Toadcast #83 – The Funkcast
Would you believe that this podcast is finished and ready and done and I am ready to go to bed by 10pm. This is a fucking scarily strange occurrence. I’ve only had about four beers too, which is also a little unsual. The only organisational task at which I have abjectly failed is keeping the length of this podcast down to an hour. Basically, having different people co-present is really nice, and I think it makes the podcasts miles better, but I am still coming to terms with the discipline of keeping the talky talky down to a manageable level and sticking to that hour which has made these weekly swear-morsels so digestible in the last few months.
At the Wickerman Festival Callum from Meursault made the highly contentious statement that not all funk music was buttock-clenchingly awful and, whilst I mocked him, I decided that someone with that kind of crazy recklessness must be brave enough to bring a Toadcast full of funky classics to an audience of sulky, morose indie kids with art school fringes. So good luck to Callum – I am going to be listening to this with the same curiosity as the rest of the audience I would think. It’s hard to get a handle on what a podcast sounds like as you record it, so I guess if I am going to absorb the lesson of the funk then I will have to have a cup of coffee, put my feet up on the couch and listen to it the same as everyone else.
Toadcast #83 – The Funkcast
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
01. Parliament – Give Up the Funk (Tear the Roof off the Sucker) (06.23)
02. Shuggie Otis – Inspiration Information (17.21)
03. Bruce Springsteen & the E-Street Band – The E-Street Shuffle (25.55)
04. My Morning Jacket – Evil Urges (30.15)
05. The Come Ons – Strangelove (37.00)
06. Charles Mingus – Boogie Stop Shuffle (49.39)
07. Bob Marley & the Wailers – Mr. Brown (54.33)
08. Sly Stone – Can’t Nickname the Truth (63.09)
09. Funkadelic – You Scared the Lovin’ Outta Me (74.53)
Ha! My ol’ man introduced me to funk in my formative years & I ‘fraid I did dig. Hence my appreciation of Prince, to a degree.
And with this, I reckon you’ve now covered every genre under the sun in these pages.
I never fail to be amazed at how much work goes into SbT, and while there always just too much to take in (reading and/or listening), plus the fact that I really dont think my brain can absorb too much more in the way of new music, I reckon this place is as good a music site – blogs or otherwise – as anything out there.
More power to your fingertips Matthew.
Watch this…It’s funking cute.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rLdQ3UhLoD4&feature=player_embedded
That was really your funk-warning alarm that went off at 00:51, wasn’t it? Not Mrs. Toad’s cooking.
Matthew, I’m just listening to you and Calum discussing listening to funk, and you’re point that you can only appreciate it if you like to dance.
To chip in with my tuppence worth, I’m sat here trying to fix my snare drum, not dancing in any way, and I was utterly blown away by Bootsy Collins’ bass line on that Parliament track. A really fucking amazing performance.
The second track has just started and I’m immediately struck by the production values. Smooth and perfectly balanced, but still raw and rootsy. Absolutely spot on.
So I’m finding it is possible to appreciate this sort of music away from the dancefloor. Good stuff.
We did actually mention that – remember Callum talking about putting on his headphones and just head-nodding awy through it?
I really am pleased with this podcast, actually. I am getting into such a comfort zone with music, it’s rare I explore anything actually different, as opposed to a slightly different sort of indie.
Do you bugger hate classical music.
Every time you watch a movie and the music moves you it’s classical. I dare you to say you are not a fan of classic after watching the first five seconds of star wars! The three new Star Wars movies were total crap but, the second Uncle Owen stands on the rock where Luke did on in the first movie and the ‘Luke Theme’ played you still got goose bumps.
You are a fan of the Divine Comedy. It’s a spin off but you can’t divorce them from their classical roots. In fact their collaboration with Yann Tiersen has featured on your blog! “Jour Tristes” with Niel Hannan is pop, without it’s classical. But the music is exactly the same.
Grumble grumble grumble…
Actually, I think I went on to explain that my relationship with classical was more defined by ignorance than dislike – settle down.
But I don’t entirely buy all of your argument, nevertheless. The bit about the Divine Comedy I wouldn’t dispute, but the bit about movies I would take issue with just a bit.
I wouldn’t look at album covers and say that they are keeping alive painting, or illustration. Because for all some of the work done for album covers is brilliant, it is not the art form in its ‘purest’ form, but the art form used as graphic design.
To an extent I think a lot of the classical music used in films is basically just aural design, or whatever you’d call it, wearing the cloak of classical music. So basically a facsimile of the real thing reproduced to serve a wholly functional purpose.
I only suggest this because I’ve recently worked really quite hard on drawings and paintings for album art work and for all I am really pleased with the results I wouldn’t describe them as art – not even bad art.
I definitely get the impression that a lot of classical music in films is the same thing, although I am not sure if the distinction I am making is entirely valid.
Well, I’m off for a bit and what does S,bT become in my absence? Nothing short of an incense oozin’, booty shakin’ love crib! Me like!
This is a splendid podcast. Funk butt-clenchingly awful? P’shaw. I’ve recently been listening to some of Miles Davis’ output from 1969 through about 1973, and it is miraculous stuff. And the same goes for the music Fela Kuti and James Brown were making at around the same time.
I like “classical” music too, especially some of the modern composers from the former Soviet bloc. How’s about a modern classical podcast next?
Oi! ‘fire’fields. Fuck’ve You Been?
Erm, sorry. Truth is I got a bit thrown off my routine this summer. Lots of traveling in New England and Ontario. And Missus C&B has gone back to work after a few years off, which is great. But my boys have been home from school for the summer holiday so I’ve been stepping up and spending a lot more time looking after them. As a result I’ve had way less time to spend on t’internets than in the past. The kids go back to school tomorrow, though, so you’ll likely be seeing more of me hereabouts.
Well that’s fucking good news darlin, cause we’ve missed your Virginian ass around here and we’ve grown weary of talking about your rugged good looks behind your back. Well, DC told me he has, anyway. xoxo
That would be true enough Sir, if the the music from Star Wars didn’t move you without the movie there.
Also to counter your argument, you can buy a CD without the cover and still enjoy it. An unscored movie would be crap. Where Classical suffers is that you can have pop/indie/rock playing in the back ground while you work or cook but to enjoy classical you need to really surrender to it as you would a book.
Here’s the thing I find. Pop music is great but it can only express small moments. Billy Bragg waiting by the phone, Shane McGowan lying in bed on tour dreaming of his misses at home, Tom Waits… Actually Tom Waits can express anything. Here’s a challenge for you. Watch The Shawshank Redemption and find me a piece of music from the pop/rock/indie world that would not have been absurdly trivial when he played it to the prison yard, or when he ripped his shirt off after crawling through the shit pipe. Imagine the end of the Ballet Romeo and Juliet and find a piece of indie/rock/pop that would be appropriate to play while young woman stabs herself in the chest.
I only use the ‘used in film’ example because by enlarge if I don’t no one has any idea of the music I’m talking about.
I’m not being snarky, I honestly can’t think of an example for the scenarios abovr. Nick Cave maybe although he doesn’t really move me like he does you. Tom Waits could perhaps.
C&B I like the classical podcast idea but I’ll be buggered if I let him do that unsupervised!
Oh joy, perhaps we might not suffer that until xmas holidays then? Because I’ll save my rock ‘n roll argument for then xoxo
(but get your copies of Tommy and Led Zeppelin out!)
Watch The Shawshank Redemption and find me a piece of music from the pop/rock/indie world that would not have been absurdly trivial when he played it to the prison yard, or when he ripped his shirt off after crawling through the shit pipe.
Gold by Spandau Ballet.
I win.
Well Ben you have kind of said what I was trying to in a sense – that classical music used in film is often subservient to the film, rather than existing in its own right – except of course for the very good stuff.
And actually a lot of album art could stand up quite well on it’s own merits.
I don’t think I was trying to make the argument about classical vs pop music in film that you seem to think I was, though.
A lot if film soundtracks genuinely don’t stand up without the accompanying film, though, if I remember from listening to Classic FM while we were working on the house. Some of it might be great, but as long as it is usually subservient to the wider movie, which it should be, I will always have my doubts about that particular use as being any sort of sanctuary for the art form.
But I certainly wasn’t saying that there is no good classical music being written at the moment – far from it. If you listen you’ll find that I was actually asking what was happening in classical at the moment, not making accusations.
I was actually going the other way around with it. I was saying that the album works without the cover and visa versa but the film doesn’t without the music. No one would decry Tchaikovsky as being only a soundtrack and yet outside of the 1812 Overture Nutcracker and Swan Lake are certainly his most famous work.
Although Shawshank would have been better, oh so much better, if Tim Robbins had broken into ‘Footloose’ when he emerged from the sewage pipe. Or whats that song that song from the 80′s that always gets played when people are happy in films.
The thing about classical is that it’s very hard for me to give you a composer who isn’t linked to film because Hollywood is the main patron of the art form right now. Also ‘now’ is a more flexible term because periods of tend to last longer. I think of Shotakovich as fairly modern but you would never describe Little Richard as’going on now’ (they were contemporaries). Even so I think you’d be amazed at home many composers are out there that you would recognise. Glass, Bartok, Zappa (no seriously, he considered one of ours) and of course Williams. I know ir’s more soundtrack based but Dennis Mcathy is brilliant and his stuff is boring as hell when using in TV but wonderful played live. I’ve even heard God Speed Black Emperor lumped in with classical composers.
I feel terrible though because this has become a bit of rant. It’s not at all. I’m sort of enjoying myself but feel guilty for spouting off because of one thing you said in a podcast about something entirely different. A really rather good one at that. Bring back the funk (and underscore it with a nice string section…)
Glass, Bartok, Zappa …Williams
Elfman?
Actually, have you heard about this new version of Alice In Wonderland Tim Burton’s bringing out?
I was shocked to learn that it had Johnny Depp and Helena Bonham Carter in it, but unbelieveably he’s got Danny Elfman doing the music.
Astonishing.
Stockhausen! He’s one of ours. But you can have him.
I’m certainly no expert in classical music, but I know what I like. Max Richter, who I think lives in Edinburgh, has done one superb record after another for the last 5 or 6 years, and his scores for Waltz with Bashir and Henry May Long are loaded with spine-tingling moments.
The Estonian composer Arvo Part has also done beautiful things throughout the last 25 or 30 years, as has the Polish composer Henryk Gorecki. Nico Muhly, who collaborated with Samamidon on All Is Well, is from the States and he’s guite “hot” in classical circles over here right now.
Anything sung by Dawn Upshaw is bound to be great. You can’t really go wrong if you buy her CDs. I defy anyone to listen to her performance of Gorecki’s Symphony of Sorrowful Songs without weeping (in a good way).
And the big guys who came up in the 1970s are well worth exploring. Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley, John Adams, Gavin Bryars. I just watched the film Koyaanisqatsi, for which Glass did the score, and it’s really amazing.
I’m actually just about to do sound for a ballet set to Arvo Part. I’d never really sat down a given my full attention to his stuff but I was really pleased.
Also the choreographer wants it to sound very ‘recorded’ coming out of the pit just demonstrating the ‘recording values’ argument happens in all music.
Part at his best is aural heroin. His Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten, which is from 1977 or thereabouts I think, gets me every time. Which pieces are the ballet doing?
Dylan, it looks fucking excellent actually.
C&B
Spiegel and Spiegel.
Dyan
I love the idea of Tim Burton doing Alice. Little worried it will be more Planet of the Apes and less Charlie and the Chocolate factory. But then I think after Apes he refused to let studios tell him hat to do any more. Tim Burton is nothing if not consistent with who he works with.
I’m more excited about the remake of Tron to be honest.
Now was the original Tron good art…
…or barmy old cack?
Can’t it be both?
Just to qualify that statement of mine, I am really rather excited about the remake of Tron.
I think it’s actually “Tron 2: The Sequel” rather than a remake.
sorry completely unrelated to post so appologies matthew but does anyone on here know a decent sound engineer who would be free on sunday? we appear to be without a sound guy for our garden party. we have a little money we could spare. and beers will flow.
Tron Legacy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1IpPpB3iWI
Michael – I take it you’ve tried Alan Pebble, Damon Thompson and Gavin Tarling?
tried alan but i think he is working. he would have been the obvious choice since hes playing at it. im afraid due to my quiet nature and the fact that i have the conversation skills of a walnut i am not acquainted with the other two chaps you mentioned. if you happen to see them it would be appreciated if you could pass on a wee message.
Hey Matthew,
Just wanted you to know SbT was rocking my deck in NYC on a fragrant summer’s night, supplemented by about 3 million crickets.
Ah, summer.
Thank you, and btw that actually sounded like a smoke alarm, not a timer — but who am I to comment on the British metric system when we can’t even get a fucking decent health system in this country without being called Nazis by our insane paranoid fellow countrymen?
Ah, summer.
Anyway, thanks for the toadcast, and greetings.
Black music on toads pages… well i never! Matthew will rap his next podcast.
Wait, Callum’s black? Fuck, I would never have allowed this if anyone had told me.
Marc – yes, she set off the smoke alarm with her, ah, ‘slightly alternative’ culinary skills. You may not believe this, but she’s actually an excellent cook, but on that occasion, erm, maybe not.