Go Ahead, Trust the Humans

At least for music recommendations....

Whenever you find yourself undercharmed by the listening recommendations of bots and algorithms, remember this ridiculously obvious hack: Trust the humans. Trust the humans who are around music, soaking up music, all the time.

That would include people working in record stores.

Some are crate diggers-slash-snobs. Some are listeners who enjoy crafting empassioned Staff Recommendation paragraphs. Dismiss these bits of text as catalog copy if you must; they’re also a micro-artform, words about music assembled with the goal of sparking curiosity, opening minds.

This type of curation works equally well in real life (imagine that!) and online, via the websites of retail shops. The other day I gave myself a timed challenge: Spend 1 hour looking for music “curation” (sorry!) on retail sites, to find 4 albums that might be of interest to Echo Locator readers. Highly recommended exercise! Results below.

I gamed the system by starting at Dusty Groove, the Chicago shrine to music exploration. Its site is loaded with crisp mini-essays about long-neglected records and new releases. These often mention standout tracks, and are written with great precise descriptions – with minimal critic jargon.

Right away I found a compilation from another Chicago institution, the Numero Group label, of singles from gospel singers and ensembles who brought their sounds to church halls and community centers around Cleveland Ohio. Great Lakes Gospel opens with Juanita Ellis repurposing elements of Bobby Hebb’s hit “Sunny” for the fiery “Make a Joyful Noise.” Almost everything here is galvanizing; to appreciate the deep ties between traditional gospel and the blues, check the tamborine-kissed “What You Need” by a group called Gospel Ensemble.

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Following lots of record stores on social media, I’ve come to appreciate the power of photography – specifically, people holding up vinyl records in stores. A store on the outskirts of Philadelphia, Vinyl Chickie, has made this a thing; its feed shows customers clutching new purchases, and owner Lisa Schaffer holding up new arrival highlights. Not much text needed! The other day the featured album was Blind Owl Wilson, a compilation of the originals that guitarist Alan Wilson contributed to the blues-rock band Canned Heat.

It could be called The Gentle Side of Canned Heat. Where the band specialized in the hot, hard-grooving Delta blues captured on the classic Hooker ‘n Heat, Wilson kept the pulse – then sought out more tenderness in the melodies and vulnerability in the themese. His fragile falsetto vocals transformed blues tropes into disarming confessionals, several of them becoming unlikely (and much beloved) hits for his band. (See “Going Up the Country” and the steady shuffle “On the Road Again.”)

(Fun underknown fact about the enigmatic Wilson: Dick Waterman, Son House’s manager, credited Wilson with being the catalyst for the bluesman’s rediscovery. “Al Wilson taught Son House how to play Son House…..All of Son’s successful concert appearances, recordings and him being remembered as having a great second career—all that was because of Al rejuvenating his music.”)

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At Grimey’s in Nashville, the first New Release that caught my eye was an album cover using the block-style font of countless tour posters. It’s called She’s Gone: The Complete Works LP, and it celebrates the work of a band The Hamilton Movement that was active around Indianapolis in the 1970s. This band had its own sound, a blend of locked-down funk backbeats and plush soul call-and-response vocals that should have been the foundation for an extended career.

It wasn’t. The band’s manager, Dick Melvin, co-wrote and co-arranged the band’s music, and was responsible for releasing its recordings. Among the gems: the tightly wound funk vamp “Love Circuit” and a stone-cold classic of heartbroken soul, “She’s Gone.” That 1976 track has experienced something of a second life thanks to crate-diggers; in June, the reissue label Now-Again Records gathered it with assorted other singles and remixes from Melvin’s archive, and proclaimed it “The Indianapolis soul album that should have been.”

That line snared me. Later I discovered that Grimey’s reused it from the label copy – what seemed like staff advocacy turned out to be plain old marketing. Sigh.

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There’s so much positive music culture going on in London right now, and the online shop of Phonica Records has put me in touch with loads of it. On this sweep, there was a short squib about a new release from the Tokyo based Kiyotaka Fukagawa, who records as Calm. His zone could be glibly summed up as “ambient” music, but that’s not entirely accurate: He cultivates a cool textural placidity that seems perpetually on the edge of being disturbed – by a feathery little flute-like synthesizer lead.

Here’s a bit from Phonica’s squib about the latest from Calm, which is titled Ambient Jazz: “Calm sets in again to moll the nerves here, serving a full plate of smooth new age and sonic draperies, recalling the night time jazz chasms of Jon Hassell especially.” Ambient Jazz isn’t really “ambient” or “jazz,” but like Hassell’s ever-unfolding soundscapes, it’s deeply entrancing no matter where it’s filed in the store. Highly recommended.