500 Songs

Bobby's songs #7 and #8: Rob Jungklas and Son House

2010-01-22T10:38:00.000-08:00

This entry is a twofer. The first song led me to the other and I think the second song is necessary to fully explain the first. So, I present both of them.

Tennessee-based Rob Jungklas scored a pair of very modest rock hits in the late 1980s. "Make it Mean Something" (which I've never heard and cannot find on the Internet) reached #87 on the Billboard Hot 100 and "Boystown" got some MTV airplay because it ripped of a previous Wang Chung video. See for yourself. He recorded 2 poorly selling albums and then seemingly hung it up in 1989. He left the music industry and went on to get a college degree, get married, and become a high school teacher.

The point is, you've probably never heard of him and neither had I. A buddy of mine who used to frequent the mini-mall where I worked for the first half of the 00's brought Arkadelphia by one day and insisted I listen to it.

Overall, I wasn't very impressed. The dirty-South white guy blues rock wasn't a revelation and the music and songwriting, while occasionally engaging, did little to hold my attention. Something about his music seemed too cerebral -- and the one thing you can NOT do is think when playing the blues.

The first song on the album, however, immediately struck me as a gem. "Drunk Like Son House" is head and shoulders above the other tracks on the album. The riffs are catchy, the vocals are convincing, and the lyrics contain one of the best poetic turns of phrase I've ever heard: "Sometimes God will mumble but the Devil always annunciates." What a wonderful and horribly true observation.

Drunk Like Son House by Rob Jungklas

i don't wanna be a poisonin' the water

i don't wanna be the light that shone

i don't wanna to be the voice in the darkness

all i want is a heaven of my own

i don't wanna be a holy roller

i don't wanna be doubtin' trancendence

i don't want to hate the men i talk to

i don't want to love the women that kiss me

i'm drunk like son house

i don't care what the good book promise

i don't care what the preacher man say

i'mma move when the spirit move me

with the whiskey and the women to help me to pray

i'm drunk like son house

i come here

stay away from Itta Bena

stay away from the Stovall place

sometimes God will mumble

but the devil always annunciates

I think it is important to be familiar with Son House and his life story in order to full appreciate this song. (Perhaps some of you already know his work without knowing that you know it. The White Stripes covered his "Death Letter" on De Stijl (2003).) It was a happy coincidence that my boss had recently purchased a Son House CD and had been playing it regularly in the store -- otherwise I would not have known a thing about Son House.

Son House was a performing Mississippi delta blues musician in the 1920s, 30s, and 40s. He was a contemporary of better-known blues icons Robert Johnson and Charley Patton. Before his career as a juke-joint musician House was a man of the cloth. He had been a Baptist preacher since the age of 15. By his mid-20s he experienced a paradigm shift. He left the church, bought a guitar, and began teaching it to himself. The first surviving record of House playing his music is from a 1930s acetate. The sound quality is terrible and some of you may not be able to listen to this song the whole way through. For those of you who do, pay attention to how the youthful, former Baptist preacher, mocks his former passion with an almost demonic exuberance. You can certainly tell he was a preacher. He was 28 here and in the midst of his pulling away from all he had been.

Preachin' the Blues (1930) by Son House

The title, "Preachin' the Blues" encapsulates House's internal struggle that he would continue to struggle with: living among the holy ("Preachin') or living among the profane ("Blues", being the music that was played disreputable establishments and usually involved liquor).

Oh, I'm gonna get me a religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist Church

I'm gonna be a Baptist preacher, and I sure won't have to work

Oh, I'm a-preach these blues, and I, I want everybody to shout

I want everybody to shout

I'm gonna do like a prisoner, I'm gonna roll my time on out

Oh, I went in my room, I bowed down to pray

Till the blues come along, and they blowed my spirit away

Oh, I'd-a had religion, Lord, this every day

But the womens and whiskey, well, they would not set me free

Oh, I wish I had me a heaven of my own

(spoken: Great God almighty!)

Hey, a heaven of my own

Till I'd give all my women a long, long, happy home

hey, I love my baby, just like I love myself

Oh, just like I love myself

Well, if she don't have me, she won't have nobody else

Most of the lyrics to "Drunk Like Son House" are inspired from those in this song. One line, in particular, is lifted completely: "All I want is a heaven of my own." Why must I choose between preaching or bluesing? Couldn't there be some 3rd alternative?

Jungklas paints an image of how House might have felt in the middle of that spiritual tug of war by evoking images of both religion ("light that shone") and lust ("I don't want to love the women that kiss me"). He even cleverly mixes the two impulses by mixing Son House's own lyrics up ("whiskey and women to help me to pray") and thereby illustrating how the dichotomy of vice and faith may reside in the same soul.

So, what does it mean to be "drunk like Son House"? Having not read his biography, I cannot say when his trouble with alcoholism began, but it would be safe to say it was with him throughout his blues career. The man drank whiskey. A lot of it. All the time. It is likely that House turned to the bottle in order to drown out the conflicting feelings he had about his life. Or, perhaps it was only when he was drunk that he felt he could confront theses big issues. Maybe it was both. Either way, if you are drunk like Son House, you are deeply unhappy and conflicted. You drunkenly wonder why it's so hard to be good yet so easy to fall from grace: "Sometimes God will mumble but the Devil always annunciates." You are also very, very drunk.

So, well done, Rob Jungklas. You win on this song. (Even if you did it by standing on the shoulders of a blues giant.)

For those who have gotten this far, I invite you to listen to Son House performing "Preachin' the Blues" some 35 years later. Note the difference in the lyrics. Also, note how age has quieted the fire that roared in him as a young man. Listen to his delivery, though. Has this 63 year old man resolved his spiritual schism? These new lyrics suggest that he has chosen neither good nor evil but has decided to express and experience both through his music, judgement be damned. "I'm gonna preach these blues and gonna choose my seat and sit down."

Preachin' the Blues (1965) by Son House

Yes, I'm gonna get me religion, I'm gonna join the Baptist Church

You know I wanna be a Baptist preacher, just so I won't have to work

One deacon jumped up, and he began to grin

You know he said, "One thing, elder. I believe I'll go back to barrelhousin' again"

One sister jumped up, and she began to shout

"You know I'm glad this corn liquor's goin out"

Another deacon jumped up and said, "Why don't ya hush?"

"You know you drink corn liquor and your lie's a horrible stink"

One sister jumped up and she began to shout

"I believe I can tell ya'll what it's all about"

Another sister jumped up, she said, "Why don't ya hush?"

"You know he's abandoned, and you outta hush your fuss"

I was in the pulpit, I's jumpin up and down

My sisters in the corner, they're hollerin Alabama bound

Grabbed up my suitcase and I took off down the road

I said, "Farewell church, may the good Lord bless your soul"

You know I wish I had a heaven of my own

I'd give all my women a good ol' happy home

I'm gonna preach these blues and I'm gonna choose my seat and sit down

But, when the Spirit comes, I want you to jump straight up and down

You know I's in the pulpit, I was jumpin straight up and down

You know I was in the pulpit, I was jumpin straight up and down

You know the sisters in the corner, they were hollerin' Alabama bound

This audio clip from later in his life has Son House explaining himself and his struggle. "You can't hold God's hand and the Devil the other." "You can't straddle the fence." "This is how I made peace with myself."

Think about where Jungklas was in 2003. He was over a decade removed from participating in the music industry where he had been a commercial flop. He had been living a safer life by settling down with a wife and a steady, respectable job. Yet, the call to write and record music had stayed with him. How fitting that "Drunk Like Son House" be the first track on his "comeback" album. Certainly he had struggled over the past decade with the desire to write and record music while juggling the new responsibilities of family and adult life. Perhaps Arkadelphia was an attempt to, like Son House, find a way to make peace with both worlds. And, like Son House, let judgment be damned.

Marky's song #22: Edgard Varèse – “Ionisation”

2010-01-15T17:28:00.001-08:00

Hey, don’t think I’m not cognizant of the order I’m doing these. The “twenty-one, only son” gag was an unexpected neat trick, but I’m looking for balance in my entries. I don’t want to overload the system with one or two styles of music – even if that presents an extra challenge since there are certain genres I listen to a lot more than others. I don’t want to be flattered with claims that I listen to everything. For that matter, I don’t want to be challenged on it, either. Stone cold fact: I don’t... mainly because I don’t have enough time. If I'd allow myself to get away with it, I would have made this one #21.5 (based on this piece.) But I simply couldn’t sacrifice my integrity that way – yes, I can hear you laughing – so we move on as expected.

My initial interest in modern classical originally centered around three people: John Cage, Charles Ives and Edgard Varèse. Since then, I’ve pretty much lost all interest in Cage, mainly due to his experiments with chance music. Chance music, different from free improv, is dull to my ears because it takes the creative process away from not only the composer, but the performer as well. However, I still have a huge interest in Ives and Varèse. I’ve already done an entry about an Ives piece, now it’s Varèse’s turn. Varèse is probably known best for “Poème électronique”, my first exposure to electronic music as classical composition, but the majority of his works are for ‘acoustic’ ensembles.

For the record, “Ionisation” is not chance music, nor is it improvisation. No way, bro, this is straight up scored for 13 percussionists. I feel it’s necessary to point that out, given the sometimes well-deserved reputation avant-garde music has for disrespecting established rules - even something fundamental like 'notes go on staff paper.' I won’t give you a full list of instruments used, but they span both traditional and non-traditional orchestral instrumentation. All sorts of non-standard percussive sounds can be heard.

Also notable about this piece is that it’s cited by Frank Zappa as the initial inspiration for him to pursue music as a career. Zappa even convinced his mother to let him call Varèse as a fifteenth birthday present. Varèse was not at home and Zappa wound up talking to with Varèse's wife instead, but obviously that was no deterrent. Zappa albums such as Uncle Meat and even Jazz From Hell show a strong Varèse influence with regard to how sound is organized and the embracement of modern technology to enhance the composition process.

The editing of this video makes it fun to watch, though reading through the comments leads me to believe that some of the instruments are not exactly as Varèse intended. (Wait, why am I wasting time reading YouTube comments?)

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The reference to a lack of time in paragraph one is prescient. Now that I'm in grad school, time becomes an ever-more-precious commodity. I will try to update regularly and keep adding new songs, but I ask for understanding should entries occur at a less frequent pace.

Bobby's song #6: "I'm Free Now" by Morphine

2010-01-12T09:27:00.000-08:00

The first thing that sticks out to those unfamiliar with the band Morphine is their odd make up: a crooning singer that plays a 2-string bass, a sax player, and a drummer. No guitars. Making rock music. Surprisingly, this unusual setup does not come off as a gimmick or an oddball novelty. In fact, once you immerse yourself in Morphine's music you discover that you never feel like anything is missing in the music. On the contrary, the lack of guitars opens the music up for a much richer coloration by the sax and allows the listener to focus on singer Mark Sandman's superb lyrics.

His lyrics were generally cynical, self-deprecating, and melancholy. They tended to deal with dark issues such as addiction, romantic betrayal, and low self-esteem. Despite this the music would often be somewhat upbeat which helped to cushion the blow of his words.

Morphine was formed in 1989 and released 4 albums in the 90s before disbanding in 1999 due to Mark Sandman's sudden death. He had a heart attack while performing on stage. (At least he died while doing something he loved.) A 5th album, The Night, was released posthumously in 2000.

Of all their albums, I love Cure For Pain (1993) the best. It was extremely difficult for me to pick one song from this album for a write-up. The whole album is 5-star gold from start to finish. In the end, I settled on "I'm Free Now" because that was the first Morphine song that I listened to on repeat when I first began listening to them. As noted in my previous entries, lyrics play a large part in how much I love a song. That being said, it certainly doesn't showcase the full range of the Morphine sound -- no one song could.

If you aren't familiar with Morphine and this song makes you want to hear more, it's not too difficult to find a number of other songs to check out. Even more interesting is listening to them live to see how they pull off their polished, overdubbed studio sound.

I'm Free Now by Morphine

Bobby's song #5: "Sixteen, Maybe Less" by Iron&Wine w/ Calexico

2010-01-08T09:14:00.000-08:00

In 2005 Iron & Wine (singer-songwriter Sam Beam) and Calexico teamed up to record a 7-track EP called In The Reins. For those familiar with both artists it was exciting to hear how 2 extraordinary songwriters and musicians would sound together since Calexico had a distinct desert western sound and Beam (up to that point) was a one-man band whose sound was influenced by his rural South Carolina upbringing. The result was THE best EP of the decade. (Go ahead and argue with me. You're wrong.)

My favorite song on the EP is a bittersweet song about first-loves, time, and memory called "Sixteen, Maybe Less". Listen to how ethereal pedal steel on the edges of the song and the tremolo on the guitars give it a dreamy-like sound. Every detail of this song, the instrumentation, the intonation, the tempo, the whisper-gentle voice of Sam Beam... all of it fits perfectly with the lyrics. Lyrics that are full of yearning and honesty.

Beyond the ridge to the left you asked me what I want
Between the trees and cicadas singing round the pond
I spent an hour with you should I want anything else?

One grin and wink like the neon on a liquor store
We were 16, maybe less, maybe a little more
I walked home smiling I finally had a story to tell

And though an autumn time lullaby sang our newborn love to sleep
My brother told me he saw you there in the woods on Christmas Eve
Waiting

I met my wife at a party when I drank too much
My son is married and tells me we don't talk enough
Call it predictable yesterday my dream was of you

Beyond the ridge to the west the sun had left the sky
Between the trees and the pond you put your hand in mine
Said time has bridled us both but I remember you too

And though an autumn time lullaby sang our newborn love to sleep
My brother told me he saw you there in the woods on Christmas Eve
Waiting

What a poetic notion - that a first-love should be sung to sleep by time and distance and youthful capriciousness.

The fact that Sam Beam grew up in South Carolina, mostly on a farm, shows up in these lyrics, too. Forests, ridges, and ponds. Time has "bridled" them both. This and the earnestness of his voice leads you to believe that this is a fairly auto-biographical song - that he really feels these. Much of Beam's music is like that. You find evidence of his roots in his music and his lyrics.

For Calexico, a band based in Tuscon, Arizona, to back Sam up with their distinctly southwestern sound, without pulling the listener out of the story of the song, is a testament to their musical talents and instincts.

Sadly, this one EP is all we have of this collaboration. Joey Burns (singer, guitar for Calexico) appeared on Iron & Wine's excellent 2007 album, The Shepherd's Dog, but I have heard of no other plans for a follow-up collaboration.

Marky's song #21 (only son): Metallica – “Disposable Heroes”

2010-01-05T11:17:00.000-08:00

There is perhaps no other band on the planet that people would like to see go down in flames as much as Metallica. Mere mention of the band can send some into an apoplectic rage. Such visceral reactions seem to stem from a perceived abandonment of a segment of their fans by the band. Rarely does artistic license get taken so personally.

Nowadays, in the wake of St. Anger and Death Magnetic, it’s easy to ignore Metallica; after all, there’s plenty of other music out there. It doesn’t change the fact that at one point, Metallica were the kings of the metal underground. Ride the Lightning and Master of Puppets are albums widely appreciated both within and outside the metal community. Even better, and fortunately for us, current violations do not negate prior triumphs. For once we can look back on the bad old days and truly claim that they were better.

Personally, I think Metallica gets treated a little too harshly (but only a little.) Some thoroughly oblivious (or thoroughly paid for) music journalists laughably claimed St. Anger was a return to earlier form. To which I can only sat that if you’re that incompetent or that financially compromised at your job, you should change your career path. If that album had been released by a band of four unknown scruffy urchins, the heralding of it as some new-nu-(gnu?)-metal tour de force might have had some miniscule amount of justification.

However, it wasn’t a bunch of know-nothing nobodies that released that album, it was Metallica. Yes, that Metallica. The one that said they would never do a video or bother with a live album. The one that said they didn’t want to waste money on extravagant stage shows. The one who’s drummer said to Congress that fans that did the modern-day equivalent of tape trading with their dreck of an album ought to be thrown in jail.

I have my own theories about why Lars Ulrich testified against Napster. We’ll probably never really know, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Elektra threatened the band’s financial support in return for the testimony they wanted. You know, send Lars to bat for us in the record industry or else we’ll withhold your advance for the next album. To have an artist deliver the message would hold more credibility than if it had been some record executive greed-head. I don’t doubt a major label – any major label – would blackmail an artist in their stable like that.

But instead of bitching about that, let me get in the wayback machine and give you details about this song from 1986. Right from the opening guitar crunch, “Disposable Heroes” grabs you by the shirt collar and never lets go. In typical thrash form, the song has an intro that lasts for over a minute and a half before the first verse even begins, though the intro is really just another verse and chorus structure played without vocals.

However, the thing I like best about this track is the break, which might be the best one in the annals of thrash metal. The strongest part comes in at 4:45 – in the middle of Kirk Hammett’s guitar solo – with a rhythm that shifts back and forth between the original break theme and a completely new riff. That ringing two-chord pattern is liberating, a rare time when the band lets up on the chunky palm muted fast picking to give the listener a chance to breathe before pumping their fist back in the air.

James Hetfield is not a great lyricist by any yardstick, but “looking back I realize / nothing have I done / left to die with only friend / alone I clench my gun” is surprisingly humanizing an event that the musicians (and many of their listeners) could not have first hand knowledge of. It’s certainly more credible than Death’s “Left To Die.” Chalk it up to a happy accident. We’ll have to, because elsewhere he talks about having to get used to the sound of a ticking clock, which I can’t for the life of me figure out what that has to do with the horrors of war.

I almost feel dumb talking about this song in such a clinical manner. Anyone who is reading this or happens to stumble over here probably already knows this song quite well. This is my favorite Metallica song and a great example of all the virtues of the thrash metal genre. And in completely unrelated nonsense, this:

Marky's song #20: The Smiths – “Handsome Devil”

2009-12-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

If you rounded up all the fans of the Smiths together, ~~you’d have a lot of pretentious people all in the same spot~~ chances are “Handsome Devil” would not be listed often as a favorite song of many. I’m not one for making lists like that (he says as he numbers each song he writes about), but if I were to sit down and ponder it, it probably wouldn’t be mine, either. It was never released as a single, and the only studio version of it that exists is a 1983 Peel Session that has appeared on various compilations.

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.

Transmission Intermission.

2009-12-10T18:49:00.000-08:00

Hey everyone, Marky Narc here. This is not a regular 500 Songs blog post, but a special gift from me to you. Instead of writing a "best of 2009" list, I decided to make you a mix of my favorite stuff in 2009 instead. Below is a link to a zip file that I spent the past week putting together. It should play in your mp3 player of choice, and included in the folder is a text file of the track listing just in case.

Astute folks might notice that there are a few songs on the list that technically aren't 2009. I give myself a little bit of leeway when it comes to stuff like this, mainly because I'm not a music journalist and I don't get any free promos. I have to obtain my music as a regular consumer like everyone else. And sometimes it takes a while to listen to what you've got. So forgive my creative license if a song or two don't actually qualify as '2009.'

I realize this mix is a bit lengthy - over ~~9000~~ ninety minutes of music - but take it in chunks if you need to. You like music, right? OF COURSE YOU DO! So download and enjoy.

Link (171.42 MB): http://www.mediafire.com/?no4wmmj4yq1

Marky's song #19: DJ Spooky – "Optometry"

2009-12-06T11:22:00.001-08:00

Paul D. Miller (aka DJ Spooky) really ought to go through his discography and put together an anthology. A double-CD package would be a great way to introduce him to newcomers as well as give fans an affordable condensed string of highlights. Actually, scratch that. Someone else should go through his discography and put together an anthology; I wouldn’t have faith in the artist himself to do it. As much as I love Spooky, he has not learned the fine art of how to self-edit.

Mind you, I have no reservations against recommending seeing him live. I once saw him put on a show in Cambridge, MA where he spun for almost three hours until they (literally) pulled the plug on him and turned on the venue lights. Take him out of the live setting, however, and he feels compelled to make the Big Artistic Statement and tends to get a little aimless piecing it all together.

Another example: I went to see his Rebirth of a Nation project, where he takes the film Birth of a Nation, chops it up into pieces and “remixes” it live with computer music backing. The music was great, but over two hours (never mind the original film is 190 minutes long) of seeing the same scenes over and over eventually lost its impact and I spent the last thirty minutes or so sitting there with my eyes closed.

This lack of focus becomes all the more maddening when he makes it click like this. “Optometry” comes from the album of the same name; it’s part of Thirsty Ear’s Blue Series, an attempted merging of jazz and electronics. It’s kind of a typical Spooky-and-his-Rolodex affair, where the DJ brings in all sorts of musical guests to give him some raw material for him to remix and reshape. Unfortunately, sticking Daniel Bernard Roumain, Pauline Oliveros and William Parker in a room together to make music only winds up proving that Roumain, Oliveros and Parker don’t have enough common ground on which to make compelling music. But wait a minute – are they really in the room together? And does it matter? This isn’t meant to be a 'live in the studio' album, no matter how much they might try to market this as modern jazz. Perhaps I shouldn’t criticize based merely on preconceived notions of how certain types of music are supposed to be made. Spooky’s authenticity (whatever that’s worth) isn’t at risk here. Besides, when Spooky gives us tracks like this, it's easy to forgive all prior transgressions.

DJ Spooky - "Optometry"
So let’s get down with our analytical selves, shall we?

A funky opening bass line fades in and is greeted by a drum (Billy Martin) and violin (Roumain) improvisation. It sounds like they’re going to lose the groove right off the bat, but don’t worry, they stay on task. Martin shifts back into the beat and is joined by piano (Matthew Shipp) upright bass (Parker) and sax (Joe McPhee).

When Spooky drops the spoken sample: “We’re going to do, now, something that has nothing to do with an arranged piece of music,” he really begins to work his magic. Ambient effects and drum loops (played forwards and backwards) are the background for other members to solo over. Players weave in and out and Spooky even does a little record scratching here and there. But my favorite part is at the 8:43 mark – with everyone’s solo out of their system, a snare roll snaps it back to the opening beat and bass, which fades out almost as quickly as it was dropped in. I kind of wish he would let it play longer, but that simply ain’t the way DJ Spooky rolls. The last couple minutes are devoted to another Martin and Roumain improvisation.

Every DJ Spooky album is good for a handful of serendipitous moments like these. If you're willing to sift through them, any album is worth checking out. I don't ever expect him to have a moment of clarity and release a classic album with all the fat trimmed off; Spooky has his own M.O. and he's happy to plug away, testing his own theories. The rest of us are just spectators.

Marky's song #18: Voivod – "Missing Sequences"

2009-11-28T08:25:00.000-08:00

My biggest complaint against metal music, regardless of the qualifying prefix (speed-, nu-, hair-, etc.), is that there have always been too many bands. It pains me to say that, because I am a fan. But seriously, go request a printed catalog from Metal Disc – you’ll get a monstrosity in the mail boasting triple-digit pages with an uncountable number of indistinguishable bands you’ve never heard of before.

So the story of metal has been since time immemorial. There’s always been a glut of bands and a dearth of innovation. Sure, metal has mass working class appeal, but it’s still ultimately a conservative-minded genre. Doing what’s expected and nothing greater is a perfectly acceptable way to ply the trade. And as soon as one band strikes an ore vein with a strong fresh idea, an endless amount of copycat bands almost instantly pop up.

It’s part of the reason why I love mid-career Voivod as much as I do. They started out as a fairly pedestrian thrash band, but their sci-fi obsessions and deep interest in progressive rock blended together to form a truly original hybrid of forward-thinking metal. It took them a while to find their stride (the first three albums are patchy) and losing key members late in their career saw a decline in quality (avoid the albums that don’t include Denis Bélanger), but when they were on, their music can stand the tests of time.

In the late 80s and early 90s the band released a quartet of amazing albums. This track comes from the second of the four, Nothingface (released in 1989). It’s my personal favorite both for being the height of their creativity and the height of their experimentalism. The album saw them incorporate more electronic drum triggers (handled by drummer Michel Langevin) and guitar effects as well as an increased ability to write memorable melodies. Voivod is probably the only band that could make a couplet like “bauxite double bind / forgetful retry” stick in your head.

This song is about, uh, sequences that are missing, I guess. It’s not the lyrics I care about here – it’s the song structure. Basically it's just two long verses, one of my favorite compositional devices in metal (“Excoriating Abdominal Emanation” by Carcass is another excellent example of this concept). This particular track is club-sandwiched between an intro, a coda and a killer middle break. The verse itself has four distinct segments before moving to the break that I love so much.

“I did, I didn’t know / I think I should go … GO!” The guitar solo is short and backed only by the bass – this was the album where Voivod decided to eschew rhythm guitar tracks and let bassist Jean-Yves Thériault handle holding the harmonic background down. The apex of the song is right smack in the middle: those four chords that follow the solo are amazing; go back and listen to them again. Then it jumps into the second verse. Going through the cycle again and on to the closing section, you can tell a lot has happened, but it's all easy to separate into bite-sized chunks.

Progressive metal that isn't navel-gazing nor a chore to listen to. What a novel idea, right? If only there had been more bands at the time willing to push themselves as hard as Voivod did. For those who don't already know, Voivod guitarist Denis D'Amour succumbed to cancer in 2005 and the rest of the band pieced together a farewell album from unused studio tracks that was released earlier this year. Thanks for the music, guys. What a long, strange trip it's been.

Marky's song #17: Dion McGregor – "Vulvina"

2009-11-14T10:50:00.001-08:00

Dion McGregor (1922-1994) was a somniliquist.

Dion McGregor - "Vulvina"

Check your wife at the door. Check your child at the door with your wife. This is for men only. Come in and see Vulvina! Now, you must ask her all the questions you want. Vulvina will answer all your sex questions. Now ... step right up. Tickets are only five dollars apiece. It's your one and only time to see Vulvina. Check your wife and child at the door. Come back, ladies ... come back, ladies. In an hour or two, Vulvina will have answered all his questions. Now, if you have any questions you wanna ask Vulvina, write them out and hand them to him. He will give them to Vulvina!

Now, at the end of this show -- at the end of this show, Vulvina will do something that no one has ever done before. And don't ask your husband until you get home and in bed tonight, ladies. Maybe you can do it! Hee-hee-heeee.

Okay! Okay! Okay! Tickets going! Tickets going! Five dollars a head! Five dollars a head! Form a little line right there, form a little line right there. Okay! Okay! Okay! Vulvina! Vulvina! They're coming in!

Hmmm -- five dollars? Too much ... too much, too much. Now honey, we can't afford five dollars. You wanna know? You can't go in. You want me to go in and report? Come on now -- what does this Vulvina know that we don't know? It's perfectly silly, perfectly silly. I don't care.

Hmph, and if ... she looks ugly. Look at that picture. What? My boss is prettier than she is. Look at that. She's just got one eyebrow -- it goes from ear to ear. I ... Honey, five dollars -- that's a terrible waste, to look at her. Mmm, well it certainly is. Tell you what -- let's go home and I'll give you the five dollars. That's it. It ... it's worth it.

You've got ... no, now come on. You wanna know what she does there at the end? Oh, alright. Well, you wait there ... you wait there in the woman's waiting room. Honestly, I've never felt so ... seedy. Imagine joining that line to see Vulvina. Vulvina What?

Okay, okay. Bye, honey. Yes, here it is -- it's what? Nnnn, you didn't tell me it was five dollars and then tax. Alright, there it is. What a cheerless room. Hunh -- isn't she homely? Look at that face! Look at that face -- mmmm. Oh, yes! She looks like a wallaby bear. Ulff. Can you imagine this ... you can't even call her a woman. Imagine her, commanding that kind of ticket money.

Oh -- one zip and she's out of her dress. At least she's got a pretty body. Mmm -- but that face. Who could get near it, who could get near it? I don't know. Question: how many times a night, Vulvina? ... Any number? Humph -- old whore. I'll bet it too, I'll bet she does, I'll bet she does.

She wants a volunteer. She wants a volunteer. Umm -- oh -- alr ... I'll volunteer, I'll volunteer! Get up there on that stage -- the closer I get, the more like a walrus she looks. Oh, look at that. Unhn -- not even very young. I wonder why she doesn't sag.

Okay, now what do I do, kneel down? Oh, very well. Oh -- oh no, I don't want to do that! No. I don't wanna do that. You have pictures? What? Oh, no, no ... well, that's impossible. Put my head in there? My whole head?!

Uh ... uh. It's pitch black in here. It's pitch black in here. You know I'm not even touching the sides, or the back? That is incredible! Vul-vi-na! Let me out! Vulvina, let me out! Let me out, Vulvina!

I know this stretches the boundaries of what is considered a “song” for our purposes (do we have purposes here?), but McGregor’s story is interesting enough for inclusion.

So, yes – he talked in his sleep. I high recommend going here for the full story behind who he was and how his dreams got recorded. Long story very short, McGregor was living in New York City (note the traffic you hear in the background) when his roommate Michael Barr discovered his subconscious talent in the mid-1950s and started getting up early in the morning in order to commit them to tape. A record of these recordings was released in 1964; a book consisting of dream transcriptions shortly followed. In 1999 Tzadik Records released Dion McGregor Dreams Again, where this track comes from.

McGregor narrated his dreams in a way that was simultaneously funny and disturbing. Usually he would wake up with a start at the climax of the dream, but the tape cuts off this time. Listen to this track a second time and more things emerge; the phrases “five dollars a head” and “they’re coming in” have twisted double meanings once you realize what is happening in the dream. For a unique, surreal listen, I honestly can’t recommend hearing the full album enough. It’s not something you’ll listen to once and then file away. Hearing McGregor verbally paint his dream world is engaging enough to make one want to go back again and again to see if you missed any other plays on words. Too much, too much... indeed.

Marky's song #16: Ornette Coleman – "Angel Voice"

2009-11-10T12:45:00.001-08:00

Ornette Coleman did not invent free jazz; no one single person did. Free jazz was pushed forward by a collection of like-minded musicians willing to test acceptable boundaries. But Ornette did become the most visible proponent and spokesperson. More importantly, he was the first to be disseminated through the channel of a large label, beginning with his recording contract with Atlantic in 1959.

Paraphrasing from a small part of the liner notes from the Beauty Is A Rare Thing boxset: nowadays it’s hard to understand what was the fuss all about. What Coleman did reads simple enough: he ignored the chord changes. Whether this is a progression or a regression depends on whom you ask, but at the risk of sounding overly portentous, all will concede that jazz was changed forever.

By the time he took up his residence at Atlantic, Coleman already had a pair of albums out. The earlier of the two, Something Else (1958), was released on Contemporary (and eventually found its way to digital format through the Original Jazz Classics imprint.) In retrospect, his debut seems the least ambitious when held up next to My Name Is Albert Ayler (1963) and Jazz Advance (1956). But Coleman would eventually sail headlong into uncharted waters like the rest of them, with fascinating results. Coleman only recorded for Atlantic for three years, but released a walloping eight albums of material.

Like Ayler and Taylor, Coleman had to make his earliest records with musicians who weren’t always hip to what he wanted. And like those contemporaries, the music succeeds without sounding forced or like people unable to communicate with each other. Of the classic quartet, he had first mate Don Cherry in tow, but Charlie Haden and Ed Blackwell were still giggin’ on the opposite coast.

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.

Ornette Coleman - "Angel Voice"

The order of solos is as follows: Coleman, Cherry, Norris, bassist Don Payne, another brief solo from Coleman, and a quick solo by kit-man Billy Higgins after a return to the theme.

Although Coleman’s first solo is stronger, it’s his second, shorter solo that deserves attention. Notice how he pokes around the rhythm section, not really reacting to anything, just casually exploring – the sound of a guy both showing others what he’s looking for and working an idea out on the stand. Sure enough, he wedges the square peg into the round hole and directs the band back to the theme in a logical way.

If you've never heard Ornette before, this should be your springboard. Save the harder stuff for later, lest you dismiss the man as an insufferable avant-guardist. If all you know is The Shape of Jazz to Come and Free Jazz, you owe it to yourself to hear the early records, just to prove that his ideas didn't emerge fully formed. He earned his stripes the old-fashioned way: through dabbling and woodshedding. You know, like a jazz musician.

Marky's song #15: Aphex Twin – untitled track; disc 2, track 9 (“Lichen”)

2009-11-03T13:41:00.000-08:00

Before I digitized and ipod-ified by music collection, I had a bulky stereo with a 3-disc tray. Never mind that the quality of the stereo was total crap; at the time, I was of the mind that bigger meant better and easily enticed by bells, whistles and flashing lights. Ahh, capitalism.

It took me about a year after leaving school to move out of my family’s house and take up my current residence in Massachusetts. For that year, I had a simple system for said stereo: CD slot one was whatever I was in the mood for at the time – keep it real and keep it rotating. Slots two and three, on the other hand, always held the same two CDs: Aphex Twin’s double disc – also available on triple vinyl – Selected Ambient Works, Volume 2.

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 Selected Ambient Works 85-92 a couple years later that it made sense. While the first album is consonant and even danceable, SAW 2 is abstruse, standoffish and mostly beatless.

If you’re like me, ~~my condolences~~ you need a little music to get to sleep at night. Just climb into bed and start disc two on the CD tray; SAW 2 was the perfect late evening soundtrack after I got home from the late shift. The album progresses somnambulistically, one quiet claustrophobic track after another. It was a poke in the eye to those that raved – no pun intended – over SAW 85-92 while desiring to elevate James to some sort of superstar status within the world of electronic music.

Aphex Twin - untitled track

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 the Sonora, the sun just beginning to peek out from the horizon. Or, for those who have synthenesia, this track (much like most of the album) is a washed-out dusty orange. Even my mother, who is convinced everything I listen to is ‘weird,’ had to say, “this is beautiful.” Even when he’s confounding our expectations, Mr. James still knows how to deliver. Nighty-night.

Ian Songs #8, In Praise of Bacchus

2009-10-31T10:44:00.000-07:00

Inventive prose be damned, let's hit this like a fan: There are few litmus tests in metal like Type O Negative. Born from the ashes of underrated thrashers Carnivore and with enough balls to dive headfirst into a goth scene that had, and let's be honest now, peaked with the first few Christian Death albums, Type O gloriously lampooned their subject matter with a straight face, dedicating turgid doomers filled to the brim with ironic Beatlesque twists to high-school notebook fodder; death, sex, depression, death, Halloween, and death. On the surface, they exuded an ultra-serious vibe, but like all good metal, when you dug a little deeper, it played out like a nod and wink, a veiled punchline to be enjoyed by the discerning listener. So, like most Metal Mosi (Manowar, Darkthrone, and...well, shit, power metal and black metal in general), they parted the seas of listeners; those that believe in an oh-so sober intent and those that recognize the inherent ridiculousness of it all. Of course, there's a natural urge to push Type O into the realm of parody, and there's an awful lot of evidence that can be brought up as support (Almost all of it stemming from generously-dicked frontman Peter Steele), but the insanely well-written music pushes it past just a joke into Ween territory; loving pastiches. Case in point, In Praise of Bacchus.

From the band's most commercially viable album, October Rust, and one that features maybe their definitive song, Love You to Death, sits Praise. Melodic and with a wall-of-distortion guitar-sheen that is downright shoegazer-inspired, Bacchus couples Fab Four with Iommi, building to an insane climax that's surreal. It's moments like these that the band revels in, making you feel uncomfortable without the use of the grotesque, making you feel uneasy as a listener. But, then again, this ain't Wagner predilection for unresolved progressions, this is trading pop licks and then dropping back into metal at the turn of the dime. From either side of the spectrum, it just feels wrong. It's so seamless, though, that it gets lost underneath the waves of sound, burying in your subconscious the sense that we're dangerously off-kilter here. And then, there it is, an actual crescendo that is not frustratingly cut short, AND WITH LATIN NO LESS. To this day, and it's an album I've listened to every Halloween for a decade, I don't know whether to laugh or be blown away. That, in essence, is Type O Negative.

Marky's song #14: Hüsker Dü – “Somewhere”

2009-10-26T10:16:00.000-07:00

(Hüsker Dü, part tü – read part one here.)

Though they would go on to bigger (if not necessarily better) things, the strongest music this Minnesota trio made occurred when they were still on independent label SST. Hüsker Dü is also notable for being the first ‘underground’ band to switch from an indie to a major label (Warner), flaring a debate concerning the appropriateness of such a move that still simmers to this day. Without getting deep into an indie versus major argument, let me present a counterfactual: if Hüsker Dü’s stint at a major label had been a thoroughly positive one – replete with improved albums and the lack of heartbreaking implosion, would certain segments of indie rock nation look upon major labels with as much derision as they justifiably do? Food for thought. Even those who talk about it disparagingly refer to the action of bands moving from smaller, independent labels to larger ones in an upward fashion. “They jumped to a major label” implies ascending, not downward or lateral, movement.

It seems that Hüsker Dü won me over despite bucking my preconceived notions at the time regarding supposed virtues and sins in music. Believe me, even though I loved the previous EP, I was very skeptical the first time I put Zen Arcade on. Think about what it is: a concept double album. Do they really expect to hold my attention that long? And what’s the deal with this last song being 14 minutes long? I still have some minor objections to the concept album claim. The story is about a boy who runs away from home in order to escape his tumultuous family life, only to discover the life outside of home is just as hard. This I cede, but where does “Standing By The Sea” (an earlier version of which was recorded during the Metal Circus sessions) or “Beyond The Threshold” fit into the narrative?

Oh well, no matter. Nowadays, the cult status of this album goes rightfully unchallenged a quarter of a century after its initial release. A legendary recording recorded in legendary fashion, Zen Arcade is an album that honestly does need to be listened in its entirety. The songs lose a little when plucked out of context. But this blog is called 500 Songs, not 500 Albums, so we have to stick to the game plan here.

Of the four sides of vinyl that comprise Zen Arcade, side two is my least favorite. (I realize this is sort of like complaining about what your least favorite way of winning the lottery is.) The first half of it comes across as senseless ruckus-making, the second half sounds like a collection of tunes that didn’t quite fit anywhere else. “What’s Going On” and “Masochism World” both conclude by devolving into noise; “Standing By The Sea” is a slow drift meant to mimic the soothing rhythm of ocean waves. I am being overly-critical here; don’t get me wrong – this is all great music I love dearly, but in hyper-analysis of the album it’s a bit of a lull, and I distinctly remember being in kind of a drowsy haze when I took side two off and replaced it with side three.

I was instantly snapped out of that haze with the bright and shiny attention-grabbing chords to “Somewhere.” The only song on the album written by one member of the band (Mould) but sung but another (Hart), this is the point where Hüsker Dü delivers on all their promise. Lyrically, this is classic Hüsker Dü emotional turmoil, contrasting desires with actuality. Furthermore, the songwriters make the concession that not only do they not know what they want, but that there might not be anything in particular that would satisfy them.

Searching for the truth but all I ever find is lies

Trying to find identity but I just find a disguise

Looking at the nightmare when I try to see the dream

Finding a reality as perfect as it seems

Somewhere the dirt is washed down with the rain

Somewhere there’s happiness instead of pain

Somewhere satisfaction has no name

Somewhere I can be the same

Looking down on everything it seems a total bore

Missing all the people that I’ve never met before

Trying to find an unknown something I consider best

Don’t know if I’ll find it but until then I’ll be depressed

The backwards guitar after the second chorus that continues through the rest of the song (and into the next) is gorgeous. And it’s worth pointing out that this song is just the beginning: the entire second disc of Zen Arcade is amazing song after amazing song, all the way to the final feedback whine of that aforementioned lengthy final instrumental.

For those of you who aren’t familiar with the album, I hope all this chatter piques your curiosity and that the sound sample whets your appetite. You can find all the other songs on the album on YouTube as well, but it is not available as digital download. The band has not gone back and re-mastered any of their SST output. The only way to get it is by way of the hard copy. But that’s fine, it’s not hard to track down and you can pretend to be the indie diehard that still clings to ~~vinyl~~ CDs.

Ian Songs #7. Mary Go Round

2009-10-25T09:55:00.000-07:00

Let’s fire up all the clichés.

Lightnin’ in a bottle. Always loved that phrase. Backhanded compliment? Sure, but I’d rather catch lightning then catch shit for continually banging out mediocre records. Of course, mediocre is in the, ahem, eye of the beholder. Case in point, Victims has had a nice career, crustily maximizing this d-beat n’ roll that has been eyeing an audience for some time now. But, they never seem to rise above the authentically leather-clad and the be-studded to hit the ears of folks that only have a passing familiarity with Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing (odd how that title sums up the up-to-now proliferation of the genre).

Maybe, just maybe, it’s because Victims best work, the album of theirs' that is worth the time/effort to track down is a ridiculously hard to find demo EP. From the opening feedback to the final chug, Harder Than it Was Meant to Be is delightfully free of battleworn self-doubt, the kind of limitations that a band lumps upon their songwriting when they’ve done enough road testing to see what works and what doesn’t. Duders here are just plain pissed with phlegm covering every blown-out microphone, every amp reduced to rubble, and every drum head thoroughly smashed. And the production is endearingly shoddy, which, ultimately makes this recording. Instead of hiding the flaws behind a wall of sound, it presents them up front, bobbing on the waves of coursing adrenaline and without the anchor of self-control. You can only get a recording like this on the first go-’round, which is why most demos, for whatever reason, are music’s lightning rod atop the Empire State Building.

Marky's song #13: Hüsker Dü – “Diane”

2009-10-19T11:20:00.000-07:00

(Hüsker Dü, part one)

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 “Public Defender” by S.O.A. or the bridge in Minor Threat’s “Screaming at a Wall”), it immediately garners attention: the monotony of velocity is broken up. That’s the first thing I noticed about this song when I first heard it, but what happened about 1:10 in was much more jarring.

We already have one song tangentially related to the band in question, and I have a second one on the brain to follow this post up with eventually. That’s the amount of influence Messrs. Mould, Hart, and Norton had on the collective conscious of underground rock. Anyhoo, this track is from the Metal Circus EP, a 45-RPM slab of vinyl that chugs right along at the expected pace until this, the middle cut on the three-song B side.

I’ll try to describe the scene here: a shy kid by himself in his room on a late autumn afternoon. He notices that this one song clocks in at nearly twice the length of any other song on the record. His ears perk up a little at the opening mantra-like drumbeat, followed by a bass part played through a flanger pedal. And then he catches these opening verse lyrics:

“Hey little girl, do you need a ride?

I’ve got room in my wagon, why don’t you hop inside?
We can cruise down Roberts Street all night long

But I think I’ll just rape and kill you instead…”

OK, so you figured out that the kid in question was me. There’s no prize for that. The lyrics are printed right on the back of the album cover (those of you too young to have owned vinyl will have to simply trust me on this) and I still missed it. I was lying on my back on the bed with the album jacket on my chest and not looking at the lyric sheet. So I sat up and said to myself “wait…what? What the fuck did he just say?” I picked up the needle and restarted the song, as if I was just not hearing right and he’d say something different the second time around.

This song is about the murder of Diane Edwards, which occurred in the Minneapolis area in 1980. It’s not the kind of topic I’d come to expect from a hardcore band. This was far too disturbing, far too vulnerable for hardcore – or was it? This EP is pointed to as the Great Leap Forward for Hüsker Dü, where they began to leave their hardcore sound (but not their ethos) behind and move towards a poppier approach. “Diane” is not the first truly classic Hüsker Dü song (that would be “In a Free Land”), but it’s the one that got them noticed outside hardcore circles and played on college radio stations back when getting played on college radio stations actually meant something. Yet, this song is not the one that clinched them for me. That song will be the topic for my next post. Suspense! (Sort of.)

Partially because it's such a good song and partially because it's a simple three chord pattern that repeats through the entire song, “Diane” is an oft-covered indie rock epic that keeps getting tinkered with re-imagined. For the story so far, a search of YouTube found the following versions:

Marky's song #12: Charles Ives - "The Unanswered Question"

2009-10-11T09:07:00.001-07:00

In Poland, the 5000-zloty banknote has native composer Frédéric Chopin on the front. If the United States were to do something similar, Charles Ives would have to be included somewhere. (And not on the never-used $2 bill, dammit – though that gives new meaning to the phrase “two buck Chuck.” Ahem, anyway.)

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.

His body of work sounds nothing like composers that preceded him and very little like the actual modernists that followed. Ives’s music distinguishes itself with its borrowing from other sources. His compositions are peppered with melodies referenced from folk tunes, church hymns and early ragtime melodies as well as Beethoven and his beloved Brahms. Motifs are swiped, altered and offered back with bristling and energetic polytonality. His compositions are emotional and earthy, a far cry from the academic steeliness of real postmodernism.

“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.

Because of the simplified instrumentation and relatively digestible content, “The Unanswered Question” is one of Ives’s most often performed compositions. But a single piece is obviously not enough to give an accurate depiction of a composer. For the curious listener, I’ve uploaded some more performances into one convenient folder HERE for you to peruse at your own leisure. Included are the companion piece “Central Park in the Dark”, the Symphony of Holidays, Orchestral Sets #1 and #2, and for the really adventurous, his Fourth Symphony. Enjoy. It’s about time we got a little classical music into this blog.

Marky's song #11: Boredoms - "Super Going"

2009-10-01T11:58:00.001-07:00

I’ve read that it takes courage to admit one’s mistakes. Not that I expect a Medal of Honor for this one, but truth be told, I gave up on the Boredoms too quickly. I wound up passing on giving their best album a chance for a few years simply because a small handful of earlier releases tried my patience too much. My bad.

A little background history. Back in the day (and by that I mean 1988), the Boredoms arrived from ~~Saturn~~ Japan to unleash incomprehensible music on unsuspecting audiences. Their albums were both aggressively flashy and violently hilarious. The best part about it all was that the uneasy chuckles their music provoked came from both those in the know as well as those who simply wrote the band off as adorable but clueless foreigners. Soul Discharge (1989) and Pop Tatari (1992) were masterpieces of fractured cultural blender-ism; its noise-making tantrums being both amusing and terrifying, yet a surprisingly large amount of the music sticks to the wall once all is said and done. The latter album in particular deserves additional mention; it was released on Warner’s Japanese imprint, which lead Spin magazine writer Mike Rubin to comment that it was probably the least commercially viable album released on a major label since Metal Machine Music.

But all winning streaks have to come to an end sometime. 1994 saw the release of Chocolate Synthesizer, which was only so-so, and then the Super Roots series began to see the light of day and that’s when things started to get tedious. #3 and especially the monolithic #5 were the hardest pills to swallow; the former being a half-hour hardcore stomp and the latter being over an hour of a cymbal wash and open guitar strings. The band called the music “ambient hardcore”, I called it a drag. More than anything, these albums left me sad: my beloved Boredoms had lost their way.

And so, it wasn’t until 2003 when I finally got around to picking up Super æ (pronounced ‘super eye.’) What a boo-boo I made. It’s an awesome album, but for reasons very different from what made Soul Discharge and Pop Tatari so awesome. The band traded thrashcore freak-outs for blissful sun-worshipping voyages.

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.

From there, the album moves on to “Super Are.” It starts with a couple minutes of blocky chords played on what sounds like a Hammond organ. After a while, it gives way to some soft tribal drumming and – what’s this? Actual singing? With harmonies?! On a Boredoms album?!?! It’s true and it’s surprising how well they swing it. The band never gave us any inclination they had this stuff in them. When the first power chords come crashing into the song, it’s the most arena-rock moment the Boredoms have ever created. The track then busts into a sort of primitive stomp punctuated by trumpet runs. An ear-splitting screech brings it to a halt before slamming into our track in question.

Boredoms - "Super Going"

From here, the album soars into the stratosphere. “Super Going” is actually not all that complicated of a song: it mainly just seesaws back and forth between two chords; about eight-and-a-half minutes (!) in, a primal scream causes a few more chords to get tossed into the equation, eventually giving way to one final drumming climax and the word SHINE! Reading the description, you might thing it's the recipe for the most boring song ever. But in the hands of the Boredoms, it's a breathtaking magic carpet ride. “Super Going” does what all truly great songs should do – immediately demand you listen to it again once it has ended. It’s a challenge for me not to simply hit the previous track button when I’m playing the full album.

(Here's an edited version of the album with a cool video included.)

The rest of the album is just as fascinating, but it was this song that won me back over. Apparently, the only substantial difference between a spazz-rock band and a trance-rock band is how long they spend focusing on each idea! Subsequent releases have mined similar trance-like territory to lesser effect. Even the live Boadrum experiments didn’t capture my attention as much. I guess the main problem for a band that releases so many wonderful albums is that the bar gets set very high. But really, I should cut the Boredoms some slack – the vast majority of bands never release even one classic album. The Boredoms have blessed us with three.

Marky's song #10: Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time soundtrack - "Gerudo Valley"

2009-09-23T17:09:00.001-07:00

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 song article related to video gaming, and I’m sure this one will not be the last.

It was only a matter of time before independent music started to incorporate video game music into their sound. Bands like The Minibosses and The Advantage (among many others) thrill audiences with rocked-out covers of 8-bit themes. On the flip side of that, Anamanaguchi and Menomena go about things in reverse – using outmoded technologies to construct modern melodies. In the realm of electronic music, you can mosey over to the OverClocked ReMix website and download for free all sorts of re-worked, updated versions of tunes from games both popular and obscure.

The point I’m trying to make here, which will most likely elicit a response of ‘duh’ from the readership here, is that access to the “situational music” of our youth is greater than it has ever been. It’s not just video game soundtracks or even orchestras playing the music of Koji Kondo, but imported soundtracks from Japanese animation series or a compiling of the music of Carl Stalling. Of course, the quality of music for video games has increased as well, as companies discovered that more and more people were paying attention to that sort of thing. In turn, the people these companies employed to compose the music spent more time crafting individual soundtracks.

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.
This track has been re-imagined many times over – a somewhat large sample of these follow below. I’ll let the music speak for itself. The popularity is with good reason: it’s gorgeous, it’s simple, and it fits the portion of the game’s scene perfectly. Good music can be found in unlikely sources – even in a tribal encampment near the desert across a bridge next to a waterfall.

Gerudo Valley (original)

Gerudo Valley (JV mix): from OverClocked

Gerudo Valley (Peeples mix): from OverClocked

[Question: is anybody having trouble seeing the media players? I’m not sure if they work in Safari.]

Marky's song #9: Wesley Willis - "Feel The Power Of Rock And Roll"

2009-09-09T19:15:00.000-07:00

It was brought to my attention recently that we just passed the sixth anniversary of the passing of Wesley Willis. I remember reading about it the day after. My first thought after the initial grief was “there will never be another Wesley Willis.” My second thought after a little bit of reflection was “perhaps that’s a good thing.” As much as Wesley came across as larger than life, he was deeply troubled by demons that he was never able to fully exorcise.

In case you’re not familiar with the man, Wesley (for whatever reason, referring to him by his last name feels wrong) stood nearly six and a half feet tall and weighed over 300 pounds. He was also afflicted with chronic schizophrenia. He made his living on the streets of Chicago by selling drawings until he bought a Technics keyboard and began “writing” songs. When all was said and done, Wesley had recorded nearly fifty albums – the vast majority of which he did the artwork for. However, only the most obsessed collector needs to hear anything else besides the first two Greatest Hits albums. (Alternative Tentacles released a third volume that sadly, turned out to be an unfortunate let down.)

Critical opinion on Wesley will forever be divided. The man’s legacy left him both loved and reviled for the exact same reasons. Some relished the catch phrases and descriptions of live gigs, while others bemoaned the sheer repetitiveness and accused some musical cohorts of exploitation. But to say that all his songs sound the same is partially to miss the point. The formula was the reason his fans loved his music so much. It’s like eating your favorite food – you more or less know what you’re going to get and you still enjoy it every time. Yet, I’ll admit, it’s an acquired taste.

Look at it from the perspective of his fellow band members. How difficult do you think it would be to go out on tour and keep an eye on Wesley? No, The Wesley Willis Fiasco was not exploitative. But American Recordings certainly was. Amazingly, Wesley got to release an album on a major label. Even more amazingly, smelling potential profit, the label advanced a mere $10,000 for the album. To me, there’s no contest as to who is guilty of exploitation here.

Although Wesley lived a life plagued by mental illness, he wasn’t dumb. Stories abound about how he was able to recall singular events in his mind and make inkpen drawings of them with surprising accuracy – even down to things like license plate numbers on cars and buses. This is from the same guy who never bothered to memorize his song lyrics and would sit (or stand) on stage with a notebook for live sets.

Wesley Willis succumbed to leukemia on August 21, 2003, but rock & roll will never die.

Honorable mention/second favorite Wesley song: "Vampire Bat".

Marky's song #8: Napalm Death - "You Suffer"

2009-08-24T18:13:00.000-07:00

No, I’m not kidding.

I seriously considered ending the post there; a ridiculously short post for a ridiculously short song. So, how short is this darn thing, anyway? Wikipedia gives an official length of 1.136 seconds. iTunes claims a length of 0:05, but that includes the dead time between it and the next song on the album. The label of the vinyl single reads a concise (0:01), which was probably the band’s initial intent. But it almost seems pointless to debate the issue.

“Intent” is an interesting word, when you consider how much of a throwaway this track is. In fact, the session that produced this was written off and tossed away by the majority of the participants. Stories about this song – and the album it’s culled from – are the stuff of legend. Albert Mudrian’s book: Choosing Death: The Improbable History of Death Metal & Grindcore does a good job collecting stories and documenting the era. (I found earlier chapters in that book far more interesting than later ones, which is an accurate way of describing death metal and grindcore in general.)

This track comes from Napalm Death’s first album, Scum, which is actually split into two separate recording sessions with two different lineups; the only common thread between the two sides is drummer Mick Harris. “You Suffer” is the final song from the first session, which, along with Harris, includes guitarist Justin Broadrick and bassist/vocalist Nik Bullen. The session was initially intended to be a demo, but internal friction caused this version of the band to break up before it could be shopped around. Not expecting Harris to re-form the band with a completely new lineup, Broadrick gave the demo tape away – for free – to Earache label owner Digby Pearson. The rest, as they say, is (improbable) history.

“You Suffer” became quite a curiosity at the time for outsiders. The band always saw the track as some kind of joke, and would often play it 30, 40, 50 times in a row at early live gigs. I guess it could be considered a (very) brief moment of levity among their more politically charged songs. John Peel’s early championing of the band garnered them some more attention from the British media, perhaps culminating bizarrely in the band winding up on the BBC educational television program What’s That Noise? (The show’s title sounds tailor-made for Napalm Death, doesn’t it?)

This is not meant to be a bio of the band; if you’re further interested in the history behind this song, I recommend the above-linked book as well as the band’s first two albums – Scum and From Enslavement To Obliteration. Sadly, at the time, neither of those were distributed in the United States; most Americans didn’t get their first taste of the band until Harmony Corruption – a decent album, but the band had re-vamped its lineup yet again, veered away from grindcore and transmuted into a far less interesting death metal outfit. The development of American underground metal would have been very different had those earlier albums had more widespread availability at the time. Oh well. C'est la vie. Just remember, by the time you finish reading this entry, you could have listened to the song approximately fifty times.

Bobby's song #4: "King Medicine" by Jets to Brazil

2009-08-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

Before I began writing this entry my general take on the word "emo" was that it was a fashion fad practiced by kids half my age that involved wearing black clothes, having mop-headed haircuts, and walking around with a scowl all the time. Which is kind of what I did when I was that age, only we called it other things back then like "being alternative" or "being a hood". Self-described "emo" music that I had heard in passing over the past few years always made me either laugh or grimace - I could never take it seriously. So I was shocked when I went to Wikipedia (and then to AllMusic) and they listed Jets To Brazil as an "emo" band. I just thought they were an Indie Rock band. And I hate the term "emo".

However, after doing a little more research I began to see how Jets To Brazil could fall under that classification. Especially with regards to lyrical content. From AllMusic.com: "Emo lyrics are deeply personal, usually either free-associative poetry or intimate confessionals."

This attention to lyrics is what ultimately made orange rhyming dictionary a permanent resident in my car for a number of years in my early-20s. The lyrics sound like they were written by a frustrated novelist. Because they were. For that, and for other reasons Blake Schwartzenbach's lyrics resonated with me. See, back then I was a generally unhappy guy who spent my evenings hanging out in bars getting plastered, trying to write a novel, reading existential philosophy books, and being pretty sure that my heart had been broken beyond repair. Hey, wait - I was so totally emo! It's all making sense now. All that was missing was a studded belt and some horn rimmed glasses.

Jets To Brazil was Schwartzenbach's second band. His first was Jawbreaker which had a decidedly more post-hardcore sound. Jets To Brazil, however, were less punkish and more geared towards the indie-rock crowd. orange rhyming dictionary was their first album and, unfortunately, their best. JTB released two other albums which were very weak (and dreadfully boring) by comparison and then broke up in 2003.

"King Medicine" is probably not the best song on the album, which is full of gems, but it is undoubtedly my favorite for its lyrical content. It spoke to me the loudest during that tumultuous time in my life and so I honor it here.

King Medicine by Jets to Brazil

Marky's song #7: Friends of Dean Martinez - "Landfall"

2009-08-15T18:49:00.000-07:00

I don’t drive, but if I did, Friends of Dean Martinez would be a mandatory portion of all road trip soundtracks. Their music conjures up images of endless journeys through flatlands where the lack of scenery is exactly what makes things so scenic. When I close my eyes I can imagine the constant hum of a solitary car engine as the vehicle rolls along a two-lane highway.

Hailing from Tucson, the band was originally named Friends of Dean Martin, but they were forced to change it at the behest of Mr. Martin’s estate. This turned out to actually be a prescient move; the sound they started with might invoke the image of a reveling, inebriated Martin enjoying the evening, but the sounds they ended up with most certainly did not.

When FoDM first hit the scene, “alternative” music was starting to move away from grunge bombast. Curious listeners had become saturated with fuzz box guitar and were looking for new sounds. “Lounge” music was one of the many styles to fill that gap. But a lot of the stuff was simply too cloying for me. FoDM wasn’t the most egregious offender, but the band didn’t really get interesting until they moved away from copping Martin Denny grooves.

By the time their potential swansong Lost Horizon dropped, the pandering towards the martini-and-tiki-lamp crowd had ended. In its place, they composed dirges to accompany staring out the car window at the continual late night flickering of lines and lights on the highway. (All my wanderlust fantasies inevitably have me sitting in the passenger seat.)

Lost Horizon is a very “dark”-sounding album and this track is the opener. For all the hubbub about moving away from the image of the self-aggrandizing guitar rocker, it’s ironic that their strongest song should “rock” as much as it does and that the focal point is a truly heroic guitar solo. The keyboards shift back and forth between two chords as the song swells up with fretboard runs, climaxing and having a big release several minutes in, only to go back and do it all a second time before closing.

Friends of Dean Martinez - "Landfall"
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Listen to this song on headphones with the lights off. Technically, Friends of Dean Martinez still exists, but they haven’t released anything since Lost Horizon, which was put out in 2005. If they truly have split up, they smartly went out on a triumphant note.

Ian Songs: #6, Got to Get Cha

2009-08-08T23:03:00.000-07:00

"Maceo, I want you to blow." Truer words hath never been spoken (for the next three to five minutes, please believe that to be the case), especially when they leave the lips of Bootsy. But, Maceo and the Horny Horns were far away in the future when the J.B.'s had a mutiny, leaving The Hardest Working Man in Show-Biz to press some of their own wax. The result? Maceo and All the King's Men, a fairly typical offering of turn-of-the-'70s Southern funk, fried in the still-hot oils of Stax & Muscle Shoals. But, goddamn, when the J.B.'s wanted to let a groove simmer 'til a boil, there was next to no one better. Doing Their Own Thing has some burners on it, for sure; which is why Old Man Brown kept it down, suppressing the album's release and any singles from floating to the airwaves. Sad, because Got to Get Cha could've been a contender, a alternate-reality radio staple that could've rubbed elbows with R&B's guilty pleasures. The words are crap, there's no way getting around it, and they don't have a lick of the je ne sais quoi, soulful swing of the Godfather. Yet, the groove is tight and the bridge is transcendent; reaching 'dem heights through a crystal clear guitar that rings in the fact that, at this time, this was the band you wished could be backing you. Of course the snap/clap is as steady as a rock. Of course the four-string brilliantly bounces. Of course the horns punctuate every apostrophe and period. This is the fucking J.B.'s and while the cat was away, goddamn did these guys ever play. Enjoy. Big Daddy Kane did.

Marky's song #6: John Zorn - "Nefesh"

2009-08-06T19:19:00.000-07:00

Those of us who are huge fans of John Zorn have a word to describe ourselves: “Zornthologists.” It’s meant as a term of endearment. There’s no codified process or minimum number of albums to purchase in order to cross the line into Zornthology, but those who are there usually don’t try to hide it. Between his solo albums, band projects, collaborations, one-offs and guest appearances, I have round 100 albums connected to him on one way or another. And that that’s only a minor dent into his discography, not to mention that there are certainly much more rabid Zorn fans than me.

Bar Kokhba is not one of his better-known albums. It is named after Simon Bar Kokhba, the leader of the Second Jewish Revolt against the Roman Empire in the year 135. The revolt was crushed overwhelmingly by the Romans and led to the expulsion of the Jews from Jerusalem. Obviously a major event in Jewish history, the Bar Kokhba revolt is also cited as the first significant divergence between Christianity and Judaism.

As you might expect from an album named after an event of such grave emotional import, Bar Kokhba drips with somber spirituality. A double-CD released as part of the “Radical Jewish Culture” series on his own Tzadik label in 1996, the album features various small chamber ensembles. In fact, Zorn doesn’t play on the album at all, being credited solely as a composer. Those familiar with parts of the Masada catalog will recognize some of the themes and find it interesting to hear them out of a jazz context, but – and Zorn has emphatically stated this on many occasions – Masada was never meant to be strictly a “jazz” project.

The point behind the Masada project was for Zorn to write a “book” of melodies. He drew the inspiration for that from Duke Ellington. Duke had a book of songs – not full arrangements, but just main themes. Sometimes it would be nothing more than a couple lines on staff paper. He could then arrange those melodies into full-fledged compositions as the instrumentation dictated. If he needed to arrange it for a piano trio, he could do that. If he needed to arrange it for a 30-piece big band orchestra, he could do that as well. It was the same song, the same melody, but a different context.

Masada plays upon the same idea, but given Zorn’s breadth of musical interests, it doesn’t restrict itself to jazz. Melodies have been re-interpreted by string trios, techno artists and thrash bands. In the case of Bar Kokhba, it’s chamber music. But this track stands out from the rest of the album because it actually is a jazz piece.

John Zorn - "Nefesh"
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The trio that plays on this track is John Medeski on piano, Mark Dresser on bass and Kenny Wollesen on drums. As far as I am aware, this is the only track anywhere that features this specific trio of musicians. A shame, because this song is one of the finest pieces of jazz I’ve heard anywhere, from any time period. The beautifully recorded track is balanced perfectly between the three instruments, each member getting a chance to stand out and shine without ever breaking the heavy mood. This track by itself may not be enough to recommend slogging through two full CDs of minor key chamber music, but it definitely deserves to be pulled out and placed on a pedestal.

Marky's song #5: Public Enemy - "Can't Do Nuttin' For Ya Man"

2009-08-02T11:26:00.000-07:00

I’m sure I don’t need to give you the huge back-story about who Public Enemy is and their impact on the world of hip hop. A friend of mine once joked, “if Public Enemy are the Beatles of rap, then Flavor Flav is George Harrison.” I laughed, but it makes sense, even if there aren’t exact counterparts to each section of the analogy. Chuck D rightfully gets the lion’s share of the attention, being the nominal leader and frontman as well as the chief lyrical contributor, but Flav is more than just a hype-man riding someone else’s coattails; every P.E. album sports two or three solid Flav cuts – he’s never the central figure, but always dependable. Flav’s larger-than-life personality outside the groups has quite the reputation, but don’t take my word for it – let Chuck D tell you in his own words.

Fear of a Black Planet was released after the stellar It Take a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back. However, before Fear… made it into stores, Professor Griff (Public Enemy’s Ringo Starr?) was released from the fold over allegations of anti-Semitic remarks in an interview with David Mills of the Washington Times. The veracity of that claim is not the subject here. The flap had the potential to damage P.E.’s rapidly increasing status, but unsurprisingly the group didn’t let the controversy slow them down one bit. The polemics are stronger than ever and the beats are just as solid as they were on Nation of Millions. In fact, Fear of a Black Planet is so strong, it made it into the Library of Congress’s National Recording Registry in 2004.

Probably the best-known song off of Fear of a Black Planet is one of Flavor’s: “911 Is a Joke.” The only other Flavor-led track on the album is this one – a hard luck story mostly told from the second person in Flav’s loopy, instantly recognizable rasp. As always, production crew Bomb Squad finds the right backing for the song, sampling both the J.B.s and Bobby Byrd. It’s not coincidence that my interest in Public Enemy declined once Bomb Squad stopped producing their albums. The video is pretty low budget (Chuck D doesn’t even appear in it), but I dig it. This track is a perfect tonic to loosen up to between Chuck’s high strung raps.

Ian Songs: #5, Messin' With the Kid

2009-08-01T22:41:00.000-07:00

It's unfair that I have to gaze at '77 through the hazy eye that is everyone else's collective retrospective. When rock exploded into a thousand pieces, it was the burgeoning punk curio that tried to piece everything back together with DIY crazyglue. And, of course, I missed it, born far too late to be caught in the riptide of any wave, barely treading water while being continuously inundated with the high-tides of yesterday. No first come, first served for this music neophyte, I had to creep and crawl my way through the unfamiliar subterrane, gorging myself on whatever thirty-year-old treat made my ears "O"; a blind cave fish just happy to have sustenance, happy to be feeding on something. Sometimes it was nothing but a hold over, something to keep the belly full enough so I could still hunt through the virtual bargain bins of the blogs, pouring over lost ruins looking for gems. Sometimes, though, what I found was gold. Enter Messin' With the Kid.

Amazingly not a cover of the blues near-standard, Messin' With the Kid happened to be the cream of Australia's best known entry to punk's second-wave. The Saints debut crackled with the high-energy, reckless and youthful abandon, and totally scummy sound that all great demos seem to be inherently blessed with. Yet, for all the spitfire aggression, slashed amp distortion, and bratty speedfests that colored the rest of the record, Messin' With the Kid bordered on being a tasteful rock ballad. It's weird. A goddamn anomaly, coming off like Dylan writing for The Damned or something. Underneath the snotty punk sheen is a lazy, summery pop song that gloriously waxes and wanes, building up tension in all the right spots and dropping a delicious and unforgettable hook as the outro. A band shouldn't be this good on a demo. Yet, The Saints were and Messin' provides the evidence that Brisbane's first punks shouldn't be taken at face value. One listen to the brilliant bass that fills in the negative space proves that. Sure, (I'm) Stranded received the glory, and rightfully so, but Messin' With the Kid is the secret crush, the one you wouldn't even divulge during the craziest Jolt-infused sleepovers. Ask, like, Thurston Moore or J. Mascis or something. Or me. I'm drunk.

Ian Songs: #4, Supersonic Rocket Ship

2009-07-27T20:55:00.000-07:00

At the height of glam n' glitter, the Davies (more likely Ray) decided to go all theatrical. Don't really blame them, they just cut a record in '72 charring the rock roadlife with a lyrical blowtorch. The cliche thing about rock is that you write what you know (or what you think you know) and if you dedicate two whole sides to how boring touring is, than it's a fairly good indicator that you should try something new. Keep in mind, as well, that the still under-appreciated Everbody's in Show-Biz (despite one overplayed selection) predates Seger's lonely end-of-the-bar-jam by a year, so they were still pushing boundaries even though they were sick to death of doing it. And, just to make sure that the traditional English irony was left in tact during the transitioning process, the right hand side of the gatefold contains, you guessed it, the Kinks recent one night stand at Carnegie Hall.

Of course, The Kinks' controlled irony is only one side of the coin. For a band that's quintessentially British in every way, they owe America's marketing machine for few million album sales. Van Halen's purposely obtuse cover of You Really Got Me must've lined the Davies' pockets quite well. And, when the American production of the British TV hit, Life on Mars pulled out their last '70s top 20 hit to back a supernatural abduction scene, anyone who heard it who were under thirty went running to make sure their iPod had what some consider to be the drunkest album ever recorded.

And, there, waiting to greet their taping feet n' fingers was Supersonic Rocket Ship, which is The Kinks at their '70s best. I mean, we're miles away from Party Line at this point and it shows in the laidback, inebriated groove. And, while its naivete is what is played up by most and is, honestly, the song's best selling feature, it's the sheer depth of the musical backdrop that deserves note. Give it a spin once and enjoy it. Spin it again and lend it some ears. A horn chart? Clever piano lines? These things didn't have to be there, yet they are and they help paint a complete picture. The picture is gorgeous, too, and will lift the lips of anyone on their worst day. Pure pop, pure gold.

Marky's song #4: Neu! - "Für Immer"

2009-07-26T08:02:00.000-07:00

For the record, it’s pronounced NOY. As in “It sure is anNOYing when people pronounce it like NEW.”

Neu! (or technically, NEU! – exclamation mark and all caps – does this mean Moe.’s sporting of typographical affectations has roots? Good grief.) was a German duo consisting of Klaus Dinger and Michael Rother, who formed the group after departing from Kraftwerk. The project is an exercise in beguiling restraint and their most salient feature is the ubiquitous presence of the motorik beat – a funkless, driving 4/4 pulse that propels many of their songs into krautrock classics.

Their three albums in the early-to-mid-70s are all outstanding examples of the krautrock aesthetic, insofar that one can assign an uniform aesthetic to the genre. Basically, they took Kraftwerk’s synth rhythms and reconfigured it to a rock format. Most people tend to gravitate toward their first (Neu!) or third (Neu! ’75) albums, but their middle album (Neu! 2) is the one that I seem to listen to the most often. It’s my personal favorite, and not simply because of the story behind it.

What happened was the band got their advance from their label and was so excited to have a somewhat decent budget for their upcoming album that they went out and bought all-new equipment and instruments for the recording. About halfway through making the album, however, the band ran out of funds. Dinger and Rother asked the label for an additional advance in order to complete the record; the label refused, citing poor sales of their debut album.

Brainstorming, and needing to deliver a full-length record, the group decided to fill the rest of the album in an unconventional way: they took a previously recorded single and manipulated it in various ways. A few tracks have them being played on a turntable at speeds different than originally intended. Another has it recorded onto cassette and eaten by the tape machine. And so forth.

At the time, this half of the album was scoffed at as being gimmicky filler and a swindle played on the consumer. Over time, however, the album’s reputation improved and is now touted as “the first remix album”, albeit a rudimentary version thereof. I don’t fully agree with that sentiment: remix albums are mostly done to generate additional revenue from a successful track/album and not out of necessity. On the other hand, necessity is the mother of invention, so I guess I should give credit where credit it due. I certainly appreciate the smiley-faced subversiveness of the project, no matter what the original reason for doing it was.

I really feel side two needs to be heard in its entirety to fully appreciate what they did. So instead of that, I’m sharing the opening track to the album. “Für Immer” is probably Neu’s single best song: shifting tempos and stretching time while maintaining the buzz of the main chord that runs through the entire 11-minute song. I love how the drums will swim underwater for a while before pushing themselves back up to the surface. It simultaneously rocks out and has a drifts placidly. Hopefully, this track will inspire those not yet in the know to further check this album out – it’s quite the masterpiece.

Ian Songs: #3, Cannibal

2009-07-24T19:05:00.000-07:00

For children of the core born post-the first few waves, it's hard to imagine a world without The Jesus Lizard; a band with a siren song so strong that it has lead Denison-disciples to a Lizard-inspired renaissance not once, but twice. The mid '90s gave us a whole slew of Shortys, of Phleg Camps, of Cake Likes that tuned their instruments to gut-wrenchin', grindin', and screamin', allowing them to wreck their ships of talent on the shores of no exposure, gaining them only the allegiance of the lands of Albini. Now, once more, kids who missed the first run-through of JL copycatism are channeling their inner Yow for a generation that never heard Boilermaker until they downloaded it (Your author, ladies and gents). Mar, Young Widows, Tinsel Teeth; the young bucks in a game that grants few fortune.

Yet, for all of this enduring fandom for the unique sound of Chicago's finest, it's the older Texas quartet that's usually forgotten. Scratch Acid is now relegated to something like footnote status, known to most only as the thing that came before. Although they reunite occasionally, like a spazzy Halley's Comet to ring in special anniversaries, they don't seem to hold the same clout in the, ugh, scene as what came after. That's a real shame. Scratch Acid was the breeding ground for the Jesus Lizard's sound, true, but it was a sponge that soaked up a hell of a lot more than the Lizard ever did, oftentimes sounding like a psychedelic, surf rocking, ear-drum-fuck of epic atmospheric proportions.

All of their recorded work can now be picked up for cheap on the Greatest Gift compilation that thankfully kept most of this stuff in print. And, right from the top, you can hear their best song, culled from their '84 EP. Cannibal stuns with its simplicity, gunning for the head with a subtly-evolving repeating riff, a young Yow's masterful yells (notice just how perfect they are, cracking and distorting at all the right moments), and a steady rhythm section that would become these guys' stock in trade for the next few decades. Greater yet, it doesn't overstay its welcome, tying the entire package up in under two and a half minutes of post-hardcore perfection. It almost doesn't get better than this, which is strange that it doesn't hit more of the CD mixtapes I receive from buddies. Oh well. Here's their chance now.

Mike's Song #1: Van Duren - Grow Yourself Up (Are You Serious?)

2009-07-23T14:38:00.000-07:00

I've got an old powerpop-obsessed coworker to thank for turning me on to Van Duren. The guy had forgotten more about 60's and 70's folk, psych, powerpop, and rock than I'll ever know. I picked up a lot from him, which will likely filter into these entries pretty often.

Out of all the obscurities that found their way into my record collection (and, let's be honest, my iPod) during that time, I think Van Duren is a personal favorite. Forgotten now, he came out of the Memphis powerpop scene in the early 70's. He was initially in a band with Big Star's drummer, and went on to form the Baker Street Regulars, who were around in '76 or so. I think the pinnacle of his work, though, is the fantastic record Are You Serious? (or Staring at the Ceiling in Europe), which was recorded and released in 1978 after he moved to New England. He released one more solo record after this, but Are You Serious? is solid gold from front to back. He's still around, located in Memphis, and still plays shows.

Van Duren - Grow Yourself Up

This song, the fifth track off of Are You Serious?, draws immediate comparison to Nilsson. I'm hearing a little of the aforementioned Badfinger (circa Wish You Were Here) right off the bat, too...it's probably the bouncy piano that carries most of the melody. There's a fantastic wave of melancholy that comes at a point about a minute into the song where everything but the piano drops off. I like powerpop with hints of bitterness (or large helpings of it - see Joe Jackson's early stuff). It's one of the more upbeat tracks on the record, although it's also one of the most lyrically acidic. The vocal and overly noisy guitar freakout at the end are pretty fantastic, and a bit beyond the boundaries Costello, Lowe, Jackson, and his other contemporaries would set for themselves. You can tell this guy had more than a little love for the massive, squalling, T.Rex side of glam/powerpop.

After this album, and the followup Idiot Optimism that was recorded in 1978-1979 but remained unreleased until 1999, Duren returned from the New England area to Memphis and performed in the band Good Question from 1981-1999. As mentioned previously, he still plays shows under his solo moniker in and around Memphis.

Bobby's song #3: "The Slim" by Sugar

2009-07-23T09:57:00.000-07:00

I came across my sister's Copper Blue tape in 1993 and "borrowed" it to have in my car. I was 16 or 17. I don't know if she ever listened to it because she never seemed to notice that it was missing, something she almost always did when I "borrowed" her stuff, so I ended up not feeling so bad about keeping it. I remember listening to it the first few times while driving to and from school and thinking. It was definitely not the kind of music I gravitated towards at that time. I mostly listened to death metal. Sugar was decidedly not that.

Like all teenagers, I had already experienced my share of heartbreaks by that age. At the time I felt that these experiences were, naturally, devastating and traumatic. Any art that captured that sense of heartbreak or loss instantly resonated with me. This is why The Slim was the track that kept me listening to this album over and over again.

The Slim by Sugar

Sugar was Bob Mould's 2nd attempt to front a band. His first, more famous, attempt was the well-regarded Husker Dü. Husker Dü started off as a hardcore-punk band in the early 80s but became more of a punk/alternative crossover by the mid-80s. If you compare later Husker Dü with Sugar's music you can easily hear that Mould was the driving musical force behind both bands. They sound very similar with the only difference being that Sugar was definitely more radio-friendly.

Despite Copper Blue being voted 1992's Album of the Year by NME and some catchy singles (this blog entry was very nearly about If I Can't Change Your Mind) Sugar failed to make much of an impression on the US charts (and performed only modestly on the UK charts). They stayed together long enough to record one more album and then called it quits.

Marky's song #3: The Would Be's - "My Radio Sounds Different In The Dark"

2009-07-22T19:13:00.000-07:00

As Michael Azerrad adroitly pointed out in the epilogue of his fine book Our Band Could Be Your Life, major labels stopped derisively ignoring the American independent music scene once Nirvana’s Nevermind album dropped. For a couple years, the ‘underground’ effectively disappeared when the search for the “next Seattle” began. Various locales around the United States were proffered up as places for the music behemoths to send their A&R people in order to strip mine the area. At one point, some executives who felt they were slightly more enterprising than the rest of their cohort poked around in places across the ocean for the next big thing. And for a (very) short while, that place was Ireland.

That the entire country of Ireland could be considered a “scene” is amusing. Not because there isn’t a vibrant musical community there – quite the opposite. But it’s such a diverse musical environment that the notion of there being some sort of immediately recognizable sound – for an entire country – is downright absurd. Could you imagine anyone claiming there was an American scene? I mean, besides me doing exactly that in the first paragraph?

In light of that attempt at humor, let me offer a sidebar: any such search was futile right from the get go. At the time, enough interconnectedness had been constructed into the network to prevent stylistic regionalism to be fostered in complete isolation.

Anyway, Nevermind was released when I was a senior in high school; a couple years later I found myself putting in a few hours a week at the campus radio station. In retrospect, it probably was the worst possible time for a person to be in college radio, with endless corporate product deluging our mailboxes and slick label people deluging our voicemails. But that’s neither here nor there. As you might expect, much of what we got was dross. But we still sifted through everything that arrived in the hopes of uncovering a gem in the midst of the mediocrity. One day, a compilation titled Straight Outta Ireland (released by California-based Scotti Bros. Records) came into my possession. Ignoring the lame N.W.A. joke there, the music inside showcased a slew of tracks that had appeared on Irish labels that had yet to secure any sort of distribution in the United States. This was the lead-off track. Maybe that’s why it made the most impression on me.

(The album turned out to be so popular that Scotti Bros. went back and released a Straight Outta Ireland 2. Because, you know, the fact that the first volume omitted both Hothouse Flowers and An Emotional Fish wouldn’t have anything to do with it.)

The Would Be’s never had an ice cube’s chance in hell of achieving anything beyond a small cult following, but they were OK with that. I mean, look at their faces in the video. It’s like they can’t believe they’re getting away with this. “Really? A video on 120 Minutes? Us?” Maybe that’s why The Would Be’s never caught on across the Atlantic: they lacked the resolute flamboyancy of well-known Irish acts like U2 and The Cranberries. Three verses and choruses without any middle break, bridge or solo. It’s about as unassuming of a pop song as you can get, even with the trombone in there. Even though this song is almost two decades old, it’s still a wonderful listen. It’s fairly typical of what you’d expect from an early 90s “alternative” act, but I revisit the song often just to re-experience the charm of the thing.

Bobby's song #2: "Little Computer People" by Little Computer People

2009-07-21T13:32:00.000-07:00

There are a handful of songs that I can listen to that will perk me up 100% of the time, no matter the situation or my mood. Little Computer People is one of those songs. I cannot help but grin and start bopping my head when it comes on. It is silly and nerdy, just like me. Maybe dorky is a better word.

You see, Little Computer People was originaly a computer game put out in 1985 by Activision. It was the 80s version of The Sims and featured state of the art graphic and music (for the time). It was the music from this video game that inspired Little Computer People (the artist) to record the Little Computer People (the song) in 1998.

Little Computer People (the artist) is one of many aliases for the German techno producer Anthony Rother. He's been doing techno music since the late 80s and released several 12" records and albums. Some of his collaborative work with Sven Vath is not bad but most of his other work is dull and takes itself too seriously. Honestly, I generally don't like German techno. At all.

But this song is different. I don't hear German techno when I listen to it. I hear the anthem of gleeful computer nerds cutting loose on the dance floor. Or at least in their cubicles. I have a feeling someone over at The IT Crowd may have heard this song and seen this video and felt the same thing.

The song didn't appear on CD until he released Electro Pop on his own PSI49NET label in 2001. The album is decent on the whole and there are a couple standout tracks but nothing tops Little Computer People (the song). Listen to it once and see if it doesn't get stuck in your head for the rest of the day.

Bobby's song #1: XTC - "Jason and the Argonauts"

2009-07-20T17:27:00.000-07:00

XTC was a band that came back to life at least 3 times during their 20-year existence. Jason and the Argonauts is a great example of where the band was musically at the end of their first rebirth.

The 4-piece from Swindon started in the mid-70s as a pop band with punkish tendencies playing short, quirky-jerky songs that were meant to be catchy. Many of them were. Some of them were just good, silly fun. Part of the make up of this early incarnation of XTC that made the bands music so quirky, besides the band member's youth, was the whiz-bang keyboard stylings of Barry Andrews.

Unfortunately, rock egos will be rock egos and there was only room for one Alpha male songwriter in the band. So, after just two years and two albums (White Music and Go 2) Barry Andrews left (and went on to be a part of Shriekback).

XTC found itself missing what was once a key component of their sound. Instead of finding another keyboardist they opted to add a second guitarist. Enter Dave Gregory and the first rebirth of XTC.

This new line-up produced a sound that was more muscular and self-confident than before. They released Drums and Wires (a title describing their new musical make up) in 1979. The new formula was clearly a success as XTC charted their first Top 10 UK single with Making Plans for Nigel.

They spent the next three years on the road stopping only to record. All of the playing made them much tighter as a unit and you could hear it in their recordings. In 1980 they released Black Sea. Gone are the quirky elements from before. This is just a straight-up kick-ass rock record.

English Settlement, released in 1982, was a watershed album. Here XTC built on the solid foundation the three years of touring had given them and added a complexity to the song writing and instrumentation that was not there before. It heralded the promise of what XTC was to become - it's next rebirth.

But the rebirth was not to happen as fans would have liked. While on tour in France in 1982, lead singer (and main songwriter) Andy Partridge had a meltdown on stage from anxiety. He was never to return to the stage after that. The rest of the tour was cancelled. XTC would become a studio-only band. But that is a story for another time.

Jason and the Argonauts is my favorite track from this album. It contains some of the very best elements that make XTC a permanent resident in my listening queue: a catchy chorus, interesting vocal lines, and a droney space-out section.

(This is not an official video, obviously.)

Marky's song #2: D.R.I. - "Decisions"

2009-07-20T11:47:00.000-07:00

There’s no way to meaningfully quantify how much influence a band has on their peers, but the Dirty Rotten Imbeciles would easily rank near the top of any such scale as far as hardcore punk goes. They certainly upped the ante as far as velocity is concerned; one might even consider them genre pioneers. They took the sound, refined it, and pushed the gas pedal to the floor. At one point, they were one of the fastest bands on the planet.

This was good for them – it was a time where listeners were trying to see how fast bands could get and still keep things somewhat together while bands were gleefully egging each other on in friendly competition to speed things up more and more. Or at least that’s the kind of camaraderie fair weather revisionists want the story to be remembered for. But velocity alone doesn’t guarantee anything – and D.R.I. also was good (or lucky) enough to pen more than its fair share of classic hardcore songs: “Reaganomics”, “Couch Slouch”, “Equal People”, “I’d Rather Be Sleeping” among others. Their first two albums are hardcore classics.

Still, trailblazing success does not mean a band won’t take its primacy for granted. In the mid-80s, there was a prevailing notion that hardcore was a dying sub-genre. Some bands saw thrash metal bands gaining in popularity while their own fan bases were dwindling and felt the need to alter their sound. The result was known as ‘crossover thrash’ or simply ‘crossover.’ Predictably, different bands had varying degrees of success with this gambit. No band attempted to grab the brass ring of metal (metal brass ring? sounds redundant; must rethink) more than D.R.I. did, and no band paid harder for making that decision. I think anarcho-crust punk band Sore Throat penned at least three anti-D.R.I. songs, and they weren't the only band out there laying out the sellout accusation.

Don’t think for a moment that it wasn’t a deliberate decision on D.R.I.'s part; the fact that they even named the next album Crossover – replete with a chrome metallic version of their old ‘running man’ logo and a pair of skulls on the cover – shows that they were fully aware of what they were doing. But, never really having enough chops to be fully accepted by the metal crowd and derided as sellouts by their original hardcore fans, D.R.I. wound up in a weird sort of no-man’s land where their fans were pockets of adventurous listeners on both sides of the fence who were looking for new sonics outside their usual gaggle of bands. For better or for worse, this was the territory the band had decided to stake out for itself.

So why this song? Why, after calling their earlier material ‘classic’ and declaring the music that followed not up to snuff, would I pick a song from the earliest part of their crossover phase? Because it deserves to be rescued. Tucked away at the end of side one, “Decisions” is actually a pretty good tune. Drummer Felix Griffin never goes past a mid-paced thrash gallop (a big deal for a band once considered one of the fastest), which allows vocalist Kurt Brecht the room to enunciate his syllables. Earlier albums had Brecht cramming words together in order to make them fit the verses – his frenzied vocal delivery part of the exhilarating adrenalin rush, but the slowed-down approach in this song drives the point home – that there are no guarantees in life – better than the hurried method would. There’s harmony in Spike Cassidy’s guitar and Josh Pappe’s bass as they tentatively explore doing something with their instruments besides slashing away at power chords. Heck, even the guitar solo tacked onto the last chorus is decent.

Whether this band is considered hardcore, metal or crossover, it makes no difference. I may be being unnecessarily harsh on the group, yet I honestly can’t shake the feeling that this song is good only by accident. But hey, ours is not to complain. Ours is to enjoy. Do that.

Marky's song #1: Gene Simmons - "See You Tonite"

2009-07-19T17:05:00.000-07:00

I’m not really much of a Kiss fan. I don’t even own any of their ‘proper’ albums. Some people will read those two lines and declare that I’ve committed some sort of heavy metal apostasy, but I can’t deny my youth. My older brother was the Kiss fan of the family and grew up on the ‘classic’ metal stylings of Kiss, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden et al. When I reached my rebellious teenage years, not wanting to slavishly imitate my bro, I discovered hardcore punk as well as thrash and speed metal. By that time, Kiss was merely a mainstream pop-metal act that had already done away with the face paint – a highly influential relic, but not interesting enough to be on my radar. As a result, even though I heard those early albums (from Hotter Than Hell to Double Platinum) many times, I never had the urge to obtain my own copies. I have a greatest hits album and that’s all I feel I need.

The exception to that rule, and the only thing that prevents me from being dishonorably discharged from the Kiss Army, is the four solo albums released under the band’s logo in 1978. For some reason, these albums fascinate me. The concept, the results, even the artwork – velvet paintings of each band member bathed in colored background light and identical fonts on the reverse – captivated me in a way that their regular albums didn’t. I used to sneak into my brother’s room in the time between when I got home from school and when he did to simply look at those albums (touching the stereo was forbidden, you see). To this day, I still occasionally put them on for reasons unknown. Maybe it’s admiration for the ultimate expression of hard rock chutzpah.

The general consensus about these four albums is that Frehley’s is the strongest while Criss’s is the weakest. I concur with that sentiment. Just to give you an idea of how the Kiss star was falling at this time: each solo album had one song on it released as a single, except for Peter’s, which had two. That they would dip into the worst of the batch twice hints at how much the band was losing its direction. Within two years, the band would shed those two band members.

I think the reason Ace’s album is so highly regarded is the sheer unexpectedness of it. Messrs. Simmons and Stanley ran highly rigorous quality control and very few Frehley-penned tracks had seen the light of day. Perhaps Ace’s lack of confidence in his singing voice has something to do with that – he apparently couldn’t do his studio vocals unless he has lying on the floor so he couldn’t see anyone else watching him. But when allowed free reign in the studio without interference, he turned out to be a pretty good songwriter with an excellent grasp of hard rock dynamics.

The flipside of that coin, of course, is Peter Criss, whose solo album is as much of a trainwreck as it has been made out to be. It’s hardly even a rock album; it’s more of an R&B affair, and not a particularly good one at that. A lot of fun has been poked at this album, and I can’t say that it’s undeserved. It can be painful to listen to Peter desperately try to be the crooning balladeer that all the ladies love and failing miserably. Criss hoped his album would prove to his bandmates that he was just as good a songwriter as everyone else – it’s safe to say that the opposite of that hypothesis is the conclusion most people reached.

But those are the extremes, and it leaves two other albums to discuss. Being the primary songwriter, Paul’s album wound up sounding the most like a normal Kiss record, but that’s not necessarily the best thing you can say about something released in 1978. The true curveball of the bunch was Gene’s. At the time, this was one of the most expensive albums ever made, with its star-studded cast of participants. Joe Perry, Rick Nielsen, Donna Summer and Cher are among the guest appearances here. Given his persona and on-stage theatrics, you figured Mr. Simmons was a shoe-in for the sleaziest, most ass-kicking album the four would create. And you would be wrong.

Sure, songs like “Tunnel of Love” and “Living In Sin” are executed in the expected modus operandi, but the album veers off into decidedly un-Kiss-like directions. “True Confessions” includes a choir in the chorus to produce what can only be classified as gospel-hard rock. “Man of 1000 Faces” and “Mr. Make Believe” are straightforward pop songs with singing that doesn’t sound like a total come on. And there really are no words to describe the closing track, an earnest cover of “When You Wish Upon a Star” other than ‘accurate.’ Thank heavens Disney didn’t call Simmons’s agent when they needed to voice Jiminy Cricket.

And then there’s this song. Understated in every way, “See You Tonite” isn’t about boffing your mom (and your sister and your grandmother and your girlfriend and your daughter), but seems instead to be about a botched murder-for-hire attempt. Married to a Beatles-esque melody, it’s one of those songs you don’t realize how catchy it is until it’s long over, when you catch yourself humming the chorus during a break at work. At two-and-a-half minutes, it’s the shortest song on the album, which only helps contribute to the fleeting elusiveness of the track. Then you remember that Gene freakin’ Simmons wrote this song, and it only increases the wonderment. Obviously stuff like this could never make it onto a proper Kiss album, but the fact that he had this up his sleeve grudgingly gained him a little bit of my respect.

You may not like Kiss. Or you might like Kiss, but not care much for the solo albums. But believe me, when you hear this song, you will like it. And you will like it more than you think you do after hearing it.

Ian Songs: #2, Give 'em Some Rawhide Chewies

2009-07-19T09:23:00.000-07:00

The age of the cyber-music fan continues to leave an inconsistent and generally confusing streak of what's worth salvaging from the depths of obscurity. If something, say, continues to flesh out the genealogy of metal and punk, the lights from the decades-later exposure singes off the warts that kept it in the shadows during its own time. So often, a heavy, pre-Sabbath riff is falsely elevated to the legendary heights because it's used only as citation for online cock measuring contests. But, that's the world in which we, the 21st century digital boys, now live. And it sucks.

And, it sucks for bands like Yezda Urfa. Even with the prog renaissance in full effect and with likeminded acts such as Gentle Giant beginning to get their work into the shelves of under thirtysomethings across the universe, they still labor in unpopularity. Of course, prog is always doomed for such an unfortunate end. They're the dexterous nerd of the music world, only admired by those with similar skills and interests. But, one can't say that it isn't a hit with the masses because it's hard to listen to. It's just...why would anyone bother unless they found ultra-active basslines and absurd rounds crucial for music enjoyment? Having shaved truffles on a dessert is not necessary for enjoyment, but foodies need that shit because they've gone too far, looked straight at the sun with wide eyes and now have blown their fucking brains out. And, if you're here, you're probably the same way. A nose full of melodic coke just ain't doing it anymore, so you need to inject those veins with endearingly pedantic feel-good to even get a fix. And, like any true music fan will tell you, each hit is killing you while keeping you alive. Music addiction makes you miserable.

There's little pockets of joy, though, when you find something legit that you won't burn out on in a week. Yezda Urfa made that kind of record with their unreleased '76 offering, Sacred Baboon. Think Yes meets Gentle Giant. They have a so-so first date where Yes can only talk about how unbalanced the coffee shop table is and Gentle Giant nervously laughs, not really getting the reference. They awkwardly hook up, produce a child, and split. Yes flirts with pop, Gentle Giant has a weird period where they date hair rock. Their kid, while retaining the best parts of each, resents them terribly, takes a bunch of speed, and scribbles down the kind of nonsense poetry that fills the dog-eared notebook of a freshman majoring in Joyce wet dreams. Kind of like that.

Ian Songs: #1, Goodbye Toulouse

2009-07-18T14:45:00.000-07:00

The Stranglers is one of those bands that got stuck with the punk tag because of the mass confusion on where to place them on the pop music map when they first bubbled forth from the gash that let British punk into our plane of reality. Not really the critics' fault, Brits have an insatiable need to categorize things from the get-go; plus, they didn't have the net so they could troll around blogs to find hairy missing-links which only five people heard one summer in a German garage (Looking at you, Monks).

For all intensive purposes, there's not an awful lot of punk sonics here. I mean, there's a fucking keyboard that shits out lines that sounds like Ray Manzarek chasing a coked-out figment across the plastic ivories. That, and their output was oddly progressive, something that punk was set loose to destroy.

Of course, The Stranglers were born in the back of pubs. Instead of Buzzcocks, they sound like Brinsley Schwarz; just a bizarre-o version that wants to fight and fuck everything. But, maybe that's where the punk comes in, with the attitude and the inside joke-esque sense of humor. They sounded tough and unbalanced, like taking the idealized verison of David Yow to a pay-only-for-what-you-don't-vomit bar. The classic example of a band you'd think twice about seeing the flesh and basing that indecision on their recorded output alone.

Ah, but the contradiction was that they never wanted to pass up a golden pop nugget. Goodbye Toulouse was their earliest, before they'd chart a sweet lil' ditty abut heroin. Still muscular, still dangerous, yet the kind of broken down dangerous that has spent a moody night looking through a beer glass. The pulsating bass line, which is oddly NWOBHM all things considered, provides the foundation for a distinctive and dreamy sandwich of fuzzed out keyboards and guitars. Then, the chorus. Layered vocals deliver a hook so big one could use a blue whale as bait. And, while foobar is promising me that it lasts a smidge over three minutes, it's gone as soon as it walked in the door, leaving a krautrock explosion to echo throughout the rest of your day.

In my mind, it's the best thing they ever churned out, the sole reason I'll reach for Rattus Norvegicus before anything else in their samey-sounding oeuvre.

Michael Jackson is the Reason this Blog Exists

2009-07-12T15:42:00.000-07:00

Ist Poem, Written in the Key ov Strife:

I mean,
if a black man
can't be happy as a
white woman in this world,
what chance do I have?
Oh, King of Pop, how we miss thee.
Where should we look now for music with such insubstantial grooves that it makes DeBarge sound like Deicide?
Oh, Jacko, you've left a
hole-o in our
heart-o that nary a
soul-o can now
fill-o.

And it's just so tempting to leave it at that. Now, don't get me wrong, I dug MJ. He gave Toto their best gig, gave Eddie Van some blissful time away from, uh, this, and was an all around brilliant little kiddie that helped launch the spectacular career of his finest sibling. PYT is still transcendent (So good, in fact, that even Monica couldn't butcher it), he did the best job biting this oft-quoted curio, and he gave Quincy Jones a great outlet to experiment on one superior lite-R&B album (Off the Wall, for the record) and one understandably overrated--yet lyrically fascinating--compilation of bizarre-o paranoia and Weegee-esque blood n' guts. And, let's keep in mind, if it wasn't for MJ, QJ would be best known for this group of chronic underachievers and some unfairly overlooked solo albums, much like this guy. So I liked him. But, after reading a week's worth of smarmy epilogues and ridiculous "I was there when..." eulogies, I realized I didn't love him. That's was okay, though, because, for the entire world, it stopped being about the actual fucking music that the man put out.

And, in a really roundabout, and well, lame way, that birthed this shitstain of a blog--that will only last a few posts, probably--into life. See, I used to be a music writer. I used to write well. Now, I only write good. That's apathy's fault. I'd forgotten about the cool little tidbits that made music meaningful to me and that's the inherent contradictions that make music human. Michael Jackson was a flawed perfectionist. I mean, c'mon, how could a music nerd not have his wang-meat enlarged by that? Children under twelve are not obligated to answer that.

So, for the next 500 songs, that's my goal. Drop a decent song on your ears with a fun spin on there; nothing more, nothing less. And, hopefully, we'll have a legion of posters that will do the same. Because, let's be realistic, you don't have time to listen to an album. You just fucking don't. There's more full-album blogs out there now then there are Michael Jackson memorial shirts in Compton. While it might be fun to peruse those blogs and download whatever ripped disc is being touted as "essential" or "the greatest thing ever," you're never going to listen to all of that shit. It'll sit on a petrified external hard drive and will only be played when alien archeologist unearth your Western Digital and wonder why you like Hall & Oats so much. Songs, you can do. Especially in this economy. A cliche end to a cliche post on a cliche blog. This will get better.