Musical mishmash

2008 brought out a wide range of the odd, eerie and sublime in music, and delivered well-earned respect to some artists with Arkansas connections

Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis, Two Men With The Blues
Willie Nelson and Wynton Marsalis, Two Men With The Blues

— This past year in music was as unruly as ever. Maybe the greatest testament to the current state of sprawl in music is the difference in the lists and comments on the year from the Democrat-Gazette writers. Arkansas opera to Lil Wayne rap - our tastes range far and wide.

AN UNRULY TOP 10

1. Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes, Sub Pop - The Fleet Foxes debut isn't my favorite of the year (that would be Hayes Carll's album mentioned below), but it's one that comes across like an oldfashioned album - stranger still since it was made by bearded twenty-somethings. Fleet Foxes carves out its own space and makes a great argument for its astonishingly beautiful, harmony-laced hymns.

2. Hayes Carll, Trouble in Mind, Lost Highway - Carll, a fellow Hendrix alumnus, made a Texas singer-songwriter album that was smarter and funnier than anything else this year. Also, do yourself a favor and find the videos on YouTube that capture Carll's sardonic stage patter.

3. Max Recordings - The boutique Little Rock label rolls on. Notable releases by Isaac Alexander, Jason Morphew and the indefatigable Boondogs prove Max still has a golden ear.

4. Death Cab for Cutie, "Cath..." - I never connected with this much-loved wimp-rock band until this buzzy take on an unhappy bride hit my headphones.

5. Jamey Johnson, That Lonesome Song, Mercury

6. Reviews of Guns 'N Roses Chinese Democracy - I'd go with Rob Harvilla's at the Village Voice followed closely by Chuck Klosterman's at The Onion's AV Club.

7. Hector Faceplant, "Thermometer" - Little Rock band stops noodling with phone machines long enough to hit melodic jackpot.

8. The Watson Twins, Fire Songs,

Vanguard

9. Tyler Ramsey, A Long Dream About Swimming Across the Sea, Echo Mountain

10. Lady Antebellum, "Looking for a Good Time" - Mindless country-rock shout-along that simply won't leave my cranium.

- Werner Trieschmann

Heavy metal's Motorhead released its 24th album, Motorizer, but even more significantly, iconic frontman Lemmy Kilmister was immortalized with his own action figure (Locoape, $19.95). The 6-inchtall figure is detailed down to Kilmister's famous muttonchops, "Ace of Spades" tattoo and Rickenbacker bass. How accurate is the rendition? Let's just say it's Lemmy, warts and all. Fans should find it heartening that this 62-year-old godfather of metal and the band he founded 30 years ago continue to produce new music and tour almost continuously. Next up - Lemmy the Movie, set for a 2009 release.

- Rhonda Owen

Maybe they blew up on the blogs two years ago, but I have a life and don't wear skinny jeans (usually) so it took a random iTunes purchase last spring to introduce me to Vampire Weekend, one of the most innovative bands I've heard in a long time. The band's postmodern style merges Afrocentric rhythms with new-wave guitars and Ivy League allusions. It's something an art-school kid and a sorority girl can both appreciate. The band's self-titled debut is the best album of the year.

- Kody Ford

A FEW MUSIC-RELATED THINGS I WANTED TO WRITE ABOUT IN

2008 BUT DIDN'T GET TO

UNTIL NOW

1. The Baseball Project,

Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails, Yep Roc - A no-brainer for the baseball geek/jangly college rock cohort. Scott McCaughey, the unofficial fifth member of R.E.M. as well as the driving force behind The Minus Five and Young Fresh Fellows, and Dream Syndicate's Steve Wynn started writing literate, detailed songs about oldtime baseball players like Curt Flood, Big Ed Delahanty, Ted Williams and Willie Mays in 1992. Last year they recruited R.E.M.'s Peter Buck to play bass and Linda Pitmon to play drums on this alternately wistful and sardonic album.

2. Apple's Genius App for iTunes - Nick Hornby would not approve but I've fallen in love with this new iTunes feature that produces instant mixtapes of your music by scanning your iTunes library and playlists to come up with a new playlist based on a track you select.

3. Seagate Go Drive for Mac

- While I'm hanging on to my CDs (for now), I've got the majority of my music collection stored on a 320-gigabyte hard drive that measures 0.69 inches high by 3.15 inches wide by 5.4 inches long and weighs less than 8 ounces. It goes everywhere my laptop goes. It lists for $169 and is compatible with USB 2.0, FireWire and FireWire 800 connections.

4. "Santa Claus, Go Straight to the Ghetto" - James Brown's socially conscious 1968 single may be the funkiest Christmas song ever recorded. Let others be nostalgic for the stop-motion Christmas specials of the 1960s; I miss JB.

5. Bruce Springsteen, "Dream Baby Dream" - Springsteen took to closing stops on his 2005 Devils & Dust solo acoustic tour with this song by synth-pop pioneers Suicide. His pump-organ-driven version has lately turned up on YouTube and on a new EP issued by the Blast First Petite label.

6. Danny-Joe Crofford, "You Shook Me All Night Long" at KABZ, 103.7-FM's Christmas Karaoke - Rock 'n' roll is a democratic form best committed by inspired amateurs with spirit than by smoothly professional talents, and Crofford's uninhibited romp through this song at an annual charity event was as inspiring as it was entertaining. Crofford proved Lester Bangs' theory that anyone could be a rock star given the proper attitude.

7. Five 2008 albums I love:

Lucinda Williams, Little Honey (Lost Highway); TV on the Radio, Dear Science (DGC/Interscope); Silver Jews, Lookout Mountain, Lookout Sea

(Drag City); Vampire Weekend, Vampire Weekend (XL Recordings); and Pete and the Pirates, Little Death (Stolen Recordings).

- Philip Martin On Nov. 8, central Arkansas singer/songwriter Shannon Boshears put on what was probably the best CD-release party of 2008 at Cajun's Wharf in Little Rock. Heralding the debut of her second CD, Black Mascara, boa-bedecked celebrants danced and hollered appreciation as Boshears and her band played one rollickin' blues-rock-gospel song after another. Partygoers were also treated to appearances by well-known Arkansas musicians such as Jed Clampit, Gil Franklin, Mark Sallings and Greg Spradlin.

- Rhonda Owen

ARKANSAS' CLASSICAL YEAR

Top Arkansas classicalmusic headline of 2008 was the April announcement that Arkansas Symphony Music Director David Itkin will be leaving after the 2009-10 season.

Itkin will continue to be on the podium through the 2008-09 season and will be involved in putting together the programming and soloists for the 2009-10 season, which will be a tryout year for candidates for his replacement.

Meanwhile, folks who expected that the orchestra's assistant conductor, Israel Getzov, to take up the slack during the transition may have been surprised at the July news that Getzov was out and that the orchestra had hired Geoffrey Robson for the new job of associate conductor. Getzov will stay in the area, holding onto his job as music director of the Conway Symphony.

Getzov was on the podium for the world premiere of Lori Laitman's opera The Scarlet Letter in November at the University of Central Arkansas. Critical acclaim focused on the music and performances (including soprano Christine Donahue as Hester Prynne) and on the acoustical limitations of UCA's Reynolds Performance Hall, which made it difficult to hear the singers.

Speaking of world premieres, the Arkansas Chamber Singers premiered Christmas Dances by Stephen Paulus in their recent concert pairing called "Tomorrow Will Be My Dancing Day," a work the group commissioned to mark its 30th anniversary.

And speaking of opera, as

Wildwood Park for the Arts

changed course, dropping opera from its immediate list of priorities, other opera options cropped up, including productions by the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Opera Theatre (Johann Strauss II's Die Fledermaus and Ottorino Respighi's Sleeping Beauty) and an increase in the number of Metropolitan Opera productions showing up in high definition on movie screens.

The Fayetteville-based

North Arkansas Symphony

more or less completely collapsed this spring as donations dried up. No word on a potential rebirth. The Fort Smith Symphony stepped into the breach, programming some concerts at Fayetteville's Walton Arts Center.

Pianist Simone Dinnerstein, who has been enjoying an almost meteoric rise following the 2007 release on Telarc Records of her performance of J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations, played the piece at Hot Springs' Arlington Hotel in January.

- Eric E. Harrison

THINGS THAT HAVE TO STOP!

Auto-Tune. Go Google Roger Troutman, Zapp and then Teddy Riley. Then stop using the device for every other song.

Ringtone Rap. I'm not knocking your hustle - if you lack all originality, talent and skill and don't mind being a footnote in hip-hop's history, then by all means continue churning out that awful assemblyline, wacker than wack, builtin dance routine "music" that has strangled hip-hop's true essence to near-death.

"Swag." Short for swagger. "Swag" is a far-reaching plague that has come to mean that if you walk around with an air of supreme confidence it will make up for your lack of real talent. Wrong.

Tight jeans. This isn't just a hip-hop issue. It's a health issue. Seriously fellas, ask your doctors.

- Anthony McPeace

10 EXPLORATIONS

1. Norma Winstone, Distances, ECM - Brit singer Winstone, pianist Glauco Venier and bass clarinet/soprano sax player Klaus Gesing explore distances - emotional, psychological, physical - in a mostly low-key chamber music/jazz setting, embodying these distances as Sinatra embodied loneliness on Only the Lonely.

Style, Pages 57, 58, 60 on 12/21/2008

Upcoming Events