#jacki apple

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Jacki APPLE

"The Mexican Tapes"

(LP. One Ten rcds. 1980) [US]

[bad-sounds]

Jacki Apple - The Mexican Tapes

[dustedmagazine]

Listed: Vanessa Rossetto

Vanessa Rossetto has been based variously in Texas and New York, but the most important location is whatever place her recordings reveal from second to second. She uses field recordings, snatches of found dialogue, the voices of her and a few confederates, and a viola to make long form sound expositions that bristle with expressed emotion and revealed texture. Since 2007 Rossetto has recorded on her own and in duos with Steve Flato, Lee Patterson, and Matthew Revert. Her most recent releases are the hour-long Rocinante, which is available as a Bandcamp download and a limited-run CD-r from Hologram, and Fashion Tape, a cassette from No Rent.

About the list

Often people who only know me through my work are surprised by the type of music I most often actually listen to. They aren't all I enjoy, of course, but some of the main types of music I have always been drawn to are early blues and country because of the emotive power of those genres as well as the strong narrative threads that run through the songs, especially when contrasted with much of more aesthetic-based (versus content-based) "experimental" music, so there's a lot of that sort of thing in here. Descriptions of each of my selections will be pretty brief, because sometimes it feels hard enough liking things at all without explaining why you do.

"When The Moon Shines Bright On Charlie Chaplin" (Anti-Chaplin WWI Novelty Song) - 1918

This is one of the primary songs I remember being sung to me by my grandmother, usually while having my hair brushed out. I listen to it on repeat a lot when I am waiting for large files to bounce down.

Roscoe Holcomb – “I am a man of constant sorrow”

Not sure if listening to this as often as I do contributes to me being a giant bummer or if my love of it is a symptom of that. Regardless, it hits me right in my heart. Holcomb, a shit-hot banjo player, elected to record this one without instrumental accompaniment which I think makes it even more poignant and impactful.

Nugrape Twins – “I Got Your Ice Cold Nugrape”

Christy & Launa Burroughs – “Swamp Guinea Legend & Been To Swamp Guinea”

Possibly, no, definitely my favorite song of all time. There is nothing about it I do not love. There's very little known about these guys, other than that their names were Matthew and Mark Little, they were actual twins and were from Georgia. This track is utter perfection to me.

In a similar Southern advertising jingle vein

Washington Phillips – “Paul and Silas in Jail”

A totally different song from the commonly covered "Paul and Silas Bound in Jail," this is just a beautiful track with lovely, delicate instrumentation. Poor Washington died from a fall down a flight of stairs, which is a fate I fret over pretty often.

Jacki Apple – The Mexican Tapes

This is not a lot like most of the other things I'm including here, but if I could make something one tenth as engaging and fascinating as this I think I could be happy forever.

Joseph Spence – “I'm Going to Live That Life”

The best advice, delivered impeccably.

Geeshie Wiley – “Last Kind Words”

No known photos of Geeshie Wiley are extant, which doesn't sound like such an awful legacy, left to represented only by your work. Such a great vocal performance on this, defiant and yearning all at once.

Texas Gladden

This has been a hugely important song to me for most of my life. It's pretty much perfect, in my estimation.

Child Ballads taught me how to live. Another from Texas Gladden, this is a particularly cheeky version of the Farmer's Curst Wife.

"The old woman went whistling over the hill, said the devil won't have me I wonder who will?"

Tita Merello – “Se Dice de Mi”

I couldn't not include this, with its supercharming delivery and some of the best lyrics ever, conveniently translated.

Dock Boggs – “Oh Death”

There are SO many good versions of this song, but this one is probably my favorite of them. 

Sweet Emma Barrett – “I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jellyroll”

Sissy Nobby – “Girl From The Gutter Like Me”

Sweet Emma Barrett puts you in your place.

And fellow New Orleanian Sissy Nobby does too...

[redshift-13]

Performance / Media / Art / Culture

Experience the interdisciplinary performance scene of the 1980s and beyond through the eyes of one of its most compelling witnesses. Jacki Apple’s Performance / Media / Art / Culture traces performance art, multimedia theater, audio arts, and dance in the United States from 1983 to the present. Showcasing thirty-five years of Apple’s critical essays and reviews, the collection explores the rise and diversification of intermedia performance; how new technologies (or rehashed old technologies) influence American culture and contemporary life; the interdependence of pop and performance culture; and the politics of art and the performance of politics. Apple writes with a journalist’s attention to the immediacy of account and a historian’s attention to structural aesthetic and personal networks, resulting in a volume brimming with big ideas but grounded in concentrated reviews of individual performances. Many of the pieces featured in this collection originally appeared in small press journals and magazines that have now gone out of print. Preserved and republished here for current and future readers, they offer a rich portrait of performance at the end of the millennium.

Just heard an interview with the author.  

This book needs to be on my shelf.

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Visit Original Link

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The Jacki Apple Papers Finding Aid for NYU's Fales Library & Special Collections