Lagniappe (la·gniappe) noun ˈlan-ˌyap,’ – 1. An extra or unexpected gift or benefit. 2. Something given or obtained as a gratuity or bonus.

The Lagniappe Sessions return with Mikal Cronin, whose sophomore solo LP and Merge Records debut, MCII, lands at your favorite record store today. Five months into 2013, I can tell you it’s one of my favorite records this year. Below, the multi-instrumentalist concentrates on the ukelele — paying tribute to a pair of FM radio staples from his youth. Cronin, in his own words, below.
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I recorded these songs a little while ago to send to my girlfriend when we were living in different states. We share an affinity for cheesy 80s and 90s pop songs, and since she can play ukelele well we could trade cover songs back and forth. On my computer I titled the album these songs belong to as “(F)ukin’ around with Mikal Cronin”… which I stand behind as a mildly funny name for a dumb uke cover album.

MP3: Mikal Cronin :: I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles) (The Proclaimers)

The trickiest part of recording this song is not trying to sing with their awesome thick Scottish accents (may be my favorite accent of all the world). My favorite part of this recording is when the phone rings right before the break. This is a really really brilliant simple and affective song.

MP3: Mikal Cronin :: Kiss Me (Sixpence None the Richer)

I’m not sure if I first heard this on the radio or in the movie She’s All That. Either way I was probably 11 or 12 and it would periodically get stuck in my head up until today. Looking it up on wikipedia right now it was stuck on number 2 in the charts behind TLC’s “No Scrubs” and Ricky Martin’s “Livin’ La Vida Loca”. That’s pretty rough. My favorite part of this recording is the out of tune melodica solo.

Aquarium Drunkard Lagniappe Sessions Archives / original illustration for AD by Ben Towle.

Autobiographies, like most non-fiction, are tricky. Their subject matter require inherent interest — maybe even passion — marginalizing most audiences. The best autobiographies circumvent that demand by having a lot in common with good fiction writing: an engaging and original voice and insight that transcends the surface narrative and turns the specific into the universal. A survivor of severe drug addiction and one of the chief architects of the New York punk scene of the 1970s, Richard Hell is a powerful enough subject to do just that. Enter I Dreamed I Was a Very Clean Tramp.

Hell, unlike a lot of the characters from that era, checked out of music almost thirty years ago, removing himself to a life as a writer. It makes sense, then, that Hell chose to focus his autobiography on the years from birth to 1984, when he quit music. It’s a must-read for Hell fans, whether from his work with the Voidoids, the scant demos of his time in the Heartbreakers or in Television.

Kendra Smith wasn’t kidding around when she called her 1994 solo album Five Ways Of Disappearing. Aside from some very low key performances in the late 90s, she’s pretty much vanished from the music scene. Or any other scene you’d care to name. Smith is rarely mentioned these days, which is understandable; aside from her work with the Days Of Wine And Roses-era Dream Syndicate, most of her music is out of print. Which is a shame, since that includes two fantastic Opal LPs made in close collaboration with David Roback (who would later take a version of Opal’s dreamy sound to the masses with Mazzy Star) and the classic Rainy Day collection. But maybe Smith finds obscurity appealing.

Perhaps her most obscure release is the 1992 mini LP, curiously entitled Kendra Smith Presents The Guild of Temporal Adventurers, a sparklingly psychedelic release that places Smith’s dark, Nico-esque voices amidst a glorious swirl of shimmering guitars and keyboards. “The Only Stars Are In Your Eyes” takes its melodic cues from the VU’s “I’ll Be Your Mirror” but lyrically leans more towards “Venus In Furs”: “The moon descends into the night / We press together, kiss and bite.” Another highlight finds Smith and her Guild tackling the Can classic “She Brings The Rain,” her cool vocals fitting the psych jazz vibe of the song like a glove. Will Kendra ever come back? The odds seem slim. But the music she’s left behind deserves to be rediscovered. words/ t wilcox

MP3: Kendra Smith :: Stars Are In Your Eyes
MP3: Kendra Smith :: She Brings The Rain

Our weekly two hour show on SIRIUS/XMU, channel 35, can be heard twice every Friday – Noon EST with an encore broadcast at Midnight EST.

SIRIUS 291: Jean Michel Bernard – Generique Stephane ++ Whitefield Brothers – Rampage ++ JD & The Evil’s Dynamite – Beer (So Nice, Right On) ++ Ebo Taylor & Uhuru-Yenza – Love And Death ++ Mor Thiam – Ayo Ayo Nene ++ Nora Dean – Angie La La (Ay Ay Ay) ++ Alex Chilton – Jumpin’ Jack Flash ++ Rob Jo Star Band – I Call On One’s Muse ++ Bo Diddley – She’s Fine, She’s Mine ++ Nina Simone – To Love Somebody ++ Michael Kiwanuka – Tell Me A Tale ++ Roy Ayers – Pretty Brown Skin ++ Junior Parker – Tomorrow Never Knows ++ Lil’ Ed & The Soundmasters – It’s A Dream ++ Willis Earl Beal – Take Me Away ++ Tom Waits – Books Of Moses (Skip Spence) ++ Africa – Paint It Black ++ Black Rock – Yeah Yeah ++ Yaphet Kotto – Have You Ever Seen The Blues ++ King James Version – He’s Forever (Amen) ++ The Budos Band – Up From The South ++ Dorothy Ashby – Soul Vibrations ++ Kukumbas – Respect ++ F.J. McMahon – Sister Brother ++ Fleur de Lys – Circles ++ The Samurai – Fresh Hot Breeze Of Summer ++ Howlin’ Wolf – Smokestack Lightning ++ Karen Dalton – Something On Your Mind ++ Serge Gainsbourg – Requiem pour un Con ++ Vanessa Paradis – Paradis ++ Nancy Sinatra – Drummer Man ++ Arthur Verocai – Sylvia ++ Scott Walker – On Your Own Again ++ Link Wray – La De Da ++ Elyse – Houses ++ Henri Debs – Bidonville ++ Bonnie “Prince” Billy – It’s Expected I’m Gone ++ Cizneros & Garza Group – I’m A Man

*You can listen, for free, online with the SIRIUS three day trial — just submit an email address and they will send you a password.
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For fellow Tom Waits freaks, the pairing of Waits guesting on Bob Dylan’s Theme Time Radio Hour is something like manna. The following five tracks find Waits calling in to Dylan’s show, commenting on various subjects, reveling in the everyday bizarre. Fantastic. Listen/stream, HERE.

(Sevens, a recurring feature on Aquarium Drunkard, pays tribute to the art of the individual song.)

It’s a hard lesson to realize what terrible things you’re capable of doing. We like to think the best of ourselves, but there are relationships that send us into dark places within ourselves in word and deed. “I Was Cruel” from Caitlin Rose’s second LP The Stand-In takes a classic country trope – the destructive relationship – and opens it up for examination so that the blacks and whites all become a lot greyer.

The best practitioners of alt-country in the past 25 years have taken the influence of country’s golden age and given it a shot of post-modern lyrical examination. Where classic country’s bad relationship songs would usually mull over how the narrator was treated wrong or how they were the one who just couldn’t settle down or play nice, anyone who has ever been in a serious relationship knows that things are never as simple as that. “I would’ve warned you if I’d known,” Rose sings as the chorus gently slides in, “but I never knew I was cruel / No, I never knew I was cruel / Baby ’til I..met you.” While the first verse seems to place the blame at the feet of the silent partner (“You throw dirt in my face / then you push me over / push me over the line.”), the chorus turns its aim inward and finds our narrator looking hard at him/herself. It’s a sharp turn in a song packed with them that manages to make space for some tremendously classic spots in the music as well. The pedal steel and the key change at the end of the bridge are huge parts of what make this song sound as stellar as it does.

Welcome to the first installment of Dead Notes. There is a raw stigma that runs parallel with the mention of the Grateful Dead. Far too often the circus surrounding the band trumps the actual music, instead placing more emphasis on skeletons, dancing bears, hacky sacks and other vestiges of the ‘parking lot’ scene. Not to mention Bobby’s shorts. But all these images, these tye-dyed pre-conceptions, are the unfortunate characterization of the last 20 years of the Dead’s history. Countless tomes have been written about the birth of the Dead, so no need to rehash at length here, save a few words. The band began as an awkward knock-off Rolling Stones inspired garage band, playing electrified blues, traditional folk and r&b rave-ups. Slowly, they morphed into the so-called Acid Kings of Ken Kesey’s La Honda with long drawn out jams that heightened the visual roller coaster their soundman (and in-house chemist) Owsley Stanley dropped upon the crowd. Emerging from that technicolor daydream they transformed themselves into psychedelic cowboys, hashing out a new set of songs over several releases that nodded heavily to America’s mythic past. Lassoes in hand and hearts on their sleeves they rambled into Europe in the spring of 1972, fusing seven years of identity crisises into a powerful set of music later christened Europe ’72. Arguably, amongst many, this was the peak of the band before they once again transformed themselves. Dead Notes are an opportunity to share some of our favorite moments of the Dead (off-the-beaten-path and otherwise), from their inception in 1965 to that epic spring tour.

After the jump: Dead Notes #1: ‘A buck and a Quar-tah’ – The Selling of the Brooklyn Bridge

For those who fall easy under the spell of rock and roll’s wild-haired cosmic prancer, Marc Bolan’s Demos From the Underworld is streaming on the the glam man’s legacy Bandcamp. This digital album collects a sampling of musical sketches from T. Rex’s final three LPs, Bolan’s Zip Gun, Futuristic Dragon, and Dandy In the Underworld, and the selection presents a cross-section of Bolan’s not-quite-as-iconic late period from an alternative, skeletal vantage point. Demos is a sonic snapshot, a montage of the craftsman at work, doodling and riffing and experimenting with “futuristic” sounds. Bolan’s unmistakable, soaring “glam” feels present in these drafts but without the oversized pomp of his studio recordings (T.Rex’s big sound made small)–it’s as if he’s singing in front of a mirror instead of a sold out arena. Presented “for your listening curiosity,” the Bolan Bandcamp notes, “Perhaps Marc was a bit more forward-thinking even during the so-called low point of his career…” Indeed, this set’s spindly fidelity could be a missing link to the overambitious hooks and jangles of DIY, home-studio rockers who followed in Bolan’s footsteps. / a spoto

MP3: T. Rex :: Golden Belt