Fair Game music segment selections
By WILL SPITZ | November 6, 2007
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings |
My latest downloadable radio-show obsession — are we really still calling these “podcasts”? — is Fair Game from PRI with Faith Salie, an hour-long “satirical news and entertainment program” distributed four days a week by Public Radio International, the same folks who brought me my first true podcast love, This American Life. Each show features a music segment — usually a live in-the-studio performance and interview. Fair Game’s Web site, www.morefairgame.org, offers downloadable 64 kbps MP3s of the recent music segments in their entirety and higher-quality MP3s of individual songs; older segments are available as streaming MP3s. The selection of bands is varied. Here are some highlights.
Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, “Keep On Looking”
Big-voiced Jones and her shit-hot soul/funk octet the Dap-Kings (who play a sold-out show downstairs at the Middle East Friday) almost capture the freneticism of their live show — not an easy thing to do in the clinical confines of a radio studio. The mix isn’t great — I’d like to hear more of Homer Steinweiss’s drums — but it’s impressive for a radio recording.
St. Vincent, “Human Racing”
Annie Clark, who’s played guitar with Sufjan Stevens and goes by St. Vincent in solo mode, is an absolute beast on the six-string and a pitch-perfect singer to boot. If I hadn’t seen her live, I’d say there’s no way she’d be able to play those complex jazzy guitar parts while simultaneously singing this song from her St. Vincent debut, Marry Me.
Grizzly Bear, “Knife”
GB strip one of the best songs from their excellent 2006 album Yellow House down to just multi-part vocals and reverby rhythm guitar — gorgeous.
Peter Bjorn and John, “Let’s Call It Off”
Acoustic guitar and piano sub for electric guitar and bass, and being the near-perfect construction that it is, the song holds up. The performance, along with Grizzly Bear’s “Knife,” offers a fresh perspective on a familiar song — the best thing about recordings like this.
Related:
Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings | I Learned The Hard Way, Revival Meeting, Spring clearance, More 
- Sharon Jones and The Dap-Kings | I Learned The Hard Way
Just to prove how serious they are about their commitment to retro soul, Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings recorded I Learned the Hard Way using an eight-track Ampex tape machine, the kind their heroes and heroines in Memphis and Muscle Shoals might have employed back in the day.
- Revival Meeting
You can bet Amy Winehouse didn’t sweat like this.
- Spring clearance
I've seen the best music snobs of my generation destroyed by downloading — instead of savoring full albums the way one might enjoy a vintage claret, they're slamming down random shots of bands with stupid names, passing out, and blanking on what they heard the night before.
- Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings
You can’t really call Sharon Jones a retro soulster.
- Lee Fields and the Expressions | My World
It's hard to dislike Lee Fields. He's an almost archetypal jobbing soul singer in the shouter/grunter/talker/improviser tradition of Otis Redding and James Brown, and he's currently undergoing something of a revival as a Sharon Jones collaborator and featured vocalist for Eurohouse hits.
- O RLY? YA RLY
“It smells like a middle-school dance,” said username andysad at the LemmingTrail message-board holiday party at Great Scott last Friday.
- Going on sale: October 3, 2008
Low vs Diamond, MC Frontalot, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, and more
- Summer treats
From Andean to zydeco, pick your flavor and there's a summer music festival ready to serve it up.
- Slideshow: 20 things you should do this spring
What you're doing for the next three months
- Winning losers
Every last one of you who votes in our Best Music Poll is a treasure; but blessed are those who write-in.
- More than human
It’s hard to talk about Janelle Monáe when your jaw’s fallen off.
- Less
Topics:
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, Peter Bjorn and John, Annie Clark, Sufjan Stevens, More
, Peter Bjorn and John, Annie Clark, Sufjan Stevens, Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings, Sharon Jones, Public Radio International, Less
