Goodbye Cruel Blog

Day after day, it becomes increasingly harder to manage posts on multiple music blogs so I've just decided to suspend posting on this one for at least as long as long as the other one i am in is functioning. This is your you, readers, so that you can save yourself the agony of having to go between the two 1000 times a day. So, go check it out to find some amazing music. Maybe I'll see ya down the road.

oldcrippledmen.blogspot.com

Exit Music (for a Blog)

Little Pheat

As one of the biggest musical spectacles of the year, Phish's Halloween show truly lived up to it's expectations. Every year on this date they notoriously cover an album in its entirety in the second set and this year they surprised everybody with Little Feat's Waiting for Columbus. Bringing a horn section and a percussionist along for the ride, Phish really came out strong in the the first set really nailing a lot of their staple tunes. When the second set rolled around things just kept heating up. They had obviously spent a lot of time working to cover this lengthy double album and it showed. Trey was laying down some of the best stuff we have heard this year and Fish was destroying on Hayward’s melodic beats (as he is perfect). To no surprise, Mike and Page kept up the shreds they they have been laying down over summer and fall. Third set comes around and is jam-packed with DwD, Suzy, Harry, YEM and many more mosters. Anyway, enough of my blabbin just grab this historic show from the spreadsheet (it will probably be up in a few days but you can pillage other shows until then).

Phish Spreadsheet

Phil Pearlman

This guy has been on my mind a lot this week and I figured I might as well throw some of his stuff out for everyone as a little Halloween treat. The psychedelic master spawned some monster psychedelia albums, often dabbling in folky sounds as well from the mid 60's-70's. He never really stayed in one place as a musician and released most notably 3 self titled albums: Beat of the Earth, The Electronic Hole, and Relatively Clean Rivers. I'm going to talk about these from most recent to earliest, simply because of listenability. All-in-all his albums go from an almost free-form improvisation to solid structuring so start wherever your heart desires.  Definitely check the all out!

         First and foremost, Relatively Clean Rivers is a psych folk masterpiece.  Often they ease you in with some nice easy-listening folk songs like Hello Sunshine and other times destroy you with strong acid leads before coming back down to Earth on songs like Babylon.  They display a lot of versatility utilizing a variety of instruments and complex time signatures.  This album has become a cult classic with original copies becoming extremely rare and intense debate brewing over re-releases (most of which are pirated and don't give money to artist).  Grab this one now!
Get it Here

Next we have 1970's release of The Electronic Hole.  Immediate and unstifling love will adhere from this one, a more experimental Pearlman release.  Two songs subdivided into seven total parts swing you back and forth as you try to make sense of this somewhat Velvet Underground sounding album that takes you on a pretty menacing journey.  Phil established his signature wall of fuzz tone on this one and sometimes brings in the sitar and harmonica.  The last track is a very tasty treat, as it is a very obscure and fuzzed-out precursor of what will become a very nice, slow Relatively Clean Rivers acoustic song, a great way to look at how he changes over the years.

Get it Here

Finally we find ourselves staring at 1967's The Beat of the Earth. In this one, you will find what can only be considered as spontaneous musical combustion.  This free-form album had people bouncing around on "guitars, tambourines, flutes, auto-harps, bongos, anything that made sound. The combined beats were primitive, primal, the beat of the Earth."  The album is considered today to be a psychedelia masterpiece, an exploration that tests the limits of music and is manifested in a lush and dense collage of sound. It is acid-rock at its finest, often times chilling, often times exhilarating.

a good interview

Get it Here

Of Montreal @ Sokol Underground....and other stuff

*Quick Note: In lieu of having an enlarged spleen, The Morning Spleen will now be posting 500% more often to offset this extra spleen-ness that seems to be going around. Also because I lack direction in life*

Someone once said to me, "live music," and it was not until a long time ago that I finally found out what that meant. A good musician should be able to play music in such a way that they ignite the audience into a state of being that they weren't in before. It is like the thermal heat that gives a molecule enough energy to escape it's entrapment in the liquid state. There is a sort of flow of interactionism between the performers and the audience that creates a feedback of emotion. It is hard to sing your heart out to an audience that doesn't care (unless, of course, the song is about how some audiences just don't care). It is also hard to keep still when an audience is jumping around in euphoric glee.
   This past weekend I ventured across western Iowa to see of Montreal. As expected, the setlist contained mostly newer songs off of False Priest. It seemed like every song that wasn't from an earlier album just bored the crowd to death. There was very minimal grooving and people just seemed to be holding their position until the next "good" track came along. I think that of Montreal is destined to suffer in their live crowd-interaction, but not by their own doing. Their albums are so obscure that it really must take more time for a person to appreciate it fully. After the gig I was talking with the band for like 45 minutes and Davey told me something similar. He said, "People asks us now to play these songs from Skeletal Lamping and I'm like 'back during the Skeletal Lamping tour, we would be giving 120% and people would be fucking bored.'" 
   There were times when I was bouncing around the room in my own world and I actually had to stop and make sure people werent pissed at me, especially during Famine Affair and Girl Named Hello. On the flip side of this, a midset Rejector actually blew the crowd out of the water and really shook up the house from then on no matter what they played. For everyone else there, that became live music. That induced the feedback. I just regret that it didn't happen earlier. 


I have to get in one more big note, a more personal one.
The set is over. The band leaves the stage while the audience screams for more. All previous setlists I had looked at pointed at a pretty killer "michael jackson medley" encore to ensue. The band takes the stage. It is still dark. The first note.
There has been one of Montreal song that has soared above all of the rest in my life, one of my favorite songs of all-time. A song so powerful to me that I actually had placed it out of the realm of possibility at this show. But in a wave of eerie screeching and a driven bassline, The Past Is A Grotesque Animal emerged in all of it's glory, in all of it's affliction.

For You, A New Sound

Alright folks, it's time to cut the shit. Listen to Josh Ritter, who is currently one of my favorite contemporary folk artists. It was just one of those finds where the first tone of the first chord instantaneously brought along an urge to get his discography. See if it happens to you too; just give his new album, So Runs the World Away, a listen and you will know just what I mean. Peace.

Here's the first Couple 'o Songs