ChordStrike

Brazilian Baby Samba School

OK, so maybe it's old news, but what can I say, I've already established my partiality for tots with musical moves. This one's a Brazilian dance prodigy with a taste for samba music.

Know of more hilarious (real) dancing babies? Drop a comment!

     --Jason Kirk

Weird Musical Amalgam Number Next: Renée Fleming's "Dark Hope"

Renée Fleming -- or, as she refers to herself on her own website, "America's great soprano" -- has just released Dark Hope, an album of pop and rock covers that includes her take on tunes by Band of Horses, Arcade Fire, the Mars Volta, Tears for Fears, Duffy, Death Cab for Cutie, Leonard Cohen, Muse, Peter Gabriel, and a few others.

Interestingly, not one of these artists is included in Ms. Fleming's own list of music you should hear.

Nevertheless, I give her kudos for variety.

As for the recording itself, fan reviews are similarly mixed. A taste:

  --  "...you can tell that a Rolls Royce engine is powering Volkswagen music"

  --  "Leave this music to k.d. lang, please."

  --  "For me, I guess Ms. Renee is way too classy to go downtown."

  --  "Ms. Fleming has an instrument that seems dipped in chocolate and honey."

  --  "Sade does it better."

I defer to my fellow ChordStriker Hugo Munday, a formally trained opera singer and our resident expert on such dramatic fare. "I don't like it," he says, "but my hat's off to her for not doing the grand-diva thing."

Sample the tunes and decide for yourself.

     --Jason Kirk

Sasquatch! 2010

Local writer Travis Hay and photographer Dave Lichterman covered Sasquatch! on behalf of ChordStrike this year. Wish you were there... (Heck, we wish we were there!)

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FRIDAY
The Sasquatch! Music Festival proved to be a monstrous beast of music during its three-day run. Throughout Memorial Day weekend, Sasquatch! featured more than 80 bands spread across three stages and a dance and comedy tent. Kicking off the summer concert season in the Pacific Northwest, the festival’s first day contained a grouping of buzz bands and established acts, making for a day of musical ecstasy. It was a theme that carried throughout the weekend. Set at the picturesque and remote Gorge Amphitheatre (about 150 miles east of Seattle), Sasquatch! boasted not only one of the most eclectic and indie-friendly lineups you'll find, it also took place in the most beautiful spot in the country to take in a show. The sundresses, sandals, and ponchos (the festival is known for having unpredictable weather) were in full effect.

America's perfect bar band, the Hold Steady, showed that they are also the perfect festival act. Craig Finn's story-songs helped create a rousing performance in the summer sun, filled with shout-along choruses and plenty of fists pumping in the air. As a performer Finn is like a rock n' roll Muppet, wildly gesturing, smiling, and laughing when not singing. His enthusiasm is infectious, which is what makes the Hold Steady such a fun band to watch live. Three songs--"Rock Problems," "Hurricane J," and "Barely Breathing"--from the recently released Heaven is Whenever, were peppered into the set and fit perfectly alongside Finn's other narrative tales about partying, religion, and rock n' roll lifestyle.

In the early evening, the action really picked up on the main stage, with the National (left) delivering an emotionally stirring set just before the sun went down. Songs from the critically acclaimed Boxer and this year's High Violet dictated the performance. Some of the material was sparse, while other songs carried a full sound punched up by horns that filled the Gorge. As a performer, singer Matt Berninger is so compelling that you practically feel the emotion. It made for an entertaining and highly engaging show.

Anyone who doubted the hype surrounding Vampire Weekend (below) should have seen how the nearly 20,000 people reacted to group's sunset performance. Thousands of people on top of the Gorge's hill jumped up and down while dancing to the likes of "Cousins," "A-Punk," and "Horchata." It was the biggest set and biggest response of the day.

While the National were stirring up emotions on the main stage, Nada Surf was closing down the activities on the solar-powered Bigfoot stage. The set was heavy on covers, several from their new album, the palindromic If I Had A Hi Fi. The Go-Betweens' “Love Goes On” and Kate Bush’s “Love and Anger” stood out, but the best selection came when Nada Surf turned Depeche Mode's “Enjoy the Silence” into a poppy love ballad.

The night was capped by My Morning Jacket's two-hour headlining set. Jim James and the rest of his band came blazing out of the gates with a hard-rock instrumental unlike anything in the MMJ canon, which led right into "One Big Holiday." From there "Dondante," "Off the Record," the short but extremely funky "Highly Suspicious," and about 15 others songs followed in a career-spanning set list. These touring warhorses are one of the best live rock bands in America, and their set was a fitting way to cap a day filled with a wide variety of music.

Brad, fronted by the soulful Shawn Smith (far left) and featuring Pearl Jam's Stone Gossard, morphed into the darker and heavier Satchel for two songs after Gossard left the stage. OK Go played a high-energy and hit-laden set. Power poppers Posies played a blissful set of unreleased songs, and Portugal. The Man’s psychedelic rock (left) and the excellent Afro-pop of Fool's Gold were two distinct styles of music that stood out.

Check out all of Dave's Friday photos.

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SATURDAY
Sasquatch!’s second day kicked off with a dance party on the main stage, led by the dual drumming assault of Caribou. The high noon set woke up the sleepy-headed campers that showed up early, its upbeat rhythms and tempos providing a great precursor to what would come later in the evening (hint: LCD Soundsystem).

Local Natives (right) filled the day’s quota in the soon-to-be-breakout-bands category. The quintet encompassed the entire musical vibe of the festival with a sound that is melodic, poppy, jangly, and jammy. In a festival forged around musical discoveries, Local Natives was the cream of the crop of the blog-friendly buzz bands.

Speaking of buzz bands, London’s XX (left) played dreamy, synthesized bedroom music and was one of the bright spots of the afternoon. The set could’ve been a disaster, given the music’s slow-burning leanings in such a large and expansive environment, but the material translated well, and the crowd was enamored by the music, singing and swaying along to every song.

The swaying turned to full-blown dancing when James Murphy and his band (a.k.a. LCD Soundsystem) managed to stir up the crowd with driving beats and plenty of cowbell. Highlights included the one-two punch of “Daft Punk is Playing at my House” and “Drunk Girls” from This is Happening, which was the most unstoppable dance force of the weekend.

While dancing was a dominant part of the day, the most anticipated set of the festival came from reunited influential indie rockers Pavement (right). The set was a bit sloppy and surprisingly started with “Cut Your Hair,” the band’s most well-known song. Later it got a bit messy, with a few botched intros to “Rattled by the Rush” (due to instrument troubles), but once Pavement got over the rough patches, they sounded great. Frontman Stephen Malkmus, who was celebrating a birthday, appeared to be annoyed by the minor hiccups, but the crowd didn’t seem to care much as the band played more than 20 songs from its catalog, including “In the Mouth of the Desert,” “Unfair,” “Two States,” and others.

Public Enemy (left) headlined the Bigfoot stage while UK electro icons Massive Attack (below right) headlined the main stage. The latter set was chill, moody, and relaxed, complete with a terrific light show that worked well under the Gorge’s canopy of stars. Public Enemy, on the other hand, brought the noise. Flavor Flav showed he is still hip hop’s reigning jester, while Chuck D held court with a nonstop assault of golden age hip-hop hits, heavy on material from It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back.

Mt. St. Helens Vietnam Band played a fantastic set of math rock with progressive leaning while filling in for City & Colour, which had to cancel due to singer Dallas Green's pneumonia. Tegan & Sara almost humorously introduced “Alligator” by beat-boxing. The Long Winters (right) played unreleased material and ended their set with a cover of the Grateful Dead’s “Touch of Grey.” And the humor of They Might Be Giants had thousands of people getting their geek on while singing and dancing along to “Istanbul (Not Constantinople).”

Check out all of Dave's Saturday photos.

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SUNDAY
Mother Nature made her presence known as the Sasquatch! Music Festival wound to a close Day with warm temperatures, a constant threat of showers, and--at the end of the day--a rainbow.

Throughout the day patches of light rain combined with spots of bright sunshine to create an interesting combination on what was the festival’s strongest day. The rainbow appeared during the summery sounds of the Zooey Deschanel / M. Ward combo, known as She & Him. It was the perfect accompaniment to Deschanel’s voice, which were the main attraction, but M. Ward nearly stole the show during a cover of “Rollover Beethoven.”

The Heavy (right) opened the main stage off with a mix of inspired British neo-soul, funk, and rock, engaging the Sasquatch! early risers with hits off of their latest album, The House the Dirt Built, closing off the set with "How You Like Me Now?". Having seen their performance earlier in the year before their explosive set on Late Night with David Letterman sent the quartet's careers into high gear, the addition of live horns added new dimensions to a fantastic set.

If Ben Bridwell’s constant smile was any indication, Band of Horses was the main stage act that had the most fun performing. His toothy grin was almost as enjoyable as the songs performed from Infinite Arms. Another band that was clearly having a blast was the Canadian indie supergroup New Pornographers, which features Neko Case, A.C. Newman, Dan Bejar, and others. It was impossible to not smile and sing along to the group’s catchy, upbeat songs.

MGMT (left) was the main course of the day, even though cult rockers Ween handled headlining duties. MGMT seemed in awe of the grandeur of the Gorge’s spectacular setting and amazed at the size of the crowd (they drew the most people of the festival), though they appeared strangely bored on stage. Vocalist Andrew VanWyngarden dedicated the Memorial Day set to fallen soldiers, started things off with “Pieces of What.” A few songs later, “Flash Delirium” began to work up the crowd, and when “Time to Pretend,” “Kids,” and “Electric Feel” finally came along, the dance party was in full force. Similar to Vampire Weekend’s Friday night set, MGMT showed they are capable of anchoring a major U.S. festival.

Sasquatch! wouldn’t have been a summer music festival without a good old-fashioned mosh pit, which is exactly what Vancouver, B.C., duo Japandroids (right) spurred on during the most intense set of the weekend. Prior to Japandroids’ set of thrashing, Canadian, post-garage rock, the deep-fried Southern rock of the Drive-By Truckers washed over the main stage crowd with a three-guitar assault. Patterson Hood’s storytelling skills were in fine form during the twisted “The Wig He Made Her Wear,” while guitarist Mike Cooley showed his skills as a frontman on “Get Downtown,” both from The Big To-Do, one of the Truckers' strongest records in years.

There were several more memorable moments from Sasquatch!’s final day, making it difficult to narrow things down to just a few. The Seattle Rock Orchestra crammed more than 30 musicians on stage to play a wonderful set of Arcade Fire covers. Aussies Tame Impala proved to be well worth the buzz they’ve garnered, creating a Wolfmother-meets-Howlin' Rain / wall-of-psychedelic sound that rang throughout the festival grounds. On the other end of the Australian rock spectrum was the Temper Trap (below), a band with modern-rock radio written all over it.

By the time the 2010 incarnation of Sasquatch! was over, it was clear that the taste-making festival is a force to be reckoned with in the destination festival circuit. Excellent music was happening around every corner at one of the most beautiful concert settings in the country. Sasquatch! is well worth the trip, and if this year’s lineup of more than 80 bands was any indication of what’s to come in 2011, you’ll want to be there next year.

Check out all of Dave's Sunday photos.

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Dave Lichterman is a programmer by day and photographer by night. "Concert photography bridges the gap between my love of music and my love of photography," he explains, "whilst making up for my complete and utter lack of musical talent. Nothing compares to the thrill of seeing and capturing musicians performing their art." Check out more of Dave's photos @ http://www.flickr.com/lavid/.

Travis Hay is a Seattle-based writer who has been covering music in the Northwest for the past decade. He was a music critic at the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and started the award-winning blog and website Ear Candy. His work has appeared in Sound Magazine, The Seattle Weekly, Crosscut.com, Three Imaginary Girls, and other print and online publications.

Free MP3 Jazz Samplers

For a limited time, we've got four free MP3 jazz samplers available:

     1. Trippin N' Rhythm

     2. X5 Jazz Legends

     3. Mack Avenue: The Road to Great Music

     4. Original Jazz Classics Remasters

The samplers are part of our annual jazz event, which also includes a set of four hand-picked jazz playlists:

     1. Classic Cuts: A mix of well-loved standards and modern classic jazz

     2. The New Standards: Jazzy takes on popular rock and pop songs from the 1980s through today

     3. Jazz Dance Classics: Classic dance tracks from the annals of jazz

     4. Instrumental Smooth Jazz Favorites: Soothing sounds, sensuous saxes, mellow guitars, tickling ivories

Get your jazz fix today...

     --Jason Kirk

Alpine Kat's Large Hadron Collider Rap

Few things go as well together as hip-hop and science. The lexicon of bleeding-edge theoretical physics is practically overflowing with rhyme-ready particles (real, virtual, anti-, and otherwise), and from Dr. Octagon to The Sounds of Science, the rap canon abounds with more-or-less learned verses.

So if you're like me and have trouble finding enough to time in your life to nurture your twin loves of hip-hop and quantum cosmology, let Alpine Kat grab the mic for a minute. Science writer by day and science rapper in her spare time, Alpine Kat has recorded a number of "science raps," the most notorious of which serves as a primer on the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), an immense subterranean machine on the Franco-Swiss border designed to slam protons together at near-light speeds in order to see what happens.

If you like what you hear, check out more of Alpine Kat's science raps.

Either way, let us know about the best science-based hip-hop we might have missed...

     --Jason Kirk

LOST: All the Songs*, All in One Place

Looking for the perfect soundtrack to your Dharma party? Need something to spin for your final-season soirée? Now you can have all the songs featured in *Seasons 1-5 of Lost with just one click.

The producers of Lost have some pretty diverse tastes, and the 71 songs included here include cuts by Patsy Cline, Perry Como, Petula Clark, the Pixies, and Puccini, just to name a few.

So check it out. Sample tracks 4, 8, 15, 16, 23, and 42, or download the whole MP3 playlist in one click. (We'll update the playlist with the songs from Season 6 after the finale on May 23.)

     --Jason Kirk

Best Music Video Ever?: OK Go, "This Too Shall Pass"

I'm totally addicted to OK Go's brilliant video for "This Too Shall Pass." Every time I watch it, I discover a handful of new reasons to love it. Perhaps the most satisfying part of this video is the sheer number of times that the on-screen action coincides with the rhythms of the song, but let me not color your experience too much. Just watch it:

     --Jason Kirk

The Stimulus Package: Best Album Art of 2010... So Far

Leave it to Rhymesayers to lead the charge in putting off the obsolescence of physical music. Last year, we made a bit of adoring noise about the very cool packaging of P.O.S.'s Never Better (in additional to naming it one of the Best Hip-Hop Albums of 2009, So Far and the 49th Best Album of the Year.. So Far), but this year, whoever's running design over at Rhymesayers has absolutely outdone her- or himself.

Freeway & Jake One's The Stimulus Package is a marvel. The music itself is definitely worth a listen if you're into hip-hop, but the design is a straight-up object lesson in concept art for music. That plastic card you see in the video below? It's got a code to download the whole album's instrumentals for free.

Back to school, designers:

     --Jason Kirk

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout

I recently had the mixed pleasure of reading the newest biography of the great Satchmo, entitled Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout. Having previously read Teachout's The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, I'd expected a reasonably satisfying read, fueled by extensive research and delivered in rather pedestrian prose. As it turns out, that's exactly what the book offers.

My fellow blogger Dave Callanan named it one of the "Best Books of December" and had the following to say by way of justification:

"Crafted with a musician's ear and an historian's eye, Pops is a vibrant biography of the iconic Louis Armstrong that resonates with the same warmth as ol' Satchmo’s distinctive voice. Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout draws from a wealth of previously unavailable material – including over 650 reels of Armstrong's own personal tape recordings – to create an engaging profile that slips behind the jazz legend's megawatt smile. Teachout reveals that the beaming visage of 'Reverend Satchelmouth' was not a mark of racial subservience, but a clear symbol of Louis's refusal to let anything cloud the joy he derived from blowing his horn. 'Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born,' explains Teachout, 'he didn't repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work.' Armstrong was hardly impervious to the injustices of his era, but in his mind, nothing was more sacred than the music."

Frankly, I think that's rather higher praise than the book deserves, and Teachout himself all but recommends Armstrong's own Satchmo over the book at hand. Nevertheless, there's a lot on offer here for the trumpet enthusiast, the armchair jazz scholar, or the lover of musical Americana.

Among the most interesting sub-plots is the fluctuating opinions of Armstrong held by his fellow black musicians in the States. Dizzy Gillespie, for one, for years publicly declared Armstrong as just this side of Uncle Tom before eventually recognizing his trailblazing predecessor for the inarguable giant that he remains today.

Most surprising to me, though, was the fact that Armstrong was a life-long user and advocate of marijuana, to the extent that, in his early days, he even pushed it on a number of his sidemen before going into the studio. Teachout returns again and again to Pops' marijuana use, ladeling an almost disproportionate amount of ink on the topic. To wit:

"The word muggles was one of many synonyms for marijuana used by jazz musicians in the twenties. It was also called 'tea' and 'sh[*]t,' and those who smoked it were 'vipers'... [A]ll that is known for sure is that [Armstrong] started smoking it on a regular basis in 1928 and continued to do so for the rest of his life. He would later explain to an acquaintance that it 'makes you feel good, man. It relaxes you, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special kinship.' It was also, unlike alcohol, legal, though by 1931 twenty-nine states had outlawed its sale and use."

Those looking to pursue overt references in Armstrong's music should start with "Muggles"...

     -- Jason Kirk

Cock Rock: A Definition

The world needs more music critics like Charles Shaar Murray. Looking forward to the release of Jimi Hendrix's Valleys of Neptune (yes, a new Hendrix album!), I've been reading Murray's Crosstown Traffic. It's brilliant writing. Hendrix is the book's centerpiece, but there's a load to learn here for anyone who likes books about music. The subtitle of its best chapter yet asks, "So was Jimi Hendrix a sexist pig or what?"

Murray argues that "the sexuality expressed through the blues gradually mutated into the penile dementia of heavy-metal rock." And with what fervor. He exemplifies the point by comparing Muddy Waters' "You Need Love" -- warm, avuncular, intimate, relaxed, utterly sensual -- with Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love":

"Led Zeppelin, by contrast, come on like thermonuclear gang rape. The woman -- who, in Muddy Waters' song, is evoked as a real person with real emotions in a real situation -- is here reduced to a mere receptacle; an entirely passive presence whose sole function is to receive the Great Zeppelin (as depicted on the group's first two album covers: lumbering facetiousness posing as irony) with a suitable degree of veneration and gratitude. Even her response is superfluous: Zeppelin's vocalist Robert Plant virtually has her orgasm for her. After all, the satisfaction of the woman in the case is not intended for her benefit, but for his: it is the validation of his masculine prowess and the price of his admission to the alpha-male society. The stud-strut of heavy metal is a ritual by which men celebrate each other; it is not primarily intended for women, who -- at British metals shows, if not at their American counterparts -- demonstrate their understanding of the nature of the event by not showing up."

As Murray goes on to say, "The technical term for this stuff is 'cock rock'."

Read it and weep.

     -- Jason Kirk