Soundtrack For When It’s Hot As Shit Outside aka Right Now

A few Saturdays ago I played records at a bar with small plates and oysters and yes natural wine in Williamsburg. Wow what a sentence, please, keep reading. I’ve DJed some in Brooklyn, I would never call myself one, I have too much respect for actual DJs. I select songs, and some days I’m like the jukebox in your dad’s friend’s basement in the 70s. I haven’t played any records out in a long time, this evening was about album sides, not songs, and that’s a whole different landscape. 

It was a welcome return to my records with a different approach. Going through my records, I realized how many of them I just don’t listen to and how many I don’t necessarily want to. I like to imagine an overhaul of my records, swapping out the ones I don’t listen to for what I listen to now. This just falls under aging, when you figure out what you really like versus what was happening at the time, what was in the air. That’s life. A lot of my music has a specific end date, a lot of the new music, it’s just about when I left working in music and it wasn’t my daily job anymore. Listening to new music was my job, then my job changed. Since then, I’ve found so much more music that I like listening to, but it just wasn’t under the realm of indie rock and all the labels I bought. 

Playing album sides versus picking songs is a different mindset. It makes for a different room, not necessarily a quieter one, but something more calm from the continuity. It’s a good place to be, as long as the album sides work, aka I don’t fuck up. Something too sleepy is well, too sleepy, that’s not a Saturday night! and something too loud, too angular, too rock, can be a place that’s great for a song, terrible for the long haul. We’re talking about natural wine, cocktails, and small plates, not shots, beers and fucking.  It’s easy to bust out all the classics, they’re classics for a reason, but I also wanted to live in my records, not just an easy Starbucks-like soundtrack that would wash over everyone. Always seeking representation, when will I be satisfied? 

The weather was good, hot but not oppressive and both the dark bar and the sunny outdoor seating were pleasant. I’m not the kind of DJ who can get people to dance, it actually freaks me out when that happens because I don’t have a lot of music to dance to. I don’t dance. I know what mood a record can set, and how I want a room to feel. I always feel a responsibility to the staff when I play records. They can’t leave. I know I’m supposed to care about the customers and how the numbers work, but I’ll take a happy staff first.

Here are a few of the albums I played. I lean on fuzzy music, the edges are a little softer to help with the heat. This heat (also a great band) makes me feel like I’m on Xanax or Valium, so I want to pair the music appropriately.

Sun Ra and the Arkestra/Sound of Joy/1957

Sound Joy released by legendary Delmark Records in 1968 (originally recorded in 1957 by Transition-they folded before release)  You can hear where Sun Ra came from, Chicago, the old swing and doo-wop, and some of where he was going, but not necessarily the super far out places he ended up going. This recording is a 10 piece band with Sun Ra leading on piano. Even though Sun Ra passed away in 1993, the Sun Ra Arkestra keeps playing, led by 98 year-old band leader Marshall Allen. Allen joined the band right after this album was recorded in 1958. Some of the parts of this album remind me of recent Sun Ra Arkestra concerts, most recently one this past spring. If Sun Ra Arkestra plays in a 5 hour drive to your home, go. It will be one of the best things you ever see in your life. 

King of Dub/Volume 1/Clock Tower 1979

https://www.phonicarecords.com/product/bunny-lee-king-tubby-king-of-dub-lp-clocktower/107059

If you aren’t listening to dub right now, I don’t know what to tell you. Hot music for hot weather. I used to work with a curmudgeonly British man twice my age who lived in London in the mid/late 70s and bought all the singles that came from Kingston into Rough Trade. He didn’t believe in listening to any reggae or dub recorded after 1979. Always listen to a purist when it comes to music, and then feel free to break their rules. That’s what they’re there for. He also hated how all of us kids who stayed out all night seeing bands, smoking and drinking and then rolling into work with the same outfit on, like 6 hours on the floor by the bed was the same as a washing machine.  He’d huff in our bleary-eyed directions while we checked in orders and wave his hand in front of his nose because we just smelled like cigarettes. Now I’m closer to 50 and I appreciate all of this as I evolve into my own curmudgeon. This album was recorded in 1979 by Bunny Lee and produced by King Tubby. I also use rare vinyl like this to taunt male record know-it-alls. It’s fun.

Wooden Shjips/Back to Land/Thrill Jockey 2013

Look at this insane die-cut album cover! It’s so Led Zeppelin III! Any record label that gives into a band’s extreme packaging dreams should be supported, that label cares more about art and music than money. Wooden Shjips is a great psych band from San Francisco and DO NOT mistake them for Wooden Ships Band–a tribute to Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young who look like a bunch of high school guidance counselors working it out. This album is layered, lush, distorted, woozy and it moves, the songs have structure and there’s an ease to them. Just because we don’t see you sweating doesn’t mean you’re not working.  Cannot go wrong with this record. 

Suicide/Self-Titled/Red Star Music 1977

Wow wow wow. The first side is a perfect album side to play in a dark bar on a bright day. This debut from Alan Vega and Martin Rev is such a seminal album, it lives in the spaces around and in-between punk-post-punk-new-wave-industrial. I can’t believe something so arty is so listenable. 

Stereolab/Dots and Loops/Duophonic 1997

5th album from this British-French band of electronic pop that a lot of writers like to use the words “bossanova” and “easy listening” but I’ve found in my time in music that sometimes the first one sheet about a band gets rehashed over and over again. Stereolab never makes me feel like I’m in an aged male-centric cocktail dream like Esquivel or somewhere in Madmen. This album looks to back to Neu krautrock groove with a lot of harmonizing Marxist lyrics from Laeticia and Mary. 

Weak Signal/LP 1/Mag Mag Records 2019

Holy shit a band that wasn’t formed over 25 years ago. 2019 debut from this New York trio that’s one of the best bands around. Fuzzy, kinda garagey, urgent not-obnoxiously poppy rock that’s greater than the sum of its parts with sonic grandparenting by the Velvet Underground and the Jesus and Mary Chain. I keep talking about music that moves, a notion that seems both obvious and simple to accomplish. It isn’t. There’s an effortlessness to Weak Signal’s music, an organic culmination of lives listening to good music and playing good music for these three musicians. A lot of people try to do it, this thing called cool. Weak Signal actually succeeds. Listen to Weak Signal. Go see Weak Signal. 

Final Thoughts

I am not trying to influence people, that’s not what I’m trying to do here. I thought long and hard about what I wanted to play that night and I think it went well. The bar, the sidewalk, the cafe, felt like a place I wanted to be in because of the music.

I’ve attempted to link the music here. Guess what? I suck at technology and I’m nost terribly savvy. I also do not Spotify. I linked to Bandcamp when I could. Bandcamp is a great resource for a lot of current more independent music where the bands actually get paid more fairly than other services. It feels more and more like the people who can make music and art and afford to live nowadays are people who can afford to be poor. That is, people with money. Music is an expression, not a product. Please, pay bands and musicians. I’ve been alive long enough to see how the internet and how we listen to music now changes how musicians make money. It’s not necessarily from selling records or how many people hear the music, which is fucked up. I don’t want to be stuck in a world of just trust fund artists, do you?