{"id":22724,"date":"2015-07-15T17:47:11","date_gmt":"2015-07-15T17:47:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=22724"},"modified":"2015-07-16T15:11:52","modified_gmt":"2015-07-16T15:11:52","slug":"listening-to-38","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/?p=22724","title":{"rendered":"Listening To..."},"content":{"rendered":"<ul>\n<li><strong>King Crimson - Larks' Tongues In Aspic.<\/strong> Though I love the 80s K.C., and I love 1974's \"Red\", I've always been wary of their earlier stuff. I bought a K.C. compilation in the 80s and it had a couple of their early tunes which grated on me: too proggy in that misty medieval minstrel style. And the title of this album certainly suggested more of that. Plus, the list of band members, at the time, included a <em>violinist<\/em>! Zounds! So I've avoided this for 25 years. But I recently read some reviews that convinced me to spend a minute sampling it in iTunes. And I'm glad of it. There's none of that RenFaire vibe here. This is much more like \"Red\" - heavy as hell, bombastic and noisy at times, complicated and generally just brilliant. It's from 1973 and has the same lineup as \"Red\", too - less a percussionist who departed after this record. But, in my opinion, if you've got Bill Bruford, you don't really need anyone else playing drums.\n<p>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=H_gzyaafZd8<\/p>\n<li><strong>Jill Scott - Who Is Jill Scott?<\/strong> Since there's no more Erykah Badu out there for me to buy, I'm looking at people who get grouped together with her under the \"neo soul\" banner. And, indeed, there's a lot of similarity between Scott an Badu. They do the same sultry R&amp;B: patiently funky and gently jazzy, densely detailed, precisely produced. Compared to Badu, Scott has a smoother voice and her lyrics are more obviously <em>poetic <\/em>and more personal. And they're always romantic or sexy; no politics here. I like the sound, but I can only take so many love songs in a day - even if some are kindof playfully dirty. I'll check out more from her, eventually.\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Jill Scott - &quot;Do You Remember&quot;\" width=\"625\" height=\"469\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uqy77su5dAI?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<li><strong>ALA.NI - You &amp; I - Spring<\/strong>. Someone on my Facebook feed linked to a video of her so I investigated. If not for the lack of terrible sound quality and modern multi-track production (ex. she does multi-part harmony with herself), you'd swear these were some from the 1920s or 30s. Gently swinging old-school poppy jazz, very nicely executed.\n<p>She only has this one single out so far, but I expect there will be more.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"ALA.NI - Ol&#039; Fashioned Kiss (Official Video)\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/cKLVHyQjkow?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<li><strong>Norah Jones - The Fall.<\/strong> For this, she dropped the soft jazzy pop and picked up some alternative adult soft rock. Her voice is as warm and fuzzy as ever, but the music - though it be gentle as a cloud - just isn't as snuggley as the stuff on \"Come Away With Me\".\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Norah Jones - Chasing Pirates\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/uTxythHY09k?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<li><strong>Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin'.<\/strong> Groovy 60's-style R&amp;B, with some modern flavor. There's a lot of stuff with that description out there these days. But, like Alabama Shakes, he adds enough new ingredients to the old recipes to keep it from tasting exactly like your gramma's R&B.\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Raphael Saadiq - Stone Rollin&#039; (Video Version)\" width=\"625\" height=\"352\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/wHyalVRUXrA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<li><strong>Constant Velocity - 7 songs about eric clapton<\/strong>. This is pretty great. Lots of interesting stuff going on in these songs: structurally, melodically, sonically. The songs are full of twists and turns - and following along is half the fun - but they still flow nicely. Which is not an easy feat to pull off. And though comparing bands to other bands is my favorite thing to do, I can't come up with a solid comparison here. I keep thinking about The Decemberists because there's a theatrical\/narrative feel to many of the songs, the way they change-up every few bars, and the A+ vocabulary of the lyrics. But there's not much similarity musically, and I find The Decemberists to be pretentious and boring. This is neither. This is more scrappy and spiky and rocks harder and is simply a lot more fun. Plus, it's commenter <i>Jewish Steel<\/i>'s band!\n<p>Check em out <a href=\"https:\/\/constantvelocity.bandcamp.com\/album\/7-songs-about-eric-clapton\">at Bandcamp<\/a>.\n<\/ul>\n<p>You?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>King Crimson - Larks' Tongues In Aspic. Though I love the 80s K.C., and I love 1974's \"Red\", I've always been wary of their earlier stuff. I bought a K.C. compilation in the 80s and it had a couple of their early tunes which grated on me: too proggy in that misty medieval minstrel style. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22724","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-listening-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22724"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22735,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22724\/revisions\/22735"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22724"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22724"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ok-cleek.com\/blogs\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22724"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}