The Smiths, as you probably know, were Morrissey on vocals, Johnny Marr on guitar, Andy Rourke on bass and Mike Joyce on drums (oh, excuse me, on the bass and the drums). They were also dynamite writers of guitar-centric pop. Sadly, they were also highly skilled at relegating their best songs to the b-sides of low run singles. According to various sources, it took an earnest plea from a Rough Trade executive to get “This Charming Man” released as a single (over “Reel Around The Fountain”). And of course, “How Soon Is Now?” was initially the b-side to “William, It Was Really Nothing” and wasn’t released as a single of its own until over half a year later, where previous band saturation caused the single to fall short of expectations.
All of the above has nothing to do with the song in question, but it does give you an immediate rejoinder when someone opines how the Smiths should have been bigger than they were and how unfair it was that such strong songwriting could have charted so poorly. They truly were their own worst enemies at some of the most inopportune times.
Anyway, cry me a river while wearing a hearing aid. The Smiths still wrote kick-ass songs even if they did go underappreciated. Me personally, I tend to like their faster songs (this post was almost about “Nowhere Fast”) better than their maudlin crawlers, and this one bristles with spiky punk energy.
Most people know this track through the compilation Hatful of Hollow. It’s not the best recording in the world – careful listeners will notice a pair of slight drop-offs in the source tape – but the rawness of the sound helps give it the snarl it needs and is a nice alternate to the slick production values that mark most Smiths songs. When Morrissey is at his lyrical best, it’s not because he’s providing great narrative or inventive wordplay, it’s because he drops wonderful and memorable sloganeering couplets. “Handsome Devil” is chock-a-block with them:
“I crack the whip and you skip / but you deserve it” – for those of you who are into that sort of thing, a little bit of sadomasochism. (There’s certainly more thrilling eroticism there than in a bitter middle-aged Canadian woman asking if your new girlfriend would go down on you in a theater.)
"A boy in the bush / is worth two in the hand / I think I can help you / get through your exams" – the crassness disqualifies it as being a come on, but it is the most sexually aggressive lyrics Morrissey has ever given us.
“Let me get my hands / on your mammary glands” – a unexpected gender flip that flummoxes the implicit homosexuality in... well, in pretty much everything Morrissey does.
And the final line, “there’s more to life than books, you know / but not much more” is pure platinum. There’s no way to tell whether it’s the tutor talking to the pupil, the pupil taking to the tutor, or just a throwaway line from the Moz as he steps out of the storyline. I guess ambiguity has always been a calling card for the Smiths.
Here's a live version (in a lower key) that accentuates the vocal and guitar lines better.
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I believe this concludes my posting for the year 2009. I don't expect to have another one of these ready until after the new year. Have a safe Whatever You're Celebrating and see you all in Twenty-Ten.
Link (171.42 MB): 
This lack of focus becomes all the more maddening when he makes it click like this. “Optometry” comes from the 
So, yes – he talked in his sleep. I high recommend going 
Coleman wrote all the melodies for Something Else, which helps the cause; with all the attention his improvisation theories get, it’s easy to forget that he is a very good composer. Walter Norris deserves special mention, handling his piano role in the quintet admirably. Piano didn’t really fit into Coleman’s musical vision, and he would wait almost forty years before recording with a pianist again, but Norris’s keen ear and light touch suits the music well without inadvertently imposing excessive harmonic restriction on it.
Aphex Twin is the project of Richard D. James from Cornwall, England. A contrarian always more interested in the process of making and manipulating sound than in the promotion of product, James happily shuns trends and popular sentiment. His first Aphex album received plenty of positive reviews while the follow-up was divisive. I heard SAW 2 (Lynn Bousman, call your lawyer) before I heard the debut and couldn’t understand what the hubbub was about. It wasn’t until picking up the preceeding 
A generally acknowledged title for this track is “Lichen,” but officially it’s untitled. The insert booklet itself lists no song titles, but instead has close up photos of various commonplace objects taken by Mr. James himself. Further intentional difficultness from a man who loves to find out what the people want ... and then do the opposite. The word that pops into my head when trying to describe this track is ‘warm.’ As you listen, try to imagine the first moments of daylight in 
Hardcore songs are supposed to be valued for their speed. A genre based on aggression naturally veers in that direction. So much so that when a song is presented that advances at a milder pace (like “
Ives’s goal (insofar that he had a single ‘goal’) was to create a body of work that was distinctly ‘American.’ Ives was adamant that American musical culture could not advance if composers didn’t move beyond mere imitation of Germans. Lazy writers often slot him as a postmodernist, but in reality he had stopped composing long before the postmodernist movement began and he hardly considered himself part of the avant-garde.
“The Unanswered Question” (written in 1906, revised in 1934) is a program piece scored for one trumpet, four flutes and a compliment of strings. The strings are supposed to represent silence (wrap your head around that) while a solitary man contemplates the meaning of life, the perennial question of existence, or some other weighty matter. The trumpet asks a five-note theme that is slowly answered by the flutes. Unsatisfied with the response, the trumpet repeats its plangent query. The flutes respond again, more frantic and dissonant than before. This process of question and increasingly discordant answer continues over and over until the flutes, exasperated, can do nothing more but blurt out incoherence. The trumpet concludes with the original theme that is not responded to; the question remains unanswered, The Unanswered Question.
A little background history. Back in the day (and by that I mean 1988), the Boredoms arrived from 
In order to fully convey the impact of this song, I need to talk a bit about what leads up to it on the album. The opening track, “Super You”, is a pile-up of spliced chords; seven minutes of a band’s jam presented out of sequence with occasional modifications to the tape speed. A tiny beat finally pops up near the end, but it’s practically incidental to the confusing (and confused) instrumental track. If you’ve never heard the Boredoms before, this song is as worthy an introduction as any, but in the context of the album it makes perfect sense. It has to be the opening track – and only on this album.
The spectre of Nintendo looms large over independent and underground culture. Ooooh, I made that sound much creepier than I needed to. Many a junior high school semi-outcast found some solace in video game systems. I know I did. We already have one 
Anyway, back to the topic at hand. This particular track comes from the Nintendo 64 game Ocarina of Time. There’s no way to gauge a “play count” in the game à la iTunes, but it easily was the most oft-listened to part of the soundtrack, mainly because it was easy to restart the music while I was playing. I made sure to explore the area thoroughly just to keep it playing and would even go in and out of buildings just to hear the music restart from the beginning. I’m probably not the only one.
