Hello folks! My name is Jared Shade Reynolds and I am honored to be the 'new guy' here at LNMC. For my inaugural post I want to introduce you to a man I call 'Spoon Guitar Man', mainly for the fact that all I know about him is that he is a man who plays guitar with a spoon in his mouth. Everything about this video makes me pretty dang happy and I hope you feel the same after watching. What songs make you feel that all is well in the world, if only for a moment?
John Amato:
I am so thrilled to have Jared helping us here at the LNMC. He's a terrific musician who Ben Folds told me was da bomb. Here's a little bio of our new maestro so you get to know him better:
Jared Shade Reynolds grew up in places as exotic as Honduras, Costa Rica and South Carolina. He has spent the last 11 years of his life touring and recording as a bassist/vocalist for various musical acts, most notably Ben Folds and Brendan Benson.
He lives in Nashville with his wife Laura and their children, Belle and Shade. His love of food and books is only overshadowed by his obsession with distance running, and he hopes to have a masters in Social Work within the next five years.
This recommendation for Maryland comes from my friend and co-worker Pete, who claims that Dan Deacon puts on the single finest live show he's ever seen.
Deacon founded Wham City, an artist/musician collective based out of a gigantic warehouse in Baltimore called the Copycat building, and I'm certain they have more fun there than most people I know.
Electronic music is a bit of a rarity here at the LNMC. Any recommendations?
Every Monday night, C&L's Late Nite Music Club showcases an act from every state, alphabetically by state, as part of LNMC's 50 State Strategy. Know a band or artist that you think is the best in their state? Email suggestions to latenitemusicclub [at] gmail.com. Next week: Massachusetts.
Happy Monday, everyone. This week's installment of LNMC's 50 State Strategy comes courtesy of C&L reader Steve L. The Railbenders (Denver) have quite a way with unpretentious country/rockabilly toetappers like "One Foot in the Grave". Enjoy!
Every Monday, C&L's Late Nite Music Club will feature an up-and-coming act from every state, alphabetically by state, as part of LNMC's 50 State Strategy. Know a band or artist that you think is the best in their state? Email suggestions to latenitemusicclub [at] gmail.com.
I used to be on the Nominating Committee of the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame. I stopped going when one of the top guys there kept telling me Patti Smith isn't rock'n'roll and shouldn't get in. After a couple years of me not showing up to the meetings they kicked me off. Ironically, the same year they kicked me off, Patti was voted in! I still vote after the nominations are put in by the committee and a couple days ago my ballot arrived in the mail. Voters are asked to pick 5-- in order of preference; it's a weighted ballot.
Let's do a LNMC version tonight. I'll tabulate the ballots and randomly pick one voter to get an Impeach Cheney cap. Send your ballots to downwithtyranny@aol.com. The nominees for the Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame-- the one Patti was supposedly not rock'n'roll enough for-- are:
Afrika Bambaataa, Beastie Boys, Chic, Leonard Cohen, Dave Clark Five, Madonna, John Mellencamp, Donna Summer, and The Ventures.
Send 5 picks in order of preference. Your first pick gets five points and your last gets one point. Although I was incredibly nonplussed by this year's crop, this is the band that got my #1 vote, although I had a harder time deciding if I should pick Walk Don't Run or this song as tonight's LNMC track:
(Nicole:) One of the best responses we've ever had for our LNMC was one that our very own NonnyMouse suggested. It's been a while since she's contributed anything, so I asked her if she'd like to do another one. Here it is:
I still have records. (For those of you who are too young to remember Viet Nam, never mind Watergate, records are those big, black Frisbee-like things in flimsy cardboard album covers.) At only 150 albums or so, I wouldn't actually call it a ‘collection'; it's just a motley hodgepodge of what I bought the last time I was a student in college. Thirty years ago. They all got put into storage in the States when I moved to Europe. More than twenty years ago. I shipped them over about five years ago. None of them have been played in a quarter of a century. But now... I have a record player. So I'm going through them all, deciding on which I treasure enough to ship once more.
I bought William Ackerman's ‘It Takes A Year' brand-new in 1977. Thirty years later, I carefully extracted the record, holding it by the edges (never touch the grooves with your bare fingers!) and laid it carefully onto the turntable, made sure there was no lint or dust on the vinyl, positioned the tone arm exactly right before lowering the brand-new stylus ever so gently onto the lead-in edge and listened to music I last heard before Britney Spears was even a zygote. Maybe it was because memories are so powerful, the music you hear in your 20's does something to your heart - I don't know. What I do know is I stood in front of an old record player, listening to the hauntingly beautiful ‘The Impending Death of the Virgin Spirit', crackles and hiss and all, and wept.
The closest I can give you to the real thing is this YouTube clip of a cover done by Adam Werner and Michael Manring.
William Ackerman founded Windham Hill Records, now sadly defunct, won some Grammies, gave up the craziness of the music business and moved away from California to the Vermont countryside where he does a few concerts, plays anywhere, even private living rooms, and is still quietly recording some of the best acoustical music known to the human soul. His newest CD, ‘Returning', features ‘Virgin Spirit', both because Ackerman wanted to refine the emotional connection of the work, and because in the past 30 years technology has vastly improved sound quality. Yet while the sound may be richer, the nuances more distinct, the music more matured, there will still be - at least for me - something very moving and unique about that older version, made long ago when we were both young and rough around the edges, that defined my life then, and still defines it now.Tonight's LNMC challenge is to share something powerful enough, without lyrics, to have moved you to tears.
A friend turned me on to an indie band from Florida a few years ago--friends of his--he said he was 100% positive I would love. He was right. They're Against Me! They're not exactly a new band, more like an underground band that is just starting to surface. Tom Gabel, the singer and guitar player started playing as Against Me! a decade and a half ago. He was just an impassioned singer-songwriter back then. Now he's an impassioned singer-songwriter with a kick ass punk band behind him. Do you ever hear older folks who were against the War in Vietnam complaining that there are no young musicians making socially relevant music anymore? They're wrong; they're just not going to the right places to listen.
You won't find Against Me on too many corporately owned radio stations or see them on former music TV channels like MTV. A better place to hear and see their music is at MySpace or YouTube. Tonight the band's first video, "White People For Peace," from their Sire Records debut NEW WAVE (which comes out next month) is our LNMC song.
I don't think the Pentagon was really trying to develop a gay bomb. I think it was just a marketing ploy to sell more Erasure and Madonna records. Or maybe you have a diffferent theory? Tonight's lnmc contest is to find the 5 gayest songs ever recorded. Here's one that strikes me as... pretty gay:
Send your list of 5 really gay songs to downwithtyranny@aol.com and win a musical package that transcends sexuality (although... admitedly, if you have any gay friends on your Xmas list...) The prize: a COLOR ME BARBRA dvd (including fabulous bonus poster!) and a rare-- never sold-- promo CD for OUTFEST, the 19th Los Angeles Gay and Lesbian Film Festival which has 15 songs by a wide range of artists from Nick Cave, Stevie Nicks, Book of Love and Enya to Ennio Morricone, Depeche Mode and New Order.Congratulations to James for winning the Pearlman/Sony Rock On contest. Thanks for being part of the LNMC Community!
Can someone do this for LNMC tonight? The bass player is a friend and I jammed with these guys two weeks ago and they are simply terrific...
You got it, boss!
Update: John Amato:
I love Particle. These guys can take a groove, play it for thirty minutes and never once bore you. There is a SPECIAL LATE NIGHT PHISH AFTER SHOW!! in New York City, NY - The Gramercy Theater, tonight and they will probably play until 3am.
If you are familiar with the LNMC, you know how much I revere Mr. Young. Here's a beautiful unreleased song from around 1981. Y'all have a good Saturday.
