Abner Jay was a classic ragtime song-and-dance man, learning his trade with Silas Green's Minstrels in the 1930's and WMAZ Minstrels in Macon during the 40's and 18's. Lap dissolve to the late 60's, and Abner Jay had transformed himself into a one-man-band and traveling nostalgia revue, issuing a series of private press LPs that now trade hands for ridiculously high prices. Sweden's Subliminal Sounds recently released this compilation, collecting material from three of Jay's best albums.
Jay billed himself as America's Last Minstrel Show, and he played an energetic combo of finger-picked banjo and harmonica, working the bass drum with a foot pedal. He introduced each song with bad puns and raunchy jokes, his deep Southern drawl a deliberate caricature of old-time Uncle Tom minstrelsy. It would be tempting to dismiss Abner Jay as a politically-incorrect anachronism, were it not for the obvious talent and intelligence with which he approaches his racially-charged material. By fearlessly accentuating the house Negro stereotypes that defined and imprisoned black performers in the post-Civil War South, Abner Jay is able to transcend them, exorcising the pain of his ancestry.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the heart-breaking song "I'm So Depressed," a track so beautiful and haunting that it floored me upon first listen. Beginning as a traditional-sounding blues lament, Jay's voice suddenly shifts into a high lonesome wail, choking back tears and belting out a series of deeply felt emotional cries that express an ancient sadness. "I was born during the hard depression days...My folks were sharecroppers/We had nothing, we had nothing, we had nothing/But grasshoppers/Looking back over my life/O lord, I'm so depressed."
On "Swaunee," Jay talks at length about his beloved Southern river, it's legacy and importance. Jay's narration is layered over an atmospheric instrumental track punctuated by the chorus of the traditional song, treated to sound like an old 78. Because of my penchant for outsider music, I have heard hundreds of hyped reissues of vanity pressings and much-vaunted musical oddities. Rarely have I heard anything as impressive as Abner Jay's evocative, recollective race-folk. One Man Band is currently the only widely available edition of his music, making it absolutely essential.
The glam rock era was the first time that popular music openly acknowledged its own superficial tendencies. The first time that the extravagance, glitter and condescension attendant to the rock n' roll lifestyle became an aesthetic badge of honor. Glam, through its emphasis on the primacy of make-up, wardrobe and snarling supercilious attitude, was pop music's first postmodern movement, containing both the substance of rock n' roll, and the commentary on the same. As such, it created a fleeting moment in history where anyone with the right combination of style, poise and bearing could become an overnight sensation, and often just as quickly fade into obsolescence.
Joining Ju-Jikan: Ten Hours Of Sound From Japan and Variable Resistance: Ten Hours of Sound From Australia, 33 RPM is the companion disc to the newest installment in an ongoing sound art exhibition series at SFMOMA. "Ten Hours" is part of the exhibition title and does not refer to the amount of music on this disc, which is a full length, non-mp3 sampler of different artists from the show. Like its predecessors, 33 RPM (thankfully) does not attempt a survey of its particular country's experimental music history, instead focusing largely on newer artists with a few older luminaries included for comparison and continuity.
The most recent in an avalanche of new music taking a crack at resurrecting the dreamy, shoegazer pop of bands like My Bloody Valentine, Slowdive and Ride, Pluramon's Dreams Top Rock only distinguishes itself from the rest of the pack by not being quite as predictable. It helps that Marcus Schmickler has recruited Julee Cruise—the serene, childlike chanteuse of so many David Lynch soundtracks—to contribute vocals to the album. Julee's last album, the dreadful The Art of Being a Girl, was such a wasted opportunity that it's a pleasure to hear her placed in the hands of a producer who can wield her peculiar vocal talents properly.