The Onion, July 12, 2010

This week marks the 45th anniversary of one of the defining moments in American musical history, except there’s one little catch. Most of it probably never happened. This much we know is true: at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Dylan “went electric” for the first time in a live performance, leaving some folk traditionalists like Pete Seeger less than impressed. But the legend goes way beyond that, implying that the shock of Dylan’s new sound provoked near-riotous anger along the lines of what Igor Stravinsky encountered at the 1913 Armory Show debut of The Rite of Spring. Todd Haynes’ 2007 movie of Dylan’s multiple personalities, I’m Not There, builds up the tallest parts of the tale, showing Jude Quinn, the Cate Blanchett character based on the too-cool-for-school electric Dylan circa 1965, enduring loud boos as the band machine-guns its way through a short electric set. The mild-mannered Seeger suddenly goes ballistic and tries to cut the amp wires with an ax.

The standard sequel to the Newport saga, known in Dylanspeak as the Judas Incident, occurred in May 1966 during a show at Manchester, England’s Free Trade Hall. When Dylan appeared with his electric band, an audience heckler famously called him “Judas.” Dylan’s next words, while hiliarous, seem awkwardly tied to that insult: “I don’t believe you. You’re a liar.”

The Dylan-goes-electric legend calls to mind Robin Williams’ old line that if you remember the Sixties, you weren’t there. As a next-generation teenager in Chicago, I found it hard to believe that in 1965, more than a few fossils could have gotten hot and bothered over Dylan playing a bit of amplified blues-rock. Even in his early acoustic phase, Dylan and many of his fans revered Muddy Waters, who started plugging in decades earlier, and T-Bone Walker, who sometimes played loud electric guitar tricks with his teeth while Jimi Hendrix was still a babe in diapers. The Band’s Robbie Robertson has said that in the Sixties, “going electric” was about as shocking as using a television.

Some context here: even at the height of his coolness, being Young Bob, despite a few perks, must have been a bit of a bum ride. People unaccustomed to nudity kept walking in and surrounding him with pencils and pens. He got a fraction of Mick Jagger’s or even Neil Diamond’s action, and his songs were too long and moody to be sung in sports arenas. All he really wanted to do was hop a freight train out of Hibbing, Minnesota, humming Jimmie Rodgers songs. Yet as soon as he started writing little ditties with titles like “Only a Pawn in Their Game,” people started acting like he was some kind of protest singer. Go figure.

And then it started getting really weird. The ghost of electricity started howling in the bones of his face, planting messages in a dense, cryptic code. After that, he couldn’t utter a simple statement–for example, “jewels and binoculars hang from the head of a mule”–without having some smarty-pants Wittgenstein scholars turning him into their dissertation themes. When pressed to define himself for those well over thirty, he defined himself as well under thirty. But he probably felt prematurely senile.

Are the Newport and Judas legends of Dylan’s mid-youth fact or fiction? To paraphrase Pete Townshend, the simple things you see are all complicated. Pete Seeger did admit to telling the sound crew at Newport he would have liked to chop the wires with an ax. But I met Seeger once, and I personally doubt he’s used anything sharper than hedge trimmers in his life. One of the organizers of the 1965 Newport show, Bruce Jackson, recalled that the audience response to Dylan was largely favorable, despite the fact that his ragged electric pickup band barely had time to rehearse. Jackson attributes most of the unfavorable reaction not to Dylan, but to the bewildered emcee, Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul and Mary, who had tried to keep Dylan to the same very short time limit as more obscure traditional acts. When a hostile audience wanted Bob back, the awkwardly goateed Yarrow awkwardly goaded Dylan to come back out with his acoustic guitar.

Now an English professor, Jackson cited the Newport myth in his book The Story is True, which surveys moments in American cultural history where the popular narrative is disconnected from what actually happened. The “Judas” story is partly myth as well. The heckler has been found, and he really was annoyed (mainly with the sound system drowning out the vocals). But Dylan’s “you’re a liar” response came after a lengthy interlude, and was almost certainly directed at yet another heckler. And that’s where we lose it: the other heckler’s comment is inaudible in the only known concert recordings.

Sadly, too much time has passed for the Warren Commission to investigate the two-hecklers theory. And don’t even think of asking Oliver Stone or Michael Moore. Since we’ll probably never know, you might as well make up your own favorite “second Dylan heckle” for May 1966. Here are my top five suggestions:

1. Bob, someday one of your songs will be used to sell women’s lingerie.
2. Bob, that poster-turning film gimmick for “Subterranean Homesick Blues” will later be used in birthday party invitations and corporate ad campaigns.
3. Bob, you will one day tell people you are a born-again Christian, and it will not be a joke.
4. Bob, in the future human communication will be reduced to a series of mechanical gestures known as posts, tweets, and skypes. “Posts” on a “website” called Right Wing Bob will repeat your most antisocial remarks and claim them as conservative political statements.
5. Bob, remember that Berkeley student, Greil Marcus, who keeps stalking you? If you don’t get a protective order before he makes it to graduate school, he will start writing books explaining how every little random thing you did in your twenties was a defining moment in American history. Go directly to your lawyer now.

All these things came true, of course. But at least Dylan could have plausibly denied all of them in May 1966. Fortunately, the actual Dylan is usually much funnier than most of the people who try to worship him even after he tried to scare them all off with albums like Self Portrait and Live at Budokan. The “real” Dylan–the song-and-dance man, the provocateur, the walking encyclopedia of American roots music–was amply on display a just few years ago, during his surprisingly genial hundred-episode gig as DJ for the Theme Time Radio Hour, whose loose format allowed him to craft inspired playlists on everything from cats and dogs to trains and body parts.

But Dylan’s radio shows had a secret weapon. Who was that mysterious caller who kept leaving DJ Dylan bizarre phone messages? Was it teenager trying to sound like a grizzled Delta bluesman? An aging drifter with too much time on his hands? Nope. The reliably hilarious call-in guy actually turned out to be America’s foremost collector of spray-painted macaroni art, Tom Waits. Below is a clip of Tom giving Bob his best shots on things like investment tips, marmalade, women’s feet, extinct birds, decapitated British bakers, and traditional Jewish curses. Dylan couldn’t have had a better sidekick for his ragged journey through his, and our, imaginary back pages.

Tom Waits phoning in messages to Bob Dylan’s “Theme Time Radio Hour”

T-Bone Walker, “Don’t Throw Your Love On Me So Strong”

Bob Dylan, “I Don’t Believe You”

In his recent documentary Maradona, the equally eccentric Serbian director Emir Kusturica describes Maradona as the footballer’s equivalent of the Sex Pistols. But he’s more like a combination of Mozart and Iggy Pop: a contortionist savant driven by instinct, walking the line between genius and madness, aware that he is both a brilliant creator and a really big stooge. While these aren’t necessarily the qualities you’d want in a coach, they are sensational songwriter’s materials. Although Maradona is reportedly despondent over his team’s manhandling by Germany, here are reasons you shouldn’t cry for him, with accompanying soundtrack.

1. He’s still the King of Bongo.

Our Diego
Who art on earth
Hallowed be thy left foot
Thy magic come,
Thy goals be remembered.

The Church of Maradona

Soccer and music don’t always mix. For every goal-worthy performance—K’naan’s Marleyesque reworking of “Wavin’ Flag” from this year, or New Order’s suave “World in Motion” from 1990—two or three come out deserving red cards (for instance, the Village People’s 1994 musical partnership with the German national soccer team). But Maradona, despite his obvious faults, inspires fanatical devotion. He could fill an entire playlist with musical tributes, some of which verge on greatness.

Maradona is the subject of two songs written by Manu Chao, the wiry French/Spanish troubador responsible for politically charged albums such as Clandestino, as well as surreal classics like “Bongo Bong” and “King of Bongo.” The raucous “Santa Maradona,” recorded with Chao’s old Franco-punk band, Mano Negra, pays tribute to his hero even as it flips the bird to hero worship. “La Vida Tombola” (life is a lottery), from Chao’s latest La Radiolina album, mixes joy and melancholy as it traces the man’s journey from rags to riches to disgrace to partial redemption.

Manu Chao, “La Vida Tombola” (sung to Maradona)

2. Andrew Lloyd Webber will never write a bad musical about him.

Argentina has had a few well-known rock bands, including Los Fabulosos Cadillacs and Soda Stereo, who performed at Maradona’s wedding. But on an international scale, Maradona’s only serious celebrity rock-star competition is Eva Peron. Unlike poor Evita, however, Maradona has no likelihood of having his life turned into a horrid Andrew Lloyd Webber musical. How bad can his musicals get? Well, in a new production of Evita, Ricky Martin will play the role of Che Guevarra.

Maradona, who named one of his dogs Che, would never stand for this abuse. Moreover, Webber, a supporter of England’s conservative party, would never risk his middlebrow credentials on Maradona, whose popularity in the UK ranks somewhere between that of Napoleon and Osama bin Laden. It’s not just that Maradona scored the most famous illegal and legal goals in history to defeat England 24 years ago (respectively, the devious Hand of God goal and the brilliant Goal of the Century). It’s that Maradona viewed each of these as poetic justice that avenged the Falklands War and placed Argentina on the right side of history. You can argue the history, but it’s really hard to be on England’s side when listening to the amazing Atahualpa Yupanqui.

Atahualpa Yupanqui, “El Carrero”

3. He’s responsible for the modernization of Argentine tango.

I don’t mean that Maradona personally did this, of course. But in his memoir, Astor Piazzolla observed that he was indifferent about football until Maradona’s exciting play made him a “furious fan.” In 1986, the same year Maradona led Argentina to World Cup victory, Piazzolla released one of his most daring works, Tango Zero Hour. More than a coincidence?

Astor Piazzolla, “Tanguedia”

4. He’s Springsteen to those who weren’t born in the USA (or England).

Beneath Maradona’s shiny designer suits and fondness for luxury toilet seats is the soul of a populist rebel from humble origins who sometimes lets his big heart show. Just when you’re ready to dismiss him as just another hopelessly obnoxious rich guy, he can pull something that’s a bit more Joe Strummer or Bruce Springsteen than Johnny Rotten. Even as his own life was unraveling, Maradona helped jump-start the career of then-teenager Diego Forlan, this year’s Golden Ball winner from Uruguay, and helped pay medical bills for Forlan’s paralyzed sister.

Below is a clip of Maradona, still bloated and recovering from his drug-addicted wipeout, covering “La Mano de Dios” (that’s right, “The Hand of God”) by the late Argentine cuartero singer Rodrigo. At first he comes on like a train wreck, something like the over-the-hill boxer Robert DeNiro played near the end of Raging Bull. But by the time family members join him at the end, the clip transforms into something weirdly touching and hopeful.

Maradona singing Rodrigo’s “La Mano de Dios”

5. He’s a better metaphor for globalization than anything in Thomas Friedman’s laptop.

Maradona is missing from almost all of Franklin Foer’s fascinating 2004 book, How Soccer Explains the World. Foer, editor for the New Republic, uses soccer as the lens for fairly gentle criticism of Thomas Friedman-style flat-earth thinking about globalization. He portrays soccer as a surreal parallel world illuminating our own, in which rival teams in placid Glasgow re-enact a centuries-old holy war between Protestants and Catholics, Nigerian players lose their cool in the icy Ukraine, and Iranian women dress up as men to sneak into the world’s largest stadium. The global game, despite its liberalizing potential, still hasn’t come close to overcoming regional, ethnic and religious strife or the power of corrupt oligarchs.

Foer views the tolerant ethos of his favorite team, FC Barcelona, or Barça (which currently includes Maradona’s protégé, Lionel Messi), as a hopeful sign that patriotism and cosmopolitanism can be compatible. The World Cup victory of a graceful Spanish team, largely on the strength of its Catalans and Barça players, with assists from the Basques, might be viewed as supporting this hope. But even that is a bit of a stretch. The victory came just a day after protests in Barcelona over a Spanish court ruling on Catalan autonomy. Outside official circles, Catalonia has its own national team, as do the Basques. And the ethnic and economic divisions in Spain pale next to others in Europe, which pale in comparison to those in other continents.

If you had to pick a soundtrack for cosmopolitan nationalism, what would you choose? Barça’s unofficial theme song last year was…drumroll please…“Viva La Vida” by Coldplay–because nothing motivates athletes quite like moderately paced middle-of-the-road rock. That may be a bit harsh. Barcelona is one of my favorite cities. I admire its tolerant reputation and its team’s storied history (the soccer field was one of the few outlets available for Catalan expression during the bleak Franco years). I also have nothing against Coldplay’s signature song, or the half-dozen others that share its lilting melody. But I think the hopeful parts of Foer’s thesis may play a little too much like a Coldplay song—meticulously constructed and catchy, but lacking a willingness to push beyond the comfort zone at the risk of looking ridiculous.

Maradona, who is all about pushing beyond the comfort zone, inspires either revulsion or religious devotion (and yes, there’s a Church of Maradona with more than a hundred thousand members). While his fanatical devotees vary widely, many never got Tom Friedman’s memo about how the latest internationally-distributed gadgets will help level the playing field. They understandably would like to believe that every once in a while, they might have a turn to rule the world, if only for the length of a game. They want to believe David can still slay Goliath, even if it requires the Hand of God.

Scenes from the Church of Maradona

South Korean singers summon the hand of God in 2002

The Zeros, “Wild Weekend”

Last Thursday, the world lost a musical pioneer known for his childlike wonder. He sealed his reputation making joyful noise, yet also seemed doomed to tiptoe through fields of anguish and despair. The singer precisely captured his moment in time. But in his increasingly strange last decades, he seemed to come from another planet, so absorbed in his restless search for solace that his oddness overshadowed his moments of unalloyed pop brilliance.

I speak, of course, of Sky Saxon, singer and bassist for the psychedelic garage band innovators the Seeds. Los Angeles-based writer and radio host Ken Levine aptly described Saxon’s music as “a mix of hard rock, blues, peyote, and not sleeping for several weeks.” Overshadowed in his time by hitmakers like the Kingsmen and the Troggs, and later by the likes of Love and the Doors, he continued the trend even in death, passing away within hours of a better-known guy who fancied himself as the King of Pop. Saxon and the Seeds were inconsistent and erratic, and their most fertile period was short-lived. But at their best, they produced relentless mini-anthems filled with love and danger. “Pushin’ Too Hard,” my favorite of these, is as compelling as anything in the Jacksons’ catalogues, and meant more to me personally.

Sky Saxon was also known as Richard Marsh, a Mormon kid from Utah and former doo-wop bandleader who discovered he could make his voice sound like Mick Jagger swallowing gasoline. When he moved to California and formed the Seeds in the mid-Sixties, his new moniker fit nicely with a new band taking flight, first with the roar of proto-punk garage rock and later with the birdlike flight patterns of flower power. The Seeds discovered trippy keyboards before the Doors, and were unleashing raw power before the Stooges. They were their best at their simplest, exemplifying Woody Guthrie’s dictum that if you use more than two chords, you’re showing off. It’s fitting that Saxon’s final days were spent in Austin, stomping grounds for fellow psych-garage head cases both old (Roky Erickson) and new (the Black Angels).

If the Seeds were a movie, they would have been a grainy, no-budget independent film that lingers in the memory longer than last year’s big-budget Oscar winner. They were a little scary, but they played with heart. Saxon wound up ingesting too many of the Sixties’ finest pharmaceuticals and joining a spiritual cult, but he remained a charismatic and inspirational figure to musicians. The Seeds remained his signature group, and they were as seminal as the name implies. Muddy Waters loved the Seeds so much that he described them as “America’s own Rolling Stones,” and wrote the liner notes to one of Saxon’s lesser side projects, an attempt at garage/ blues fusion. Joey Ramone claimed that listening to the Seeds’ “Pushin’ Too Hard” inspired him to sing, and the Ramones later covered a second Seeds standard, “Can’t Seem to Make You Mine.” I’m pretty sure the Ramones also took haircut tips from the Seeds.

The most heartfelt tribute I’ve seen to Saxon’s legacy came from Los Angeles native Nels Cline, whose genre-bending guitar work has found him collaborating with everyone from Charlie Haden to Mike Watt to Willie Nelson, fronting his own improvised music group, and playing lead for the fiery nineties roots-punk combo the Geraldine Fibbers on the way to his current lead duties with Wilco. In an obituary last week, Cline described Saxon as his first rock idol, not simply for the Seeds’ music, but for the charisma he exuded while appearing on TV programs with names like “Boss City” and “The Groovy Show.” Cline wrote that he “would stare in disbelief as he—clad in shiny satin Nehru shirts bedazzled with some gaudy brooch—would gyrate around lasciviously, holding the microphone in every cool way imaginable. He seemed from another planet.” Years later, Cline ran into an aging hippie at Trader Joe’s with an unmistakable style, and you can guess who it was. Saxon and Cline went on to play an improvised set, using the name Flower God Men and their Assistants. The flower god man has taken his final flight, but the thrill ride continues.

The Seeds, “Pushin’ Too Hard”

The Seeds, “Mr. Farmer”

If a deep, slow groove with big implications for globalization are your bag, all 10.5 minutes of “900 Million People Daily All Makin’ Love” should be required listening:

Warren Zevon, “Jesus Mentioned”

When Elvis left the building a generation ago at what seemed then the very advanced age of 42, I loved a few of his songs, but mainly considered him a bloated, Eskimo Pie-addicted man-cartoon that some kids’ parents liked. Only later did I discover what the fuss was about: the Memphis truck driver getting “real, real gone” in the magical Sun Sessions; the swaggering sex machine; the out-of-control mystery train that not even a dozen corny movies and a thousand prescriptions could completely derail. No wonder even Nixon cited Elvis as the explanation for the Bermuda triangle (“Elvis needs boats”).

This week, at the young, tender age of 50, another larger-than-life man-cartoon made an inglorious exit. Like Presley, Michael Jackson walked on water, first with his brilliance and later with his pills. And as with Elvis, I dismissed most of what he did long before he left. But MJ was an arresting presence even for those who, like me, did my best to ignore him. Elvis even seems an inadequate comparison for his stratospheric global reach. A closer comparison might be Howard Hughes, another man-child of erratic brilliance, whose master aviator’s soaring heights later gave way to reclusive paranoia and heartbreaking tailspin.

For now I will set aside the aspects of Michael Jackson’s life better left to the justice system and to his maker. As an admiring non-fan, I’ll count down five of his huge accomplishments:

1. He Liberated Eastern Europe from Communism.

Who do you think accomplished this, Reagan and Gorbachev? Please. The invasion of Afghanistan was bad enough, but the Kremlin’s most self-destructive act was its 1985 decision not to censor a vinyl version of Thriller. Long before MJ built a 35-foot statue of himself in Prague, his invisible gloved hand shook like a thousand Adam Smiths, securing our opportunity to visit McDonald’s in Vilnius.

Michael Jackson, HIStory Teaser

2. He Made Globalization Irreversible.

Don’t blame him for the shortcomings of NAFTA, GATT and world-beat fusion music. The new century would still be inconceivable without globalization, and MJ was its mascot. If there’s any doubt, listen to Caetano Veloso’s version of “Billie Jean.”

Caetano Veloso, “Billie Jean”

3. He Stopped Quincy Jones from Making Bad Solo Records.

Quincy Jones has a great ear for talent other than his own. Long ago, Q made five-martini bachelor pad classics like “Soul Bossa Nova,” which featured the amazing Rahsaan Roland Kirk. But by the late seventies, he’d spent far too much time making lame film soundtracks. Soon after Q started mentoring MJ, he woke up and started sailing the high seas of Eighties soul-funk cheese, producing bizarre period classics such as 1981’s The Dude, which even features a zany cover of a song by Ian Dury and the Blockheads sideman Chaz Jankel. The Dude abides.

Quincy Jones, “Soul Bossa Nova”

Soul Bossa Nova (Tema da Nike) – Quincy Jones

4. His Voice Was Better than Your Favorite Singer’s Voice.

Maybe that’s stretching it. Still, once you get beyond the tabloid crassness, Jackson had a voice so divinely inspired that comparisons are almost unfair. Production values and taste are things that can be questioned, and I’ve criticized those in most of his work. But his abilities were already astonishing by the time the J5 featured his preteen lead on “I Want You Back.”

Jackson Five, “I Want You Back”

5. He was Jackie Robinson in Aviator Glasses.

It’s hard to describe how segregated most of the pop mainstream was at the end of the seventies, with much of white America (including me) still in “Disco Sucks” mode and rap still emerging from the underground. Off the Wall and Thriller shattered that rigidity. If the path that followed has had some cracks in the pavement—like having to endure Fred Durst limply pretending to be funky—MJ still helped prepare the country and the planet for their multiracial future.

Indian version of “Thriller”

Funny videos

Last week, when Aretha Franklin put on her oversized bow hat and melted fire with her inaugural version of “America (My Country ‘Tis of Thee)”—Samuel Francis Smith’s 19th Century rewrite of a German rewrite of “God Save the Queen”—a piece of my heart held the memory of another queen of soul, one generation and half a world away, who met with a more tragic fate. Blessed with a voice of equally staggering power and beauty, Ros Sereysothea rose from poverty and illiteracy to become the most beloved singer in her native Cambodia during the sixties and early seventies. Thanks to the excellent Los Angeles combo Dengue Fever, discussed below, the music of Ros and her contemporaries is finally experiencing a rebirth on both sides of the Pacific.

Ros’s story carries a distinctive rock twist. Along with the cherub-faced godfather of Khmer soul, Sinn Sisamouth, a former Royal Court crooner turned unlikely garage rocker, and the more playful female vocalist Pan Ron, who makes me think of Martha Reeves, Ros meshed Khmer music with the range of Western sounds that made their way across the Pacific during wartime—everything from Motown and classic R&B to surf, psychedelic and garage rock. Eastern sounds from Bangkok to Bollywood also entered the mix. The resulting Khmer rock underground was like nothing else heard before or since. A track like Ros’s “Chnam Oun 16” (translated as “I’m 16” or “Sweet 16”) virtually defies description, but to me it sounds a bit like an even more intense Asha Bhosle performing an upbeat Aretha number, backed by the 13th Floor Elevators. The song sounds so alive that it seems to mock death itself for its weakness and cowardice.

Ros Sereysothea, “Chnam Oun 16″

As John Swain captured in his Indochina memoir River of Time, Khmer rock’s seminal figures remained upstarts in their heyday; even Ros and Sinn scrounged for cassette sale revenue and never reached the upper echelons of Cambodia’s economic elite. But their musical revolution came to an abrupt end after April 1975, when Pol Pot’s forces overrode Cambodia. Few of the leading Khmer musicians survived the genocide. Sinn Sisamouth was sent to a work camp and executed. Pan Ron disappeared. Ros Sereysothea’s demise remains the subject of conjecture, but Greg Cahill’s short film about her life, The Golden Voice, concludes that after her discovery in a slave labor camp, she was forced to sing pro-Khmer Rouge songs and marry one of Pol Pot’s henchmen, who later had her killed. In another account, she died from malnutrition in a Phnom Penh hospital weeks before the Vietnamese invasion ousted Pol Pot. Either way, this achingly beautiful and surprisingly rocking music—which often paired melancholy sentiments with sparkling melodies—virtually disappeared, preserved only because fans risked lives and livelihoods hiding priceless cassette tapes. The musical history of a generation went undercover in the face of what Hannah Arendt, commenting on a different genocide, termed “the banality of evil”: ordinary people following orders confiscated and destroyed the tapes, even as they were silently humming these same songs under their breath.

Sinn Sisamouth, “Ma Pi Noak”

Pan Ron, “Rom Ago Ago”

After the click-through: Dengue Fever and the renaissance of Khmer rock and roll.

Part Two: Dengue Fever and the Khmer Rock Renaissance

For years, the golden age of Khmer rock remained virtually unknown in the west. The occasional exceptions included Parallel World’s 1996 Cambodian Rocks anthology (first released without any artist or track information), and the several classic tracks that appeared in the soundtrack to the 2002 film City of Ghosts. But the music’s renaissance is largely due to Dengue Fever, whose uncharacteristically mellow Khmer language cover of Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” was featured in City of Ghosts. The band has one of the more improbable histories in recent memory. Ethan Holtzman, a California-based keyboardist, traveled to Cambodia in the 1990s, and while his traveling companion was contracting dengue fever, he was filling his backpack with classic Khmer cassettes. Inspired to form a band performing Cambodian rock covers, he recruited several stellar musicians, including his brother Zac, the former Dieselhead guitarist who should have won last month’s battle of the beards. Traversing the karaoke clubs of Long Beach, California’s Little Phnom Penh, they became entranced by a beguiling young singer, Chhom Nimol, who had already become a teenage sensation back in Cambodia. Incredibly, they persuaded her to join the band, which has progressed from a Cambodian covers-only format to equally impressive original material that brings in everything from homegrown California psych-pop to Ethiopian jazz.

If you simply listened to Dengue Fever’s hilarious 2008 ode to troubled transcontinental romance, “Tiger Phone Card,” you might think that Dengue Fever was merely a really good international novelty act. But as shown on most of the recent Venus on Earth album, the band deserves better than to be consigned to the “world music” ghetto. A rock band every bit as much as Radiohead or TV on the Radio, Dengue Fever serves as a reminder that, due to the prominent American R&B and rock influence, the lost years of Cambodian rock are also a lost part of our own collective memory deserving of rebirth.

John Pirozzi, the director whose film Sleepwalking Through the Mekong chronicles Dengue Fever’s surreally rewarding 2005 tour in Cambodia, is working on a broader movie called Don’t Think I’ve Forgotten on the lost history of Cambodian rock and roll. Four volumes of Cambodian Rocks reissues are available on the Khmer Rocks label, and a wealth of Khmer rock classics are also available on YouTube and elsewhere on the net. These efforts bear witness to the stunning musical contributions of a strife-torn country, intertwined with our own tangled war-torn history, deserving recognition for something richer and grander than killing fields and donut shops. Rather than retreating in the face of evil, past or present, we have the opportunity to become educated about our country’s complex history in southeast Asia, while also cranking up the volume and letting freedom ring.

Dengue Fever, “Tiger Phone Card”

Dengue Fever, “Sleepwalking Through the Mekong”

Dengue Fever, “Seeing Hands”

Dengue Fever, “I’m 16″

Facial outgrowth isn’t always a sign of greatness, or vice-versa. Patchy-faced Bob Dylan and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy have sometimes dabbled in facial hair, but these are not beardly men; you might as well put a spoiler on a Volvo station wagon. Nobody knows that better than Tweedy himself, the author of “Bob Dylan’s 49th Beard” (“things got pretty weird, and I grew Bob Dylan’s beard”). And beardrevue.com gave a major thumbs down to Stuck Between Stations favorite Captain Beefheart (Don Van Vliet), ranking him three points below the composite band score assigned to current beard icons the Fleet Foxes. Explaining the Captain’s lowly 5.9 ranking, the site noted: “His lip ferret was merely average. And his poet’s beard was never much more than the obligatory mark of a mad musical genius.”

At the outset, I have disqualified Devendra Banhart, because that would be too easy, like naming Jesus on a list of famous sandal-wearers. This list is for beard-growers, and I have it on good authority that Devendra was born bearded to traveling circus performers from Caracas. Here are my rankings in this year’s Battle of the Beards:

• Kyp Malone, TV on the Radio (Sanders-Hudson Rating: 7.5)

The guitarist-singer from Brooklyn’s innovative art rockers-turned-mutant funkateers had this year’s beard competition all sewn up. But, snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, Kyp has now trimmed his beard.

TV on the Radio, “Dancing Choose”

• Jim James, My Morning Jacket (Sanders-Hudson Rating: 7.0)

James’ Kentucky combo may well rank as the most hirsute band of the past decade. But he’s docked two notches here, because his Prince falsetto on this year’s Evil Urges is less convincing than that of Spoon‘s Britt Daniel, and worse, he has reportedly switched to a mustache.

My Morning Jacket, “Wordless Chorus”

More beards after the click-through

• Robin Pecknold, Fleet Foxes (Sanders-Hudson Rating: 8.0)

He’s in his twenties, but looks and sounds like he woke up in a sleeping bag in Golden Gate Park in 1967. You could do far worse.

Fleet Foxes, “Tiger Mountain Peasant Song”

• Ben Bridwell, Band of Horses (Sanders-Hudson Rating: 8.3)

While nothing’s shocking here, he delivers reliably well-rounded whiskers and melodies.

Band of Horses, “Funeral”

• Will Oldham, Palace/ Palace Brothers/ Bonnie Prince Billy (Sanders-Hudson Rating: 9.0)

Finding religion in the palace of sin, he’s all shaggy perfection as he explores the missing link between Gram Parsons and Rasputin.

Palace Brothers, “You Will Miss Me When I Burn”

• Steve Earle (Sanders-Hudson Rating: 9.2)

A flowing beard, a good appetite and a strong sense of justice helped save the life of this former self-destructive gunslinger, and he’s been a national treasure ever since.

Steve Earle, “Christmastime in Washington”

Blowing away any remaining generational snobbery, I randomly discovered a recipe for Monterey Jack muffins on an intermittently updated music blog called Half a Person, whose sixteen year-old author, Nina, says she “likes music and long walks on the beach.” Nina’s accompanying “Muffin Mix” seemed uncannily close to home:

Stay Positive- The Hold Steady
Two Halves- My Morning Jacket
You Got Yr. Cherry Bomb- Spoon
The Sons of Cain- Ted Leo
Eraser- No Age
Sequestered in Memphis- The Hold Steady
Alex Chilton- The Replacements
I’m Amazed- My Morning Jacket
Constructive Summer- The Hold Steady
Sheila Take a Bow- The Smiths
A Little Bit of Feel Good- Jamie Lidell

This is how close I live to the Muffin Mix: Swap Bon Iver and Tinariwen for No Age and Jamie Lidell, and you would come very close to my own heavy rotation for the same week. Nor is Nina a guitar-rock one trick pony; her latest post displays precocious taste in rap both new (Nas, Lupe Fiasco, Lil’ Wayne) and prehistoric (De La Soul and A Tribe Called Quest). And I doubt I’ll read a better review of Mamma Mia than the following from Nina: “I now have every ABBA song simultaneously stuck in my head. It was charming at first, but now I’m just feeling suicidal.” Nina’s hall-of-fame post thus far, however, is intriguingly titled “Sorry I Accosted You”, where she summons her teenage fortitude to defend Radiohead’s honor (details after the click-through).

Smiths, “Half a Person”

Replacements, “Alex Chilton”

When Nina and her friend were in line to buy summer books at Barnes and Noble, an unsuspecting couple were poised to buy a copy of The Best of Radiohead, which Nina correctly identifies as “EMI’s plan of revenge after Radiohead left their label to give away In Rainbows.” In prose worthy of a sober Lester Bangs, Nina recounts the following:

“Oh, Radiohead!” said the man, picking up a copy.
“They’re great,” replied his girlfriend tracing her finger down the back
track listing.

I fretted. “These people can’t purchase this sham of an album! Radiohead wouldn’t want that!” I thought. So, I did what any partially insane teen would do.

“You can’t buy that!” I said abruptly.

The couple stared at me blankly. I stared back. “Um. EMI, Radiohead’s old label, released it without permission. Radiohead, uh, doesn’t want people to buy it,” I stammered. The couple stared at me blankly.

“Um.Ok,” said the male with a forced chuckle, placing the album back on the rack. “Why is this nervous girl with braces yelling at me about Radiohead?” he was probably thinking. My friend Victoria looked at me with an amused smile. I turned around and walked away. Mission accomplished.

My apologies for accosting you, friendly couple. But you really shouldn’t buy the album.”

Nina’s little vignette actually gives me hope for the future, because it’s a story only a real fan could tell and it’s free of the cool distance that too often accompanies music writing. I’ve also been there before. As a partially insane teen, I came close to accosting someone at Chicago’s Wax Trax records who was on the verge of buying Squeeze, an album by a Lou Reed-less version of the “Velvet Underground” fronted by bassist Doug Yule. In retrospect, Squeeze wasn’t terrible, and it’s not as if cranky old Lou Reed needed the money; it’s just that something viscerally bothered me about allowing that record to be purchased on false pretenses. I cared enough about what the Velvets had done for me that I didn’t mind looking like a nutcase trying to defend their honor.

Years from now, when Nina is old enough to be me, I hope she stays positive, finds new and adventurous ways to mix her muffins, and never lets her enthusiasm molder. If I’m still around, I’ll still be listening.

Radiohead, “House of Cards”

Moldy Peaches, “Anyone Else But You”

Remember the bad old days of yore, making mix tapes for yourself and friends, mistakenly believing you could re-use the same cassette over and over again ad nauseum ’til the ferrous oxide particles started to dissolve or flake off? Somewhere between the time you first slid off the shrink-wrap and the time the tape inevitably got stuck between the capstan and pinch roller, leaving 17 seconds of that unreplaceable Minutemen live bootleg tangled up like a knot of dried tagliatelle pasta, there was the “print through/partial overdub” period, when traces of audio from previous recordings or adjacent layers of tape would appear as ghostly traces on the current recording.

The effect was mostly annoying, but also sometimes mystical. Rhythms might accidentally match up, or serve as counterweights to one another. Sometimes you’d think you’d proven finally and conclusively that T. Rex and Marmalade really were involved in a mutual back-masking cabal. But mostly it just sounded weird. In a good way.

After the jump: Backyardigans and Evan Lurie, The Wizard of Floyd, Dali’s paranoia-critical method, and the sonic layering of Solveig Slettahjell.

II) Evan Lurie and God Knows What

Five-year-old Miles was deeply zoned in a Backyardigans video game featuring a predictably groovy Evan Lurie musical soundtrack (Lounge Lizard John Lurie‘s little brother Evan Lurie scores the music for Backyardigans). Knowing Backyardigans tracks can sometimes have a lot going on at once, I didn’t bat an eye when I first heard what sounded like a second, unrelated layer going on in the background. But after a few seconds, it became clear that the second layer of music was completely unrelated to the first. Realizing that iTunes must be chugging away in the background, I suggested that maybe we should turn it off. “No daddy! I like it this way!” Whoa. What to my ears sounded dissonant and distracting, he was digging. Solving his little spy puzzle, accompanied by simultaneous doses of Lurie and god-knows-what shuffling through the background rotation.

n.b.: This was the same toddler/punk who recently reacted to his first exposure to the genius of Harry Partch by saying the music “Sounds like space chimps driving a broken car.” Had I broken his musical brain by exposing him to too much avant stuff too early in life? Was he genetically wired to like challenging music? Or was he finding synchronicities in the two soundtracks that I wasn’t tuned into?

But the more I listened, the more I was struck by the sonic coincidences; moments of musical timing that came together purely by accident, complimenting one another rather than conflicting. Either he was oblivious to the strangeness of the layering and just didn’t want to be bothered, or he was truly digging on the confluence.

III) Dark Side of the Rainbow

Try this (no, really — try this): Cue up a CD of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon and immediately hit the pause button. Simultaneously cue up a DVD of the Wizard of Oz on the TV. Keep your TV’s sound muted. When the black-and-white MGM lion roars the first time, un-pause the CD. Sit back, torch a doob or brush up on your mycology if you must, and let the audio/visual coincidences mount. Some accounts say there as many as 100 noticeable moments where the technically unrelated media streams appear to line up perfectly. Impossible coincidence? Mass hallucination? Mystical multimedia kismet?

The phenomenon is called, alternatively: Dark Side of the Rainbow, The Wizard of Floyd, or Dark Side of Oz. A decade or so ago, a handful of Stuck writers and their significants gave it a shot. We didn’t find all 100, but the match-ups were pretty striking.

What’s going on here? Floyd vehemently deny any intentional connection, but your brain insists otherwise. Salvador Dali had a name for this tendency of the mind (and used it to great advantage): The Paranoia Critical Method:

It was defined by Dalí himself as “irrational knowledge” based on a “delirium of interpretation. As a matter of fact, all of us have practiced the Paranoid Critical Method when gazing at stucco on a wall, or clouds in the sky, and seeing different shapes and visages therein. Dali, though not a true paranoid, was able to simulate a paranoid state, without the use of drugs…

In other words, it’s the same thing iPod users do when they insist that Shuffle mode is not actually random, but is rather capable of “sensing” what songs would work well back-to-back, or even capable of reading their minds. Apple engineers insist that random mode is as random as a computer can get, but our brains tell us otherwise. We’re really good at finding coincidence where there is none. Making connections is what we do. Our brains will scramble like hell to map the un-mappable, connect the un-connectable, and to draw false (but pleasing) meaning from perceived confluences. We’re a trip, man.

IV) Solveig Slettahjell != iPod Malfunction

So there’s all this wispy stuff out there – tendrils of information intertwining in our minds. For the most part we do a good job of filtering out the stuff we’re not paying attention to, and focusing on what we want to hear. But every now and then, improbable textures collide in mid-air and transform themselves into some kind of freaky new whole.

I’m not sure what made me pick up Solveig Slettahjell’s Good Rain. Slettahjell is a lovely Scandinavian jazz singer with a sliver of Bjork in her face and voice (but isn’t that true of all beautiful Scandinavians?), sans swan dress. And another sliver of Norah Jones. Maybe it was the name of her backup band that got me: “The Slow Motion Quintet.” Oooh, I loves me my slow motion – this must be good!

Truth is, I hadn’t given the record much of a listen since coming into it six months ago. Then, while pounding my way through the daily bike commute home a few days ago with the iPod in shuffle mode, I started to hear what sounded like a print-through effect rolling through one of her tracks. My first thought was that something had gone terribly wrong with the iPod. Sultry vocal jazz in one ear, back-masked synth warbles in the other. A rhythm section working contrapuntally to the cadence. Felt like I was simultaneously hearing laid-back Scandinavian vocal jazz, Bohemian drums, and left-field electronica all at once. And yet, all of the pieces somehow fit. I assumed that these disparate sounds couldn’t be thrown together intentionally – that I was actually hearing multiple sound sources at once, and was merely having a paranoia-critical moment. Had to stop both the bike and track to make sure I wasn’t hearing audio from an external source.

I wasn’t.

The track was composed this way – but my expectations of her style* had fooled my brain into thinking that she was too “straight” to get all experimental on my ass, and that I must therefore be hearing something else.

Like tooth imprints on a corndog, these fly-away particles of meaning drill deep into the imagination of humans, looking for love in all the wrong places. The brain truly is great.

* Most of Slettahjell’s stuff isn’t like this; the record is lovely, but don’t buy it assuming you’ll get an ear-load of experimental sonic layering. There’s a bit of it going on, but the Slow Motion Quintet is pretty restrained, with the exception of this song.

Carrie hasn’t been resting on her laurels. ThunderAnt, her new duo with SNL’s Fred Armisen, has released what is, scientifically speaking, the perfect pop song (clip below). Slate featured her test-drive of the Rock Band video game. She coaches and promotes a rock camp for girls. Best of all, her Monitor Mix column for NPR’s website has, in just over half a year, become one of my favorite sources of music writing; her written work is passionate, personal, and refreshingly free of hipster posturing. In recent posts, Carrie delivers a great road trip playlist (Wipers, Go Betweens, Music Go Music, Richard and Linda Thompson, Cal Tjader), captures the gift of the Replacements’ Paul Westerberg (“his songs have an adult acuity sung in an adolescent idiom”), admits her weakness for reality television (“I suppose that I’d rather get that artifice-parading-as-truth from The Bachelor instead of my government”), and explains why she enjoys, but can’t bring herself to love Vampire Weekend (“if you take preppy yacht rock too far, you end up back at Jimmy Buffett”).

The posts in Monitor Mix are thoughtful and reflective, even when Carrie is giving simple shout-outs to recent favorites, such as Bon Iver and Blitzen Trapper. One great recent piece uses the strange worlds of underground Christian/ alt-rock pioneer Larry Norman and Colorado hardcore obscurities Bum Kon to segue into the fertile subject of bands that fall under the radar screen. And instead of just sneering at the reviewer recently caught rating a Black Crowes album he’d never heard, Brownstein uses it as a springboard for some hilarious fictional music reviews. Here’s Brownstein on the Shins’ nonexistent opus Honey Poke Shimmy Lantern: “James Mercer and crew can do no wrong. They’ve added the Decemberists, the Thermals, and Spoon to their lineup. Recorded inside a deer carcass, the sounds on Honey Poke are haunting and cervid. These songs will change your life back to the way it was before The Shins changed it the first time.”

ThunderAnt, “Perfect Song”

After the click-through: Carrie on Saddam Hussein and Liz Phair.

A post discussing the impending re-release of Liz Phair’s Exile in Guyville captures Brownstein’s writing at her best. She captures Exile’s still-beguiling magic better than anything I’ve read: “The first thing I noticed about Liz Phair was the voice. She wasn’t screaming, she wasn’t being cloying, she wasn’t an amazing singer, but there was something serious about the vocals, something deadly. Part of it was the flatness; the strange deadpan delivery, like someone is singing on their back, like they woke up one night and decided they’d had enough and so they made an album. But the songs weren’t victim anthems just like they weren’t merely come-ons; they spoke of the fine lines between power and powerlessness, autonomy and isolation, they depicted epiphanies and the subsequent letdowns. The album was a journey vacillating between interior and exterior landscapes, the lyrics evoking halcyon moments always on the verge of implosion, either by the author’s own hand or by someone they loved. And the album was drenched in desire, of wanting and of wanting out.”

“Strange” and “deadpan” are also good descriptions of ThunderAnt’s low-fi sketch comedy. The skits have a loose, improvised feel that will seem familiar to fans of Chicago-style improvisation. Rather than relying on heavy dialogue or dramatic punch lines, Carrie and Fred start with an outrageous premise that has a ring of human truth and milk it for its awkward emotional nuance. You never know quite what to expect, whether it’s passive-aggressive employees of a feminist bookstore quietly arguing about which flyers to put up in the store, proprietors of Portland’s worst restaurant responding defensively to online criticism, or my personal favorite, Saddam Hussein reimagined as an aging indie rocker appearing on a Cable TV show.

The clips below include some favorites from ThunderAnt and Sleater-Kinney’s gonzo-heavy2005 swan song, The Woods. For news and updates on Carrie Brownstein and her former band mates, check the unofficial Sleater-Kinney news blog Tiny Suns infused with Sour. Another fan-run site has a gold mine of covers and obscurities.

ThunderAnt, “Boink!” (featuring Saddam Hussein)

ThunderAnt, “Feminist Bookstore”

Sleater-Kinney, “Jumpers”

Sleater-Kinney, “Modern Girl”

Sleater-Kinney, “Entertain”

If one figure spans all those influences, it is the provocateur, painter, raconteur and raver Jon Langford. The Welsh-born Leeds-to-Chicago transplant and Bloodshot Records mainstay has—in the 23-year stretch dating from the Mekons’ often-mentioned, seldom heard Fear and Whiskey—done more than just about anyone else to resuscitate the withered heart of post-punk and reclaim the tarnished soul of American country. In Austin, I was thrilled to discover that the Yard Dog Gallery has a fantastic collection of Langford’s visual art, mostly densely layered, distressed images of iconic American roots musicians in graveyard settings. Blindfolded, sullied and marked for extinction, the characters remind me of Chicago artist Ivan Albright’s studies of decay and corruption; constantly “dancing with death,” they are unsettlingly alive and a reminder of the slow death that comes out of greed, fear and homogenization.

As a curmudgeonly first-generation art school punk who writes lines like “John Glenn drinks cocktails with God at a café in downtown Saigon,” Langford is smart enough to realize he doesn’t play or paint “authentic” honky tonk any more than Vampire Weekend is a gang of African tribesmen. And unlike some of his retro-worshipping peers, he acknowledges that the “golden age” of county music had its own problems with pills and pretenders and poor directions. Yet he uses his outsider’s distance as an advantage. While bemoaning the death of country music at the hands of what he calls “suburban rock music with a cowboy hat on,” Langford’s work cuts deeper than that, excavating the signs of life in a cultural landscape pockmarked with interchangeable strip malls and Kenny Chesney records. There’s also a redemptive element in the search; like his protagonist in his Waco Brothers anthem “Hell’s Roof,” he’s reclaiming a lost history, “walking on hell’s roof, looking at the flowers” (and not “walking in a clown suit, looking at the flowers,” as I misheard Langford’s impassioned growl for more than a year).

Jon Langford, “Hell’s Roof”

Many of Langford’s paintings are collected in Langford’s 2006 book Nashville Radio: Art, Words and Music, which intersperses his artwork with lyrics and some unforgettable stories. One of my favorites involves Jon and the gang in East Berlin just before the wall fell, unable to buy souvenir Stalinist bric-a-brac with their worthless East German marks; another, during their short brush with near-fame following the release of 1989’s Mekons Rock and Roll, found A&M cofounder/ vice-chairman Herb Alpert’s secretary forging an autograph on a CD for Langford’s mother: “Dear Mrs. Langford, you have a fine and talented son—Herb Alpert” (sadly, Alpert himself was never present to shower them in whipped cream and other delights).

The Nashville Radio book also comes with a thoroughly enjoyable 18-song CD, The Nashville Radio Companion Earwig, which contains powerful acoustic renditions of some of Langford’s most striking country-related songs, supported by a strong cast of Langford comrades including singer Sally Timms, bassist Tony Maimone, and violinist Jean Cook. Earwig is an indispensable treat if, like me, you find it too daunting to keep up with every release of Langford’s many groups (to name a few, the Three Johns, the Waco Brothers, the Pine Valley Cosmonauts, the Sadies, Ship and Pilot, and even a children’s music band, the Wee Hairy Beasties). Keeping up with these could be a full-time job. The Waco Brothers just put out Waco Express, a first-rate live album recorded in Chicago. On April 27, Victory Gardens in Chicago will debut a theatrical version of Langford’s 2004 solo concept album, All the Fame of Lofty Deeds.

All of Jon Langford’s bleak musing about commerce and decaying culture could come off as misanthropic and pretentious if he didn’t spend most of his time being genial and side-splittingly funny. If you find yourself in a Langford book-buying mood, don’t miss his amazing turn (under the moniker Chuck Death) as the illustrator of the cynical, hilarious and usually dead-on music criticism cartoon book Great Pop Things, penned by his Pythonesque partner in crime Colin B. Morton. In its only slightly fictionalized history, the bass player in Led Zeppelin was Jean-Paul Sartre. Brian Eno is credited with the creation of “ambivalent music, which you can’t quite tell if you are listening to it or not.” Bono gets mercilessly tweaked, and Morrissey takes it on the chin more than once. Robert Christgau reports that at the EMP Conference, Langford defended himself against charges of cynicism by saying, “We really like all these people. Except Sting, of course.”

Mekons, “Ghosts of American Astronauts”

Mekons, “Memphis Egypt”

Waco Brothers, “Death of Country Music”