Pakistan Folk and Pop Instrumentals

From Metro Pulse.

Various artists

Pakistan: Folk and Pop Instrumentals 1966-1976 (Sublime Frequencies)
In the late 1960s, a restrictive military dictatorship in Pakistan was overthrown, which led to relaxing censorship and allowing more personal freedom. Long hair and hashish became popular, and instrumental bands inspired by Western pop music began playing in Karachi’s nightclubs. Few of these bands were recorded, and most of those that were got a chance to release only a single or two. Fortunately, venerable British label EMI released a number of these records, and it’s from their well-preserved masters that the 22 songs on this Sublime Frequencies compilation originate.
The American and British influences are obvious from the band names alone: the Panthers, the Mods, the Bugs, the Abstracts, the Blue Birds. In addition to note-perfect imitations of their Western counterparts on some tracks, these groups retained a strong regional sensibility, incorporating traditions from Iran, Afghanistan, and India. Reverb-heavy surf guitar and organ are the dominant sounds driving these songs, but the tone is often higher, and the tempos faster, than what you’d normally expect from surf music, abetted by the sitars and tablas that make frequent appearances.
Some singles, such as the Panthers’ “Malkaus” and the Fore Thoughts’ “Jungee,” sound nearly indistinguishable from a beach-party record an American band might have released, but the B-sides are more bhangra than Baja. The Panthers’ “Bhaivri” opens with a distinctively mournful Middle Eastern-sounding figure, which turns into a Dick Dale-style slow burner that fades just as a keening vocal, the only singing on the album, launches into a lament. The Mods’ “Spring Dance” sounds like a pop take on a traditional Pakistani folk song, much in the way British and American bands reinterpreted the folk-blues classics “House of the Rising Sun” or “Stagger Lee.”

Indian and Pakistani film music also adds its inevitable stamp. Two tracks by the Blue Birds are taken from soundtracks, and two older film composers are represented by a song each, adding more elaborate textures and indigenous flavor to the primitive template of the younger bands. But just when you’re getting accustomed to the exotic nature of these recordings, the drummer for the Fore Thoughts lays into an Incredible Bongo Band-style beat that’s ripe for sampling, as a funky organ jam dances across the top.

Sublime Frequencies has been criticized for their skimpy, sometimes even non-existent, liner notes, which detractors say do not show sufficient respect for the musicians or their culture. Co-founders Alan Bishop and Hisham Mayet have defended their approach, saying their method requires more from the imagination and ear of the listener. (Never mind that extensive documentation or reportage by outsiders can come off as Westernized exoticizing of these cultures, Orientalism all over again.)
Complaints about the label’s failure to distribute royalties are harder to overlook, but Bishop and Mayet insist that finding some of the musicians who played on decades-old recordings from remote countries is impossible. Plus, any profits from sales go right back into finding, recording, and releasing the kind of overlooked world music no other label will deal with.

Bishop and Mayet seem to have taken some criticism to heart, though, as recent SF releases have contained a bit more info, and here they let us know this collection was 10 years in the making, in part because compiler Stuart Ellis tracked down most of the musicians. Considering how difficult it is to find detailed session information about lots of one-off singles by American soul or garage bands from the ’60s and ’70s, and that many Pakistani musicians fled the country after another military takeover and the imposition of Sharia law in 1977, Ellis’ detective work seems an impressive feat. Still, information about each band remains scant, certainly much less than you’d get from Smithsonian Folkways or other curatorial-type labels. In a way, that serves to highlight how intrinsically accessible and alive this music remains, way more fun than a curio or museum piece.

D.C./The Ex

Well I've just been terrible about keeping this thing updated. No surprise there. A few days after my last post, Stephanie and I went up to D.C. for four days, and the weather was so nice for so long after that I wanted to limit my time in front of a computer as much as possible. Those sunny, near 80 degree days took a turn for the bleh recently, though, and it's been chilly and rainy and/or overcast the past few days. The return to a more or less normal Spring is dispiriting following the unseasonably warm one, but at least we're not in the North or Midwest, where they're still getting snow.

The trip to D.C. was scheduled around Steph's Spring break from her job at Montessori, and it just so happened to coincide with The Ex playing The Black Cat. It was also a few weeks before our friends Tre and Sarah and their son Eli would be moving from the suburbs of Reston, VA to Ithaca, NY, and we wanted to visit with them a bit. Washington is a great place to take a trip if you don't have much money, because most of the museums and touristy things are free, and decent hotels are reasonably priced. We ate lots of good food, which wasn't as reasonably priced, but I have to chalk that up in part to not knowing the city well enough. Still and all, food was our one splurge and it was well worth it. Turkish tapas, Spanish tapas, dim sum and smoked lamb and quinoa soup from the Museum of the American Indian's surprisingly good (if pricey) cafe were the main highlights. (And btw, why is it the Museum of the American Indian instead of Native American? Seems kinda un-PC.) I know it's easy to hate on the small plate fad, and you can run a tab up pretty quickly eating that way, but it makes total sense to me. You get to try several different dishes, usually very flavorful ones, at one sitting. If you enjoy food, why wouldn't you want to do this? I guess the main problem is when mediocre restaurants, which Knoxville is lousy with, try it. But D.C. has lots of interesting restaurants, so odds are good you'll end up somewhere decent. My main food regret is coming across a Korean bbq truck right after we'd eaten, and I wasn't even hungry enough for one measly taco. We'd just had a breakfast with fresh fried fish, something I haven't had in ages, and I forgot how good fish could be with eggs, potatoes, toast and coffee. Why am I talking so much about food? I hate foodies. I even hate the word. I want to punch that word in the face. At least I won't be putting up pictures of food.

I'll keep the sightseeing details brief. You probably have a good idea what's in D.C. I will put in a good word for The National Gallery, which alone is worth hopping a Megabus for (more on that later). Not nearly in the same league as The Met, it's much less crowded and more manageable than that behemoth, but you can still spend an entire afternoon there. And it's probably the building on the Mall with the least amount of kids, always a plus. A bit off the Mall, the Folger Shakespeare Library is the place with the least amount of people in general. There were about five other people when I stopped by for a tour, excepting the 20 or so actors there to audition for a role in the Library's next dramatic production. I also got a library card for The Library of Congress, a neat but ultimately meaningless act, since I'm rarely in D.C. Still, it made me happy, even though I don't look it in my photo.


The highlight was seeing The Ex, of course, who don't make it to the U.S. all that frequently, and to the South hardly ever. Of course it was one year ago almost to the week that we saw them in town at the Big Ears festival, but that was an unusual event. I love the three guitar and drums lineup. They're basically three rhythm guitarists, playing repetitive riffs without a real lead player. It's amazingly effective and engaging, and of course Kat's drumming is always impressive. Every few songs they'll have something of a dual where two or sometimes all three of them freak out and show off a bit, best exemplified during "Double Order." Here's a video giving you an idea what that's like: http://vimeo.com/8060711. I love this band, and though what they're doing now is a pretty simple concept, they're doing it very well and I'd see 3 or 4 of their shows on this tour if I could.

Anecdote: I met up with old comrade James Henry at the Black Cat before the show. We were downstairs in the little restaurant part and he was telling me about life in D.C. He was talking shit about Fugazi and particularly Ian MacKaye, and I thought it was funny because he lowered his voice to do so. "You never know who might be around," he said. "What a paranoid, dude," I thought. We got up maybe 5 minutes later, and I saw Ian hanging out in the kitchen, about 20 feet from us. I think he could take James, too, so his discretion was warranted.

Merle and Kris

I really wanted to make it out to the Prince Rama show at PL Monday night, but I've been fighting a cold and we're going to D.C. this weekend so I wanted to get some rest and avoid potentially blowing out my always perilous immune system with another late night and the always perilous threat of too much imbibing. Too bad because word is it was great. Maybe next time.

Instead, Tuesday night I went to a show that was probably the exact opposite in almost every way imaginable. My brother-in-law bought himself, my dad, brother and me tickets to Merle Haggard and Kris Kristofferson at Tennessee Theatre. That was nice because I only see my dad and brother, who live on a farm about an hour's drive from Knoxville, maybe nine or ten times a year, usually at holidays and birthdays. It was a good chance to socialize with them in a way we never do. My dad said he hasn't been to a concert in decades, and I'm sure my brother hasn't been to one in at least 10 or 15 years either.

I grew up listening to a lot of country, my mom preferring the more-pop-than-country sounds of Kenny and Dolly and Juice and Sylvia, my dad going in for Waylon and Willie and the boys. Merle was his favorite, and I always liked him, too, because his music seemed less shit-kicking, and often had a melancholy devoid of the melodrama so plentiful in country music. Plus he had that great song you could sing along with and get away with saying "hell." And that song was probably the first place I heard about this "Nixon." I'd seen Merle twice before, once at the Kentucky state fair about 8 years ago, and once at the Tennessee Theatre about 2 or 3 years ago. His concerts are basically greatest hits affairs, which is great because you're reminded how many hits he had and how great a songwriter he is. He's easily my favorite living country artist, and I'd probably put him behind Hank Williams as my second favorite. All due respect to Willie, Waylon and Jones, but they just never wrote as many great songs, Merle's voice has held up remarkably well and he incorporated more Western swing and jazz into his music. Willie's still a more interesting guitar player, but Merle's a good picker, too.

I thought the evening might be split between an hour or so of Kris and an hour of so of Merle, especially after Kris came out and did a song alone with acoustic guitar. His voice sounded rough as he croaked along. He apologized, saying he'd been sick, then reminded us his voice had never been that great to begin with. Then Merle and the band came out and the two swapped songs the rest of the night, Merle doing about 3 for every 2 of Kris'. It was a startling contrast not just because Kris' voice was so ragged and Merle's so smooth, but Kris' tempos were all slow, and most of his songs downers. The vocal problem actually wasn't so bad, because the songs he chose to perform came off like they were written by a world-weary older guy; it was as if voice had grown into his songs. I sat between my dad and this 80-ish year old woman who sat very prim and proper and didn't make a noise the whole night, until she sang along with "Sunday Morning Coming Down." That was sweet and weird.

(Speaking of which, there was more than one walker with wheels in attendance. Who knew so many older folk like songs about alcohol and misery? I guess the tunes are familiar, and the melodies are so pleasant and hummable.)

Like I said, with Merle it's a greatest hits revue, so he played about everything you can imagine except "Are the Good Times Really Over." I guess the question the song poses has been answered, since things are so much worse than when he recorded the song back in 1981. Too bad. It's a crowd pleaser. He did do "Okie From Muskogee," making the requisite pot jokes beforehand letting you know he was down, that you shouldn't take the song too seriously. He even let Kris sing a verse of his version, making fun of the original. I've never been sure how seriously we were supposed to take the song, and as he introduced it, Merle said he wrote it for his dad, who's from Oklahoma. Whether or not he personally shared the point of view of "Okie's" narrator is beside the point; he accurately and poetically depicted the point of view of that small town mindset. And with a great tune. That's part of what makes Merle such a unique songwriter. He can write songs for and about the jingoistic patriot and the disenfranchised rebel, the counterculture and the blue collar working man. Maybe not so much the middle class, but they're already overrepresented, plus their art is generally lousy anyway.

The last song they did together was "Poncho and Lefty" and it's a tribute to how great that song is that the punched-up, bright keyboard mariachi version they did didn't make it any less compelling. Again, Kris' voice made his (originally Willie's) parts that much more tragic.

Fine Peduncle

Article here.

And here:

Though it sounds like a word used to describe a creepy older relative you don’t want your kids around, “peduncle” is actually an anatomical term referring to various types of connective stalks found in plants, fish, insects, arachnids, and human brains. For Cole Murphy, the term’s multiple uses and its relation to both insects and humans make it the perfect choice for his musical project, a one-man electro-soul R&B show he calls Fine Peduncle.

“Since I was a kid I’ve had an interest in insects, and I keep a lot of arachnids now,” he says. “I relate them to the more mysterious aspects of my sexuality and spirituality, and from that I’ve developed my own spiritual system that’s reflected in my music and art.”

Murphy makes the kind of bedroom pop only possible in an era of advanced home-computer recording software. Building tracks based on beats and loops that he’s fashioned from recordings of himself playing bass, guitar, keyboard, and even some banjo and violin, he then harmonizes with himself to create a surreal vocal persona with a one-track mind. Fine Peduncle’s music often recalls the blue-eyed funk of Midnite Vultures-era Beck and the freaky sexploits of R. Kelly and Prince, with playfully suggestive raps worked in. The stacking of Murphy’s multi-pitched vocals, which makes frequent use of his arresting falsetto, especially brings the Purple One to mind, though Murphy says he never listened to Prince much until someone made the comparison after one of his shows. In fact, despite the prurient content, he claims the main influence on his singing is the music from which all R&B originates—gospel.

“Gospel is at the root of what I do,” Murphy says. “I get a lot of the vocal ideas from studying music at the Southern Baptist church I went to growing up, where I sang in the choir occasionally.”
Having recently graduated with a degree in printmaking from the University of Tennessee, Murphy is now concentrating on music as much as visual art and says he sees the two as intricately linked. He released the Glen EP last October (available for download via SoundCloud), and he will have a new six-track EP available at his March 4 Pilot Light show. But live shows are where the Fine Peduncle concept really takes off. Murphy’s performance is a hyperactive affair; he sings and talks to the crowd as he dances, usually shirtless, all while trying to keep his vocals and loops lined up.

“I guess some of the actual music is kind of simple, but it’s not easy to perform live,” he says. “There’s a lot of headwork involved. I have to always be thinking about jumping to this numbered channel in this many measures. And I always want to keep it danceable.”

Lyrically, Fine Peduncle’s songs are crowded with references to Michael Bolton, Usher, Friends, and Reading Rainbow. “I Carey a Ludacris Fantasy” melds Ludacris’ “What’s Your Fantasy” with Mariah Carey’s “Fantasy,” while “Won’t You Be My Neighbor” turns the Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood theme song into an NC-17 sex fantasy as imagined by someone who watches a lot of Cinemax. It might seem like a crazysexydorky conceptual project, but Murphy’s impressive vocal prowess convinces you it’s not meant to be an ironic take on R&B, and he insists there’s more going on than appears at first glance.

“I like the idea of having something easily accessible on the surface—like the sexual imagery in R&B—having another, underlying meaning,” says Murphy.

As an example, he compares the act of taking his shirt off during performances to the molting of a tarantula, adding another context to the conventional R&B seduction boast he sings while disrobing: “Gonna undo all my buttons/Take off all my clothes/Show you something you ain’t never seen before.” And watching Murphy, with his rather diminutive frame, belt out goofy, risqué lyrics can seem like an attempted subversion of the exaggerated masculine pose found in much hip-hop and R&B.

Murphy also considers Fine Peduncle a way to explore and explicate his spirituality, a customized system drawing from Chakra, Jewish mysticism, and entomology that may be made a bit clearer when Fine Peduncle enters its next phase.

“I’ve already got the next CD planned out,” Murphy says. “It’s called The Entonomicon, and the songs will be based around the 10 spirit guardians associated with energy systems in my body. I think a lot of the ideas will also be made more obvious when I incorporate the new type of performance I want to do. I want to make a far more powerful, theatrical show that has a performance-art aspect to it. I’m making some videos right now using stop-motion techniques that I’ll probably end up projecting. Sexy live dancers are a possibility and strange, grotesque sexual things kind of like GWAR do might be played up in the future. Whatever I can do to pump up the live shows.”

Mountains of Moss/Cloudland Canyon/The Mutations/Big Bad Oven/NDN/Dumb Lunch/Fine Peduncle

All the above bands in two nights at Pilot Light. Quite a different atmosphere/sense of purpose/audience between Thursday and Friday nights, though there was some audience overlap. And if you consider Cloudland's Kip Uhlhorn is a former Knoxvillian, both nights were all-locals affairs. Some serious sounds going down all around.

Thursday's show actually felt more like two different shows, an "early" (start time @ 11:10 p.m. for a four band bill - that's pushing it even by PL standards) dreamy, droney set and a late rock set. I'm assuming Cloudland Canyon were dreamy and droney, they were the last two times I saw them, but I missed them this time around, as some of us were over at Backroom with former Knoxvillian, current Washingtonian (what a word) and soon to be Ithacan Tre Donn Berney, who was in visiting for a spell. I did catch Mountains of Moss' opening set, and wow but it was good. It always is, of course, but seemed to be especially so this time. The great thing about a set by Adam Ewing is you know it's always going to be worthwhile, but you never know exactly what he's going to do. It opened with the other current member of MoM, who I know I've met but whose name I'm ashamed to say I can't remember, laying down a nice drone while Adam fingerpicked a bit. The dual vocals sounded great, Adam's high-pitched keening blending well with the other guy's baritone, and other guy even sang one himself. I don't know if it was a song he wrote or not, but this performance felt more like a collaborative effort than a lot of past MoM shows have. Great stuff.

The Mutations are a new band with Cuts/Cheat/Dude Fuckin Whatever guitarist Harold Heffner and some other guys whose names I don't know. It was their first show but they already sound so good you'd never have guessed it. Granted it's not too far afield from the surf rock kind of stuff Harold's been doing for years, but I guess it's so second nature to him now it seems effortless. Not to single him out, the whole band was great. I especially like the slower number that sounds like it would fit comfortably on the Grease soundtrack. I so don't mean that as an insult.

Big Bad Oven burned the place down, of course. It was Josh Wright's birthday and everybody was in just the right mood for BBO's kind of mind melting activity. Could a trio of drums, saxophone and homemade lap slide guitar be the best rock band in Knoxville right now? Some nights, yes, and Thursday night was one of them.

Friday night was a whole other affair. I showed up around 11:30 and NDN was on stage. People were talking pretty loudly and I myself got caught up in a stop and chat by the front door, so I couldn't really hear what he was doing. I think he was rapping, or somesuch.

Dumb Lunch. Wow. What to say about these guys. They're a sort of conceptual prankster take on Top 40 hip-hop, and while the raps, all centered around blunts, drinking, more blunts and an egregious amount of anal-insertion references, were briefly amusing in a so bad it's good kind of way, they got old pretty quick for me. I mean some of Lil B's stuff is along those lines and he's not trying to be funny, plus he can actually rap when he wants to. Besides which the greatest parody of a thing is itself, so what's the point? But I dug the music, which was four guys playing some combination of laptops/iPads/drum machines, I couldn't really see because they were sitting on the floor, but even the higher tech stuff sounded kind of primitive. I though they were improvising but Chris Rusk, who played with them, swore they were pre-arranged songs. It sounded like a holy mess to me, in a good way, not in a noise for the sake of noise, tripping all over each other way, but a weird, loosely connected exploratory way. It reminded me somewhat of Black Dice's last couple of records or even parts of Royal Trux's Twin Infinitives and Hand of Glory. But mostly I didn't have much of a context for it, which is usually a good experience.

Fine Peduncle closed out the night. His recordings are great, but his live show makes what he does so much more impressive. If you haven't seen Cole Murphy perform, you can get an idea about what he does in my Metro Pulse article, some parts of which I already have second thoughts about, which I'll get into in a later post. But his voice is flat-out incredible, and last night he played a batch of songs from his new EP, which demanded a lot more from his falsetto than normal. It's amazing to watch, and I wonder how often he can do that and keep his voice intact. Like if he ever goes on tour, can he do that night after night? We may find out soon; I've never heard so many people independently of one another so convinced that someone local is destined for great things, especially someone who's only been performing about a year. If the right well-connected person hears him, or he gets a bigger platform, like Bonnaroo or Moogfest, he's bound to get national attention. Soak it up now while he's still playing PL to sizable but still comfortably manageable crowds.

A stupid question

They say there's no such thing as a stupid question. But that's stupid. Here's one: "Is there such thing as a stupid question?" Of course, stupid! Anyone who is in retail or, say, an American hears multiple stupid questions every day. And kids ask stupid questions all the time, because they're inherently stupid.

Here's another one: If digital recordings are made up of a series of 1s and 0s, is it possible to remove all of the 1s or all of the 0s from a recording? What would Michael Jackson's "Billie Jean" sound like with every third 1 removed? Like a skipping CD? A remix by Oval? What about replacing "Billie Jean's" 1s with "Black Dog's" 0s? Will there every be an app for that? The Plunderphonics app? Are silences in songs — like the silence after the opening guitar noises in "Black Dog" — registered by 1s and/or 0s? Is silence more 1-is or 0ish? Is there such thing as an absolute silence? Maybe these questions don't reflect stupidity so much as my ignorance as to how digital encoding works. An ignorant question, then. But aren't all questions based in ignorance? Yes, except the stupid ones.