Tuesday, January 08, 2008

Oops! How... (Cough!) Could I've Forgotten...


Spacemen 3 - Che -
What would any "Best of" playlist be w/o Spacemen 3? What'm I, high?!


You'll still get in at less than 1:16 here, so go burn yr. CD! This one's supposed to go between "The Loser" and "Monica Lewinsky..." (That transition
did feel a little off before, didn't it?) It's from Playing w/ Fire. The new double disc remaster (holy shit... does that album really need to meander any further? I guess so...) contains a "Maracas Mix" of "Che," which, I'm sure you will agree, was entirely necessary. Anyhoo... you can never have too much of this stuff... Enjoy!

What I Did w/ My Year-Long Vacation

OK... I'm gonna keep the preamble and prefatory and prehensile and pre-ejaculative to a minimum, 'cuz this is already too long, & I suspect that you have better things to do w/ yr. time, (I hope)...


This is my "2007 Playlist." I do these things every year. (It will be 10 years in 2009, at which time, I will prob. have to undertake the deeply Augean task of coming up w/ a 10 year list, unless I get smart and solicit my own death before that time cums.) The rules are: make a list that is less than 80 minutes--so that it might be burnt by anyone who would like to do so. (For some reason.) Include songs that had a significant meaning to you that year, so that you might go back to the list and have some sorta indication of what you were going through and thought you were going through at that time. (Which means you don't have to feel obliged to included music you just acquired or discovered, unless it really meant something to you.)

Those are the rules. So here goes...


43 WAYS TO KILL YOU W/ A PIMENTO:


I Hear a New World – Joe Meek & the Blue Men —One of the things I love most about music is when it can surprise me. This one’s pretty surprising. And it’s got something for everyone: druggy surf-style guitar, chipmunk vocal effects, bongos and truly bizarre lyrics. Ten years before the Apollo flights, this song appeared on a concept album Meek made about life on the moon. It’s a doozy!


Pink Turns to Blue – Husker Du A friend of mine used to put Zen Arcade on every time I came over for dinner. He said that it made him think of me, which I took as a compliment. It is one of my favorite rock albums. Every song sounds different and says something different. The record runs an emotional gamut from hope to rage to humor to heartbreak. Obviously “Pink Turns to Blue” leans toward the latter in a very bleak way. I played it a lot on the guitar this year—not very well—but while that solo is so primitive that I’m almost able to play it now! Look for me soon in the lounge of your local Holiday Inn Express!!!


Laser Life – The Blood Brothers—I started planning this list, and one of the first songs I picked was “Laser Life.” I think the Blood Brothers are really keeping the rock & roll spirit alive. “Laser Life’s” got all this energy and, well, noise. Also it’s got a sense of humor, and that never hurts. I finished the list, and then out of curiosity, I happened to glance at my 2006 list and found the same fucking song there! If the old-timey track selection here didn’t convince you that I’m gettin’ geriatric, maybe my Alzheimer symptoms will. Anyway, the song is really pretty cool, and my lapse was pretty revealing, so I figured I’d keep this Blood Brothers track around.


Gunslinging Bird – Charles Mingus—I don’t think it’s always apparent from these lists, but I listen to a lot of jazz, esp. these days Mingus and Miles Davis. I pick up Mingus records whenever I can. You just can’t have enough of ‘em lying around. I always know it’s Mingus when I hear him, which is saying a lot given all the ground he covers. There’s so much passion and invention in his music—esp. fury and joy—and so many stylistic shifts—from old-time jazz to classical music and beyond—but somehow he brings it all together, so that you say to yourself, “That’s Mingus…” And then you say, “Cool…”



Love It’s Getting Better – The Pastels –I know what you’re thinking: he really has softened up! Barf! And isn’t that exactly what the chick from the Pastels is doing when she says ”…it’s… oooghug… so divine…”


I’d be lying if I said that I just liked this because it’s funny, ‘tho it is pretty hilarious. On the other hand, it seems heartfelt—which apparently, given the number of times that word has come up here, is important to me these days. The song’s also beautiful in a DYI way. Minimally produced and performed in a way that requires very little technical ability. (‘Tho for all I know, they had ‘em. Don’t know that much about the Pastels.) Isn’t that true that simplicity is the key to a lotta great music? And hey! How ‘bout that pumpin’ dance floor coda, complete w/ yodeling!




Capillarian Crest (Live) – Mastodon Speaking of currently active bands who suggest that rock may still have a future: Can these guys rock, or what? As if a tooth rattling, jaw-dropping assault isn’t enough, (like you, I’m trying to picture how these 2 things could happen at the same time—it sounds very painful) these guys have gargantuan ambition. I mean, c’mon, they’re called Mastodon, and those animals were big, right? One of their best albums is called Leviathan, and well, these animals were supposed to be huge. But Mastodon guys don’t hide behind a name—however easy that would be to do w/ these sorta proportions being thrown around—they come up w/ big albums that tell big stories in an XL way. Stories about enormously important subjects, like, f’rinstance, how much havoc a leviathan can wreak. What’s more, they have ideas that are so big that they extend beyond petty things like lyrics. This metal isn’t of the meat n’ potatoes variety, ‘tho it can pummel you up & down the street w/o even thinking about it. Listen to those hairpin turns! Some of these songs have arrangements that are almost prog-rock-like. (Thankfully not too prog-rock like. However malicious these guys may be, they don’t make you sit through King Crimson leftovers.) They’ve got vocal harmonies and time changes and all sortsa other surprises that you will find when you run out and buy their entire catalog right after you read this. They’ve also got the best song title from this entire list. I mean, “Love It’s Getting Better” is awfully damn stupid—and therefore makes a strong bid—but best is best.




Portofino – Raymond Scott —Raymond Scott was an inventor of various electronic instruments, and a musician and composer who worked in all sorts of modes from jazz, to experimental electronic music to commercial jingles. He performed incidental material for a few Hollywood films, and assembled the first racially integrated studio orchestra in the history of TV. He signed an arrangement that licensed a lot of his recorded music to Warner Brothers studios. If you’ve watched many cartoons—early Bugs Bunny, etc.—you probably know his stuff. So although you might not know his name, his music might, very well, have permeated your consciousness.


This song is from a 2-disc set called
Manhattan Research, Inc.
that collects Scott’s commercial stuff, along w/ some of his more out there and/or serious stuff. I think this song that, by virtue of its sheer humanity, strikes down the idea that electronic music is cold or inhuman.



I’m Only Sleeping – The Beatles —I’ve loved the Beatles for as long as I can remember. Not sexually, thank god. Can you imagine what that would be like? A fourway w/ 2 living dudes who are old enough to be my father—one of whom which could scarcely, by any stretch of the imagination, be called human—and 2 dead guys—one of ‘em long dead. Probably best left unimagined. But no, musically. When I was a very young kid, and not yet familiar with image and irony and cynicism and all that other cool stuff, the Beatles’ music sparked my imagination and spoke to my heart. (I am now ducking and covering from the stones and arrows and laughs I expect will be aimed my way for saying something so dorky and, I assure you sincere.) I couldn’t even distinguish between the relatively simple music of the Beatles early records and the sometimes contradictory experimentation and streamlining of the more “adult” later albums. I loved all of it, and it helped shape my abiding views of music and popular art.


It’s appropriate that I felt a strong connection to this song in 2007I couldn’t help but appreciate its openhearted expression of a feeling. I’ve often thought that John Lennon was, aside from being the coolest Beatle, one of the most adept portrayers of real depression in contemporary music. He wrote this one just after the Beatles stopped touring, during a period where he laid in bed, too numb to move. Again, maybe that’s overwrought—definitely self-pitying—but it works for me. (Also had a great time playing this with my guitar teacher)




End of the Night – The Doors If pseudo-profundity did not exist, we would have to invent Jim Morrison so he could invent it for us. While I recognize that they are deeply silly, I really like the Doors. They’re the perfect example of a musical endeavor that is greater than the sum of its parts: a very delicate house of cards that if you sneezed at it from a 5 foot distance would shuffle itself into oblivion. If you stop and think about the lyrics, the music or the performance, you don’t know whether to laugh or turn off your stereo. My absolute favorite Doors lyric, as delivered, is “Your ballroom days are o-vuh bay-bay” from “Five to One.” What the hell does that even mean? Jim really lived up to the name Lester Bangs gave him there, Bozo Dionysius. Still, somehow, the Doors have something other than yukks goin’ for ‘em. They have the ability to create a mood, allowing, the mumbo jumbo of, say, “The End” to go down smoothly. This is the next to last song before “The End” on the first record. Here again, despite and/or because of that clumsy Robby Krieger (cool effects) guitar solo and the fact that Jim Morrison draws all the lyrics from a William Blake poem, there is s sort of compelling synergy. I finally replaced some of my Doors stuff after losing a lot of it during my many moves over the last 10 years or so, and this song stood out to me for some reason when I gave the stuff a fresh listen.




Conquering Ruler – Derrick Morgan Due to some financial necessities, including but not limited to, the need for a new computer, I picked up new far less music in 2007 than I normally would over the course of a year. I also did not have as much time to think about or find new music, which may explain why I’ve included so much older music here. I fell back on some safe bets when I did look for new albums, and two of these were from the Island Records series of reggae box sets. Whereas I used to sneer at reggae as knee jerk white hippie music performed by black performers from one of the poorest countries in the world, in recent years I’ve come to find a lot of beauty and humor and sadness in it. You can also find a lot of attitude—as in this song. Don’t screw with Derrick Morgan.




Blister in the Sun – Violent Femmes Fuck. Is this turning into a middle-aged nostalgia program or what? But hey, again, I just replaced this stuff—well, I downloaded the excellent compilation Permanent Record anyway—and although it may be heard a little a lot, tell me this song isn’t great—and that the Femmes don’t live up to their hype.




Mercedes Benz – Janis Joplin — When I discovered Janis Joplin, I was as young as I was when I noticed the Beatles. My sister and I would sneak up to the record player to put on this song. We acted covertly (or so we thought) because we thought the song was hilarious, and we didn’t want to earn our parents’ ill-will by laughing at it. At the time, I felt like we were laughing at Janis. Now—and I hope you’ll forgive another dorky and clichéd observation—I think we were laughing w/ her. She certainly sounds like she’s having a good time—maybe w/ the aid of recreational libations. And the song’s got that ragged, real feeling.




Happy - Sugar Plant— OK. I know. This is more than a little poppy. Not to mention heavily produced. Its sins include a willful and irresponsible overuse of vocal overdubbing, an insultingly simple guitar “riff” that—along with the multi-tracked “ooohh”s—comprises a 6 minute fade-out, and, most sadistic of all, a chorus that runs something along the lines of “’Cuz when you’re happy/ It makes me happy/ To see you happy/ It makes me happy…” etc., ad nauseam, to say the least. (Don’t quote me on the lyrics—I didn’t bother to actually listen to and transcribe them.)


See when you get down to it, ‘tho it may seem otherwise, this thing isn’t antithetical to the spirit of rebellion, it is the spirit of rebellion. Look at vintage Mick. Look at Sid Vicious. Look at pre-army Elvis. Musical coolness has always been defined by the desire to annoy people, and through sheer, malicious obnoxiousness, to piss them off. Now tell me this song doesn’t do that.




Short Wave – The Brian Jonestown Massacre — This year I experienced a deep frustration that I think we all know. It’s an expression of the human condition—that struggle with forces larger than yourself, be they geopolitical, philosophical, spiritual, or physical—according to your beliefs and circumstances. In this case, I gotta melodic line stuck in my head. Really stuck. And it was just a melodic line. It wasn’t even the entire melody. I went around for days, trying to find it. It had come outta nowhere. I rifled through my record collection, listening to songs that, I thought, sounded like it. I got close: when I was listening the Dylan Does Dallas bootleg—that one in which he famously, embarrassingly came out on stage in a gun belt, chaps, spurs and ten gallon hat and then began insulting the members of his band—usually in racial and/or anti-Semitic terms—but it turned out he was just doing some weird atonal version of “Idiot Wind.” I stopped bathing, eating or thinking. I was obsessed. I was acting suspiciously like Al Bundy in that episode of Married with Children in which he tries to find a record that turns out to be “Anna” by Chuck Berry. Then as quickly as it hit me, it passed: I realized it was this song. It’s got a pretty bitchin’ riff, and it’s a pretty cool song as well. Again with the snoozy and woozy, but musical escapism seems to be part of what I was about in 2007.




The Loser – Derrick Harriott—Why did I spend so much time avoiding reggae when I could’ve been listening to it? Because I was worried about looking like one of those aging NPR-listenin’ people whose hippieness has become thoroughly diluted—if It was ever solid at all? If so, I was succumbing to one of the biggest, stupidest mistakes a person can make, which is to avoid living her/his life outta self-consciousness.


There’s something really comforting in witnessing such a unique, well-established musical tradition that is so far removed from American or British music. At the same time it’s closely related, and doesn’t this sound like some great lamentably lost Motown track—Tops, Temps, Smokey, something like that? There’s that ache of love lost and some
wicked
harmony parts.




Monica Lewinsky & the Three Bears – David Cross — Not exactly a song, but the mix-tape etiquette w/ which I was indoctrinated allowed for the occasional non-musical throwaway. To me, the work of guys like Bill Hicks and Lenny Bruce can be just as revealing as a good piece of music. Certainly I think their stuff has influenced the way I think and write. ‘Tho they’re often lumped together, I don’t like David Cross nearly as well as I do Bill Hicks. But he is pretty fuckin’ cool, and every time I hear this routine, it makes me laugh. Like any good comedy, I think it makes a very sharp observation about people and the way they act. I wouldn’t even limit this insane posturing to rednecks. You hear it all over the place, albeit in different forms.




Ronnie & Neil – Drive-by Truckers — OK come on now. Tell me that wasn’t a brilliant transition. A dude ridiculing southern rednecks and their accents to another dude indignantly defending the south from northern stereotypes. Never mind that he does so while more or less brushing aside the infamous Alabama church bombings. He does acknowledge that they were a bad thing, but seems to think it’s just as bad to condemn everyone down south as a “racist piece of shit.” I think his feelings are fair, just a little askew. And that’s appropriate. I think that’s what the Truckers are going for here. The song’s meant to dramatize the war between Skynyrd and Neil Young, started by Young’s scathing anti-racist “Southern Man,” and its ultimate judgment is that both Ronnie and Neil actually had something to say, unlike most rock stars, and that the south “needs both of them around.” Nice play on the line from “Sweet Home Alabama,” and a really pretty great song.




Ants – Dr. Octagon, featuring DJ Dexter – Here’s another one of those universal musical experiences: Around Thanksgiving, some evil influence led me to walk down the Magnificent Mile. I had no need to do so, and I have no idea why I should be so utterly stupid and masochistic as to use this route as a means of getting from Point A to B, when there are virtually a hundred other ways to do so, even if you are on foot. Traveling this way is awful at any time of the year, but at the threshold of the holidays, the gates of greed and true human callousness open along with the purse straps. You will get your feet stepped on. You will be pushed and spare changed. You will stumble across the extended legs of a human being who leans against a wrought iron fence with a coat over his face. He smells like feces and he has a handwritten cardboard sign that you could not read even if you were inclined to stop and look at it. You’ll see tacky midwestern corn-fed tourists, gawking at the Hancock building as they walk unexpectedly into you. You’ll watch what seems to be their polar opposite: rich Euro-trash—accents just as incomprehensible as your own thoughts—who are too busy sneering to gawk at anything. And then there’s you, who you begin to suspect are just as ugly as everyone else.


For more of my impressions of what it is like to walk up Michigan Avenue, you may want to consider the past entry “Cage Match: Ema Saiko vs. Peter Cottontail,” if you have the inclination. If, for some unimaginable reason, you do, then you may ask yourself why I would want to live here. And if you did, I would say that the answer to that question is complicated—to say the least.


Anyway, there I was, and on the headphones came “Ants.” It wasn’t long before I was disturbed by how much this song was expressing
exactly
how I felt at that moment. Ordinarily, I would never admit that I had feelings like this—even to myself. But when you are faced with a clear expression of truth, however dark, it’s hard to ignore it. I’ve had a hard time getting into freestyle hip-hop. It’s difficult for me to let go the strict connection between beat and rhyme. But Kool Keith (aka Dr. Octagon) can make anything work, somehow. Even this song.




Mad World – Gary Jules w/ Michael Andrews – Because it is so focused on the ideas of invisibility and surplus population, this song seemed liked the natural sequel to “Ants.” Here, the ideas assume a different aspect. Their logic extends toward emptiness, alienation and invisibility.


The song wears its heart on its sleeve. In a time of irony, that’s not cool. It’s fodder for laffs. Still, I can relate to it, and that’s more than I can say about a lot of contemporary popular music.


A postscript in the form of a confession: the first time I heard this song,
I
laughed at it—Jules’s shaky delivery, in particular, struck me as silly. Maybe I’m suggestible, but the film Donny Darko really hit home w/ me, and ever since then, this song has made a lotta sense.




19-2000 – Gorillaz – OK, “This world is spinning too fast…” Again, tell me that’s not a perfect transition from Gary Jules. Not to mention a necessary deflation of all that heaviness.


It’s sheer stupidity, I know. Not only is it a guilty pleasure, but this song is exactly the carefully marketed stuff I always bitch about. Still, I am not opposed to anything, if it is well-done and heartfelt, and I think this album is. Also, really, if you listen to the whole record, it’s got some less candy-flossed material in its mix.


So I guess that makes me a hypocrite, ‘tho I would maintain that a little fun is OK. It keeps you alive for all of that other, more serious stuff. And come on, the chick from Cibo Matto singing, “Get the cool shoeshine?” Every time I listen to it, that bit sticks in my head.






OK. So that’s it. And please pardon my negligence in the last 4 months or so. I’ll try to get back to more frequent posting, for what it’s worth, but in the meantime, hope your ’08 is moving along swimmingly…


Forceman out…