Records”
LOCAL RECORD BLOG MAKES GOOD!
As previously noted, the good people behind Record Store Day 2009 have tapped The Vinyl District to be their flagship blog for this year’s festivities. It’s a commendable move, and seems to have sparked a wave of gratitude over at TVD:
…[It is] an honor for this blog which attempts in a small way to champion the efforts of the brick and mortar record stores and of the medium in general that is: vinyl—to have been designated the blog of record for Record Store Day, 2009.
But it is you, dear reader, to whom we owe a significant debt of gratitude for turning this wee blog, first conceived in pajamas one morning into something the cup of coffee that day never imagined–the blog of record for records. Or something along those lines.
As a thank-you to said “dear reader[s],” TVD is starting eleven (11!!) weeks of vinyl giveaways leading up to the big day on April 18. Check out week one’s Swedish Invasion offerings.
B-more City Paper Chats w/ Animal Collective Producer
Baltimore City Paper recently (well, a week ago) posted this Q&A with Ben Allen, the Atlanta-based engineer who worked on Animal Collective’s Merriweather Post Pavilion (which we reviewed in this week’s Washington City Paper). Allen—who spent most of his career working in hiphop and R&B—can probably be credited with bringing most of the low-end definition that makes MPP so resoundingly huge. He’s also quoted at length in this NY Times profile, but the Baltimore City Paper Q&A gets a little deeper into the recording process and whatnot, so I’m going to shamelessly aggregate it here.
Andalusians To Release 7-inch Single
One of my favorite local bands, Andalusians, will be releasing a three-song 7-inch single, “Do the Work,” on February 16. Dischord recently announced with a bit of info. The downloadable version will include three extra tracks!
Dischord also reports that the band will soon be touring with a stop at the Black Cat: “The band will celebrate the record release and begin a tour of the south and mid-west United States with a show in DC at Black Cat on February 5th.”
You can listen to “Do The Work” on the band’s myspace page.
