Are you ready to do the Dap Dip? This week, the Discord & Rhyme Super Soul Revue travels back to 2005 to discuss Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, who play sunny R&B that sounds like it came straight out of the late ‘60s or early ‘70s. But despite the retro sound, there’s nothing retro about this band, who were just playing the music they loved and recording it the way they loved it. And Sharon Jones herself was the real deal, a classic diva who was born in the South literally across the state line from James Brown. The world lost Sharon Jones to cancer in 2016, but her voice lives on in the Dap-Kings’ catalog, which includes six wonderful studio albums and innumerable covers recorded for hire. So put a fish in your dish and join Rich, Mike, and Dan to talk about an album that will make you fall in love with soul all over again.
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It's only talk! This week, Mike rounds out our fifth-anniversary triad of King Crimson discussions with some dialogue, duologue, diatribe, dissension, and declamation about the band's 1981 album Discipline. On this album, bassist Tony Levin and guitarist and vocalist Adrian Belew joined Crimson veterans Robert Fripp and Bill Bruford to produce some of the most complicated music in the Crimson oeuvre, with every musician devoted to making their instrument produce sounds you’ve never heard. But paradoxically, it's also one of their catchiest albums, dabbling in new wave and world beat in the same musical sphere as Talking Heads, who were part of the same New York scene as Fripp in the late ‘70s. Discipline may sound like a sharp, disorienting left turn for King Crimson on first listen, but the album did a lot to cement the band’s music as a living document to be iterated upon. Join us as we break it down, frame by frame!
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Part two of the Discord & Rhyme celebration of King Crimson brings us to the 1974 album Red, the band’s final studio(-ish) album before it disbanded for 7 years. John’s history with King Crimson began with this album, and while he didn’t initially like it, it’s long become his favorite King Crimson album, and the ‘72-’74 King Crimson lineup especially has long become one of his favorite bands. This episode examines how everything in King Crimson’s turbulent history to this point made this album possible, and how the band’s refusal to get pigeonholed as “progressive rock” allowed it to create some of the heaviest, most powerful, and most awe-inspiring music ever made under the general umbrella of “rock” music. Also, “Starless” might be the best song ever recorded, and we're happy to tell you why.
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As frequently as we mention King Crimson on this podcast, you’d think we would have done a proper episode on them by now. But we wanted to hold off until we could really do it up right, so this is the premiere of our three-episode series on the greatest pioneers of progressive rock. They didn’t fully invent prog, but they did more to solidify the genre than any group that had come before them, to the point where each song on their debut album spawned a different prog subgenre - so, while this isn’t the first prog album, it might be the most important. Time to get started on this journey, because the cracked brass bells have rung to summon back all us fire witches to discuss The Court of the Crimson King.
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It’s time to follow the Moody Blues into the 1980s. After a long hiatus and a disappointing comeback album, the Moodies reconvened with a new keyboard player and a new producer to start a new decade in their long career. Music production styles had changed quite a lot since their classic period in the ‘60s and ‘70s, and the new personnel came with a new aesthetic that sounds quite different from the Moody Blues music we’re all used to. However, if you can forgive Patrick Moraz for not being Mike Pinder, and Pip Williams for not being Tony Clarke, and the ‘80s for not being the ‘70s, you’ll find that there is some fantastic music to be found on Long Distance Voyager. And there is also “Veteran Cosmic Rocker.”
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By the time he recorded his third solo album, After the Gold Rush, Neil Young had already been part of successful records by the Buffalo Springfield and Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, and his second album had hit the top 40. As great as that music had been, though, Neil hadn't yet reached his peak - at least according to Ben. Ben explains why After the Gold Rush is a high point in a career full of high points, and why the album and its singer have meant so much to him since he was a teenager. Rich, Phil, and John also weigh in and discuss their varying - but generally substantial - levels of Neil Young fandom.
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Phil Ochs, perhaps more than anybody else in the 1960s Greenwich Village folk scene, believed that he could end the Vietnam War and change the world through his music. He offered deeply critical insight both of mainstream society and of the folk scene itself, calling out hypocrisy where he saw it and asking his listeners to consider questions and issues without easy solutions. He did this through a combination of exceptional songwriting gifts and a blazing intensity, but this intensity also limited his ability to appeal to a wide audience, and he largely faded into obscurity after his untimely 1976 death. In this episode, John leads a discussion on the 1966 live(ish) album In Concert, which he has loved for nearly 20 years, and the tenor of the discussion ranges from serious to silly in a way that mirrors the album itself. Join John, Ben, Phil, and Amanda as they cover an essential album from one of the most complicated figures ever to pick up an acoustic guitar and declare his truth.
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Crosby, Stills & Nash weren’t the first so-called “supergroup,” but they may have been the first to eclipse the fame of each of the bands the members came from. David Crosby (hailing from the Byrds), Stephen Stills (hailing from Buffalo Springfield), and Graham Nash (hailing from the Hollies) came together to create a group that was completely unique. While the group would become more famous with the addition of Neil Young for 1970’s Deja Vu, their 1969 self-titled LP remains the group’s masterpiece. Phil, who has a lifelong love of the works of Crosby, Stills, and Nash, is joined by Amanda and Ben to discuss just what makes their 1969 debut LP such an enduring masterpiece.
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Everyone knows by now that Joni Mitchell is one of the most profoundly gifted and driven musicians of the 20th century, and it’s long past time we came back to her here on Discord & Rhyme. Court and Spark is Amanda’s favorite Joni album, and it marks the sweet spot where Mitchell balanced her desire to push boundaries with the need for accessibility. The result is a set of brilliant songs that sound simple enough on the surface, but are secretly full of strange and interesting details. We spent a very happy couple of hours analyzing her brilliant lyrics, deciphering the weird and complicated musical arrangements, and marveling at Joni Mitchell’s genius.
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This week, Discord & Rhyme heads back to Ohio for a discussion of Pere Ubu’s 1978 debut The Modern Dance. Rising from the ashes of the short-lived proto-punk pioneers Rocket from the Tombs, David Thomas and company emerged with a fiery set of songs fusing art and punk with an intensity that the band would never quite match again, even as their music would become even stranger and more challenging. Join Dan, Mike, and Rich for this sentimental journey of rusty Chuck Berry riffs, art-rock detours, and creepy soundscapes.
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