koven j. smith dot com

Gah. So apparently I decided to take virtually the entire summer off of kovenjsmith.com. Rest assured that I was doing great things with that time away, kids! I’ve actually got a whole run of posts lined up over the next couple of weeks, so I thought I’d get y’all in the mood with some of the music I’ve been digging these days. Those of you who visit me here at kovenjsmith.com can listen to the tunes in the sidebar there to your right; those of you who thirst for misguided wisdom via RSS feeds can check this out.

A few words on the tunes:

• Incidental Music from “The Amazing Spider Man”: So we begin with some of Stu Philips sweet music from the original 1970’s Spider Man TV movie. I just can’t resist how bad-ass the drums sound when they enter at about 00:26. I mean, just listen to them! They really do sound bad-ass. This is courtesy of the most-excellent Frayker Breaks blog, which focuses on (mostly) obscure library recordings. Many of the rekkids featured on the blog also feature bad-ass drums.
• Under Glass: In honor of the wonderful news that Dischord will be re-releasing Jawbox’s seminal 1994 recording “For Your Own Special Sweetheart,” and the even more heartening news that Jawbox will be reuniting for a one-off performance on “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” on December 8th, I offer up one of my favorit-est Jawbox tracks ever. This is from the posthumous odds-and-sods comp My Scrapbook of Fatal Accidents.
• Nam Myo Renge Kyo, Got To Have Your Lovin’, and Lady Friend: I stumbled on a few excellent psych and garage mp3 blogs that have reaped rich rewards. I’m particularly amazed by the Bill Plummer and the Cosmic Brotherhood tune, which is crazy for two reasons. One, the album was released by Impulse records, known primarily as the home of John Coltrane and his late-career brethren, and two, it’s a cover of one of my all-time-favorite-but-not-well-known Byrds songs, from the Younger Than Yesterday album.
• Marrow and Some Velvet Morning: Weirdly enough, these two tunes will forever be associated in my mind thanks to a two-and-a-half week road trip that Madelyn and I took out to the Black Hills of South Dakota and back. We went up through Canada, and managed to see St. Vincent in Montreal, and this particular song kinda blew me away. I just wasn’t ready for the tenor sax. It’s a little buried in the studio mix, but it was waaaay out front when we saw them. And Lee Hazlewood is just the best late-night driving music you’ll ever find. Also, this song is messed up.
• Day Dreaming: I don’t know why more people don’t seem to know this song; it’s long been one of my favorites. It’s got a great rhythm track (with what sounds like Bernard Purdie on drums and possibly Chuck Rainey on bass), a great arrangement, a tricky coast into 6/4 on the bridge, and a masterful performance from Aretha. Perfect.
• City Birds: Polvo have a new album out!
• The Big One: Better known on these shores as the theme to The People’s Court, this song is so hilariously over the top that it kind of makes other music unnecessary. If you do not like this song, then your opinion on all other matters will be suspect to me.
• The Ultimate Rap: Oh, man. This song. I discovered this song recently thanks to the wonderful folks at the mighty Soul Jazz Records, who closed a great comp of late-70s/early-80s NYC rappin’ with this. It starts out based on one of my all-time favorite bass lines (from Cheryl Lynn’s “Got To Be Real”), and then builds up a head of steam that doesn’t let up for nine-minute running time. I believe this song is also bad-ass.

Thanks for hanging in there while I took a long unannounced break from the blog, kids! More exciting stuff to come.

Koven playlists aretha franklin, For Your Own Special Sweetheart, Jawbox, lee hazlewood, music emporium, oscar and the majestics, playlist, polvo, st. vincent, stu philips

Image via WikipediaAwright, so my new online/virtual/cyber m(i/u)xtape o-sphere is now up, meaning that all five of you who read this can collectively exhale and begin enjoying your lives again, free of the anxiety borne out of anticipation. Koven understands your needs. Also your wants. And occasionally, your desires. I finally went ahead and moved the mixtape widget over into the right hand column over there (seriously, look to your right–it’s right there!), so that it would be permanently available. It replaces the little-loved “Favorite Tracks from Last.fm” widget, which was cool, but relied too much on Last.fm’s occasionally questionable library of tracks (most painful was listening to my own “favorite tracks” and hearing an 80’s re-recording of Sam & Dave’s classic “You Got Me Hummin’” in place of the original). Anyway, I’m still using the Last.fm recent track list, for those of you who require up-to-the-second information on what I’m listening to. So here’s a list of what we’ve got this week, along with helpful/meaningless commentary inserted at random:

1. The Frames – “In the Deep Shade”
2. The Shins – “Sea Legs”
3. King Geedorah – “The Next Level”
4. Joao Donato – “A Ra” : we might be playing this jam at next week’s Latin Hustle show at Spike Hill in Brook-a-lyn. See the “Events” page fer more info.
5. Lee Hazlewood – “Hey Cowboy” : Great tune that I discovered thanks to the excellent “Joe de Vivre” mp3 blog. Lee Hazlewood is a new thing for me, and I’m definitely digging his stuff. That trumpet intro really, really sounds like Burt Bacharach to me.
6. Fleet Foxes – “Blue Ridge Mountains” : found myself surprised at how excellent this record is, given that the band is being advertised in Starbucks.
7. Enon – “Raisin Heart”
8. Deerhoof – “My Purple Past”
9. The Four Tops – “Are You Man Enough” : Just a last tribute to the great Levi Stubbs. This is one of my fave Four Tops tracks, from the Shaft In Africa soundtrack.
10. Daedelus – “Drummery Jam” : Oh man, how do I love Daedelus. He was responsible for one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever seen, as part of the “Sound Art” concert series curated by my friend Jennifer Stock. Daedelus just blew everyone’s mind.
11. Stars of the Lid – “A Meaningful Moment Through a Meaning(less) Process”

That’s it for now, kids. I hope you’re all well.

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Koven playlists Daedelus, deerhoof, enon, Four Tops, joao donato, lee hazlewood, Levi Stubbs, mixtape, music, Sam & Dave, Shaft In Africa, Tracks