{"id":465,"date":"2006-06-30T12:27:57","date_gmt":"2006-06-30T20:27:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/index.php\/archives\/2006\/06\/30\/satellite-discoveries\/"},"modified":"2006-06-30T12:27:57","modified_gmt":"2006-06-30T20:27:57","slug":"satellite-discoveries","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/2006\/06\/30\/satellite-discoveries\/","title":{"rendered":"Satellite Discoveries"},"content":{"rendered":"

"Nothing I Can Do"<\/strong>
Ben Taylor<\/p>\n

You’d love this if you only heard it.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine a brand new seventies JT song, wouldn’t you kill for that?\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of the perfect but bland drivel he’s been releasing since 1985 and "That’s Why I’m Here"?<\/p>\n

I was parked at the light at Pico and Sepulveda and I heard one of those songs on Sirius’ Coffee House that is just too mellow, the kind that makes me disdain the station, and then the track made the most AMAZING CHANGE!\u00c2\u00a0 It went from mellow to MELLIFLUOUS!\u00c2\u00a0 And suddenly, everything seemed right in the world.<\/p>\n

Do you remember "Gorilla"?\u00c2\u00a0 James Taylor’s almost perfect, lighthearted record released at the advent of summer 1975?\u00c2\u00a0 That began with "Mexico"?\u00c2\u00a0 You’d put that record on and feel the breeze in your hair and feel that this life was truly worth living.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s what "Nothing I Can Do" sounds like.\u00c2\u00a0 It doesn’t beat you over the head, it just takes you on a gently twisting ride.\u00c2\u00a0 And Ben’s voice has got that slightly reedy sound of his dad’s way back when.<\/p>\n

This is not Top Forty fodder.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the kind of stuff they used to play on KNX, 93.1 FM, L.A.’s mellow rock station, back when one could dedicate an entire CHANNEL to this sound.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s the kind of thing you hear and buy the album and go to see the act.\u00c2\u00a0 And that’s what this whole business was based upon.<\/p>\n

"Off The Record"<\/strong>
My Morning Jacket<\/p>\n

On XM the deejays don’t talk enough, on Sirius they talk too much.\u00c2\u00a0 On XM when they do talk they sound like the lauded record spinners on the free format underground FM stations of yore.\u00c2\u00a0 When they talk on Sirius they sound exactly like what you hate about terrestrial radio.\u00c2\u00a0 Jive guys and gals preaching to a lowest common denominator, nobody YOU know.\u00c2\u00a0 They employ cliches, they’re all sunny, it’s complete bullshit.\u00c2\u00a0 Which is why I ignore them.\u00c2\u00a0 And felt self-satisfied after the babe waxed rhapsodic about this record and it turned to be FAR from the target.\u00c2\u00a0 The vocals were ridiculous, and the lyrics not much better.\u00c2\u00a0 And wasn’t that the guitar from "Hawaii Five-0"?<\/p>\n

But then Jim James, who can sing others’ material SO well, stopped emoting, and the guitarist took over, and it was the seventies ALL OVER AGAIN!\u00c2\u00a0 Kind of like the Marshall Tucker Band crossed with an act from the U.K. Midlands.\u00c2\u00a0 An endless dreamy ride.\u00c2\u00a0 They don’t make them like this anymore.<\/p>\n

Then again, they made THIS!<\/p>\n

Download this.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll be stunned.\u00c2\u00a0 You’ll finally understand what all the hype is about.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine driving around after midnight, stoned with your buddies, on a hot summer night.\u00c2\u00a0 THAT’S what this record sounds like.\u00c2\u00a0 After you get past the vocals, when you get to the instrumental part.<\/p>\n

Hear this ONCE, and you’ll GET IT!!<\/p>\n

"Give It Time"<\/strong>
Eric Lindell<\/p>\n

The first time I heard this, I thought it was ersatz.\u00c2\u00a0 The second time I thought it was okay.\u00c2\u00a0 The THIRD TIME I was ENRAPTURED!<\/p>\n

That’s one thing about Sirius, you do hear records with enough frequency to grow into them.<\/p>\n

I’ve got no idea who this guy is.\u00c2\u00a0 But once you get past the point that this SOUNDS like the Josh Dodes Band from VH1’s "Bands On The Run", recorded not so well, the vocals sounding just not distinct\/unique enough, you realize there’s MAGIC HERE!<\/p>\n

This is the best Black Crowes record in years.\u00c2\u00a0 That’s who it ultimately sounds like, Chris Robinson.\u00c2\u00a0 Without quite the offense.<\/p>\n

But there’s the seventies sound, of being at the rock show in the middle of the afternoon, in the hot sun, high on beer and pot.\u00c2\u00a0 People are lying on their blankets, tapping their thighs with their fingers, and suddenly the girls in bikini tops get up and start writhing to the music.\u00c2\u00a0 This is not Top Forty music, it’s short form jam band music.<\/p>\n

Listen to the clip a couple of times.<\/p>\n

Go to: Eric Lindell<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 Click on "Music".\u00c2\u00a0 Then click on "Give It Time" in the player.\u00c2\u00a0 Unfortunately, it’s only one minute.\u00c2\u00a0 But you’ll hear the hooks.<\/p>\n

And, there’s an "Avenging Annie" falsetto background vocal that once you catch it in the record, you’ll hear up front and center, you’ll pick it out like a babe in the crowd, and you’ll devote ALL your attention to it.<\/p>\n

Every time I hear this, it gets better.<\/p>\n

"Take A Walk"
<\/strong>Urge Overkill<\/p>\n

From Mike Marrone’s 50th birthday playlist.<\/p>\n

I thought the band was an overhype, but DID like the lead singer’s look.\u00c2\u00a0 And their Neil Diamond cover.<\/p>\n

And this starts off mediocre and unmemorable, but in the MIDDLE there’s a part so exquisite you’ll never forget it.\u00c2\u00a0 This is the kind of gem Mike specializes in unearthing.<\/p>\n

"The Wings"<\/strong>
Gustavo Santaolalla
"Brokeback Mountain"<\/p>\n

I’ve saved the best for last.<\/p>\n

There’s this channel on XM, Cinemagic.\u00c2\u00a0 They play movie themes.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s right next to the Broadway channel.\u00c2\u00a0 I switch between them and play name that tune with Felice.\u00c2\u00a0 I’m stunned, she knows EACH AND EVERY ONE!\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, maybe not some of the themes from the recent lame movies, but up until the flicks took a bad turn, sometime in the past decade, she knows THEM ALL!<\/p>\n

And I didn’t listen to Cinemagic much before meeting her.\u00c2\u00a0 Now it’s a regular stop.\u00c2\u00a0 I like it best when I hear Thomas Newman’s "Road To Perdition", my favorite recent soundtrack.\u00c2\u00a0 But most of what I hear doesn’t resonate.\u00c2\u00a0 And then Wednesday, I heard two cowboys talking.\u00c2\u00a0 I knew it was "Brokeback Mountain" before I looked at the readout.\u00c2\u00a0 Even though I’d never seen the movie.<\/p>\n

But I wanted to go RIGHT FUCKING THEN!\u00c2\u00a0 Because as the music played under them, I got the mood immediately.\u00c2\u00a0 Out in the vast landscape of the American west, still untamed all these years later.<\/p>\n

There used to be a romance in movies.\u00c2\u00a0 Before they became based on theme park rides and old TV shows.\u00c2\u00a0 Movies used to be our highest art form.\u00c2\u00a0 They were about story, they were about experience.\u00c2\u00a0 Now they’re worldwide extravaganzas, made for sums we can’t even FATHOM.\u00c2\u00a0 And what results we can’t really understand.\u00c2\u00a0 Oh, we can watch the films on screen, but we don’t feel a PART of them.<\/p>\n

But we felt a part of "Last Picture Show".\u00c2\u00a0 And all those endless great movies of the late sixties and seventies.\u00c2\u00a0 We LIVED to go to the movies, not purely to escape, but to learn about ourselves and our world.<\/p>\n

I can’t go anymore.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s too disillusioning.\u00c2\u00a0 I feel like the Nazi in "The Producers".\u00c2\u00a0 These are not MY movies.\u00c2\u00a0 I watch some HBO and Showtime, but I’ve kind of resigned from viewing filmed entertainment.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s kind of like music.\u00c2\u00a0 There’s too much of it and it’s too hard to find the good shit, which is buried and forgotten almost instantly.<\/p>\n

I went to the BMI composer awards, and this guy won all of them.\u00c2\u00a0 He smiled, he didn’t look like a genius, was he really worthy of all those trophies?\u00c2\u00a0 But when I heard "Wings" after the cowboys spoke on Cinemagic I could have sworn it was Wyoming on the other side of my windshield, not Santa Monica.<\/p>\n

I had to come home and download every Gustavo Santaolalla cut from the soundtrack album, all seven of them.\u00c2\u00a0 And I played them endlessly, for hours.<\/p>\n

I recommend you do this.<\/p>\n

<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

"Nothing I Can Do"Ben Taylor You’d love this if you only heard it.\u00c2\u00a0 Imagine a brand new seventies JT song, wouldn’t you kill for that?\u00c2\u00a0 Instead of the perfect but bland drivel he’s been releasing since 1985 and "That’s Why I’m Here"? I was parked at the light at Pico and Sepulveda and I heard […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-465","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-the-music"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-7v","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}