Tricks with Sticks

OK, so back to this Hawaii thing...

When last we left our hero, he was being sodomized by an alligator w/ a bad case of shingles. (How do you know if an alligator has shingles? Well, just climb up on his roof and look!)

Oh wait... That was where we last left the ghost of Oscar Wilde, who'd just lifted the vial of plutonium from AmWay's Worldwide Secret HQ. It was in a wall safe behind a painting that look just like Melissa Sue Anderson w/ a dick. She was runnin' down that fuckin' hill w/ Half-Pint and that fuckin' dog and alla that, but whereas usually, when her dresses flips up a little, you see bloomers-- here you get an eyeful of a a big, hairy shlong. (Fortunately, in this painting, she's herself as an adult, or this image would be pedophiliac, and that is not just morally wrong, but psychologically disturbing!) The painting was in a gilt frame, wrought in such a way as to look like scrolling with lil' tiny letters embossed in it that spell out: IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. AND STUPID.

Yep. That's where we left Oscar Wilde. Except for that I never wrote that about Oscar Wilde. Hmm...

Oh well, see ya next time--whenever I update this thing again!

Oh but wait... We were talking about Hawaii! That's right... Hmmm... OK then... well... Let's see...

When last we left... our…well… uh… me… (can't call myself a hero w/ a straight face...) I was--and, OK, while this image is not nearly as overtly sexual as an alligator fuckin' Oscar Wilde, it is pretty surreal--looking through some strangers camera lens at a pool of molten liquid... Yeah. That's where I was when I last wrote about this…on December 9. 2008.

Hmm… well if you want me to do a "previously on," I just did. Or at least, that's the best you're gonna get. Because if I did a "previously on," I'd never finish an entry, and the next time I'd finish an entry would be around the next time Kilauea erupts, which it just did, by the way, in case you didn't notice. (Right after Libya, but right before the tsunami. What a world, what a world.) (Actually Kilauea is always erupting, but not usually boom pow! erupting. They had to close Volcano National Park. Thankfully, Hilo's OK though.)

But so, quickly: While on a missing persons job in Hawaii, I, Steve Forceman, PI, had been sidetracked into running a fellow lodger's 16 year old son, Niko, up to the heart of the Kilauea lava flow at Volcano National Park. I'd wanted to see the flow myself and had figured a brief stop off would do no real harm, but hadn't fore seen how the drive through the surreal volcanic scenery would lead not just to a short hike, but to a longer more rigorous trek over uneven volcanic rock. Along the way, Niko and I hooked up with his dad, Stefan. Niko and Stefan were Germans and experienced hikers, but you shouldn't hold that against them. We ran into a young shy couple, Natalie and her unnamed male companion who followed us but seemed not to want to engage with us much. They were lousy hikers. Just after dark, we ran across large, spectacular pools of molten lava. Around the same time, we met another lava seeker, a bearded, long-haired hiker named Mark, who loaned me his high-end video camera so I could gawk at the details of the flowing lava in the dark.

Huff puff… OK caught my breath… and… action!

I handed Mark back his camera, and, to the extent that I could, directed my attention away from the phenomena in front of me to get a better look at him. I'd said before that he struck me as a hippie sort. His long hair and scruffy beard suggested Dead before Zep and Zep before Sabbath and Sabbath before Slayer and so down the line. I think this was partly the earth tones and lighter colors he wore, but also how laid back he seemed. I mean, he was clearly awed by the lava, just like the rest of us--the same idiot grin stretched his face--but he seemed more sedate. Then there was the fact that he immediately projected this air of someone who enjoyed nature. I couldn't figure it out at first. To be fair, I was caught up in the blast furnace air and the intensely distracting presence of the lava. It was hard to make sense of why anything was the way it was. But then it hit me: a big part of his sylvan vibe came from the big, gnarled wooden staff he bore. I looked him in the eye. I pointed at it.

"Gandalf?" I asked.

He laughed and shook his head.

"You're not that other dude who everyone mistakes for Gandalf and who's really a prick?"

"Saruman?"

Thousands of people in Hawaii and I had to keep running into the Tolkien enthusiasts.

So this guy was named Mark, and he had coppery colored hair which seemed appropriate enough for a traveling companion under the circumstances. And the large stick he was carrying was not a trick of the light, had in fact been carved and polished and then purchased cheaply by Mark from one of the innumerable roadside salesman in Kona earlier that day.

"It was kind of a last minute thing. I have a regular metal type walking stick, but I forgot to bring it when I flew to Hawaii. Seemed like a good idea to bring something with me if I was gonna be moving over this kinda shit."

Looking around me at everyone else and their walking sticks, I nodded.

After that, we all moved around the lava for a while, just watching it. Tendrils extended from pools and became smooth formations of rock. Then after a while, the pools themselves disappeared beneath a solid sheet of stone. Then cracks of golden-red light would show somewhere in the rock, a tendril would crawl out, and a new pool would reveal itself. It all happened continuously, more quickly than you'd expect, but in such a mesmerizing way that it seemed slower than it really was.

The state of mesmerization was soon shattered though when Mark took the same exuberance with which he'd shared his camera and applied it to sharing his stick. Man was his stick hard and long. And wooden. His walking stick.

"Check this out!"

Mark was crouching several feet from the edge of a pool of flowing lava, leaning down so he could poke it with his walking stick. A small flame twisted around on the edge of the stick, translucent and pale. Mark poked the lava again and sparks showered in reverse, upward.

"Holy shit!" I probably said. Who knows what I said? I ran over toward him. "Lemme! Lemme! Lemme!"

It was probably the act of an idiot. It certainly seemed all the while like you were inviting disaster. But that wasn't what was fun about it. It wasn't a rock n' roll thing--stealing a car, say. It wasn't evan an adolescent thing--stealing some lipstick, say. What was thrilling about it had nothing to do with transgression. Though the sense of potential transgression was there, it was mostly incidental, like a the atmospherics of a Grimm Brothers story. The attraction was one of childlike mystery: get up close and personal with the Fire. The Big Fire.

Mark relinquished the stick, and a-pokin' I did go. Down there, close to the lava, the heat was terrible. I could see more details, but there was a shimmer of heat distortion. There was no resistance when I prodded the liquid stuff, so it was hard to tell if I was making contact, but then there were loud hisses, timed to my stabs, and the sparks danced past me. I poked at the lava some more, and could see bubbles of the stuff chasing after the stick when I retracted it.

I looked at the others and they were smiling and laughing. Niko was eager to take his turn, so I passed him the stick. In turn, Stefan, Natalie and her friend each tried it as well, though they each gave it a pretty rudimentary effort. By that time, the thing had lost a foot or more. I was surprised it wasn't even shorter.

Though it was all so beautiful and strange, I became aware of how late it was and of how long the trip back to Akiko's was. At this point, I was no longer sure of what I'd been drafted for, but I believed it still involved carting Niko back to the Bed & Breakfast that night.

I looked around me, and although I ain't Gandalf either--I thought I could sense a general flagging of energy among my companions. We'd been less mobile for some time, and I suspect that everyone's sense of wonder was starting to be sapped by the aching of his/her aching joints, tendons and whatnot. Not to mention that dry heat. It had cooled off a lot, but the wind still seemed hot, and the glow rising from the ground was still palpable. A gulp of water seemed to wet your tongue for only a moment.

I think it was Mark who suggested that maybe it was time to turn back. I took one look back up the slope of the mountain past us. We'd never really climbed up there. No need. I'm not sure I would've felt safe doing so, though I'd gone so far past the point of what I'd originally considered "safe," who can say? The jagged orange lines stretched back and forth up into the dark. It was with only a little regret though that I turned around. I'd seen more than I'd imagined I would, and besides, I was really fucking tired.

At this point, Natalie and her beau hovered on one side whispering conspiratorially, but Stefan cut in without hesitation.

"We are heading back! Will you be joining us?"

He waited, wearing a big shit eating grin, while they stared at him for a while. They appeared nervous.

"Um, sure," Natalie said.

"Nat!" said her companion, in a voice that was way too high for Prince Valiant, despite the groovy haircut he wore, "I think we should wait."

He surveyed all of us with an unfriendly eye.

Stefan grinned, waited. No one else said anything.

Finally MArk said, "OK. Let's go."

We began moving. Natalie and her friend did not follow.

Stefan said, "Should we leave them like that? They don't appear to be very experienced hikers and it can be somewhat dangerous out here."

Mark said, "If they don't want to come with us, we can't make them."

They looked at me.

"What do I know? Ask the kid."

They looked at me some more.

My Private Eye training kicked in and did the talking for me: "OK. Mark's right. Mostly. We can't make them go. I mean, what are we gonna do? Threaten them? I think the guy is just insecure about his woman and wants his privacy. But they're as tired as we are. They won't wanna wait too long, and I think even if they're sorta dumb they'd have to know it's safer to keep us in sight. I'm guessing they'll follow us, just at a distance."

Mark smiled approvingly, "I bet you're right." He looked at Stefan. "They'll be OK."

I had some misgivings about my own argument, and I think Stefan did too, but for the moment everyone accepted it. I figured if we really lost sight of 'em, we could mention it to the rangers or figure something else more noble out later. So the three of us stumbled after Niko. The kid already had a pretty good lead on us. No one was worried about him hopping around out there in the dark, but then, probably no one needed to be.

Remember all that stuff I told you about the trip out? How I'd stumbled over piles of irregular rocks, often finding it necessary to leapfrog back and forth between large angled slabs of stone for minutes at a time because there was no flat ground to be seen? Well, it was worse on the way back. The impact wore me down more each time, particularly my lower spine, and in the darkness, my landings grew increasingly sloppy. And every time I caught myself, my hands would get more scraped. I was cursing those assholes with their fucking sticks as they trundled down the slopes around me.

"Now now," said Stefan at one point. "Sticks and stones…" He giggled merrily.

I tested a rock about the size of a grapefruit for heft, considered the angle of his skull, but then remembered the asshole's kid was there, and besides, he was German. They can't help it. They've got that Schadenfreude thing.

And really, it's a good thing I didn't brain him, because at that moment, I realized two things:

1) Natalie and her beau were following, as I'd expected. Although they were stumbling difficultly around, they would've had a perfect sightline on my murder of Stefan. Almost certainly, I would've gotten Murder 1 as a result.

2) The enormous full moon was breaking free from the clouds--the brightest it had been all night--dousing all the dead brown lava with blue and hiding all the orange light. Suddenly, you could see everything a lot more clearly.

2010 in Review: The Monkey I Have Been Told of - Part 2

2010 in Review: The Monkey I Have Been Told of

Part 2

OK… So where were we? Oh yeah I know…

12. Ruler - Marnie Stern - This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and... :

I've been making these playlists for 11 years now. One thing I've noticed in doing so, is that each list seems to form a personality around midway through the process. After I finish the list, I may hear it differently as time passes, but years later, that same essential character that I became aware of early on will still be palpable to me.

2010's list stands out positively in my mind--not because it was a great year… Actually, it sucked! And that makes this list yet another argument for the way a mix tape can uplift your life, but what's strange is that I didn't even find that much good new music this year. Time and money were more scant--apparently, so were the imaginative faculties of the people recording and/or distributing music out there. So. I did not find a lot of good new music. But what good new music I did find was really good--and in a really good way. Like this Marnie Stern record.

OK, maybe Marnie Stern isn't new to you. If so, the new album may not seem so revelatory, though the critical consensus seems to be that it's very good as Marnie Stern records go. All I can say is it blew me away. Aside from the drums here, most of what you're listening to is a one woman show. So yeah, there's a lotta multi-tracking, and she uses that and some incredible guitar virtuosity and extremely manic vocals to get out there somewhere really strange--somewhere that's both sunny and clear, but not remotely soft. Like a less cerebral Neu! And... she has a sense of humor and personality that rises up all over the record. This, to me, is a really unique sound, which is more rare in today's rock music than a Chicago Cubs postseason appearance. I'm really eager to see where she takes it. Her self-titled follow-up suggests a slower, more cathartic approach to the same ideas. I haven't fully digested it yet, but I can tell I like it.

13. A Horse Called Golgotha - Baroness - Blue Album:

Recently, you may've noticed a sorta ominous, muffled thudding coming from down yonder--no I'm not talking about that Down Yonder. Though it has been rumored to emit everything from roars to rumbles from hellhound howls to banshee shrieks. People've even tried to blame it for Led Zeppelin, which, no matter how truly awful Zeppelin may be is getting downright silly, I'm sure we can all agree. I mean, if Hell is really as tedious as your local classic rock station's weekly or... gulp... even nightly... Zep hour... then I think I really may have to repent and be born again. But that's probably grist for some other quixotic mill up the road.

But nope, I wasn't talking about Hell anyway. I was talking about down yonder past the Mason-Dixon line... down in the Sludgy South... and in particular, down in Georgia. (Where, to be fair, the Devil has been known to go--at least, according to the famous words of one fat lil' reactionary fireplug.) Must be something in the water, or more likely the mud, given the thudding sound of this stuff. You may or may not be aware of the fact that Georgia is the epicenter of the Dawn of New Metal Age, and I ain't talkin' 'bout nu-metal. This stuff is waaaaayyyy too big for that, both in terms of volume and ambition. The people have amps and ideas that are the size of glaciers, and they wield them with sheer tectonic force.

Mastodon, whom I championed in the past, is one of 'em, and size-wise, they obviously believe in truth-in-advertising. Baroness are their peers, and they're so confident in their badassery that they've named themselves not just after a chick, but a chick who probably sits on cushions being fed pastries all day. They don't care what you think, because when you hear them play this shit, you're gonna duck and cover. You will be amazed while you're being pummeled. I don't think you have to love metal to get this stuff, 'tho these guys show mastery of everything from Sabbath-crawl to Slayer-gallop and everything in between throughout their album. They also show such deep inventiveness as songwriters and such great cohesion as a rock band that their music is very difficult not to get caught up in.

14. All out of Love - Air Supply - The Best of Air Supply: One That You Love:

Including a song like this in a playlist is both provocative and cliche. Provocative because we, as a culture, have pretty much agreed to view this thing as an embodiment of treacle, to be recoiled from--with a smirk at best, with disgust at worst. Well... OK... you got me... The worst is boredom.

The opposite of love, sayeth the cliche is not hate, but indifference, and just a moment ago, we were speaking of cliches. Air Supply, and this song in particular, have been invoked so often, generally, these days, for the same ironic purposes that they have almost no meaning. But maybe it's worth remembering that irony only works when it has a base meaning to react against.

I can see you cringing as you read this. Is he about to make an argument for Air Supply as serious musical artists? Um, well, no. But I'm gonna say something about how silliness may arise from earnestness. Sometimes something is silly because it's heartfelt. Is this song heartfelt? Wow, I sure doubt it. At least, I don't think it's heartfelt in its entirety. How could anyone even know if there's a heart down there under those layers and layers of keyboards and canned background vocalists, who are, yes, thoroughly hilarious, to the extent that they aren't annoying?

Maybe some hack felt something when he wrote this, but he's at least 50 or 60 generations removed from what you're listening to here. What difference does it make?

The difference that it makes is that my first girlfriend loved this shit to the the point of tearing up whenever Casy Kasem spun it. She bought all the Air Supply tapes she could afford with the meager funds she scraped together from babysitting, modest pot-dealing and her sporadic white trash allowance--all that weren't already spoken for by cigarettes, makeup, birth control and whatever sundry hackshit a 16 year old girl shells out for.

I hated this music back then, but somehow, whenever she sang it, I was touched by the obvious depth of her feeling for it. Never mind the fact that she was the only person in the world who seemed to see anything positive in me. Objectively, her own experience just seemed very real.

And plus, this song is just so dorky, how can it not give a much needed boost as we move into the next, less pleasant moment of reminiscence?

15. Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod - The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree:

When memories of adolescence aren't embarrassing, they're often just painful. Rock writer Lester Bangs once questioned popular music's glamorization of adolescence, calling it "one of the worst parts of life, it's the cloud of unknowing and a state of total awkwardness when the fun you have always seems to be tempered by some kind of stupid bullshit like parents or zits or what-have-you." This song, and most of the really powerful record it's drawn from, doesn't apply a waxy sheen to its reminiscence. It's about a lower life form's struggle for survival--a loathsome mass of flesh that dreams of "wriggling up on dry land" in the song's closing line. How poignant it is that this Darwinian crawl is being performed by a socially bottom feeding teenage boy may depend on whether or not you've been there, fielding confused hormonal urges toward violence and procreation, small enough that pretty much every other guy could (and many did) randomly work out his own confused aggressions on you, awkward enough that pretty much every teenage girl wanted nothing to do with you, and enough of a fuck up that pretty much every adult wished you'd just go away somewhere (maybe until you grew large and coordinated enough to make varsity sports or graduated and miraculously got into a decent college). Anyway, the simple declarative vocal and 3-chord punch, leading to a dreamy, but horrific image may still get to you. And I know for myself, that 1 little personal glimmer of escape does as well: the stereo--the one thing singer couldn't live without--that carries him away into a dream chamber, even in the midst of some really dark days he hopes to live through.

16. Masochism World - Husker Du - Zen Arcade:

This song sorta keeps the adolescent ball rolling onward for me. See, at 15 years old, I'd transferred to this new high school, whereat they had this exotic creature that wore grotesque amounts of eyeliner, styled her hair like that dork from Flock of Seagulls--'tho she could only achieve a sorta orange tone when she dyed it--and cultivated an openly bitchy contempt for the manifest stupidity of everyone around her. It was love at first sight. Well, not really, but eventually.

Anyway, she liked music, and she could coherently express why she liked the music that she liked in such a way that you could understand that her affections weren't cheap. She was a punk, she said, which was mostly a new concept to me And being a punk and all, many of her musical touchstones were unfamiliar to me.

In the blue collar big town/small city of Flint, Michigan, ca. 1985, a 16 year old's punk esthetic was quite forgiving--or at least my girlfriend's was. Soft Cell, New Order, The Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode and other fluffy-haired faces all made her hit parade. This being the sticks, I didn't know much better, and was left with the impression that punk was the music warbled by white kids who got beat up a lot and were OK with it. I was a white kid who got beat up a lot, but wasn't OK with it, but that didn't really make a hell of a lotta difference, I suppose. And to a large extent, I've seen that light, so that a lotta bands like that--e.g., the Cure--I like OK.

Later in high school, I would come to find that my relationship with my punk rock girlfriend really hadn't given me the background in the genre that I would need to be conversant in the genre. Yes she had mentioned something in passing about the Sex Pistols, maybe even the Dead Kennedys, but largely just in a name-dropping type capacity. Just like your friend's older brother, who was supposed to be a real stoner, had Hawkwind records, but thankfully never played the fucking things. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I was even fully aware that the old Capitol Theater in Flint had live punk--mostly hardcore--shows several Friday nights each month, or that the city was even home to its own touring hardcore act the Guilty Bystanders, whose big hit was called "Broccoli Rules."

Strangely enough, one of the few kinda sorta legitimate punk bands of the day that sparked my girlfriends interest enough that I was exposed to it at that time was... Husker Du!

I'm not sure how significant it is that out all the stuff that was proselytized at me, that Husker Du, one of only artists I really connected with, was also one of the only artists that were arguably, really, "punk." (It seems somehow especially noteworthy when you consider that the officiating punkette sold them somewhat tentatively and listened to them infrequently if I remember right--and given the fact that up until this point and somewhat beyond, I still wasn't sure I really liked all this punk shit, which I pretty much saw as a buncha fey, elitist posturing. But this punk--the stuff with guys with guitars who were yelling--who were sloppy and loud--not like the stultifying fare my parents listened to like the Stones and Who... (I was also pretty ignorant of most of any Stones or Who that didn't get played on the radio at this point, which on Flint radio, meant mostly anything pre-1975 or so, when both bands lost any resemblance to a noisy sloppy rock band)... well this stuff I kinda liked.

And I still do. And Zen Arcade is the best of many worlds, because you can love it at 14 or 41. Well 15 and 41. And without any real nostalgia. I never really think about my second girlfriend much when I listen to it, 'tho most of my memories of her are good ones. It's one of those rare records that I really do just listen to pretty much every year just because I want to, and I always find something new in it. It's full of ideas and energy.

Sometime in the early fall, I was out for a walk, and I just heard this song in my head. Hadn't heard it in maybe a month or 2, and it wouldn't have been a song from the record I'd expect to have come to me like that. It's a great bit of noise--and definitely melodic in its way, but catchy? Guess so. As soon as I got home I put it on. Must be one of the consequences of living with a record that good for that long.

17. Master-Dik - Sonic Youth - Sister:

To continue the chronological thread: I was kinda "off" rock n roll for most of my teen years. White middle class kid that I was, I think this attitude was partly a reaction against the entrenched domestic culture around me, wherein Stones/Zep/Petty/et. al. were more or less the Perry Comos of the day. Mullets were crew cuts. Archie and Meathead were Kramden and Norton. (Actually All in the Family was a little on the early side for me, but it seemed a good correspondence here and close enough timeline wise.)

Not listening to a lotta rock radio not only liberated me from music that was presented in these overly reverent tones--as tho its holiness was manifest, despite the fact the songs often weren't so great to begin with--it also let me map out my own plan for youthful uprising.

"What are ya rebelling against?"

"I don't know, what did you use to rebel against whatever you rebelled against?"

"Uh… rock n roll. I guess."

"That then."

OK. You're right. Marlon Brando would totally have tripped himself up in alla those words.

Still, not liking rock n roll sorta was my rock n roll, if you get me. It was a way of rejecting an established norm of the bland-out culture around me. I mean, what healthy teen wants to listen to his parents music? Do you want to hang out with that kid?

It's one thing for girlfriends to listen to New Order or, gulp, even Air Supply. They have something you want! Eyeliner! You can freak adults out with that shit! But Tom Petty? Really? I still hate Tom Petty.

In my own way, I was a punk then--way more than my 2nd girlfriend--even if I had to use Prince or Run-DMC to induce fury and disgust in parents, teachers, jocks, preppies, stoners, etc. around me. Whatta rebel!

Only years later, at college, did I calm down enough to realize that I was missing out on a lot. I resolved to become more programmatic. I noticed that some hippie chicks were hot. I grew my hair long. I even cultivated a beard for a while. I started listening to Neil Young a lot--the really loud stuff mostly. At least that was angry enough that I could relate to it. Then I reconnected with the Beatles, whom I'd loved since infancy, and all a that was fine, but clearly, if I was really gonna make my peace with rock n roll, I was gonna have to find some new artists that were making stuff that was good.

And here was a problem. Much as I could grudgingly admit that I liked a lot of the canonical stuff--again, Neil Young, Beatles, also Velvets, (tho I never cared much for anything after White Light, White Heat,) Stones, (tho I never really cared for anything after Exile on Main Street,) Hendrix, et. al.--and some of the more underground stuff from way back, it seemed that everyone making new records was just trying to sound like some amalgamation of some of that old shit. That's fine, you know--building on established forms, putting your own stamp on it, etc. Jazz, blues, country, various folk forms have all flowed along like that, right?

Sure. But rock is more self-conscious, and in the age of heavily recorded and distributed music, there are fewer excuses for a lack of imagination. And besides, remember? This is all about me?!? My needs! Not history! Fuck history! I needed a new rock esthetic, or a newer 1, anyway, or rock was just gonna fizzle it's way back into a lil' blip on my CD rack. (That's what I had then--a big 1 that my then girlfriend made me. Always had lots a music.) And that'd be a tragedy, 'cuz, well, there's lotsa good rock, right?

Ignorant 'twas I. A bumpkin from Flint, MI. No internet. MTV showing videos still, but by none too many bands. I didn't even know about all the bands that were out there. Tons of 'em! You did! You were out there, dyeing yr. hair, piercing yr. labia &/or foreskin, singing along to Diamanda Galas arias while you shoved a dildo in yr. neighbor's plughole. (Tho she's only sometimes sorta rock and only sometimes sorta good and only sometimes do these things sorta line up.) And you're laughing at me! Because you hate Sonic Youth! And they're my rock esthetic!

Well, they're part of it, 'tho not in an immediate way. Truth be told, the last Sonic Youth record I bought was NYC Ghosts & Flowers back in 2000. And before that, I hadn't bought one since Dirty in 1992. Before 1992, I can think of few popular rock band's with a sound I found more exciting than Sonic Youth's. It's a big, wicked field of noise that leaves room for all these haunting little jagged details. The guitar lines and interplay of Lee Renaldo and Thurston Moore were so vivid and unique that I could identify them almost immediately. (Famously when the band's instruments were stolen, they were no longer able to play a lot of their old songs, because they couldn't recreate the weird tunings in which they'd left the guitars.) And from 1983's Confusion Is Sex until Dirty, everyone in the band contributed odd ideas about arranging and writing songs that gave Sonic Youth records a feeling of experimentation and newness that never stripped them of sheer rock n roll immediacy. After that, something happened, it seems to me. I don't know what. (I'm not too rigorous of a fan of anything these days, and I swear it's by choice. I just can't take the disappointment of knowing too much.)

Anyway, another great thing about Sonic Youth is that along with inventiveness and rock power, they've also always had a sense of humor. (Sometimes to an excessive cornball degree, but, hey, ya gotta try...) This song finds then in their Ciccone Youth persona, a hip-hop group named after Madonna (Ciccone), thus tying together 2 of their many pop culture obsessions--the style and the musician. The song just popped in my head 1 day, and I had to put it on. The bit where it keeps going "I know... I know... I know..." made me laugh, and it's been in my regular rotation since. Really dumb song, but one that I like.

18. See the Leaves - The Flaming Lips - Embryonic:

I was a late convert to The Flaming Lips. I hated that "Tangerine" song like it was stomach flu. Still do really. I always felt it epitomized a tendency that I still think the band has to drift into arch cutesiness. 'Course, everyone who knows who the Flaming Lips are and gives them enough thought probably hates something about them. That's because the Flaming Lips are chameleons--though not in a traditional sense--they alter colors very after long changeless intervals, and when they do, the shift can be disorienting. The twist from mischievous alterna-mugsters to sophisticated psych-prog rockers was so convincing that I stopped being distantly annoyed by them and gradually sat down and listened to records like The Soft Bulletin long enough to absorb their imaginative scope and emotional sweep. Heart and energy, despite the tepid quasi-ironies of that "Tangerine" claptrap. Sure, there were full-paunched specters of MOR complacency lurking in the mixes somewhere, but you can't damn the work for the marketing, even if, at times, things seem a little calculated.

If the band's new album is this self-conscious, I didn't notice it. It has the feel, anyway, of some guys walking into a studio and plugging their instruments into really crappy amps, just ready to play some straight-ahead music. The guys are probably in a bad mood, maybe even suffering from profound personal problems. Themes of exorcism and black magic creep up in the song titles, but the lyrics are muddled and buried in the mix, and are delivered somewhere between a mumble and squeal anyway. The sounds are mostly muddy, overly bassy with the occasional spooky tone in a higher register. The chick from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guests on one song where she and lead Lip Wayne Coyne role play over the phone, making animal noises. It's one of the few tracks where his voice is immediately recognizable--'tho you can catch it pretty quickly elsewhere. The song is also too cute by half in an old school Flaming Lips way. It's the only song really that drifts that way, and even it has this kinda spooky feel due to some brittle keys and textural effects.

The rule of the album is better exemplified what you hear in this song: thudding doom. Big thunder. Mumbling pronouncements, more panicky than Dylan's, of something you half understand. To my ear the coupling of melody and groove is probably lifted from "Ball of Confusion," an appropriate touchstone for the kinda heat this one's generating, both musically and in its dark, hefty sorta mood.

19. A Fond Farewell - Elliott Smith - From a Basement on a Hill:

I've already written about Elliott Smith elsewhere on this list, so I won't add much here. As with Ween, I've included 2 of his songs on this list to show what a big part his music played in my life this year. Every year, I seem to develop a greater appreciation for a few songs by playing them on the guitar. "A Fond Farewell" falls into that category. I spent some time figuring out that main riff, which is really only tricky, as it involves some very focused string-bending. I also felt a connection with the mood of the song though.

Some people think the lyrics forecast Elliott Smith's suicide. It's true that he was working on this album when he took his life. But his death was so violent and seemingly impulsive--I find it hard to imagine someone planning to stab himself multiple times with a kitchen knife, but maybe that's just me. I also find it hard to link it to the calm, almost meditative tone of the vocals. The lyrics are sad, the farewell does feel final, and I do believe that the "friend" Elliott Smith is offering it to may be a part of himself. But the suicidal intent remains obscured, and if present, maybe conflicted, which is, I think how suicidal people maybe live most of the time, while they do live. So it's paradoxical. Hope in despair and that sorta thing. I almost never hear hopelessness in Elliott Smith's music. A lotta times, actually, he sounds like he's just trying to work things out.

And the string-bending part is really pretty fun.

20. Big Jilm - Ween - Pure Guava:

At first, when I was messing around with a track sequence, "Big Jilm" seemed like a strange place to end things. Somehow, though the abruptness of it, leaves the list feeling more immediate than unfinished to me. It feels like the year is still in progress in a way, which seems appropriate somehow. It's not a bad feeling, tho 2010 was not a good year. Decades always seem to have rocky beginnings for me.

One of the entertainment highlights of 2010 for me was going to see Ween play the Aragon Ballroom. I hadn't been to a live show in a while. Maybe I'm showing my age, which is roughly the same as that of Dean and Gene Ween. Anyway, they looked pretty good on stage, and tho half the show was ruined by Gene periodically wandering off in a (one assumes pharmaceutically induced) daze, the other half was really powerful stuff. "Big Jilm" had to by the biggest lighter-raising moment. Tho some of the other songs were performed just as well, it was when this song came on that the crowd went really, really berserk.

If Elliott Smith's "New Monkey" was my theme song this year, Ween's Pure Guava was probably the album I listened to the most, when I settled in to listen to a whole album. ("Settling in" being figurative here, as this was often while walking around.) As much as humor is essential to Ween's music, Pure Guava strikes me as sorta a dark album--murky, claustrophobic, paranoid, twisted, melancholy and angry. Still frequently silly, of course, but kinda heavy. It's a monster of a headphone record, if you've never listened to it that way, but I think that derives from the fact that it was really concocted by a couple of guys in a studio to be privately shared... maybe with you.

I wouldn't say that Ween and Elliott Smith were the poles of my musical existence this year. Lots of less popular music type stuff--e.g. most of my jazz--never even makes it onto these lists 'cuz the songs are so damn long. But both Ween and Elliott Smith were important to me, so I'm beginning and ending this way. I'm not sure what that says about where I was at or am at. I guess I'm not blazing any new trails, and I'm also not exemplifying a positive, mature attitude--musically. (I promise next list'll be nothing but dubstep and Billy Bragg/Fugazi re-issues, seriously.) (Not that dubstep will be hip at that point.) (Not that it's probably hip now.) But I think it's also worth noting that I stumbled on some new sounds. Not a lot of 'em, and I hope I didn't the relatively small number of new tracks doesn't seem too dreary. The ones that are here make up for it in how good they are, I think. Seems like there's more happening out there that's actually interesting than there has been in some time. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in 2011--musically anyway.

2010 in Review: The Monkey I Have Been Told of - Part 1

2010 in Review: The Monkey I Have Been Told of

Part 1

(Presented in 2 Parts, given its length, in hopes of not choking blogger, my IP or you…)

I'm not really sure where to begin with this one, which is probably just as well, since I seem to've outdone myself with my natural tendency to say too fucking much. I tried to edit, cut down, etc., but let's face it: it's March 2011. This list is supposed to be a retrospective of what happened to me in 2010. I think we are in danger of losing our perspective here. So I'm just gonna shut the fuck up and give you what I got as it is. I'm sorry! It's a mess! But I hope you can make sense of it, if you feel so inclined.

The drill, if you don't know it is: a list of music that was significant to me in 2010. Not all of it is "the best" music, in my estimation, but I had significant moments with all of it that marked part of 2010 for me. At the same time, I love new music--that is, music that's new to me--and I am usually on the look out. There is some of that here. It's not the newest, as I am not either, but I liked it, and it gave me some hope for the future to find that people were making it.

One last note: This is the 11th list I've done. For the last decade, I've limited them to 80 minutes, as I wanted friends--or whoever--to be able to burn them to a disc if they wanted to--and so I could foist discs off as "gifts" if wanted to. With the death of the CD at hand, it seems ludicrous to stick to the 80 minute format, so next year, I'll probably come up with something else. This year would've been more appropriate, since it's the beginning of a new decade, I guess, but I didn't think of it till I'd nearly finished the list, if you can believe that.

I said I'd shut up. I didn't. I am. Now. Here it is:

1. The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness - The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms:

I really couldn't think of a better place to start this playlist than "The Boy with Perpetual Nervousness." It builds from such a subtle, intriguing opening--one that, if you've never heard it before, will probably insinuate itself into your environment before you even realize the song has started--into this irresistible, passionate groove. The song is always controlled, despite the jitteriness its title implies. There's no real distortion to speak of and no tough-guy guitar muscle-making. In fact, for a rock record from the 70s, there are scant signs of either classic or punk rock conceit. If you haven't heard this, I won't lie and tell you that it sounds utterly unique, however. There are obvious parallels to kindred spirits like Talking Heads and R.E.M.--and to the entire "college rock" trend--itself a wellspring of a lotta that alternative rock stuff you kids like or did like. So by extension, that means that Vampire Weekend and Cage the Elephant are spiritually if not literally descended from alla these guys. OK, who's ready to join my angry mob? I got dibs on David Byrne!

OK so I'm making it sound like a really obscure record, and it isn't really, and you knew that. But for a very long time, Crazy Rhythms was out of print. Music critics salivate over it alla time. Strangely, no one I knew had it. Even used, the fucking thing was nearly impossible to get for less than, like, $35, at least if you are as unsavvy/-lucky as I am. A few times, I almost bought it. It's just, y'know, there are a lot of records, and usually $35 can buy you at least 3. At least. Finally, for the lazy asses in the house--here here!--it's available for digital download. And... it's as good as most (not all) of the critics said it was. So let me throw my endorsement in there! Go download it, buy it, whatever! If you don't already have it. I did. And it really has been a good listen throughout its residency in 2010.

2. She's Lost Control - Joy Division - Unknown Pleasures:

Was I just saying I was unsavvy? Ha!

Ha!

Ha!

That's me imitating the opening beat of this song, which is strikingly similar to the beat that opened the last song. These beats are carried forward through the songs, but they are--one could argue must be--slowed down and elaborated to establish the songs. Why? Well, to give me a cool transition from first to second track of my playlist, obviously. Whateryoo, stoopid?

Seriously, there may be a reason why, tho I am not the songs' makers and can't say for sure. The rhythm has to come first here, and it does, literally. The groove has to come first. The mood has to come first. With both songs, it's something like a trance state that's sought, I think. Ian Curtis, Joy Division's vocalist began suffering epileptic seizures when the band performed live. At times, bandmates and audience couldn't distinguish his dancing from his seizures. Increasingly, mild seizure disorders are being identified less as the classic thrashin' around, frothin' at the mouth, etc. and more as someone slipping into a quiet wordless daze. As I'm doing while I write this................................

Oh. Yeah. But this beat is a harsh pulse too. So it's a trance that'll bash you up one side of the street and down the other--more like one of those seizures that causes you to crack the back of your head and bite of the tip of your tongue. And that's something that people tend to forget about Joy Division: They were a band that kicked ass live. The most recent re-releases of their albums include tons of extra live material--reason enough to pick them up if you don't already have 'em, 'tho the studio stuff is transcendent and worth investing in as well. A passing note: One thing I love about Joy Division is the way in which the bass carries the melody, while the guitar is more like this ugly, noisy textural element. It's a sound that got imitated later, but was abandoned by the band, when they became New Order. After Curtis's suicide, they felt it would be uncool to go on this way. Fair enough, but they never sounded remotely as interesting again.

3. Every Day - AFX - Hangable Audio Bulb:

If you follow my playlists--and, like, who doesn't?--you can probably guess that AFX is yet another alias adopted by Aphex Twin a.k.a. Richard James, since you know that I spend a lotta time listening to him every year. If you have a better guess as to why this guy feels he needs another alias aside from sheer perversity/paranoia, you're ahead of me, and you should let me know.

Atmospherically, what you have here strikes me as a bit paranoid and perverse--tho not overly so. As techno-inflected electronica goes, it's not very aggressive, but it does feel cold--a bit like the theme song to a really cool video game that you are, nevertheless, playing completely alone at 3:30 a.m. on a Wednesday night. And for me, the wicked humor of the distorted vocal really does nothing to dispel this feeling either. This (we assume) privileged limey wife bitching about her hubby bitching at her to get him another tie, etc., really only conjures a weak little grin at her expense. This song really isn't much fun at all, now that I think about it. Maybe you'll feel differently. But it has a sorta enthralling texture, and it rises nicely out of the Joy Division number and leads well into Ween, especially given that domestic bitching is about to be turned on its distaff ear...

4. Piss up a Rope - Ween - 12 Country Classics:

Ween exerted a huge influence over me this year. When I wasn't "down," their music was the music I was most commonly listening to--which is not to say that I didn't listen to other stuff--only that if you had to choose a single artist on the "up" side, it would be Ween. (On the "down" side, it would be Elliott Smith, but that's a matter best considered later, like in the next song.) Considering Ween's ubiquitousness this year and their staggeringly diverse body of work, I found it difficult to narrow my choice down to 1 track, so you get 2 Ween songs here. I tried to space 'em out, for what it's worth.

First, "Piss up a Rope": The diversity and success of Ween's music is due not to the degree of their chameleonic gifts, but to the deftness with which they employ them. Calypso, funk, Philly soul, 70s classic rock, and punk rock thrash are all played out equally convincingly. It wouldn't work, I think, if Ween didn't respect each kind of music enough to really listen to it, to explore its nuances, to figure it out thoroughly enough to understand what really makes it tick.

That doesn't mean that they don't pack each song with outrageous lyrical conceits to turn everything on its head. If the words here--a raunchy sendup that are only a slightly bizarre extension of New Country macho bluster--don't make you laugh then I don't know what's wrong with you. ("2% milk?" Do we even want to know what that really means?) They're also wildly inventive enough to throw an occasional musical detail out of left field that, improbably, works, like the synthesizer freakout that stands in for a guitar solo here. This album was recorded with a bunch of seasoned Nashville session men, who later toured with Ween as "The Shit Creek Boys." I would've loved to've heard what they thought of this keyboard alone, never mind the rest of the equally messed up stuff on this album.

5. New Monkey - Elliott Smith - New Moon:

If I had a theme song this year, this was easily it. No competitors.

It hits so many of the major issues that rose up in front of me that it's what... eerie? Humorous? Depressing? I don't know.

Want me to catalogue 'em for you? I'm not really sure that it does anyone good to do so. Maybe the most important concern involves the creative process--how if you spend a lot of your time digging your feet in and trying to do something creative, you may find yourself questioning the value, not just of the venture, but of yourself and... heh heh heh... of a lot of the stuff and people around you. Does that make you a prick? Probably.

Worse, once you start to feel that your time is empty, well you gotta do something with it, right? It's kind of a frightening proposition. What do you do if you suspect that nothing you're capable of doing really has any value? Sound like a pussy? A malcontent? Should someone like that be out distributing food to the homeless? Are you? Didn't think so.

I admire that Elliott Smith could portray all of these feelings with such humor. So many musical artists are committed to mythologizing themselves as these heroic figures--if not noble, then strong or charming. Elliott Smith gives you his humanity--his struggle with his ugliness and weakness, which, sometimes is a losing battle. Fortunately, he was able to use it as the basis of the "images of hope and depression" that you find in his music.

6. Pilots - Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain:

As I've grown older, I've noticed that summer has become more important to me. This change surprises me, not in the least, because I used find the endless bitching of others concerning the variance of the seasons to be tiresome. If there's one thing you can bank on people talking about when they have absolutely nothing to say, it's the weather. By an even more irritating extension, if there's something you can guarantee that people will complain about when they have absolutely nothing to complain about whatsoever, it's the slightest variation of the temperature from a mean of about 80 during the day and 75 at night!

What the fuck?

Let me reveal myself as a heretic and say that once in a while I like a day where the high is 45 or 95 or whatever--just to shake things up. I'm OK with a little snow once in a while. (Though as I write this on Xmas Eve, lemme say that I fucking hate Xmas, white or otherwise.) And I fucking love rain--especially thunder storms.

That all said, winter hits me harder than it used to I don't know why. Every year, it seems to stretch on longer, and it I find myself wishing there were fucking leaves on the trees and shade and satyrs scampering about or something. Shade. Quiet. A different color pallet. I don't know. That silver gray shit is killing me somehow. And it just goes on. The plows. The sludge. The ice. It feels like... death.

But then, what is this, Ragnarok? And more to the point, what's it have to do with Alison Goldfrapp?

Well, I'm glad you asked.

As early as June this year, I felt summer getting away from me. Maybe it's a function of turning 40. Maybe I could see there weren't as many of 'em ahead. It hadn't even started, calendar-wise, & it seemed summer was receding already. Under the shade of the trees, the leaves hissing like I was in Antonioni's Blow-up, and already, the gold was white and gray. And I felt fucking crushed.

And I thought OK, I gotta make it be summer. It's dangerous to try to construct a mood, because you run the risk of foregrounding how clearly absent something you need is. But I was desperate. I was thinking of "Jane Says," 2 years ago, & how the ipod had summoned it up in the sunlight to bail me out. (See 2008's playlist, if you feel like it.) And I thought back to this Goldfrapp record. It has this sopoforic, sunny feel. Sure, maybe it's a little bit like escapism, a narcotic even, but it helped, and thereafter I listened to this record and enjoyed the summer a lot more.

7. Cool Out - King Midas Sound - Waiting for You:

If you aren't high yet, this may get you there. I sincerely doubt tho that it will put you to sleep. It's a woozy sound, but huge. Enormous in its sense of emotional isolation and of physical space. Music never sounds so big as it does when it's recorded like Jamaican dub reggae. This ain't Jamaican dub reggae. It's a collaboration between a vocalist from Trinidad, who understands the traditions of Carribean singing and has the personality and authority to carry them forward, and an American producer of electronica, who loves dub reggae and clearly understands how to isolate some of its technical aspects and make them do something that is both prototypal and new simultaneously. These guys are making fucking exciting music, as you can hear in this song and in the entire album that follows it. It's a new sound that is thoroughly informed by some rock solid ideas. Haunting and tough. It's one of those records that reminds me that people are still making really good new music and thereby uplifts my hopes for humanity or some such silly shit.

8. Neverland - The Knife - Silent Shout:

The Knife are hip. Or they were. I guess. I found out about them at the end of 2009, a year in which they had apparently consolidated their hipness and at the end of which lead singer/sister side of this Swedish brother/sister act Karin Dreijer was already wowing the indy press with her solo project Fever Ray. I was stumbling after the hip train. Sometimes I can see it up there on its smooth, lean, gleaming monorail tracks. Sometimes it's worth it. In this case it is.

I could give a rat's ass that this chick's outfits made Lady Gaga look like Minnie Pearl from Hee Haw. (Now that's hip for ya!) What I care about is they twist up electronic textures, wicked humor, irresistible beats, real pathos and utterly unexpected musical twists into one of the most unique albums I've heard in a while--one that manages to be fun without being shallow, which is more than I can say for most rock and roll I've heard coming down the line for some time. Menacing, danceable, (probably--I can't dance,) and full of life. This song leads you into an album full of shifting ideas and emotions that never gets dull. (And it provides the playlist with it's title, in case you didn't notice.)

9. Fake Tits/Real Beer - David Cross - Shut Up, You Fucking Baby!:

I listen to standup comedy on occasion--I think, in part, because I'm fascinated by good writing, and good standup is demanding as a form of literary expression. It requires that the comedian hone his or her ideas to a very fine edge as the audience is right there in the room. (Also, it necessitates an ability to improvise that a print writer will never have to develop--except at the rare live reading, where stultifying adherence to procedure insures that nothing unscripted usually happens anyway.)

To my way of thinking, Bill Hicks, Lenny Bruce, Richard Pryor, Eddie Murphy, (when he was doing standup,) and many others were artists and deserve recognition as such. If nothing else, they deserve inclusion on my playlists, so they're gonna get it! Enough defensiveness... I think this bit fits really well here. What's more, I've listened to the album it comes from a lot the last couple of years. I have this unfortunate habit of putting it on headphones when I'm out in public and then having to fight the urge to burst out laughing while complete strangers give me weird looks. Of course, the shit becomes even funnier under those circumstances, so that routines that might only draw a smile under normal circumstances, suddenly become uproariously funny.

David Cross's humor is often not of the laugh-out-loud sort, though it certainly does have its moments. There's a routine I'd love to put on here that's 16 minutes long that always makes me laugh, but, well, it's 16 minutes long, y'know? This one gets me at exactly one point--when he says, "It's me... you!" (Don't think that's giving anything away if you're reading before listening.) Almost every time I hear it, I laugh.

Nevertheless, whether I laugh out loud or not, I always find him funny. He's spot on with his observations--usually--clever in the way he expresses them, and imaginative in the way he visualizes things. Morally, I usually line up with him--tho sometimes, I think he's kinda an elitist dill hole and maybe a dash tad hypocritical.

Anyway, he's pretty cool overall, and this bit seemed extremely relevant at one point this year, when Beloved Female Acquaintance started complaining at length about people mis-using the word literally. She noticed I was amused and asked me why, and I said, "You gotta hear something..."

10. Zumbie (featuring Andy Milonakis) - Major Lazer - Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do:

For some months now, I've been thinking about whether or not I should include the song. At first, it seemed like a gimme. I loved it. I thought the minimalistic approach to a Jamaican groove was both ingenious and rocked. I thought the lyrics and the delivery--by American comedian Andy Milonakis, who acknowledges his lack of cultural credibility with the throwaway "me a fake Jamaican"--were hilarious... But then I noticed something else about the lyrics--that is something that sounded like "...because me don't like the HIV..."

Dig if u will a picture of me playing back that section of the song around 5000 times, trying to pick up the surrounding context--in particular, the line before, because I determined that it's the only one that'd explain why this undead rude boy is discussing HIV. I mean, let's face it: there can't be too many reasons, esp. when you're dealing with Jamaican culture, which however much you want to romanticize it, offers about the most virulent strain of homophobia on the planet. It runs through the very dancehall music celebrated on the very brilliant pan-cultural multi-artist album Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do. But I guess we might've hoped it could've been… uh… weeded out of the fun here, right? Or would that have ruined the authenticity?

Wow! This got complicated, didn't it? Am I an imperialist? Or a homophobe? Must you be 1 or the other? I definitely ain't Jamaican. And not all dance hall music is homophobic, of course.

Well, I did eventually determine that the line is probably "and me don't eat gays, 'cuz me don't like the HIV..." so that may or may not be confirmation. Of something. I've heard it argued that maybe Milonakis is ridiculing a tough guy stance. Y'know, like the Beastie Boys used to. Poking fun at a b-boy stance by adopting a sorta cartoonish version of it. Thus the deflating bits like "me a fake Jamaican, etc." Could be. Beasties eventually pussed out, expressed remorse, and started making real boring music. Does anyone listen to their music anymore? I sure don't.

Buuuutttt… I'm also pretty leery of songs where the line between irony and bigotry gets too blurry these days, kinda cuz somehow I got attached to stupid sentimental ideas about people being human and therefore being due some sorta dignity or something, which, I know is counter-productive. Sorry. Anyway, here's the song. It is pretty great. Read the stuff in the 1st paragraph as to why I think so, but consider how many paragraphs I spent on the rest, if you care, as an indication of my ambivalence otherwise.

11. Baby (featuring Prince Zimboo) - Major Lazer - Guns Don't Kill People... Lazers Do:

This is just a ridiculously fun "extra," riding on a ridiculously fun track. Here at least, you get a real Jamaican vocalist... and an Autotune baby! Gotta wonder what's gonna happen to that kid as he grows up, am I right? Is it a curse or an affliction? I think we all have a real good idea what he/she'll sound like if he/she decides to become an R&B vocalist anyway. My only concern for the little waif is that given the ephemerality of pop music modes, Autotune may be yesterday's diapers by the time he/she is outta swaddling cloths, let alone old enough to drive. No one ever said life was gonna be easy, but I think we should all resolve to be extra nice to the person taking our order at Burger King in 16-18 years--you know, the one with built-in Autotune--just in case.

TO BE CONTINUED