Herbie Hancock - "Fat Albert Rotunda" (1969)

Herbie Hancock invented funk in all forms.  He pioneered electric funk, acoustic funk, techno-pop, and the use of synthesizers in jazz and rock.  His music is sampled so frequently alongside James Brown and George Clinton that the three have became the foundation of hip-hop, but in my mind Fat Albert Rotunda was the starting point of it all, the starting point of all funk.  Soul, Jazz and R&B had given way at this time to a whole new form musical for Herbie Hancock, and it must have hit hard because this is the first jazz album to ever go platinum.  It blew the doors wide open for the first time jazz listeners and the old aficionados as Herbie Hancock stood at a crossroads between his straight ahead jazz on Blue Note and the electro-awesome Mwandishi period to follow.

Having finished his contract with said Blue Note, Herbie was asked by Warner Brothers to record soundtrack music for Bill Cosby’s Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids TV show as the start of a new multi-album contract.  The rich subject matter, the freedom and support of a new record company, and Herbie’s wise choice of soul/jazz crossover musicians put it all in just the right place.  Yes, Herbie had gotten his first industry chops with soul-master Donald Byrd and Coleman Hawkins.  Before that he gained an electrical engineering and music degree from Grinnell.  After that he played with Miles Davis’ second great quintet, Kenny Dorham and Freddie Hubbard, but it takes more than a great musician to make a great album.  The timing has to be right, the recording environment, and the mood.  Herbie had just discovered the Fender Rhodes, been given a solo contract by Warner Brothers and the freedom to lead his own band.  Fat Albert Rotunda has a sound that many have come to imitate, but for Herbie Hancock it was a one-of-a-kind, as he soon afterwards sought new instruments, new musical layering and styles, and challenges both compositional and technological.    

But even more importantly than the back story, Fat Albert Rotunda’s got soul.  Everybody starts movin’ when “Wiggle Waggle” drops in, a first choice to get the party going, ‘cause if anybody knows how to do it right it’s Herbie.  Check out those beats, lil’ brother.  Listen to that wiggle waggle!

The Chromatics "Night Drive" (2007)

Sometimes an album just falls out of the air and into your lap.  Sometimes this happens for the listener and maybe sometimes it happens for the artist too, but an album like this can stand alone as one enjoyable length of music, regardless of the rest of a band’s catalogue.  Sometimes a group of people just gets it right, and that would be the album Night Drive by The Chromatics.

I have been drawn to female vocalists in The Cocteau Twins and Dead Can Dance, the techno edge of their work with Future Sound of London.  Portishead has always had a dark disdainful sound, and I like the German brooding of Chicks on Speed, but Night Drive is an album of Italo-Disco, an old style re-invented by a group of Portland musicians on Italians Do It Better.  If I could make up the story, it seems like the first stab by a new collection of musicians at a new sound, eager to get away from a punk background but still aware of a specific target; a sparsely instrumented, intentionally repetitive collection of euro synth-pop songs that at first comes up like background music, until you find yourself spacing out on it, or singing the hooks a couple of days later. 

Night Drive starts with street noise and a phone conversation as a girl leaves a club and starts her car, then her drive takes you through scenic landscapes and sound structures that are only appreciated fully when the album is enjoyed from beginning to end.  Like an orchestral composition, there are movements and rhythms that vary like the idea suggested by the title.  Then the album comes to an end like the end of the night, or early morning, the two times I find myself playing this music the most.

Personally, there are some musicians whom I know as personalities and myths before I know their music.  Then there are musicians whom I know only through their music.  That would be The Chromatics, but when  Ruth Radelet sings “Oh, little stranger“, I want to be there with her, and I want to see the sun disappear.

Olive's Top 51 Live Shows

In case you doubted my experience as a critic, I am posting my top fifty-one shows as a bit of a resume.  This is a response to the facebook challenge some years ago in which people were asked to list their top fifty live music shows in any order.  I ranked mine here based on showmanship, the setlist, crowd enthusiasm and my personal experiences as a concert goer (Journey was my first show, Jane's Addiction my first mosh-pit show). I would probably have more jazz on there if those tickets weren't so damn expensive.  Check it out and enjoy...  See you at Radiohead in March, too.  Maybe they'll make the list this time...

Olive Tabugi’s Top Fifty-One Shows

Jane’s Addiction (City Coliseum, Austin, TX - 1991)

The Who, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Fabulous Thunderbirds (The Cotton Bowl, Dallas, TX - 1988)

Lollapalooza with Jane’s Addiction, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Butthole Surfers, Ice-T’s Body Count, The Violent Femmes, etc. (Starplex Amphitheater, Dallas, TX - 1991)

Phil Lesh & Friends w/ Warren Haynes and Jimmy Herring (The Backyard, Austin, TX - 2002)

The Flaming Lips (Which Stage - Bonnaroo, Tennessee - 2008)

Journey, Bryan Adams (The Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX - 1985)

Sonic Youth (That Tent - Bonnaroo, Tennessee - 2006)

The Red Hot Chili Peppers, Pearl Jam, Smashing Pumpkins (City Coliseum, Austin, TX - 1991)

Gogol Bordello (This Tent, Bonnaroo, Tennessee - 2007)

Fucked Up (Kenny Dorham’s Backyard, Austin, TX - SXSW 2007)

Girl Talk (The Austin Music Hall, Austin, TX – 2010)

Fishbone, Primus (The Austin Opera House, Austin, TX - 1992)

The Grateful Dead (Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA - 1995)

King Crimson (Austin Music Hall, Austin, TX - 1996?)

Jeff Tweedy (Hogg Auditorium, Austin, TX - 2007)

Iggy and the Stooges, Mike Watt on bass (Stubb’s, Austin, TX - SXSW 2007)

The Flaming Lips (Liberty Lunch, Austin, TX - 1993)

U2 (The Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX - 1987)

Beastie Boys, Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, The Roots (The Summit, Houston, TX - 1994)

Feist (This Tent, Bonnaroo, Tennessee - 2007)

The ORB (Deep Elem Live, Dallas, TX - 1994)

Medeski, Martin and Wood (This Tent, Bonnaroo, Tennessee – sat. late show 2002)

The Rolling Stones (Zilker Park, Austin, TX - 2006)

Manu Chao (Bud Light Stage, ACL Festival, Austin, TX – 2006?)

The McCoury Brothers (One World Theater, Austin, TX – 2008?)

Galactic, James Brown, RJD2, The Dead (What Stage, Bonnaroo, Tennessee – 2003)

Morphine (Liberty Lunch, Austin, TX - 1998)

Elvis Perkins (This Tent, Bonnaroo, Tennessee – 2007)

Stereolab (Austin Music Hall, Austin, TX - 2005)

Galactic (Stubb’s, Austin, TX -  Halloween 2002?)

The Raconteurs (Stubb’s, Austin, TX - 2008)

Stanley Clark (One World Theater, Austin, TX – 2010)

The Pretenders (Stubb’s, Austin, TX - 2009)

R.E.M., Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians (The Frank Erwin Center, Austin, Tx - 1990)

Paul McCartney (San Antonio, TX – 1998?)

Neil Young, Dinosaur Jr., Blind Melon (The Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX – 1995?)

American Music Club (Glasgow, Scotland - 1994)

Z-Trip (Elysium, Austin, TX – 2007?)

Metallica (What Stage, Bonnaroo, Tennessee - 2008)

Rollins Band, TOOL, w/ Butthole Surfers during encore (The Back Room, Austin, TX - 1992)

Sparklehorse (AT&T Blue Room Stage, ACL Festival, Austin, Tx - 2006)

The Grandmothers (Glasgow, Scotland - 1994)

Flogging Molly (Stubb’s, Austin, TX - 2009)

Pearl Jam, Soundgarden (City Coliseum, Austin, TX -  1992)

Mickey Hart (some quarry in Pennsylvania, 1999)

Fugazi (San Antonio, TX – 1990?)

The Charlie Hunter Trio (La Zona Rosa, Austin, TX – 2003?)

The Wailers, 311 (The Backyard, Austin, TX – 2008?)

Living Color, Bad Brains (Texas Student Union Ballroom, Austin, TX – 1994?)

Tom Petty (The Frank Erwin Center, Austin, TX -  1989)

Bob Dylan (Palmer Auditorium, Austin, TX - 1991)

Gram Parsons "Grievous Angel" (1974)

You know the story.  A brilliant, underappreciated musician influences other stars but dies at a young age himself after recording his best album ever.  Gram Parsons played with the Byrds, influenced Keith Richards’ country side of songwriting and birthed the career of Emmylou Harris.  He set the standard for alt-country like The Eagles, the Flatlanders and later Uncle Tupelo, Neko Case and some band called Wilco, and even though Gram seemed to chase a rainbow called “hit record”, it’s the love of country music that can be heard throughout his music and the story of his life.

Yeah, Sweetheart of the Rodeo came first, and sounds like a bunch of Californians covering country music.  When Gram released Grievous Angel as his second solo album, that’s when he got it right with Emmylou Harris, whose amazing harmonies and soulful connection with Gram inspired him to list her name with his on the album cover (a choice later denied by Gram’s wife when the album was assembled).  In Keith Richards’ bio, Keith writes deeply about his relationship with Gram, sharing an opinion that Gram never got to a place where he felt appreciated by the industry, but that during the recording of Grievous Angel he still attempted to be as sincere and sober with his art as he ever was.  Listen to him talk to the crowd during the live “Cash on the Barrelhead/Hickory Wind” medley and tell me that’s not pure joy.  He never saw the release of the songs, though, or the influence that they had on others, as less than a month after the sessions ended his friends were pouring five gallons of gas in his coffin and cremating him by fireball in the desert near Joshua Tree.  But that’s another story.

Gram, you lived a life that inspired others through tragedy and pain. It set our hearts on fire, but our love for you brings more than misery. It brings inspiration.

The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion - "Orange" (1994)

   When I had it on tape, the actual cassette was a transparent orange and the cover of the album was metallic silver.  So raw, so sexual, so confident in the sound.  The two-guitar-and-drums instrumentation, the stage personas and bravado, the mythologically bluesy lyrics, this album broke me backwards in time to discover bands like Pussy Galore, Boss Hog and the original delta blues that inspired them, while paving the way for Beck and I would argue that whole Detroit White Stripes thing and the Eagles of Death Metal too.  When I saw them open for the Beastie Boys at the Summit (now Compaq Center) in Houston about 1995 with some band I had never heard of before called The Roots, there was maybe a 500 person rush to get on the floor.  People went crazy, because the blues is number one, the blues is number one.