M.I.A. mania is starting to sweep the world in anticipation of the official release later this month of Kala. The new album follows the thoroughly unclassifiable British/ Sri Lankan aural graffiti artist’s breakthrough Arular album and Piracy Funds Terrorism mixtape, the sources of several of the Zeroes’ most arresting rhythms so far. Since the artist otherwise known as Maya Arulpragasam–whose website should remain unvisited if you are not wearing sunglasses–has been known to draw from everything from bhangra and baile electro-funk to dancehall and Dr. Buzzard’s Original Savannah Band, you might wonder about the source of the leadoff sounds you will hear on her new album. Uh, how about…Jonathan Richman?

That’s right. In her continuing quest to bring the noise to college radio-obsessed geek rockers, Maya’s new “Bamboo Banga” starts out with a twisted, tripped-out reworking of the Modern Lovers’ car radio classic “Roadrunner,” which will remain Richman’s most iconic song no matter how many charming ditties he writes about dinosaurs, bumblebees and lesbian bars. Achieving speeds usually reserved for professional stunt drivers and Lindsay Lohan, M.I.A. doesn’t even notice the Stop n’ Shop as she drives “with the radio on,” and I’m betting that her car is equipped with satellite radio. Here’s an audio snippet from M.I.A.’s mini-cover, juxtaposed with a video playing “Roadrunner” Modern Lovers-style.

[audio:http://stuckbetweenstations.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/08/01-bamboo-banga-1.mp3]

“Bamboo Banga” isn’t even the most interesting reworking of a rock classic on the new album; after the click-through we’ll present her take on the Clash.

Continue reading M.I.A., with the Radio On →

Canadian reggae and soul, eh? If you expect that combination to go down as easily as curried goat with a side of Canadian bacon, you may be surprised. By the late sixties, economic strains, liberalized Canadian immigration laws, and fear among draft-age men that a United States passport would lead straight to Vietnam led a growing number of Jamaican expatriates to relocate in Toronto. Just 236 miles from Motown, visionary keyboardist/ arranger Jackie Mittoo, who had already cofounded the Skatalites and served as music director at Jamaica’s Studio One, helped guide a gang of upstarts eager to mix their Island recipes with generous helpings of sweet soul and heavy funk. The Jamaicans in Toronto included rhythm king Wayne McGhie, gritty vocalists Johnny Osbourne and the Mighty Pope, dub-savvy crooner Noel Ellis (son of rocksteady legend Alton Ellis), and roots rocker Willi Williams, whose “Armagideon Time” (“versioned” from a Mittoo riff and showcased below) later became the Clash‘s most moving reggae cover. The Toronto scene produced music of surprising range and vision for almost two decades, and then seemingly disappeared.

Thanks to Vancouver-based music historian Sipreano (AKA Kevin Howes) this vibrant body of work has been brought back from cultural extinction. The innovative small label Light in the Atttic—whose catalog includes everything from Brazilian iconoclasts Os Mutantes to the Velvets-meets-Roky apocalyptic sound of Austin’s Black Angels—has released two fascinating anthologies and reissued several crucial solo albums (by Mittoo, McGhie and Noel Ellis) chronicling the best of the Toronto scene. Last year’s mostly soul and funk-centered Jamaica to Toronto anthology, discussed more below, already ranks as one of my favorite music collections released in the Zeroes. Worth the price all by themselves are the tracks by Jo-Jo and the Fugitives—the righteous wanderers’ anthem “Fugitive Song,” and the delicious, McGhie-penned “Chips/ Chicken/ Banana Split,” whose huge break-beat deserves a place on your ultimate chicken dance playlist alongside the Meters’ “Chicken Strut” and Cibo Matto’s “Know Your Chicken.”

[audio:http://stuckbetweenstations.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/01-fugitive-song-1.mp3]
Jo-Jo and the Fugitives, Fugitive Song

[audio:http://stuckbetweenstations.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/12/03-chips-chicken-banana-split.mp3]
Jo-Jo and the Fugitives, Chips/Chicken/Banana Split

The new Summer Records Anthology, 1974-1988, captures Toronto’s homegrown reggae as it traversed the path that Sipreano describes as “dub to digital,” although only Unique Madoo’s spirited dancehall workout “Call Me Nobody Else” really represents the latter. After a few tracks of Johnny Osbourne’s soulful crooning and house band Earth Roots and Water’s supple rhythms, it becomes easy to forget that Lee Perry’s Black Ark Studio, which operated around the same years, was thousands of miles away. An interesting short film (excerpts below) accompanies the anthology. In it, Summer Records vocalist/ impresario Jerry Brown, Willi Williams, and Jackie Mittoo weave a cosmic, rhythmic and economic thread that connects dub reggae, bicycling and auto body repair. Did you really think those rat-a-tats were just random noises?

Continue reading The Great Black North →

Becoming the favorite banjo-playing Episcopalian geography expert and Halloween costume inspiration of NPR listeners apparently wasn’t ambitious enough for Sufjan Stevens. Today at the Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival—whose lineup also includes firebrand harpist Zeena Parkins— Stevens will present “The BQE,” a symphonic testament to that fount of poetic inspiration, the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. But why stop there? In what follows, I’ll list some of my own favorite urban planning disasters, with accompanying theme music for each.

As a fan of absurdly overconceived projects, I’m glad to see Brooklyn-based Stevens providing a soundtrack to one of his borough’s least-loved eyesores. The traffic-clogged BQE is a soul-numbing, neighborhood-dividing monument to master planner Robert Moses’ unchecked ego. But since it exposes the tension that comes with having a sense of place, it seems like an ideal subject for Stevens. Maybe his take on Moses will even surpass Alex Timbers’ surreal play “Boozy,” which portrayed Moses’ arch-nemesis—urban gadfly and community activist Jane Jacobs, a hero of mine—as a femme fatale time traveler who stalks Moses with an angry gang of rolling pin-wielding housewives.

Sufjan Stevens’ mannered chamber-folk divides the indie world into Sufists who hail his genius, and anti-Sufists who want to slap him silly. He’s too clever by half and could use an editor, as on The Avalanche. But I’d challenge the haters to write a song as moving as “Casimir Pulaski Day” or a rocker as fierce as “In the Words of the Governor,” Stevens’ Polvo-meets-White Stripes barnburner featured in The Believer’s summer 2007 CD compilation. The preview snippet of “BQE” below doesn’t suggest Stevens is the new Steve Reich, but I’ll give the piece a chance. Did I mention that “BQE” has hula-hoopers?

After the click-through, I’ll provide music for some equally soul-numbing missteps in urban planning. If you have your own stretch of paradise that’s been paved for a parking lot, tell us about it, and give us some music to get through the madness.

Sufjan Stevens, “In the Words of the Governor”:

[audio:http://stuckbetweenstations.org/wp-content/uploads/2007/11/04-in-the-words-of-the-governor-1.mp3]

Sufjan Stevens, “BQE, Part 6”:

Continue reading Road to Ruin: A Sufjan Stevens-Inspired Soundtrack to Bad Urban Planning →