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bradluen

@bradluen.bsky.social

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 11d

Hilda Tloubatla and Pulp are indestructible, Maria Muldaur and Sabrina Carpenter have more comfort with dick jokes than [REDACTED], Djrum and Barker digest club music for those of us who don't get out much, plus jazz, B-pop, and more in this month's Semipop Life
bradluen.substack.com/p/semipop-li...

Semipop Life: Indestructible libido

Mahotella Queens, Maria Muldaur, Pulp, Sabrina Carpenter, and more!

bradluen.substack.com

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 8h

Linking the whole column for once because it's my best worst newsletter title
bradluen.substack.com/p/semipop-li...

Semipop Life: I choo-choo-choose life

Rina Sawayama: Sawayama

bradluen.substack.com

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 8h

#TheTwen2ie5 ranked:

16. Rina Sawayama: "Bad Friend"
Japan-UK 2020

I mean I'm inclined to take whichever side she's on of all of the last few years of pop star beefs, just saying

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLXt...

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 18h

Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington, The Great Summit (rec. 1961). I mean it holds up hella better than Watch the Throne. Pops's trumpet's strong, Duke caresses his vocals, and Barney Bigard relishes doing *his* "Mood Indigo" again.

(clip isn't up to the album version musically, but ya want to see it)

Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington "Duke's Place" on The Ed Sullivan Show

YouTube video by The Ed Sullivan Show

www.youtube.com

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 23h

Update: IU just killed the print edition of the student paper. (The quote from the Chancellor, inc. "The university has not and will not interfere with their editorial judgment", is eye-opening for those of us who were previously unsure whether to trust him.)
www.idsnews.com/article/2025...

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 1d

Haven't seen it in decades but I remember enjoying Terror—the turn to camp was refreshing after all the Serious Soldier Stuff. (Obv. it's Doctor Who so like everything good they ran it into the ground eventually.) Justice for Liz Shaw, though, sure!

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 1d

Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Rip, Rig and Panic (1965). With support from Byard/Davis/E. Jones, Kirk can for once show his exact relation to the tradition ("From Bechet, Byas and Fats": huh; a lot; a bit.) Whether playing a conventional woodwind, an odd '20s sax variant, or a tape recorder, he plays hard.

From Bechet, Byas, And Fats

YouTube video by Roland Kirk Quartet - Topic

www.youtube.com

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 1d

Is there a better-than-Wikipedia (but less than a book) article on Qing Dynasty restrictions on migration to Manchuria?

(trying to work out how critical this was to the fall in per capita food production and hence the Great Divergence; n.b. I don't know anything)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Willow_...

Willow Palisade - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 1d

Review of Lil Baby's My Turn. (Found It's Only Me underwhelming; should probably give Wham a spin now that my expectations have been usefully lowered.)

Lil Baby: My Turn (27-track Deluxe Edition, not to be confused with the 26-track Deluxe Edition)

Key word: “Consistent”. Don’t know if it’s surprising or just very 2020 that the year’s most streamed album adheres to Ramones-level palette restriction, essaying minor variations on the same basic post-“Versace” pattern. Spice is provided by old friends (Young Thug, Gunna) and new (his gambling buddy and fellow aficionado of overpriced streetwear 42 Dugg.) Bear in and you’ll find barbed lines throughout: they’re especially concentrated on “Sum 2 Prove”, which contrasts past eviction notices with his current successes, yet still recognizes the perilous nature of black fame: “They don’t want see us on TV unless it's the news.” From there, it’s only a zoom-out to the bigger picture.

Grade: A MINUS (“The Bigger Picture”, “Sum 2 Prove”, “Whoa”)

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 1d

#TheTwen2ie5 ranked:

15. Lil Baby: "The Bigger Picture"

Drip connoisseur endorses both protest and the ballot. "A liberal wet dream", I said while declaring this my 2020 song of the year; I appreciate the necessity-not-sufficiency of liberalism even more these days

www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VDG...

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 1d

Thelonious Monk, It's Monk's Time (1964). Three originals that he gives Charlie Rouse's tenor the run of. Three standards, two of which Monk grabs with two dialoguing hands, and "Lulu's Back in Town" looks like it'll go that way until he reluctantly lets the band have fun. There's only one of him.

Lulu's Back In Town

YouTube video by Thelonious Monk - Topic

www.youtube.com

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 1d

Johnny Hodges, Everybody Knows (1964). Nothing much: Rabbit just plays at the level he'd been at for over 30 years, while bringing a couple of his own tunes that stand with the Strayhorns. All his friends save the Duke himself show up, and both the soloing and the unison horn playing are memorable.

Everybody Knows

YouTube video by Johnny Hodges - Topic

www.youtube.com

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

The Indiana University Media School told its Director of Student Media to instruct the student paper not to print any non-Homecoming news for its Homecoming edition.

The Director of Student Media refused. So IU fired him!
www.idsnews.com/article/2025...

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS: IU fires student media director after he refused to censor the IDS

Indiana University directed the IDS to stop printing news.

www.idsnews.com

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

The first Grupo Frontera album is still a bit special, even if it's abundantly clear at this point that producer Edgar Barrera is the auteur (hey Taylor, you know who has a very 2020s pop sound and an impeccable resume?)

Grupo Frontera: El Comienzo

It’s easy, and not wrong, to credit their unprecedented rise from South Texas norteño covers band to one of the U.S.’s most streamed artists to Bad Bunny’s rizzed-up guest spot on megahit “Un x100to” and to the song doctoring and patented artificial sweeteners of superproducer Edgar Barrera. But their momentum predates Bunny hopping on, and Barrera’s work with, say, the highly competent Becky G lacks the same zing. While the band aren’t writers, they adapt well to Barrera et al.’s tales of love in an age when a cell phone battery in the red can keep you roiling in your heartbreak for a surprisingly long time. They’re very comfortable within their home territory of Mexican cumbia, with accordionist Juan Javier Cantú measured and wistful and 20-year-old singer Payo Solis deploying his considerable Romanticism without oversinging or upstaging his senior bandmates, and they can branch out to meet guests halfway (brassy ranchera with sadboi corrido slinger Junior H, rock en español with sadgirl Yahritza) and to amuse themselves (“Cuídala” is Tejano country.) Still, they’re realest when the bajo quintos and congas have full room to maneuver, with Barrera’s programming easing their passage into the digital world. Texas ain’t big enough for them.

Grade: A (“un x100to”, “Que Vuelvas”, “El Amor de Su Vida”)

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

#TheTwen2ie5 ranked:
14. Grupo Frontera & Bad Bunny: "un x100to"
USA/Puerto Rico 2023

The most moving song about low cell phone battery to date. Can imagine the stars arguing over whether they're Neil K compliant (Bunny would say yes, some of the Grupo might say no)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3inw...

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

have to try not to split the 3-step vote across ten different Jazzwrld hits this year... unless someone gifts us a megamix

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

yeah, I lost a parent to it at an age not far from D'Angelo's, which is not that far from mine

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

fuucckk indeed :(

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

Didn't know D'Angelo (and his brother) wrote this inspirational supergroup song? Definitely not what he'll be most remembered for, but allow me some shameless nostalgia

(this award show version doesn't have *that* currently imprisoned R&B singer, if you're worried)
www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRXP...

Black Men United - U Will Know - American Music Awards 1995 Live

YouTube video by njsman

www.youtube.com

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

Eddie Gale's Ghetto Music (1969). Jazz's great statement of Black (specifically Bed-Stuy) pride. You can hear Gale's time with Sun Ra in the way his trumpet holds and decorates notes. His sister Joann and the Noble Gale Sisters add sporadic concreteness. The rain falls; wipe your face and keep on.

Eddie Gale - The Rain

YouTube video by Atane Ofiaja

www.youtube.com

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 2d

Solid group—even Al won me over by the end—but if I, personally, were to vote for anything other than "So Many Men", it would feel like a hate crime

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 3d

Albert Ayler, Spirits Rejoice (1966). Everyone else prefers Spiritual Unity, but you can have both. The sloppy (complimentary) horns constrain Ayler: he can't screech all the time, so he explores more deeply the full tenor range. The harpsichord cameo is, as Harvey Pekar once wrote, pretty funny.

Albert Ayler - Spirits Rejoice

YouTube video by Santoszzz

www.youtube.com

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 3d

Wait they gave Mokyr a Nobel too? Are multiple Nobel committees just cribbing their picks from bradluen dot substack dot com now? (If so, I really have to update my Chainsaw Man piece.)

bradluen.substack.com/p/a-semipopu...

Too many 40-somethings get way too into World War 2, so I’m taking up economic history as a hobby instead

bradluen.substack.com

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 3d

Blurb was an attempt to mirror the mode of thinking of the song that didn't quite work (art, it turns out, is hard)

Rosie Tucker: "All My Exes Live in Vortexes"

Analogical thinking is kind of what I do around here, but is it actually useful? Is drawing a comparison between capitalism’s mass production of waste and one’s own inability to sustain a lasting connection within the relationship-industrial complex helpful for getting oneself laid, let alone for the Great Pacific Garbage Patch? Does a descending chorus riff further emphasize that individual efforts at sustainability inevitably degrade, or is it just catchy? Now, you can argue that whatever the utility, it’s clever, and since this is art, that’s enough. But analogical thinking is set to be the first thing genuinely valued by puny humans that Pandora’s latest box, artificial intelligence, can surpass us at—it’s easier to reduce to a statistical problem than, say, narrative or pro wrestling are. One day the Great Internet Garbage Patch might be filled with extended metaphors and fragments of Master’s theses that broke off when someone mashed the Derrida button too hard. Still, progress towards AGI hasn’t been as fast as some predicted—there’s a lot of junk to maneuver around—so barring a 2024 computational breakthrough, this is a song of the year contender.

bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 3d

#TheTwen2ie5 ranked:
13. Rosie Tucker: "All My Exes Live in Vortexes"
USA 2024

I hope no one had to piss in a bottle at work to get me the thing I ordered on the internet
But I am no responsible party
I’m just a middle sized fish
In a pile of plastic
Wider than Texas
www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIgm...

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bradluen @bradluen.bsky.social · 3d

A Poirot mystery but for working out who voted for *that* guy; townie reflections inevitably setting me thinking about Taylor; rappo and bam bam; theorizing that Kacey Musgraves's comer/rezar/amar is satirical; gentrifying the C-word; and two more backflips on Benson Boone in this month's singles:

Video & Audio: The best mistake

There's many things I wish I didn't do

bradluen.substack.com