Music that Matters, Pt 2

12. King Crimson, Starless: A five minute guitar solo built on one note that—seriously—will make you wonder why every other guitar player uses so many.

13. Thelonious Monk, Well You Needn't: Monk plays the piano like it's another kind of drum. Monk's chords and offbeat strikes make you realize that our hearts probably speak in angular chords played at weird intervals too.

14. Leonard Cohen, Everybody Knows: For me, pretty much the best lyric ever written. Cohen's lyrics are like the best guitar solos you've never heard. Amazing to think that his great moment of enlightenment was "I have to sing." You could imagine his superego responding "you fool, with that voice?" leading to an ego versus superego brawl like two poets on a bender ending with the ego triumphant; years follow playing folk clubs and dodging beer bottles and eventually the result is this song. This is the voice of a brilliant frog. (A great song when someone else sings it, too.) 


A respectable rendition by Concrete Blonde here.

15. Steely Dan, Black Friday: Maybe it's true that only absurdity can properly describe our tragedies ("...with nothing to do but feed all the kangaroos"). Black humor also helps. And Fagen's voice serves both masters perfectly.

16. Jacques Brel's If You Go Away: I don't care who sings this—Sinatra, Neil Diamond, Nina Simone, Dusty Springfield, Cher (Hell, even Sonny couldn't ruin this)—it's a song that (nearly) transcends the singer. (Streisand covered it first.) It's also the most elegant exploration of psychotic obsessive-compulsive love stalking you'll ever hear. A real weeper out of the right mouth.

17. XTC, Dear God: Beautifully uncomfortable stabs of one person's truth that pretty much captures my religious views as well. Try this attitude at your next sales meeting or job interview: People will be too scared of you to say no. 

18. Velvet Underground, Venus in Furs: An amazing combo of a bondage lyric, eerie slurring viola, a beat that chugs like a room-sized cloud of bong smoke, and a primitive oiled-up-around-the-campfire vibe that works even though it sounds as if it was recorded with a mic stuffed into a tooth filling. Listening to this you might think you could make music like this too. You'd be wrong, of course, but it does give one hope.

19. Blue Oyster Cult, Hot Rails to Hell: A favorite band of mine in high school which exploits the Satisfaction riff again (sort of inverted) but what else should a hot rail to hell sound like? A perfect song for the drive to my teenage hellhole minimum-wage pot scrubbing job.
 

20. Roxy Music, Song for Europe: Bryan Ferry's vibrato is like your hands on ten cups of coffee following a week-long fast at gunpoint. I love how this song kind of explodes at the end. People with better ears than mine say he sings a little sharp. I say we should all be so sharp.

21. Jeff Buckley, Grace: Somewhere in the song's last minute Buckley's voice trips off into insanity: Not the insanity of the homeless guy cursing outside my window at three in the morning, but the kind of genius insanity that only comes from deep breaths of the infinite blowing out a voice that was thousands of years in the making. There's an old rabbinical tale of a man who gets his wish to see the face of god. Afterwards, his friends come to visit and find him hiding under his bed for the unspeakableness of what he saw. There's a moment in Grace where Buckley sounds like he saw it too. Even the most disillusioned cynics may get chicken skin on this one.

Music that Matters, Pt 1

Some years ago you may've seen this forward viralizing Facebook:
"The So-called Life Changing Record List": Think of 15 albums, CDs, LPs (if you're over 40) that had such a profound effect on you they changed your life. Dug into your soul. Music that brought you to life when you heard it... etc, etc.

No true fan could refuse a taunt like that. So with a music fanatic's sense of duty, I wrote my own version. Now five years old, this little rant would eventually become the seed for creating this modest little blog. Over time the list grew bigger and bigger until it eventually became the bloated mastodon of joyous self-indulgence it now is. The first ten are posted below with more installments to follow. 

Understanding that music is often at least as much an emotional experience as an intellectual one, often it's the context, associated memories, time of life, etc, that can make a sound archetypal for one person while only water torture for another. To wit: Had it not been for The Cars' Just What I Needed wafting up from the radio downstairs as I was losing my virginity it may've only remained the bubblegum rocker that it is to millions of others. Instead, it will always be the plaque over my gateway to awkward coital bliss. Also, the music of my generation, rock music in particular, became all the more personal for me as my unnerved Swing Era father pretty much took me to task for it my entire life. Culture through music, he was sure, was eddying its way down civilization's toilet bowl. (While some lamented society's doom with drugs and sex, for my dad it was Pepsi-cola.)

As far as the So-called Life Changing List is concerned, I strayed from the original list-of-albums concept and turned it into something more like a compilation of abrupt first kisses that grow into torrid musical love affairs.

1. The first time I heard The Doors at six years old: A hard bossa nova groove—like The Girl From Ipanema as a streetwalker—that gives way to the hypnotic falling bombs of "break on through to the other side!" For tiny me, it was a kind of Pentecostal moment. 

See Jim lip-synching uncomfortably here.

2. The Rolling Stones, Either The Last Time's hounds of hell fade out on the "no no nononos!"–a sound not found in my parents record collection--or the guitar riff from Satisfaction, the pissiest guitar sound ever. Both sum up perfectly the sound of teenage angst which for me started somewhere around third grade. (See it performed here semi-live without the hounds-of-hell fade.)


3. Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols: All of it but especially Holidays in the Sun: Note the eruption of a break that follows the "over the Berlin waaaaaallllll." Say to yourself next time you think you've done something especially well, whatever it is: Have I thrown down a slab of my great passion as authentic as that? If the answer is yes, then you've been all you can be.

4. Radiohead, OK Computer: The slow burn of Exit Music for a Film. Sometimes a pouty, abstract, and turbercular-looking young Brit is the perfect vehicle.
5. The Beatles, moments by the megaton but especially: A Day in the Life, the "ah-ah-ahs" following "then somebody spoke and I went into a dream." Sucks you into the ether like a wind tunnel at mach III. 
6. Diamonda Galas, the banshee wails of Do You Take This Man: If you haven't heard her she's a brilliant and amazing sick puppy. If the history of female anger could be summed up in one voice, this is the one. (Not that I haven't heard enough female anger in my lifetime, but here, at least, it's interesting.)

7. Lee Hazelwood, Some Velvet Morning: I played this around the house and soon three year old daughter was singing "some velvet morning when I'm straight," most likely the greatest opening line ever. My three year old understood that line's intent about as much as the Bush men-folk do syntax, still, a broken man's lament from the mouth of a babe can be sickeningly cute.

8. 16 Horsepower, American Wheeze: A song about God–not that toga-wearing "purpose driven life" pansy, but the blinded psycho who might've had Abraham go all West Side Story on son Isaac—sung over the hardest bandoneon you'll ever hear and a slide guitar that might've been played with a pitchfork: Magic. This isn't mascara and black leggings style goth but the true demented Gothic: With torches, inbreeding, and a mania for bloody holy-vengeance. The fact that an irreligious soul like me can love this can only be proof of its inherent genius.


9. P.J. Harvey, Rid of Me: Describes wanting someone to a sick excess and then hating them for it because, as it turns out, they don't want you. And then, taking the only appropriate action under the circumstances which is to make their life a living hell. A kind of deep humiliation that requires a distorted guitar and a country girl wail from the bottom of the well for the proper goosebump. 

I don't know if this is definitive but you'll wonder how this petite Dorsett farm girl squeezes all that sound out.

Another version from her performance on Jay Leno and her famous sheep castration story.

10. House of the Rising Sun: a great song done by many but I prefer The Animals version. A little opera about blaming parents for one person's boozing, gambling and whoring mess. Pray our kids don't sing this about us one day. (Fortunately, unlike the parent in the song I'm not a gambling drunk. But then my girls aren't in high school yet. [My eldest began this year.])

11. Led Zeppelin, the fade out shrieks of Whole Lotta Love: About Plant's singing I remember my older sister complaining "This guy is so in love with his voice," like it was a bad thing. The whole outro vamp fade of the song becomes a circle jerk between Plant and Bonham to see who could swing their banana the hardest. (Page's guitar does its territorial pissing all over the rest of the song.) Plant's wail is a castrato howler monkey's from the treetops and Bonzo pounds his sticks with a methamphetamine abandon and that may be his balls hitting the kick drum. The bluesmen Zep stole from, particularly Muddy and Wolf (and Willie Dixon who successfully sued for songwriting credit), did plenty of banana swinging of their own but were loath to bare their chests for real, unlike these guys. Whole Lotta Love may be the apotheosis of the testicular form and anyone who would cover this version without understanding that should be pilloried. (The TV singing shows have provided too many egregious examples.) 

Though, I suspect both P.J. Harvey and Diamanda Galas would have the huevos to do it justice.

"We're Not Coming."

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inducted the Pistols in 2006. As you'll see, they chose not to attend. (While Mr. Rotten gave them the respect of a handwritten note, you'll note that the style of his writing and singing are very similar.)

Wiki devotes a line to the matter but more space to the general controversies of the institution itself which, you may not be surprised to know, operates more like a business and less like a museum.

Also noted that if an artist chooses to attend, induction comes with a price.

K-pop Is Koming

The post below was published in September of 2012. Recently––December of 2012––a brouhaha erupted over Psy's impending performance for President Obama and some lyrics he performed in 2004 regarding deaths caused by the U.S. military in South Korea and around the world. This article from the Guardian U.K. offers some much needed perspective on the situation. Please read.

His moniker is Psy (for Psycho, nee Park Je-Sang or Jaesang). He may not be a part of the Korean pop music scene AKA K-pop, at least he'd rather not think so. In South Korea he is called "The Bizarre Singer." (This passes for bizarre in Korea?) In the U.S. he may also be a sign of things to come. Americans have traditionally had phobias about music with non-English lyrics but this may be changing. I may be attracted to this for all the reasons that I liked the Archie comic as a kid. Archie wasn't handsome or smart, had freckles and red hair (like me), no ball skills, no money, and no friends outside of Jughead. What he did have was the two hottest girls at Riverdale High fighting over him (at least on the covers, inside the books Veronica was usually more blasé). Psy has the chicks and also no illusions about his quotients of coolness, trimness, or danceness. (See him splash in the bath and sit on the toilet.) But who cares? He still has the chicks and the most virulently watched video in K-pop history. He may also something of a subversive in Korea (see link below).

I was alerted to this video by my 14 year old daughter. She is part of the post-modern generations that care nothing about gay marriage, cultural miscegenation, or music with lyrics that can't be understood. Perhaps they are the Brave New World at last. That should keep the Tea Partiers awake at night.





The Atlantic looks into Psy and gives some context to his video here. Adult son and his 60 year old mother bust a move Gangnam Style here.

Addendum: The records-keeping authority announced Friday morning that Psy’s Gangnam Style broke the record for “Most Likes on YouTube” with 2,141,758. That breaks the previous record set by LMFAO’s Party Rock Anthem (1,574,963), Justin’s Bieber’s Baby (1,327,147) and Adele’s Rolling in the Deep (1,245,641). (It should also be noted that Psy is edging close to 100,000 dislikes as well.) Gangnam also has racked up 227 million views [over 823 million by Nov 25], which puts it just outside of YouTube’s list of the 30 most-viewed videos ever. [Gangham Style is now the Most Viewed Video Ever.] Postscript to the addendum: Gangnam Style now has the distinction of being the first video to break the billion mark.

Addendum excursus, etc: Gangnam is now moving into future trivial pursuit territory. Proof is this Berkerly, CA based Korean-American group giving Psy the Nouvelle Vague treatment. Together, the group is adorable but the girl is adorable cubed. Her hand gestures are just so.

In praise of cranky old geniuses

This has been making the rounds: With furrowed brows and evermore furrowed face, Dylan obliged yet another The Rolling Stone Interview, this time in support of his newest album. And that furrowed aspect of that face––the gestural lining, the graying cloud of hair, and the more recent addition of a mustache that is the car salesman's version of debonair––is very much in effect in his words. But then Dylan has always been more dark matter than shining star. As a guy edging ever closer to overripe maturity myself, I have nothing but respect for the old guys who can still deliver big––Leonard Cohen, Noam Chomsky, Richard Dawkins, Ian McKellen, etc. (sorry Clint)––and Dylan, now 71, delivers here epically.

The newsy red meat from the interview has been popping up on the interwebs news sources like juiced time lapsed mushrooms. That old crank Mr. Zimmerman just brought slavery fresh into the national conversation again! And, yes, his music referenced the material of others as have many other songwriters in history in a longstanding musical tradition: To this he responds, appropriately: So what of it, m*****f*****? If the new record Tempest has half as much salt and spice as the interview then handle this disc like you would a jalapeña pepper: It may leave some eye-searing burn on your on your fingers. See what all the fuss is about here.

Slightly less geriatric but none the less for it, is one of my favorite bands of all time, Television, heard in a vintage performance captured in their fully muscled prime from 1977 and available for download at Aquarium Drunkard, a blog I humbly submit as one of the best and longest running music sites around. Better yet, if you've been deprived of the experience of this band up till now, then hear it here, now. I've had a crush on this record since discovering it in high school. For me, this record is a rare diamond, un-occluded from start to finish. Really. It's that m*****f***ing good.

Roxy served raw a la 1973

Roxy Music: One of the great twisted voices of the 70s whose musical skid marks were left all over the 80s. They were a band that understood the importance of total integration of branding. In their early period, as evidenced below, their every aspect was a highly overdriven exercise in style: music, hair, make up, glittery fashion, PR, graphics, ambiance, milieu, and all with a quotient of cool as envisioned through a group of mascaraed, ersatz art school twinks. They were stylistically glam and yet miles away from it. They bore vestiges of prog yet had none of its excess or pretension. They had the insolence of punk and the self consciousness of New Wave at a time when New Wave was only used to describe French cinema. Their songs represented shovelfuls of music hall, cabaret, vaudville, showtunes, a thimbleful of The Beatles, and generous dollops of misappropriated Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Blue Cheer. And all of it done in a way that was quintessentially British.

Later on they'd smooth out the kinks and become the sleekly mature and buttoned up sound so favored by the AOR mainstream (see Avalon). It was a respectable move but nowhere near the prime of their kinkier origins. In 1973, their glory was in those kinks. You should love them if you don't already.

See here for an earlier post on one of the great songs from their early mid-period.

1) Do the Strand
2) Editions of You
3) In Every Dream Home A Heartache
4) Re-Make/Re-Model



Thanks to Dangerous Minds and Art Chantry for the prompt.

Dum Dum Girls do Ono

While on the subject (see previous post), here's a band of four young glamorpusses doing a tribute to Ono's legendary Cut Piece (originally performed in 1964 and more recently in 2003).



An even more glamorpuss take on the band can be seen in this video.

A film of Ono perfoming Cut Piece.

A description of the piece:
Ono’s work related destruction to interpersonal, often intimate, human relations. This element was particularly thought-provoking in Cut Piece. Ono sat motionless on the stage after inviting the audience to come up and cut away her clothing, covering her breasts at the moment of unbosoming. Cut Piece entailed a disrobing, a denouement of the reciprocity between exhibitionism and scopic desires [scopic being a belabored way of saying the experience that the subject goes through in its interaction with the other] between victim and assailant, between sadist and masochist: and, as a heterosexual herselft, Ono unveiled the gendered relationship of male and female subjects as objects for each other. Kristine Stiles, 1998