He was the bass player for Japan, Rain Tree Crow, Dali’s Car, Gary Numan & Tubeway Army, No-Man and many others. I’m particularly fond of an album he did with Yoshihiro Hanno in 2000 called Liquid Glass. If you haven’t heard me play it once in a while, you probably aren’t listening. Mick Karn was heralded throughout music, even in the standard jazz genre’s as one of the best bass players around. He was also proficient with very odd (to my liking) implementation of woodwinds in rock music. He was very good at clarinet and bassoon. He used them a lot in the music he made in the 90’s with Jansen/Barbieri/Karn (or JBK) which was the instrumentalists from the band Japan.
Nobody sounds like this guy playing bass… NOBODY. If you don’t believe the power of this, try you tube’ing his name and look at all the people trying to play his bass lines.
This video is actually fun to watch and listen to. You can really hear the quality in the sound Mick Karn was driving at. Listen to this guy try to teach a Mick Karn bass line. He’s doing “Cantonese Boy” from Japan. Just the sound of the fretless bass played in this fashion gives me freakin goose bumps.
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m gonna miss Mick Karn.
Well, as you all know I’ve been incredibly sick. Haven’t had a flu/bug like this in a long time. Add to the fact that my boss has been calling me everyday and every night even on weekends about work crap (and I cant bill for the time he harasses me), I needed to stumble over some music that made me feel good.
It’s times like this I need to find me some music I like. So I was combing YouTube for videos. Some of you may know, in the past year I have developed this taste for Japanese pop music courtesy of Yellow Magic Orchestra and Human Audio Sponge/Sketch Show. There’s a spin off from these bands from the drummer/vocalist Yukihiro Takahashi that I’ve fallen in love with called Pupa.
Debut album from Pupa called "Floating Pupa"
If any of you have been in the car with me this summer, you have inevitably heard some of this stuff. Well, I have been overjoyed to find that they have put out a follow up album called “Dreaming”. The title track (which I’ve instantly fallen in love with) has a video. Here it is:
What I have found charming about this band is that there are so many instruments at play. Further research on YouTube of their live concerts shows them up on stage with so much junk (horns, guitars, drums, keyboards, everything) that the musicians barely have room to be on stage. It’s quite interesting. This is a video of them live performing one of my favorite songs from their first album. Yukihiro Takahashi sings lead vocals on this one. He’s gotta be like a million years old by now. The lyrics saying, “is this the way how it’s supposed to be…” is a question I ask myself every freakin day!
No dance music, beautiful blond bitches with boob jobs, plastic surgery patients, fat black lady singers screaming over top, or great stage show here folks, just good music being played by talented people (something that is sorely lost on today’s music purchasing public). Imagine this in music! Real live harmonies and the thing I love the most … sustained droning electric guitars. This stuff sticks to my ear like glue, and somehow makes me happy with all the bullshit going on in my pathetic life.
Either way, be rest assured this is getting high rotation on WMOM.
Enjoy some Dreaming Pupa (and laugh at the name like I do!) It’s Burt Bacharach meets the Japanese!!
As most of you know I am one of the world’s biggest Todd Rundgren fans. I think I’ve seen him live and met him in person more than any other of my favorite musical artists. He’s coming to Philadelphia to the Keswick Theater in Glenside Pennsylvania just outside of Philly.
What makes this so special for me and other Todd fans is that he will be playing 2 classic albums in their entirety. I went to see him do his album A Wizard/A True Star with JohnnyD last year and it was SPECTACULAR! This year, I’m going with Bitchin Bob for this one. Here’s a crazy bit from last year’s show. He goes through some 10 crazy costume changes for this stuff.
For what it’s worth, I just thought I’d share a little of my excitement over this. In this day and age, one must make an effort to report on good things. Keeps ya from losing it!
After I was able to cross Kraftwerk off of my “bucket list” of bands to see, I was happy at the prospect of never going to see another band live again. When my cousin called me and said she wanted to go and see the B-52’s live, I was a little apprehensive at first, but in looking back over my concert going career, they where one of the bands that I always loved (before the Love Shack/Roam invasion) but had never seen live. I thought, “WTF” I’ll go. And I was glad I made that decision.
They rocked it. The crowd was a mix of folks my age with their kids (it was an open show and I should have taken my daughter who is also a fan), my parents age, and a younger college crowd which was nice to see. Also, the hispter factor was at an all time low which was another plus.
They played the obligatory “Love Shack” and “Roam” and of course “Rock Lobster”, but the most impressive aspect of the show was that the play list consisted mostly of songs from their “Wild Planet” album. They played maybe 3 songs off of their new album “Funplex”, but the fact that they went back to the “Wild Planet” to get most of their material was the best.
Keith Strickland is an amazing guitar player, and for each song they played, the roadie supplied him a fresh guitar. Even when during the beginning of “Party Out of Bounds” when guitar handed to him was out of tune, he stopped the song much to the amusement of the other band members and they began again. Its was hard to remember that he was the original drummer for the band before Ricky Wilson’s untimely death in the late 80’s. The spirit of Ricky is still strong in those early guitar rifts that Keith now belts out. I wish they had played some songs off of my favorite album “Whammy”, but that was the last album Ricky and his sister Cindy Wilson worked on before his death. I can imagine that some of those songs still carry a sting to them.
It also was inspiring that Cindy Wilson, who left the band back in the early 90’s to have a career as a housewife and a mother could come back now, with a voice as strong as ever, to rock it just as she had back in the late 70’s. Kate Pierson is an amazing vocalist, and it was the same with her; like she had just stepped out of a time capsule, only a little older and wiser. Fred Schneider was in “Full Frontal Fred” form, with his microphone, Spock/Kirk “Phaser Set to Stun” baseball tee, and cow bell. Fred rapped way before it was the norm, a credit due to him which I think is tragically overlooked.
If you get a chance to see them live this summer, don’t pass it up. It’s like turning down a chance at tasting a vintage wine or wondering how good the soup might have been vs the salad. The B-52’s are a true professional band and they will not disappoint. And another plus-NO AUTO TUNE!
I’ll give you fish. I’ll give you candy. I’ll give you everything I have in my hands…
If you haven’t heard, the self proclaimed savior of the world and personal do-good’er Bono from the band who defined “sell out” known as U2 has been admitted to a hospital for emergency back surgery. Personally I think its from bending over in those stupid rock and roll poses in his music videos while the camera sails under his crotch or down his big mouth.
He’s probably in the hospital right now saying, “how kin yew poke foon of me in yer bloog when there’s all this suffrin’ goin on in me back! NURSE! I need another Nooty Booty bar!!!”
