The editorial offices are almost back to “normal” here at Racing to the Red Light. Sorry for the hiatus. We’re attempting to once again face our addiction to Flaming Hot Cheetos Con Limon and Diet Hansons Root Beer, and we’re doing well of it so far, day to day.
We’ve been listening to some new-to-us music lately, so here’s our first post-hiatus music post. Behold, Grouplove:
We’re finally back, after our three-month booze-and-drugs bender, er, “sabbatical”. Just kidding.
The Racing to the Red Light’s Album of the Year 2013 award goes to Howlin by Jagwar Ma
You can grab it on Amazon here.
A very, very close Second Place (in our admittedly biased opinion) goes to The Naked And Famous’ second album In Rolling Waves, here at Amazon. So many amazing tracks!
This is CLASSIXX featuring Nancy Whang of LCD Soundsystem fame. Consider it to be Racing to the Red Light-approved beats.
* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EGvviA69ieI
Undoubtedly, Regulate… G Funk Era was one of the finest hip hop albums ever released. Top 5, for sure, in the opinion of the senior editorial staff of Racing to the Red Light.
Released in 1994, it contained an entire album of solid tracks, including standouts “Regulate“, “This DJ” and “Do You See“.
Here’s Regulate:
Here’s a clip of Brian Williams “singing” the same song, as produced by Jimmy Fallon and crew:
The area code 213 is referenced repeatedly in the songs on this album. For our readers hailing from outside of Southern California, here’s a little bit of 213 history as described by Wiki:
The area code historically has been associated with Southern California and Los Angeles. Area code 213 is referenced in Warren G and Nate Dogg’s song “Regulate”, Dr. Dre’s “Still D.R.E.”, the Electric Six song “I’m the Bomb,” and the Notorious B.I.G.’s song “Going Back to Cali.”
213 was the O.G. Los Angeles telephone area code, as introduced in 1947, when 213 represented all of Southern California from the Central Coast down to Mexico. Over subsequent years, it was broken down into an ever-smaller geographic area around downtown Los Angeles (from Wikipedia):
So Warren G, Nate Dogg and Snoop were all living squarely within “the 213” when the album Regulate… G Funk Era was released. Today, Long Beach is area code 562.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W5ffHd7O3yQ
Many thanks to our crack South Bay Bureau Chief for sending this one in.
There is a great track on the Making Mirrors album from Gotye called State of the Art.
Musically, these are a lot of samples and sounds from different instruments and sources. His voice is processed through some kind of eerie effect that gives it a quality that is not completely unlike the voices on the other end of the phone in those ransom call scenes in movies.
The video is quite clever – I love the animation style and the story it tells:
The central subject in the song and video is an electronic organ called the Lowrey Cotillion Model D-575. I had to read the lyrics and then look up the Cotillion in order to decipher the song’s meaning.
I found a great article on a British music website that had interviewed Wally (Gotye) about this song. Here’s what he had to say on the subject:
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My favorite piece of kit amongst this long list is easily the Lowrey Cotillion organ. My parents bought it for me from a Salvation Army second-hand store for $100 in 2009. It was released in 1981 and I’ve been told that it retailed for around $15,000 at that time! I had always loved playing with the various electronic organs hiding in dark corners of studios I’d visited over the years, but I found they had a lot of similar functions, effects and sounds (endless electronic flutes!). It was a joy to discover that my folks had chanced upon a fully-functioning organ that also happened to be a brilliant and idiosyncratic synthesizer. I instantly fell in love with the Cotillion’s sounds- there are a bunch of quite peculiar ones, but also a host of really vibey patches that, despite the D-575 being a digital model, have an analogue grit to them which I find really appealing.
I got so into the sounds on this organ that I wrote a song not just to showcase them, but also a self-reflexive lyric that mused on how fascinated I was with their peculiar sonic qualities. The song, ‘State of the Art’, is one of my faves on my recent record, and it features a whole bunch of Cotillion sounds.
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Part of the lyrics talk about “throwing out the TV” when they bought the Cotillion, and about staying home rather than going out in order to have fun playing the organ.
This is quite a contrast to a story that the NY Times ran recently about how so many older pianos are now being hauled off to the dump rather than being donated and/or fixed up – especially since new pianos of similar quality, made in China, can now be purchased cheaply.
It was not that long ago, as the NY Times article points out, that practically every middle class household had a piano for entertainment. If you liked music – and who doesn’t? – you had relatively few choices in terms of enjoying music inside your home. You had the radio, the phonograph, and live music.
It’s sad that we’ve moved away from learning to play music. These days it is becoming more rare for the average person to be trained in at least one musical instrument.
The other kind of cool part of these contrasting articles is the robustness of the D575. Granted, Gotye thinks that his was produced in 1981, but still, it has evidently held up pretty well. It seems like a shame that so many things these days are not built with quality, built to last. Everything feels disposable, from modern cars to pianos.
Thankfully, Wally’s parents recognized the Cotillion for the treasure that it is at the Salvation Army, and put it to good use on his album.
HOLY SMOKES!
The following BOMBSHELL announcement from your friends here at RttRL is brought to you by a Google search on our blog’s name.
An Austin-based musician named James McMurtry has a song named … Racing to the Red Light!
I’m not a huge country music fan, but I like it!
Please listen to James’s music, and buy his stuff! 🙂
