MEET BENJI HUGHES

Who the hell is this guy? Why didn't anyone tell me about Benji Hughes? I keep up with contemporary sounds as best I can, trade musical tips with fellow obsessives, read the music rags, but I totally missed this oddball character from North Carolina who looks like the offspring of some unholy union between a long lost beer hippie and Sasquatch. Benji is one scary looking dude, but just when you think he'll ride his Harley through your flowerbed to kill the family dog, he turns into a heartsick troubadour who brings a tear to your eye. Benji writes the hell out of a song. He maps the human heart and not like some dopey singer-songwriter--this guy has soul.

I first heard about Benji this week in the Believer Magazine Music Issue, something that comes out ever year about this time, and a great article by Joe Hagen. Esquire, StarNews Online, and Encore, "Your Alternative Voice in Wilmington, NC," have also been sources for this piece, if you're curious about that sort of thing. Track down more info if you can. Some day he may be a common household name, but I just hope he gets one billionth the attention your brand name pop stars enjoy every day.

One of the best Benji Hughes' songs I've heard came out in 2003, in which Hughes sings about his old man in the joint.


"Dad"

It’s been a long time since you dropped me a line
I just had a birthday and Mom’s doing fine
The last time I heard you were still doing time
I heard about the sentence, never got the details of the crime


“Benji captures heartache much in the same way Hank Williams did back in his day," said Fred Champion, local musician and the owner of CD Alley, in Wilmington, NC (where tickets were on sale for Benji's shows at the East Coast Opera House, July 24 and 25). "He expresses in a song his thoughts and feelings on just what it means to be human: to love, to have heartache, to pine for someone, and about regular everyday life things like annoying neighbors or the experience of going to see a favorite band with some friends.”

Chuck Klosterman wrote a great article about Benji in Esquire back in March. "A Love Extreme is twenty-five songs of pure, enthusiastic songwriting from a man who clearly does not care what I think about his work. It's an ambitious, solipsistic project...But he's amazingly good at fitting every musical idea into whatever worldview is best suited to hold it. There's something effortless about his ability. It often seems as if Hughes can listen to any rival artist, immediately deduce what element defines the work, and then synthesize the vibe without seeming derivative. It's almost like A Love Extreme is a project: At various fleeting moments, he sings a little like Julian Casablancas, Joe Pernice, Leonard Cohen, Jarvis Cocker, Rivers Cuomo, Chet Baker, Mark Oliver Everett, and Mark Sandman."


Listen to his song about a road trip to see the Flaming Lips, called, appropriately enough, "I Went with Some Friends to See The Flaming Lips":


It was raining just a little but we didn’t mind
We had some drinks in the bar at the Haywood Park
Sent Mark and Jason on a beer run, ’cause it was getting dark
Then we checked into our rooms and started eating mushrooms
Jessica and Elle dropped by...

The music changes, shifts, and whoa, the drugs kick in.

Standing in a line we realized Mark had taken too much...
taken way too much MDMA...

He elucidates his world in stunning detail, and the music beautifully reinforces the mood. He'd probably yell obscenities if he heard this, but he's really a short story writer. His stories wouldn't be out of place in a collection of great contemporary writers working in the short form, George Saunders, say, or Deborah Eisenberg--writers who chronicle this strange modern world in all its glorious and strange detail.



"You Stood Me Up" is about a fight Benji had with a date. He brings in some soulful sounds and telling details to paint a picture of a small town misunderstanding that is bleak and absolutely real:

You had a date with me
On April 17th
I showed up at the Dairy Queen
where we were 'sposed to meet
I got there at 4:53
We were 'sposed to meet at 5
I had a Butterfinger Blizzard and some fries

According to Hagen in the Believer, Benji grew up in a crazy family with a strict Jehovah's Witness mother and a "hard-fisted drunk man" for a father, but he finally squeezed out of there. He played gigs in Charlotte and became something of a legend among local teenagers. This hillbilly beardo would show up and blow everyone away with his songs, then he'd smile and pop a beer. Hughes recorded some, too, and was roundly ignored by everyone. He co-wrote one of the songs from "The Dewey Cox Story" called "Let's Duet," a Johnny Cash/June Carter parody that has more double entendres than anything I can remember.


Benji Hughes came out with another record, "A Love Extreme," a glancing reference to the Coltrane spiritual classic. NYTimes music critic Jon Pareles loved it, and a few more folks, but it didn't really take off. Too bad. Not enough people read George Saunders, either. Still, it's a great album and worth your time, especially if you're just hanging around the Dairy Queen doing nothing.


Benji Hughes is not for everyone, and he doesn't want to be. If you're looking for standard pop confection look elsewhere. His voice can be mournful at times, kind of in the Beck ballpark, but he can dazzle you if you love true stories and real music.

"The Mummy"

The committee, they asked me to be the one to pick the band to play the prom
I said I wanted Frankenstein
They said that Frankenstein was not a band
Could you get Dracula?
Whatever you do, don't get the mummy

Don't get the mummy, when the mummy gets drunk he unravels...

HAPPY MAYDAY!

It's Mayday, and we're celebrating International Worker's Day and the accomplishments of the labor movement--a good thing to celebrate in this season of layoffs, bankruptcies, and billion dollar bailouts. The economy looks shaky, but the weekend is here (thanks to unions) and today we're looking beyond our shores for some good music to kick it into high gear. The Cold War is over, they tell me, and since we're already trading with Vietnam and China (those commies drink a lot of Coca Cola) perhaps it's time to get off our high horse and recognize the people living on a tiny island just ninety miles off the coast of Florida. Let's celebrate Mayday with some Cuban soul. Adelante!

In the 1940s, the Buena Vista Social Club was a members only club that regularly held dances in old Havana. A half century later, musician and musicologist Ry Cooder hurdled the blockade and traveled to Cuba to meet with the surviving musicians of the legendary club, including Ibrahim Ferrer, Compay Segundo, Rubén González and Eliades Ochoa. The result was a brilliant and popular album that brought international attention to Cuban music, and a worldwide tour. Enjoy the music and humanity of this fine documentary by Wim Wenders.

I dare you to not like this music!

BEFORE THE MUSIC DIES

Do you like music?

Do you really like music, or is it just incidental background noise, the audio equivalent of wallpaper? Does music really matter? If you catch yourself singing in the shower, playing an instrument, or just tapping your feet to a tune on the radio you must watch this riveting documentary.



"Before the Music Dies" zeroes in on the current state of American music at a time when fewer and fewer companies control the music industry. Turn on the radio, and you're likely to hear bland, homogeneous Velveeta oozing from your speakers. Overproduced, pitch-corrected, unimaginative product dominates the airwaves--but down the block, just out of earshot, diverse and creative independent music plays its heart out and struggles to survive. What's the deal?

"Before the Music Dies" isn't simply an anti-corporate screed. Filmmakers Andrew Shapter and Joel Rasmussen have made a thoughtful film that asks why mainstream music seems so packaged and repetitive, and whether corporations really have the power to silence creativity. They examined all the angles, and interviewed dozens of musicians, critics, industry insiders and fans to find out. The film that will make you think--especially if you love music.

COME ON BABY IN OUR DREAMS

And if the snow buries my,
my neighborhood.
And if my parents are crying
then I'll dig a tunnel
from my window to yours...


"Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)" performed at the Lowlands Festival in the Netherlands.

Snow this morning! The neighborhood was completely covered with snow when I woke up, a surprise after the weatherman tried faking us out last night. They called off the warning, and sure enough the cold front hit--which they say will be the longest frigid stretch since the 1980s. I opened the blinds and made hot coffee and kept singing this song about digging tunnels through the snow.

Arcade Fire are perfect for a bright, wintry day. The band is from Montreal, so they know snow. Led by Texan Win Butler and Québécoise Régine Chassagne, this indie rag-tag multi-instrumental troupe powers through joyous and heartbreaking anthems guaranteed to roust the coldest, moribund soul. They bring an axe for the frozen sea within us.

Fun couple: Win Butler and Régine Chassagne

They remember that childhood wasn't all cake and ice cream, and they soar and dive and capture that midnight terror reserved for little ones still wearing feet in their jammies. In their songs, we see a world where sleep is giving in, where an older brother is bitten by a vampire, and the entire neighborhood dances to flashing police lights. It's weird stuff, sure, more art than entertainment, and not for everyone, but if you wake up snowblind and vulnerable this band will blend seamlessly with the illogic of your dreams. Listen to them work their magic.


Somethin’ filled up
my heart with nothin’,
someone told me not to cry.

But now that I’m older,
my heart’s colder,
and I can see that it’s a lie.

Children wake up!

"Wake Up" performed live at Glastonbury



People say that your dreams
are the only things that save ya.
Come on baby in our dreams,
we can live our misbehavior.

Every time you close your eyes
Lies, Lies!


"Rebellion (lies)" performed live at Coachella festival

VAMPIRE WEEKEND: SCHOOL SESSIONS

"m79"

Vampire Weekend team up with a Julliard-trained string trio to perform three songs from their self-titled debut in the room where they played their first shows: Columbia University's ADP Literary Society.


"walcott"

One of my most vivid memories is of coming back West from prep school and later from college at Christmas time. Those who went farther than Chicago would gather in the old dim Union Station at six o’clock of a December evening, with a few Chicago friends, already caught up into their own holiday gayeties, to bid them a hasty good-by. I remember the fur coats of the girls returning from Miss This-or-that’s and the chatter of frozen breath and the hands waving overhead as we caught sight of old acquaintances, and the matchings of invitations: “Are you going to the Ordways’? the Herseys’? the Schultzes’?” and the long green tickets clasped tight in our gloved hands. And last the murky yellow cars of the Chicago, Milwaukee and St. Paul railroad looking cheerful as Christmas itself on the tracks beside the gate.

When we pulled out into the winter night and the real snow, our snow, began to stretch out beside us and twinkle against the windows, and the dim lights of small Wisconsin stations moved by, a sharp wild brace came suddenly into the air. We drew in deep breaths of it as we walked back from dinner through the cold vestibules, unutterably aware of our identity with this country for one strange hour, before we melted indistinguishably into it again.

F. Scott Fitzgerald

SOME RIGHTEOUS BROTHERS

The Righteous Brothers perform their smash hit "You've Lost that Loving Feeling."

Brother acts have been around since Cain and Abel. The Jonas Brothers, the Everly Brothers, the Stanley Brothers*, the Louvin Brothers, the Statler Brothers, the Ames Brothers, the Blues Brothers, the James Gang--not to mention the countless Baldwin brothers, each a dimmer version then the last.

*81-year old legend Ralph Stanley (pictured here) just endorsed Barack Obama for president. Good for him. Stanley and his brother, Carter, formed the Stanley Brothers and their Clinch Mountain Boys way back in 1946, and helped create "bluegrass" music. Story HERE.

My favorite brother act has always been the Karamazov Brothers. The Flying Karamazov Brothers, that is.

Only loosely based on their literary counterparts, these master jugglers have seen worldwide success Fyodor Dostoevsky could only dream of. Here, they perform in Bologna, Italy.



The Flying Karamazov website is HERE.

WILD IN THE STREETS!

This election year, it's worth taking a look at campaigns of the past. In 1968, Max Frost and the Troopers led a revolution of young people who challenged the status quo and eventually took over the country. LSD was put in the water supply, hip kids wore crushed velvet bell-bottoms, and people over thirty (!) were taken off to camps.

Talk about California Uber Alles! (Somebody call Jello).

Yup, it was a cautionary tale, and a "youth-sploitation" movie, but we kids thought it was pretty cool, and the song was great. Years later, The Ramones covered it, but here you have Max Frost himself performing the original, the rallying cry, "The Shape of Things to Come."

SOMETHING SPECIAL

SHEA STADIUM, 1965. The Beatles flew into New York City on August 13th, 1965 to begin a tour of the United States. On August 14th they rehearsed and recorded a live tape at CBS studios to be shown on the Ed Sullivan Show later that evening. Throughout the city, the excitement was palpable. The Beatles were in town! The following day, August 15th, they officially opened the US tour with a concert at Shea Stadium, home of the New York Mets.

This was an amazing show. The boys were in top form. The fans screamed and fainted and were carried away by New York's Finest. This was the first time in the history of pop music that a stadium was used for a rock concert! 55,600 adoring fans witnessed rock history. The take at the box office was a record $304,000 -- of which the Beatles took a whopping $160, 000!


Happy Birthday, Bekki!

SOUL FOOD FOR THE SOUL

Etta James, Chaka Khan and Gladys Night, with B.B. King on guitar, performing "Ain't Nobody's Business." It doesn't get any better than this.

You've seen those books, "Chicken Soup for the Soul"?

This is "Soul Food for the Soul." Listening to this is good for you. In a world gone bland, this is spicy, down home, and real. Skip the lunchables. This is chitlins and ham hocks, fried chicken, corn bread, collard greens, and a big fat slice of sweet potato pie. Enjoy!


soul food for your soul

NEIL YOUNG'S ELECTRIC LINCOLN

Old dogs and new tricks: Neil Young looks over his 1959 Lincoln Continental that has been converted from an inefficient fuel guzzler to a hybrid electric that can potentially get over 100 miles per gallon.
Johnathan Goodwin works on the motor that powers Neil's Lincoln. The two are cooperating on a project to make a car that has no emissions and requires no roadside stops. Why don't we all have electric hyrbid cars? For one thing, we don't have Neil Young's money to spend. More importantly, the automobile and oil lobbies have tried to squash the hybrid. For a great documentary that will get your blood boiling, rent "Who Killed the Electric Car?"

BLUES IMPROVISATION FROM JIMI

A message of peace and love from Mr. James Hendrix. After Expatbrian mentioned so many great sixties heroes passing in his comments (all coincidentally with names starting with the letter "J") I had to play some Jimi, and this bluesy exploration from the historic Woodstock performance fits the bill. Imagine plenty of mud, and people for miles on Max Yasgur's farm. The New York State Thruway is closed. It's 1969, and you leave Nixon and Vietnam and the Moon Landing behind for "three days of peace and music." It doesn't get any better than this blues improvisation from Jimi Hendrix.

"With the power of soul anything is possible."

SURF'S UP!

Brian Wilson, leader of the Beach Boys, in a 1966 rehearsal of "Surf's Up" from the aborted "Smile." album. The album was put on hold for decades, as the troubled songwriter battled mental illness, combined with drugs, and lived as a recluse.

"Smile" was intended to be a follow-up to the brilliant "Pet Sounds" but Wilson didn't finally piece it together until 2004, 37 years after its inception. During the break, the album became a mythical to fans, the great lost album, the teenage symphony to God. Pieces emerged, in truncated form, on "Smiley Smile" (a bunt instead of a slam) which included the huge hit "Good Vibrations," and various bootlegs circulated with a reconstructed "Smile." Finally, in 2004, "Smile" received an official release (with new takes) was issued. After decades away, Brian returned from the past like Rip van Wilson, a little shaky, but finally facing the music.


In 1976, SNL stars Belushi and Ackyrod take Brian Wilson surfing.


The Beach Boys on "Ready, Steady, Go!" in 1964.

TOM WAITS FOR NO ONE

His Master's Voice


Tom Waits just announced plans to hit the road this summer for the Glitter and Doom Tour. Click HERE for more information and tour dates. Here he performs "All The World is Green" on David Letterman, and sticks around to chat.

KID CHARLEMAGNE

A strange band, without an obvious niche, named after a sex toy in a William Burroughs novel -- who would think they'd make it big? At first glance jazzy, with decidedly weird lyrics, backed by a crack team of studio musicians, that's Steely Dan. Here they tell the tale of a certain infamous outlaw chemist of the 1960s, loosely based on reality (as were many things back then), one Augustus Owsley Stanley, III, otherwise known simply as Owsley.


For a 2007 interview with Owsley, click here.

NOW APPEARING IN THE VELVEETA LOUNGE

This is bad. Very bad.

Wayne Newton, looking like the perennial ex-husband, slides through a cheesy Vegas version of the most pretentious, overwrought song in human history, MacArthur Park. This sweaty lounge lizard bears his soul like a bowl of queso fundido, but alas some songs are impossible to sing. These lyrics could kill a man.

MacArthur Park is melting in the dark
All the sweet, green icing flowing down...
Someone left the cake out in the rain
I don't think that I can take it
'cause it took so long to bake it
And I'll never have that recipe again
Oh, noooooooooooooooooo!

RADIO FREE EUROPE

The national television debut of a very young REM, when they were still a squirrelly little outfit from Athens, Georgia, known for an EP, and a great first album, "Murmur." That still is one of my favorites. Here they jump like snakes on a griddle. Yes, everyone had more hair back then. This was twenty five years ago, after all. What did your hair look like in 1983?