DFGAS1

Featuring Grandaddy, Grizzly Bear, and a Grimes demo.

Feb 07, 2023

Welcome back to Melissa Recommends Music! I hope January ended on a good note for you. If not, here’s to a fresh start in February, and what better way to go forth than with a batch of new music?

Today I’m launching the inaugural installment of DFGAS, which I wrote about in my first post. Unlike LR, none of these songs are in my regular rotation, but I’m revisiting them here with fresh appreciation. Read on for an overview of “tax-scam” records, an oral history of a Brazilian girl group (courtesy of my parents), and a handful of tracks that are near and dear to my heart. Fair warning: this newsletter is a long one.

Click the image to get to the Spotify playlist ~

Track Listing

“Just For You” - 1619 Bad Ass Band
“A.M. 180” - Grandaddy
“REALiTi - Demo” - Grimes
“Cavalo Ferro” - Quarteto Em Cy
“Tenkou Why Feel Sorry” - Tsegue Maryam Guebrou
“I Want To Be Your Lover” - Various Artists, Pan Ron
“Let’s Ride - Original Version” - Junei’
“out of your mind” - Adrienne Lenker
“Sexy Moods of Your Mind” - Hot Chocolate
“Knife” - Grizzly Bear

1. “Just For You” by 1619 Bad Ass Band

This song dominated my life for a few weeks in the spring of last year, and my roommates can attest to that fact. Whether I was cleaning, cooking, hanging, hosting, you name it, this song was perpetually in the queue. As far as functionality goes (which a friend asked about in the comments of my last post), this is one of those magical one-size-fits-all type of tracks that I can listen to whenever and wherever. It’s like the jeans from Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants… accentuates any given situation.

As is usual for me, though, I fixated on this track and never bothered to explore the rest of this album, which is the sole offering from New Jersey natives 1619 Bad Ass Band. Not much is out there about this band, perhaps because their one release came about through the “tax-scam” label TSG. If you’re wondering what a tax-scam label is, so was I, which is how I ended up on a deep dive that took me through Discogs, Reddit, and personal blogs from serious music connoisseurs with little time, it seems, for grammatical edits. One such blog explained the phenomenon well:

“‘Tax scam records’ is a term that was coined by collectors to identify albums that are believed to have been manufactured for the sole purpose of—get this—losing money. From around 1976 until 1984, a number of record labels were established as tax shelters, with investors putting their money into albums. A financier would invest, say, $20,000 in an LP, and if it tanked, the backer could claim a loss on their taxes, based on the assessed value of the master recording. Technically, the practice was legal, but to maximize the write-off, the appraisal was often grossly inflated—as high as seven figures.
The I.R.S would come to question the legitimacy of some of these labels, and accuse those promoting shelters that focused on tax benefits—rather than the music being bankrolled—of perpetuating fraud.”

In short, “‘Tax scam records’ were meant to bomb, giving investors the maximum amount they could deduct on their taxes, while spending as little cash as possible.”

In line with this philosophy, “1619 Bad Ass Band” had a very limited original pressing, and while it was reissued a few times—even as recently as 2016—the true 70s-era copies go for close to $1000 these days.

2. “A.M. 180” by Grandaddy

I was pleasantly surprised when I heard this playing at a bar in my neighborhood the other day. I’m pretty sure I first heard this on Tumblr in high school, and I immediately connected with it. I love a heavy shredding guitar, but the funny little synth going on in this track helps bring some levity and novelty to what might have otherwise been a pretty straightforward (albeit awesome) song.

PUP covered the song in 2020, and while I wasn’t impressed (replacing the funny little synth with a guitar… immediate flop), it did make me appreciate the charm of Grandaddy’s original vocals. There’s something about Jason Lytle’s quiet, deadpan, almost spoken-word delivery that offsets the heaviness of the instrumentals in a specifically ‘90s way. As I was researching this song I also found out that it was used in a few different movies and, appallingly, a Dodge commercial.

[Side note: I was supposed to see Grandaddy play FYF Fest in 2017, when they were touring for their first album in over ten years, but they dropped last minute and were appropriately replaced with Built to Spill playing the entirety of “Keep It like a Secret.” They were so good, but so bored.]

3. “REALiTi - Demo” by Grimes

In my opinion this is the superior version of Grimes’ “Realiti,” which first debuted on her 2015 album Art Angels. This version is a little less embellished and a little more streamlined, with vocals that take up less space and thus allow for the strength of the instrumentals to come into focus; I’ve linked the album version below in case you want to compare for yourself.

4. “Cavalo Ferro” by Quarteto Em Cy

I had never heard of this band before discovering this song on Michelle’s playlist a few months ago, but when I read their bio on Spotify I became daunted by the task of encapsulating for you all the cultural significance that the biographer ascribed them. Dubbed “the most important girl group of the MPB," Quarteto Em Cy was made up of four sisters: Cyva, Cynara, Cybele, and Cylene, who were discovered playing nightclubs in Rio de Janeiro by Vinicius de Moraes, a titan of popular Brazilian music. The band came up in the ‘60s, right around the time that my parents were growing up in Brazil, so rather than rehash their Wikipedia page, I’m recording the oral history that my parents provided me with when asked about the girl group.

The two were of course familiar with Quarteto Em Cy, they said, but for them, the band was a little “before their time.” They associated them with their older siblings’ generation, with their childhood in the ‘60s rather than their adolescence in the ‘70s; they said their sound was a little bit vintage, and that Quarteto Em Cy didn’t quite make it beyond the heyday of MPB, a genre of Brazilian music whose acronym literally translates to “popular Brazilian music.” Unlike MPB4, contemporaries and frequent collaborators of Quarteto Em Cy, their success and impact didn’t outlast the ‘60s and early ‘70s.

My parents mostly associated Quarteto Em Cy with a cover of a famous Chico Buarque song (linked below), and didn’t immediately recall “Cavalo Ferro” when I mentioned the title. But they recognized it when I played it for them, and even clued me in to the fact that this song is also a cover — the original was written by Brazilian musician Raimundo Fagner, colloquially known as Fagner, whom my parents were shocked I didn’t know.

In fact, most of the songs that Quarteto Em Cy recorded and performed were covers, and while they may not have made an impact on my parents, they were certainly active beyond the ‘70s and even into the 2000s, touring globally and recording with practically the entire spectrum of major Brazilian artists (Caetano, Gilberto, Toquinho, Djavan, the list goes on).

I was struck by the clarity of their harmonies on “Cavalo Ferro” and the energy they brought to the recording, made even more apparent if you compare their version to Fagner’s original. But it makes sense that they were relegated in my parents’ memories to the ‘60s — after all, this was a time when manufactured bands were all the rage, when matching outfits and clean-cut harmonies dominated the airwaves in America, and thus in Brazil, where they attempted to replicate the success of The Supremes, The Monkees, The Beatles, etc. A girl group made up of sisters whose names all started with “Cy” seems almost too fitting for this era. I’ll cut myself off here before I get too carried away, but I’ll have more to say on these ‘60s manufactured bands in my next newsletter ;)

5. “Tenkou Why Feel Sorry” by Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou

As we emerge from the high energy of the last few tracks, let us settle into an introspective moment provided by Ethiopian pianist Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou and her innovative, nimble melodies. Simultaneously bright and relaxing, I imagine this song as the backdrop to the montage of a peaceful day spent running pleasant errands—yes, I romanticize my life to this song! Alternately, the entire album once functioned as the soothing soundtrack to a rare afternoon bath I took on a chilly day (highly indulgent, highly relaxing, and highly recommended). But seriously, her music is so emotive and so technically impressive that I’m left in awe.

If you’re interested in learning more about Guèbrou, I recommend reading this 2017 interview published in The Guardian for a look into her extraordinary life. It was written alongside a more detailed radio documentary for the BBC, which is also worth a listen.

6. “I Want To Be Your Lover” by Various Artists, Pan Ron

Another chilly day staple, and one of my favorite songs ever, I came across this gem in 2021. Gorgeous, atmospheric, even mysterious — from the cover I know it’s Cambodian, but I’ve never researched it further. And I’m going to do something crazy here and deliberately not research it, for two reasons: 1) I feel compelled to preserve the mysterious aura of this song, which adds to its charm for me, although that might be as a direct reaction to this awesome 2014 New Yorker article I just read about Virginia Woolf’s idea of privacy; and 2) I don’t want this newsletter to get too long and I know if I start Googling this I’m gonna find myself in a rabbit hole. So here, I invite you to join me in resisting the impulse to intellectualize in favor of basking in the pure emotions that arise from this listening experience ~

*Dengue Fever Presents: Electric Cambodia*

7. “Let’s Ride - Original Version” by Junei’

Okay done basking in emotions! Time for more music lore. This song comes from Willie “Junei’” Lee, a Gary, IN native who toured with legends like Curtis Mayfield, Dizzy Gillespie, The Emotions, and a whole slew of others. Of course, he worked on solo material too, like this crazy 1987 track that is both mind-blowing and face-melting. Numero Group, which re-released it last year, has a great little bio on it that I’ll quote here for convenience:

“Pressed in minuscule numbers in 1987 on Pharaohs Records, the 45 never connected with the nearby scenes in Chicago and Detroit where it might have found purchase in fertile soils. Decades later ‘Let’s Ride’ found new life as the bed for KAYTRANADA’s ‘Scared To Death,’ and the track has slowly worked its way through the algorithm to a new generation of vapor huffers.”

WELCOME TO MY NEWSLETTER, VAPOR HUFFERS. I can’t tell if that’s a Gen Z diss or just implying that generations of “vapor huffers” have listened to this song? I mean it definitely gives fog machine. IYKYK.

8. “out of your mind” by Adrienne Lenker

Oh boy, another track that makes me say “oh boy!” This album captivated me upon its release in 2018, but “out of your mind” was my number one. A melange of guitars ranging from gloriously fuzzy to brilliant and flinty provides us with all the percussion and harmonies we need, while Adrienne’s distinctive voice is riveting as usual. The first fuzzy ten seconds always get me, and the part where she goes “—demons!” followed by three emphatic strums that serve almost to expel those demons. For years I thought she was singing “My heart is a-waggin’” like a happy yappy dog, but now I know she’s saying “My heart is a wagon,” which, though not as cute, makes much more sense before the next line (“but I can’t push her desire”).

I was inspired to add this song to the playlist after I saw my friend Andrés post a different song off this album to his IG story — thanks Andrés!

9. “Sexy Moods of Your Mind” by Hot Chocolate

This is not the Hot Chocolate of “Every 1’s A Winner” fame, but rather a three-piece from Cleveland, OH that only released a pair of singles and a self-titled debut album before changing their name to Seven Miles High. Another “perpetually in the queue” track (though not quite to the same degree as “Just For You”), this smooth instrumental really just sounds like a polished jam sesh.

10. “Knife” by Grizzly Bear

A late middle school-era track for me, “Knife” emerged as the most memorable song off of Grizzly Bear’s Yellow House, which I listened to after getting really into Shields. I have to credit this interest to Raquel, whose college music zine reviewed Shields upon its release. Somehow this zine made its way into my hands as a 13yo on a family trip to visit her at school, and having already been introduced to the seminal “Two Weeks” (also by Raquel, duh), I was hungry for more.

“Knife” is, to me, immediately intriguing. The first strum of the guitar is like a literal purr… inviting, warm, rich. Daniel Rossen’s lilting vocals come in as if posing a question — they seem to reverberate from within the walls of the empty echoing house featured on the album’s cover, and when they lead into the first verse, there’s a split second where it feels as if we’re holding our breaths in time with the suspended strum of the guitar——“I want you to know / when I look in your eyes…” these lyrics, and the slightly doo-wop turn of a second guitar here, always make me think that romance is right around the corner, but then Rossen subverts my expectation: “With every blow / comes another lie.” What could it mean? I love the complication he introduces. And I love how the second part of this song swells, the horns and the drums and the harmonies. “Can’t you feel the knife?” I SURE CAN!