| What I'm trying to play is very difficult because I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. | |  |  | | Charles Mingus, circa 1970. | | (Tom Copi/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | | rantnrave:// | It's Friday
Happy 100th birthday, CHARLES MINGUS. Happy RECORD STORE DAY (Saturday) to all who celebrate, whether your pleasure is live/rare jazz sessions from the likes of Mingus, ALBERT AYLER and BILL EVANS, or MARIAH CAREY and (I'm not RickRolling) RICK ASTLEY on vinyl, or ultra-rare New Orleans jazz funk from the ELECTRIFIED A.G.B.
And happy New Music Friday to CAETANO VELOSO, who told the Washington Post last year, "To like songs is to like quantity." Nothing proves that like an April Friday. Speaking of which...
You can get frustrated or defensive that people have pigeonholed your art as "coke rap" or you can embrace it and try to make the best damn coke rap album anyone's ever made. Pusha-T finds the term "lazy" but wants to honor the style and its history. "This is a legacy thing with me," he told Complex's Jessica McKinney about his fourth album, IT'S ALMOST DRY. "This is all about making sure that the subgenre of street rap is seen at the highest levels, and can compete with everything that's popular. This is the realest real estate in hip-hop, and I'm the Martin Scorsese of it." McKinney's piece, btw, is a great inside account of the making an album that Pusha-T, along with producers Pharrell and Kanye West, began to conceive early in the pandemic when he was building a new house, preparing for the birth of his first child and not thinking about recording. "I was like, 'Man, you know what? Let's just cook up while there are no expectations. Nobody's thinking about us. We can actually find s*** that we like. We can go through the processes"... UNDEATH is a death metal band who "don't care for your tortured death metal poetry" and who, all things being equal, would rather laugh. "If I'm watching a band and I can tell the dude singing these songs about murdering people *really* believes it, I'm kind of cringing a little bit," singer Alexander Jones tells Pitchfork. "When there's an element of self-effacement and humor, it makes it so much better." The five-piece from Rochester, N.Y.—expanded from the trio that released Undeath's acclaimed debut, "Lesions of a Different Kind," just 18 months ago—returns, a week after Easter, with IT'S TIME...TO RISE FROM THE GRAVE. Undeath's songs continue to be peopled with the kind of zombies you can laugh with rather than run away from. Which is just as well for a band that brags about wearing Crocs.
On her debut album, KILUMI, Kenyan photojournalist/filmmaker-turned-DJ/producer COCO EM "draws on a range of global and Kenyan sounds, from amapiano and gloomy trap to grime, Luo rap, and chakacha," writes Bandcamp's MEGAN IACOBINI DE FAZIO. There may be a bit of her original profession within the searing single "Land (Black) First," a protest song about white supremacy featuring spoken word vocals by Sisian and percussion by Kasiva... JASON ALDEAN's MACON, GEORGIA completes a double album project the country star began with the release of an album called "Macon" five months ago. The full thing has 20 new studio songs and 10 old live songs and was inspired partly by Guns N' Roses' twin "Use Your Illusion" albums ("even if you look at our album covers, it's kind of similar") and partly by the insatiable appetites of current-day music fans. "They have access to so much music," Aldean says, "that they get an album all at once, then they burn through it in a couple of weeks and are like, 'Well, what's next?'"... Seventysomething BONNIE RAITT "faces mortality with compassion and hope" on JUST LIKE THAT... And seventysomething RY COODER and nearly eightysomething TAJ MAHAL's GET ON BOARD shares three songs and an album cover design with the 1953 Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee LP of the same title. They made it in Cooder's son's house in Los Angeles. "Cooder was surrounded by his usual panoply of stringed instruments. Taj, now a man of considerable girth, set out a half-dozen harmonicas in front of him and barely budged." What else do you need to know?
Plus new music from FONTAINES D.C., MONSTA X, BLXST, BANKROLL FREDDIE, HD4PRESIDENT, SPIRITUALIZED, CHARLEY CROCKETT (covers album), TENILLE TOWNES, JOSHUA HEDLEY, MDOU MOCTAR (remixes, all by African artists), SOMALI YACHT CLUB (metal from Lviv, Ukraine), JEFF MILLS (first of two spring 2022 albums), CLAIRE ROUSAY, ROGER ENO, JAMES HEATHER, BEN MARC, FILIPPO DEORSOLA, BECCA STEVENS & ATTACCA QUARTET, DOROTHY, PRIMUS, NORTHLANE, KIRK HAMMETT (Metallica guitarist's debut solo EP), KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD, PSYCHEDELIC PORN CRUMPETS, JANE INC., JENNYLEE (of Warpaint), PARTICLE KID, OLD CROW MEDICINE SHOW, FOXES, HATCHIE, HARU NEMURI, DEFCEE (released Tueesday), REDVEIL (released Wednesday), DAMA SCOUT, KATHRYN JOSEPH, PATRICK WATSON, S. CAREY, GEORGIA HARMER, MY IDEA, REAL LIES (first album in seven years), GARETH DUNLOP, CHARLOTTE ROSE BENJAMIN, MICHELLE MALONE, DALE WATSON, DALLAS WAYNE, TESS ROBY, BLACK MATTER DEVICE, MISTER GOBLIN, GREEN-HOUSE, BOWLING FOR SOUP, DANIEL JOHNS (of Silverchair) and SONGS OF TOWNES VAN ZANDT VOL. III, featuring nine covers by AMENRA, CAVE IN and MARISSA NADLER.
Rest in Peace
Cynthia Albritton, better known as CYNTHIA PLASTER CASTER, the visual artist and rock and roll superfan who made her name sculpting plaster molds of rock stars' phalluses. In later years, she added breasts to her repertoire. The subjects who sat for her, immodestly encased in Jeltrate dental mode, included Jimi Hendrix, Frank Zappa, Jello Biafra, Peaches and Karen O. She self-identified as a "reformed groupie" and said she "used art to help myself meet rock artists." But she was celebrated for the craft, precision and daring of her work... Blues guitarist GUITAR SHORTY, who influenced generations of rock and blues performers both with his chops and his wild theatrics... And, from my hometown of Newton, Mass., actor ROBERT MORSE. Before you fell in love with him as Bertram Cooper in "Mad Men," he starred in several musicals on Broadway, most notably the original production of "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying," where he introduced the role of corporate-ladder-climbing window washer J. Pierrepont Finch. Here he is in the film version.
| | - Matty Karas (@troubledoll), curator | |
| | better git it in your soul |
| | | |  | | The New York Times |
| | The Multifaceted Mingus | | By Marcus J. Moore and Giovanni Russonello | | On the bassist and bandleader's centennial, 10 jazz musicians discuss his achievements and complexities and pick out a pivotal track from his repertoire. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  | | Music Tech Solutions |
| | Spoxit: Has Streaming Jumped the Shark? | | By Chris Castle | | Do you really think that streaming will go on forever as the configuration of choice for consumers? Has that ever happened before? | | | | | | what we're into |  | | Music of the day | | "Duet Solo Dancers" | | Charles Mingus | | From "The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady" (1963). | | |
|  | | Video of the day | | "Jazz Icons: Charles Mingus Live in '64" | | Charles Mingus | | Filmed at three concerts in April 1964 with saxophonists Eric Dolphy and Clifford Jordan, trumpeter Johnny Coles, pianist Jaki Byard and drummer Dannie Richmond. | | |
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| | Music | Media | | | | | | Suggest a link  | | "REDEF is dedicated to my mother, who nurtured and encouraged my interest in everything and slightly regrets the day she taught me to always ask 'why?'" |
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