The countdown of my top 152 albums of all time. Continues. The
story so far:
Part I (150–152) here.
Part II (147–149) here.
Part III (144–146) here.
Part IV (141–143) here.
Part V (138–140) here.
Part VI (135–137) here.
Part VII (132–134) here.
Part VIII (129–131) here.
Part IX (126–128) here.
Part X (123–125) here.
Part XI (120–122) here.
Part XII (117–119) here.
Although I had heard of Frank Zappa for as long as I can
remember, I am sad to say that, aside from a few tracks that were played on Dr.
Demento in the early 80s, I didn’t get into Zappa in earnest until he died in
1993. Sad, really. Anyway, one of the first records I had bought by him was We’re
Only In It for the Money, his third album
(credited to The Mothers of Invention, his original band that mutated with each
record). (This was Zappa’s fourth overall album, as the orchestral Lumpy
Gravy, which was recorded at the same time,
was released beforehand, although it includes orchestral instrumental versions
of some of the songs on WOIIFTM).
It’s a wicked satire of the 60s counterculture—Zappa had little patience for
either normal society or the hippies, and he never did drugs—via subversive
pseudo-pop songs, musique concrète,
and a concluding orchestral piece (“The Chrome-Plated Megaphone of Destiny,”
inspired by a Kafka story). “Who Needs the Peace Corps?” remains a pretty funny
poke at the hippies (“I’m really just a phoney but forgive me ’cause I’m
stoned...I will love everyone, I will love the police as they kick the shit out
of me on the street...”). Zappa makes equal fun of parents and kids: “Ever tell
your kids/You’re glad that they can think?/Ever say you loved them, ever let
them watch you drink?” The record is also famous for the repeated quotes from
drummer Jimmy Carl Black (who was Cherokee Indian), “Hi, boys and girls, my
name is Jimmy Carl Black and I’m the Indian of the group.” Side two (or the
second half) shows that Zappa’s sympathies lay with the freaks, via songs like
“Let’s Make the Water Turn Black” and “Take Your Clothes Off When You Dance.” As for the immortal question,
“What’s the ugliest part of your body?” Well, “I think it’s your mind.”
My
first exposure to the album was the "revisionist" 1987 Ryko version
in which Zappa restored some censored lines from the original album, and
completely re-recorded the bass and drums. It wasn’t until a subsequent
remaster that the original rhythm tracks were restored, after an outcry from
fans. (The censored lines remained, though.) Graphically, the album is known for
its back-cover takeoff off Sgt. Pepper.
I was introduced to Canadian singer/songwriter Jane Siberry
in 1988 via a pal I had in college. He had just reviewed The Walking and recommended her records as being reminiscent of
a more whimsical Kate Bush, who was a favorite of mine at the time.
In 1988, Siberry only had three albums out, so acquiring her
back discography was not hard, and her first album (actually, her second, I
discovered much later) No Borders Here quickly became a favorite of mine. It’s much poppier than her albums became
(especially The Walking, which was
quite out there), but is full of great character studies, which alas became
less and less an element in her songwriting. Case in point: opening track “The
Waitress” who “would probably be famous now if I wasn’t such a good waitress”
(Siberry actually was a waitress and financed the recording of her first album
via tips). “Extra Executives” pokes fun at those sales types (“His card reads
‘executive’ but it mumbles ‘just a salesman’”). Some of the characters are
sadly amusing in their obliviousness: the singer of “I Muse Aloud” attributes
her beau’s sleeping around to the fact that “I make him feel so good.” “Dancing
Class” is an experiment in early multiculturalism. “Symmetry” anticipates the
TV show Monk by about 18 years.
The breakthrough single for Siberry was “Mimi on the Beach.”
Siberry certainly
became more musically and lyrically experimental, but the humor and directness
of No Borders Here made a very strong
impression on me back in the day.
I got into The Replacements—sometimes considered the
American Rolling Stones, although they were never particularly popular—in an
oblique way: I really liked their 1986 garage-band-like cover of “Cruella de
Ville” from a record called Stay
Awake, a collection of 80s alternative
artists doing covers of songs from Disney films. (Tom Waits doing “Heigh Ho
(The Dwarfs Marching Song)” has to be heard to be believed.)
Live, The Replacements were a mixed bag; not drunk enough,
they were stiff and uncompelling. Too drunk, they were sloppy and inept and all
played different songs simultaneously (I had an English professor sophomore year in college who saw them in Syracuse and they were the latter). Recordwise, their early indie albums
were a bit too messy and sloppy for my taste, and their last two albums a bit too
slick and uninspiring. But Tim was the
perfect ’Mats album, being the first major-label album, and before they got too
slick. It does have a never-ending series of classic tracks, and demonstrated
the breadth of Paul Westerberg’s songwriting abilities. That the same guy can
write “Bastards of Young” and “Here Comes a Regular” is nothing short of
amazing. “Kiss Me On the Bus” and “Waitress in the Sky” (which I still often
sing to myself on airplanes, even though it’s a little mean—“Sanitation expert
and a maintenance engineer/Garbage man, a janitor and you my dear/A real union
flight attendant, my oh my/You ain’t nothin’ but a waitress in the sky”) were
the two radio songs, but there is barely a bad song here, and “Left of the Dial” an 80s alternative music call to arms. The rough edges were
just softened enough, but not to the extent that they were drained of energy
and life.
Well a person can work up a mean thirst
After a hard day of nothin’ much at all
Summer’s passed, it’s too late to cut the grass
There ain’t much to rake anyway in the fall
And sometimes I just ain’t in the mood
To take my place in back with the loudmouths
You’re like a picture on the fridge that’s never stocked
with food
I used to live at home, now I stay at the house
And everybody wants to be special here
They call your name out loud and clear
Here comes a regular
Call out your name
Here comes a regular
Am I the only one here today?
Subsequent albums yielded alternative radio hits “Alex
Chilton,” “I’ll Be You,” and “Merry Go Round,” and the last Replacements album—All Shook Down—was supposed to be a Paul Westerberg solo record. They disbanded shortly thereafter.
So far, the Frankenstorm has yet to do much of anything up here, if it even will. Best comment ever, from Albany’s Palace Theatre’s Facebook page: “We regret to inform everyone that tonight’s showing of SINGIN’ IN THE RAIN is ironically cancelled due to the threat of the incoming storm.”
As is often the case with the records on this list, My
Nation Underground was not the
best-reviewed of Cope’s albums, and I think even he disliked it. And it does
represent that 80s-esque overproduced sound at odds with his other, less
fussily produced records. But, again, the titles on this list are often about
context, and this was the first I had heard of Cope; “Charlotte Anne” was
played occasionally on WFNX (Boston) when I was home for Christmas break in
1988. I liked the song and the pun (“Charlotte Anne”/“charlatan”—get it?) and
Spectrum (the SU campus record store) was having a get-rid-of-all-our-vinyl
sale, so I picked this up for $1, and played it endlessly for a while.
A good track is the opening cover of The Vogues’ 1965 hit “5
O’Clock World,” slipping in a bit of a sci-fi rewrite of “I Know a Place.” A
relative epic ends the first side (in the old days of vinyl), the title track,
which is an apocalyptic call to arms of sorts (“Says Nostradamus, it’s coming
soon”). (Side two ends with the slightly shorter “Great White Hoax”—Cope loves
puns.) “China Doll” opens side two on a quiet, tender note, before launching
into a cover of Shadows of Knight’s “Someone Like Me.” “Easter Everywhere” is
another apocalyptic song: “We’re on an earthquake island on an alien planet/Gotta
find someone who can help me out/Don’t care about the others/Just care about
me....” Sums up the Reagan years pretty succinctly.
Cope followed up My Nation Underground with two bare bones indie-released records (which I
have never been able to find) called Droolian and Skellington, before returning on his major label with the epic
statements Peggy Suicide and Jehovahkill, both of which received heavy play upon their
original release. I lost track of him throughout the 90s, and he apparently
releases stuff through his Web site, although I have not investigated any of
it. Sorry.
Barrett, of course, was the founder and original songwriter
of Pink Floyd (see Piper at the Gates of Dawn waaaaay down this list), but mental instability thanks in very large
part to drug use curtailed his tenure with the band, and cut short his brief
attempt at a solo career. 1970 saw the release of a brace of Barrett albums—the
extent of his solo output, aside from a collection of outtakes released in the
1980s—and this entry could stand for either (or both) of them, as between the two
is one terrific album.
One listen to the first of them—The Madcap Laughs—indicates why his solo career was going to be a
dodgy proposition: Barrett was incredibly erratic, in and out of the studio.
For every genius song like “Octopus” or “Terrapin,” there is an equivalent “If
It’s In You,” aptly titled, as it is preceded by false starts, studio banter,
cracking voices—I don’t know, but I think including it on the album just seemed
kind of mean. (Ironically, the worst of the stuff was produced by David Gilmour
and Roger Waters, who surely had no ill-intent.) But when The Madcap
Laughs is good—which is almost all of side
one and most of side two—it’s quite good. “Late Night,” the concluding track,
is quite beautiful.
The second album, Barrett, may lag in places, but at least they kept the
bloopers off. As a Pink Floyd completist, I picked up the Barrett records early
on (circa 1983) and while they likely appalled casual Floyd fans used to The
Wall or Dark Side of the Moon, I liked them—and still do—for the unusual genius
they represent. There is literally nothing like these albums out there,
although they did inspire most of Robyn Hitchcock’s career. Syd died in 2006.
In the 1970s, when I was growing up, S&G were all over
the radio, and my mother had and often played their greatest hits album, so I
was intimately familiar with their hits. In 1986, I bought Paul Simon's Graceland, and took the opportunity to acquire S&G’s five
studio albums which throughout my sophomore year in college received heavy
rotation. (I was so hip.) They’re all good, in their own ways of course, but
two made an especial impact on me. This was the first (Bookends appears later in this list), and it reflects perhaps
the best mix of Paul Simon’s poetic aspirations, Garfunkel’s angelic vocal
contributions, and the emergence of folk-rock post-Dylan. It bears mentioning
that Simon did not like Dylan (Dylan snubbed him at one point), as evidenced in
the humorous “Simple Desultory Phillippic” which mocks Dylan (and other 60s
figures) at one point.
Opener “Scarborough Fair/Canticle” perhaps sums up the M.O.
at the outset—Garfunkel’s soaring voice singing a traditional English folk
song, with Simon’s lower, less angelic pipes chiming in with more relevant,
socially relevant lyrics. The two blend beautifully. PSR&T has been called pretentious, and it’s true that many
of the lyrics do seem very “English major-y” (I was an English major when I
discovered the record, so no criticism here!). But when a record contains
“Homeward Bound,” “The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin’ Groovy),” and “For
Emily, Wherever I May Find Her” (a Garfunkel showcase), you can forgive the
literary name dropping of “The Dangling Conversation.” Which, being a
pretentious English major myself, I have no problem with. The final track, “7
O’Clock News/Silent Night” is really quite the chilling—and
depressing—juxtaposition. The actual news report may be a tad dated (i.e.,
1966), but I doubt any contemporary news report would be any more uplifting.
Just a wonderful record.
This morning, I participated in the first ever RunDead race benefitting Special Olympics. The way it worked was this: It was a 5K run through Saratoga State Park, and it was a fairly tough trail run; up and down hills, through woods, alongside streams, over slippery rocks, up stairs and, though some muddy bits (my favorite). Each runner was given a little belt with three Velcro-detachable “flags.” As you ran the course, people dressed as zombies (and some folks were very creative in their costuming) leapt out and you and attempted to tear off the flags. If you lost all three flags, you were “dead.” I was doing well, but lost two flags in rapid succession the second mile, and then a short time later when my guard was down a five-year-old “zombie” snuck up behind me and got the third. They’re small, but they’ll crawl you. It was a lot of fun, although I noticed a few people taking it a bit too seriously, and some people were cheating by holding the flags in their hands, etc. (how bad does your self-esteem have to be to cheat in a zombie run?). I did it in a lethargic 31:30, but I wasn’t going for time or speed, and stopped every now and then to take pictures or not fall into a stream.
One of the problems with frequent traveling (of which there are myriad) is staying healthy and fit. Eating healthily while on the road is always a challenge, but even that can be offset with a decent exercise regimen. Many years ago, I got into the habit of avoiding “labor saving” things like elevators and escalators (I always take the stairs when possible, even when carrying luggage), walking instead of cabbing or driving when practical, etc. Travel to major cities is always good because they are usually somewhat pedestrian-friendly.
Most hotels have some kind of fitness center (which can range from a single dilapidated treadmill shoved in a closet in a damp, ill-lit basement next to a sign that reads “beware of the leopard”) to a full-scale gym/spa like the one at the LVH Hotel in Las Vegas—although they charged $20 day, so that wasn’t gonna happen. One advantage to Las Vegas is that, the town being what it is, you rarely find fitness centers crowded (or even occupied) at 6 a.m.
As a result, I have been compiling “travel workouts of the day (WODs)” from various CrossFit sites (and some that I just make up based on what’s available and what I’m in the mood to do). Most can be done in a hotel room (at one Graph Expo hotel last year, the only room available was the handicapped-accessible room which had a great wide-open space for burpees), and many hotel fitness rooms have a set of dumbbells, so some strength exercises can be included as well. This will of course depend on the size of the fitness room; doing one-armed dumbbell snatches in a smallish exercise room in the Chicago Marriott Courtyard earlier this month, I nearly clonked some guy who blundered into my workout radius.
A great travel WOD I recently found online and did—appropriately—in Las Vegas last week is called “Blackjack,” as each set comprises 21 total reps. It goes like this:
For time: Pushups: 1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8-9-10-11-12-13-14-15-16-17-18-19-20 alternating with Situps: 20-19-18-17-16-15-14-13-12-11-10-9-8-7-6-5-4-3-2-1
What this means is that in Set 1, you do one pushup, followed by 20 situps. In Set 2, you do 2 pushups, then 19 situps. And so forth, concluding with Set 20 which comprises 20 pushups and 1 situp. I did it, appropriately, in about 21 minutes. The pushups get you toward the end...
Another good one is:
12 minute AMRAP (as many rounds as possible); 10 pushups 15 situps 20 walking lunges (each leg = 1/2 rep)
I did this one for the first time in Memphis last month and completed 3 rounds + 10 pushups + 15 situps. Reprising it in Vegas last week, I completed 4 rounds + 10 pushups + 10 situps. It's always good to repeat workouts and note progress.
If the hotel fitness center has a set of dumbbells, this is a good one I did in Chicago (with the caveat I mentioned earlier):
3 rounds for time: 20 one-armed dumbbell snatches (10 each arm), 30# dumbbell 15 pushups 20 situps
Time=7:03
Various tabata-style exercises are also good for hotel rooms. Tabata is a style of high-intensity interval training that, in the incarnation I usually do, comprises 8 cycles of 20 seconds of high-intensity exercise (like burpees, situps, or anything, really) where you are moving as fast as you can, followed by 10 seconds of rest. I have a good Tabata Timer app for the iPhone that time the cycles and tell you when to stop and go. The great MyWOD iPhone/iPad app also has a tabata timer that lets you enter the total number of reps for each cycle of activity.
The advantage to these types of workouts is that thety do not require a great deal of time, a big advantage when you are on the road and have morning meetings.
Somehow, and despite all my best efforts, following my unexpected and oblique triumph at the Area Contest, I appear to have won the Division G Humorous Speech contest, held October 15. Now I am off to compete at the District 53 Fall Conference, Saturday, November 17, at the Marriott in Albany. At least I don't have to drive to Connecticut this time!
Last month, business travel took me to Memphis, where I got to tour Graceland. This month, the SGIA Expo takes me to Las Vegas, my absolute least favorite place in the known universe—at least Miami Beach, my second least favorite place, has a nice boardwalk that is great for early morning runs. Las Vegas is like being trapped in a 3D model of a schizophrenic’s brain. And it’s chock full of really skeezy people or, even worse, people who aspire to skeeziness. It’s also kind of a menopausal Disneyland. And walking through hotel casinos watching elderly people with forlorn expressions on their faces shoving coin after coin into slot machines is just kind of sad. Plus smoking is allowed everywhere, which is just vile.
By somewhat happy accident, though, I ended up staying at the LVH Hotel (formerly the Las Vegas Hilton), primarily because it is right next to the Convention Center, but as it turns out this was Elvis’ hangout, where he forged his legacy as an entertainer—for better or worse—between 1969 and 1976. It was called The International at the time (it became the Las Vegas Hilton in 1971 and the LVH this year), and we are told:
In 1969 Elvis performed his first show at the International to a sold-out crowd and he went on to perform regular engagements at the property for seven years -- a total of 837 consecutive sold-out performances in front of 2.5 million people.
This is commemorated on a plaque attached to a statue outside the front doors.
Naturally, there is an Elvis impersonator who performs here every night. Elvises everywhere, indeed. Or would the plural be Elvi?
Anyway, Elvis has little to do with the next three records on my list of 152 favorite albums, except in that Robyn Hitchcock’s 1989 album (and 1990 song) was called Queen Elvis.
I came to Editors’ critically acclaimed first album a few
years after the fact, but The Back Room
was a pretty stunning debut, and a hard act to follow, perhaps explaining why,
seven years later, they still only have three albums out. Called a British
Interpol, I think they’re far better (the lyrics are far less cheesier than
Interpol’s).
Inspired by late 70s/early 80s bands like Joy Division and
Echo & the Bunnymen (among others), Editors write dark, elliptical songs
whose meanings aren’t readily apparent. Still, they often play “Munich” in my
gym (“People are fragile things you should know by now/Be careful what you put
them through”)—indeed. And I think we have all known folks like the antagonist
in “Blood”: “Blood runs through your veins, that’s where our similarity ends.”
And in “All Sparks”: “You burn like a bouncing cigarette on the road/all sparks
will burn out in the end.” (Okay, they’re a little cheesy.) Still, it’s my favorite track on the album.
The album title comes from “Camera”: “If we run they’ll look
in the back room/where we hide all of our feelings.” Make of that what you
will. In “Fingers in the Factories,” they seem to channel Morrissey:
As the sun goes down on a broken town
And the fingers bleed in the factories
Come on out tonight, come and see the sight
Of the ones you love and the ones in love.
This record and its follow up An End Has
a Start were very guitar-oriented, but
Editors abandoned the guitar sound for a more heavily synthesized approach on
their third album In
This Light and On This Evening. It’s
okay....
Steven H. first recommended this to me back in 2003, so I
picked it up and loved it, never having heard Belle & Sebastian before.
Named for a French
children’s novel about a dog (Belle) and a boy (Sebastian), the band
started as a project for Glaswegian Stuart Murdoch’s music business class at
university—his thesis was actually the band’s first album, Tigermilk. Although only 500 copies were pressed, it became a
highly sought-after cult hit, and the band quickly recorded a proper album, If
You’re Feeling Sinister, easily one of the
best albums of the 1990s (see later in this list).
By the beginning of the 2000s, they had started to lose
their way a bit and, despite a series of terrific non-album singles and EPs
(finally collected on the superb two-disc collection Push
Barman to Open Old Wounds), albums like
Fold
Your Hands Child, You Walk Like a Peasant
had more than a few dry patches (the title is the best thing about the album).
So the band regrouped and with the unlikely assistance of producer Trevor Horn
(Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Yes’ 90125, ABC), came up with an album that didn’t necessarily change their
basic sound, but expanded upon it. Horn did what a good producer does: he found
the essence of the band and made it come to the fore.
The songs are more lush than had been the case in the past;
Murdoch has been apparently overdosing on 1970s AM radio hits. It’s a much
fuller sound, but at the end of the day, the songs are there, and they’re some
of the strongest he’s penned. The opener, the funny “Step Into My Office,
Baby,” is probably a sexual harassment suit waiting to happen, but the hapless
protagonist doesn’t seem to mind (“Step into my office, baby/I want to give you
the job/A chance of better pay/Say my place at nine.”) Some songs hearken back
to the “old” more “twee” Belle & Sebastian (“Piazza, New York Catcher,” which
is a bit of an anachronism; I barely even remember the brouhaha that led to the
line “Piazza, New York catcher, are you straight or are you gay?” and “Lord
Anthony” with its return to schooldays).
But it’s songs like “I’m a Cuckoo” and “Wrapped Up in Books”
that really make the album, and are probably two of my favorite B&S songs.
The follow-up album, 2006’s The Life
Pursuit, is just as good, as Murdoch
seems to have rediscovered 1970s glam rock. 2010’s Write About
Love is also pretty good.
After about 30 years (his first recordings with The Soft
Boys date from 1977, although he had been performing in various guises—Dennis
and the Experts, Maureen and the Meatpackers) since the mid 1970s), Robyn
Hitchcock has become something of an elder statesman, and is often name-checked
by alternative bands old and new (The Decemberists are fans and Robyn guested
on their 2010 album The
Hazards of Love). The three Soft Boys
albums released between 1978 and 1980—especially the classic Underwater
Moonlight (see later in this list)—were
important touchstones for 1980s alternative rock (they influenced the likes of
R.E.M. and The Replacements, the latter of whom wanted Hitchcock to produce Tim in 1985—see later in this list).
His perhaps most fertile period was 1986–1990, when he had
formed The Egyptians from several former Soft Boys, and recorded a string of
college album chart toppers—Fegmania!
(1986), Element of Light (1987), Globe
of Frogs (1988)—for all, see later in this
list—and Queen Elvis (1989). A switch to a major record label resulted in
having a slick commercial producer foisted on him, ensuring that anything that
made his records distinctive was removed, resulting in the bland Perspex Island (1991). The Egyptians’ swan song Respect (1993)
had some high points, but felt more contractual obligation than artistic
statement. Hitchcock went into hiding, much as he had in the early 1980s. Back
then, he reappeared in 1984 with the all-acoustic I
Often Dream of Trains, and this time,
he reappeared in 1996 with the mostly acoustic and excellent Moss Elixir. A Jonathan Demme-directed concert film (Storefront Hitchcock) was filmed, but scuttled by Miramax, and
languished, although it is an excellent document of a typical Hitchcock
concert, with the songs introduced by funny, often very surreal stories and
commentary.
Since then, Hitchcock has pretty much followed his muse
wherever it may lead. A brace of fin de siècle albums (Jewels for
Sophia and A Star for
Bram, 1999 and 2000, respectively) had
high points (“Mexican God,” “The Cheese Alarm,” “I Saw Nick Drake,” an electric
version of “1974”) but suffered from its random writing and recording wherever
he happened to be and with whomever he happened to be. The all-acoustic I
Often Dream of Trains/Eye-like Luxor was self-released in 2003 as a 50th birthday present
to himself. A year later he signed to YepRoc Records and released a roots-like
but still excellent collaboration with Gillian Welch and David Rawlings Spooked. During this same period he was constantly touring,
doing guest appearances at others’ shows, and generally, it seems, enjoying
himself.
On this roof I play this riff
Play it till my hands are hollow
You can play to the tomatoes
You can play to the Apollo.
But then:
In the end I’ll be a skull
Through my eyes the eels will wallow
In the end I’ll be a warning
Time is not for us to follow.
Still: “Music is the antidote/To the world of pain and
sorrow.” He’s got a point. It is a good riff, with some appropriately grunting
saxophones.
“Belltown Ramble” is a bit of a lengthy, well, ramble.
And you wanna know what is
And also what is not
Don’t you, girl?
It’s an independent life
And you want to see your eyes
Reflected in the world.
Well, don’t we all? Shortly, though, “Then you find the
Uzbek warlord/You collide with Tamerlane/His teeth are brown.” Then things get
faintly apocalyptic:
Seven men are on their way
Seven sets of appetites
have got to be appeased today
Ignorance comes first
then comes Opportunism
Greed is third
Fundamental Faith
Rides in backwards with his eyes shut
listening for the Word
In bowls number five
He needs a bit of elbow room
His name is Haste
He fires off a slew of e-mails
And says, Put your hands together, boys
for six aka Waste
The boys all look around
They looked at number seven
Reclining in his chair
He’s got his headphones on
His head is full of paradise
He isn’t there
The title track is an ode to reproduction told, not
surprisingly, in the context of spiders. As Hitchcock explained, “It’s
all to do with how people feel about what brings them into
existence—how some people kind of recoil from it and some
people are delighted by it, and some people are just shocked that they exist at
all.”
It sounds like everyone had a bit of a good time in studio
while recording that one. And how can one resist singing along with “I feel
like a three-legged chinchilla/Standing on a table so wide/I can’t see over the
side.”
Although Guadalcanal Diary was a modest college rock
favorite in the late 80s, I did not get into “Guad” until
singer/guitarist/songwriter Murray Attaway opened for Robyn Hitchcock in
concert in 1993. Murray was touring behind his first (and, alas, only) solo
album In
Thrall, but I really liked his set,
and, a few days later, the record. I then spent many years trying to track down
the four Guadalcanal Diary albums, first available on vinyl in used record
stores (I spent a lot of time in Bleecker Bob’s on West 3rd St. in NYC), before
they turned up on CD. Classified as “jangle pop,” they did seem to owe no small
debt to R.E.M., and being from Georgia the comparisons were easy to make. But
Attaway’s vocals were far more distinct than Stipe’s, and early on reflected
Attaway’s lyrical preoccupations with Southern history (especially the Civil
War) and religion. “Trail of Tears” is a fantastic album opener, but the real
classic track here us “Watusi Rodeo,” a funny tale of cowboys in the
Congo.
Monkeys in the trees just thumbing their nose
At the bull-riders riding on rhinos
Warriors standing with spears in the hands
Wondering what's next from a crazy white man
Natives are restless under these Stetsons
What are these cowboys doing in the Congo
Look like cows but they're water buffaloes
It’s a short album, and boasts two instrumentals (and a
strange live version of “Kumbayah”), but is a great debut. 1987’s 2X4 (with the alternative hit “Litany”) is perhaps their
most famous record, justly, and Flip Flop (1989) was the hit that should have been, but of the
four, WITSOTBM is the one that
gets the most play. I was so happy a few years ago to find a new CD version
that combines this record with 1986’s Jamboree, even if the latter isn’t nearly as good.
In 2003, I rediscovered progressive rock music—not just the
old stuff (Genesis, Yes, ELP, King Crimson) that I was into in high school and
later abandoned for a time—but also so-called “neo-progressive” bands. Two of
the most prominent of these bands formed about the same time (1994) and began
to hit their peak around 2000–2002. The first was California’s Spock’s Beard
(see later in this list) and the second was Sweden’s The Flower Kings. Yes,
this is how I like my progressive rock—sweeping, symphonic, and Swedish. Roine
Stolt is a brilliant guitarist who cut his 17-year-old teeth in the early 1970s
with the Swedish band Kaipa. He left toward the end of the 1970s and kind of
vanished, since after 1977 anyone who played—or even liked—progressive rock became
pretty much a pariah. By the early 1990s, fans were rediscovering (or starting
to admit that they liked) the music of Yes, Peter Gabriel-era Genesis, Van Der
Graaf Generator, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer, and all that lot, and new
progressive bands were starting to form which took the music of their forebears
and expanded upon it—often exceeding it. Stolt released an album in 1994 called
The
Flower King, which was his return to
symphonic progressive rock, and was the pilot project for the band The Flower
Kings, which released its first album a year later.
Stolt is a great guitar player, with sort of a
Zappa-meets-Jeff Beck style with a little David Gilmour thrown in. He’s also
the band’s chief singer (sounding like an amalgam of Roger Waters, John Wetton,
and the Swedish Chef) and primary songwriter. Sweeping epics are grounded by a
very strong melodic base, but they are not loath to go off on sprawling
instrumental flights of fancy. And majestic guitar solos. Lyrics tend to be
very positive and life-affirming, and vaguely spiritual, but not oppressively
so. I think the band is utterly brilliant. If they have a flaw, it’s that some
of their albums tend to be a bit much—that is, they are not shy about releasing
double-CD sets, and each disc is stuffed to the limit with music. It can be
rather a lot to absorb.
2000’s Space Revolver was the first single-disc set after two back-to-back double albums, and it
benefits from its focus and editing. The album is bookended by “I Am the Sun”
parts one and two, which is the sort of sweeping epic that is the Flower Kings’
stock in trade. Jazz elements occasionally enter the mix, courtesy of Ulf
Wallander’s saxophone. Tomas Bodin’s keyboards complement Stolt’s guitar and
the interplay between the two is one of the highlights of any Flower Kings
record. Second singer Hans Fröberg (he has the technically better voice but
it’s less distinctive) gets a song credit with the lovely acoustic “You Don’t
Know What You’ve Got.” “Rumble Fish Twist” is a wild instrumental with some
exceptional bass work from newcomer Jonas Reingold. Stolt also loves big power
riffs, and this album has them in “I Am the Sun” and “Monster Within.” The
strangely-chorused “Chicken Farmer Song” (“I’d rather be where the chicken
farmers run”) is a breezy pop song with a great guitar solo from Stolt. The
five-minute instrumental climax to “I Am the Sun part two” is a thing of
beauty, and ends the record on a perfect note. Their music started to get a lot
more diverse as the decade wore on, but Space Revolver stands as the perfect essence of this extraordinary
band.
And now for something completely different. I had heard of
The Residents ever since reading about them back in the 1980s—I knew they were
famous for being completely anonymous, known only as four figures wearing giant
eyeball masks. As the legend has it (and make of it what you will), the four
(apparently) people who make up The Residents hailed from Shreveport,
Louisiana, and migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area in the late 1960s.
Sending out demo tapes of their, um, bizarre music, they took their band name
from the envelope of a rejection letter from a record company: it was addressed
simply to “Residents.”
Undaunted, The Residents were one of the first “indie”
bands, setting up their own record company (Ralph Records, which would
eventually become fairly famous for signing non-mainstream acts with names like
Renaldo & the Loaf) to release their material. They credited all writing
and production to The Cryptic Corporation, and band names never appeared
anywhere. And still don’t. (They are still recording, although whether it’s the
same four guys, who knows, although the singer sounds the same.) Sometime in
the 1980s, one of the eyeball masks was stolen, so the Resident opted for a
black skull mask instead. Go figure.
The Residents were always about more than music (they
weren’t really musicians, and a lot of their early records were more about
deconstructing popular music, with The
Third Reich’n’Roll being two side-long
“mutant medleys” of top 40 hits of the late 1960s; the advent of synthesizers
in the late 1970s gave them a bigger palette than the analog instruments they
were pounding on throughout the 70s). They also experimented with the “theory
of obscurity” (which they credited to a figure called N. Senada, who may or may
not have actually existed), which held that “an artist can only produce pure
art when the expectations and influences of the outside world are not taken
into consideration.” As the legend also goes, they recorded their album Not Available with no intention of ever releasing it, and several
years later it was supposedly plucked from the shelves by their record company
when they were running late on what would become their much-heralded Eskimo album. (Not Available has got to be quite possibly the strangest album
ever recorded, with Eskimo a
close second.) They were also early pioneers of merging music and video, long
before MTV, and they were early devotees of the nascent interactive CD-ROM
movement of the early 1990s (Freak Show was the first of several combination music albums
and interactive games they did before the Internet killed the CD-ROM market.)
Anyway, I had never heard a single note from them until a Rhino
compilation came out in 1998 and I was curious. It was...um...difficult to
get into initially, but bizarre enough to warrant further investigation, and I
eventually amassed most of their major releases (they’re one of those bands
that have tons of EPs and other assorted collections, making completism a bit
of a pipe dream). The 1977 release Fingerprince I think strikes the best balance between being experimental and being
accessible. It was also toward the end of their analog period, when they still
used conventional instruments. They often supplemented their records with
actual musicians, such as the late guitarist Phil Lithman (aka Snakefinger).
The opening track “You yesyesyes” starts off sounding like a
mutant version of something off Pink Floyd's Obscured
by Clouds before the weird horns come
in. The first half of the now-typical configuration of Fingerprince (the CD has combined the original LP and a
complementary EP called Babyfingers)
contains shorter, mutant pop songs—“Godsong” and “Tourniquet of Roses” are
highlights—while the second half includes longer pieces like the narrative
“Walter Westinghouse” and the epic “ballet” instrumental “Six Things to a
Cycle.” “Death in Barstow,” actually far less abrasive (actually quite “easy
listening”) on the record compared to the live version from 2010 embedded
below, pays tribute to one of their inspirations, avant garde composer Harry Partsch, who died in
1974.
True, Fingerprince
may not be as groundbreaking as things like Eskimo or their later work (and 1998’s Wormwood was a contender for this list—I saw them live in
L.A. on their “Roadworms” tour and they were great...very theatrical), but it’s
the one of their records that I am most likely to put on when the (bizarre)
mood strikes me. Currently, they are going through a “narrative” phase, with
albums telling entire stories with musical backdrop, kind of like radio drama.
It remains difficult keeping up with them!
Syracuse is losing to Rutgers, which is dispiriting, so time to update the blog!
The Rereading Stephen King project has begun! Time and energy
will force me to forgo any detailed reviews, but just wanted to add some of my
overall impressions of his first eight books. (These have also been interspersed with the first five Don DeLillo books—about which in a separate post at some point—and, following a trip to Graceland, Peter Guralnick’s excellent two-volume biography of Elvis.
Carrie (1974)
Perhaps his shortest book (at least not under the Bachman name),
it is his first and has the distinction of being the book that started it all
off, getting him signed to a publisher and on the bestseller lists, the latter thanks in no small part to the De Palma film adaptation, which
remains one of the best King adaptations. As first novels go, it's a good one,
and taps into the horrors of adolescence quite effectively—we're all with
Carrie when the one final humiliation pushes her over the edge.
If there is a
weakness to the book, it's that a lot if it is told through made-up newspaper
articles, investigation transcripts, and teenage diaries—all of which sound
like, well, Stephen King.
Grade: B
Salem's Lot (1975)
This was the first King book I read, way back in 1980, and
obviously I liked it, as I continue to enjoy King 32 years later. Reading it,
it was actually better than I recall. The town of 'Salem's Lot is very well
drawn, and its denizens colorfully and effectively portrayed. The epic length
allows us to get familiar with the town (through the eyes of relative outsider
Ben Mears) and let the tension build before the vampires show up. The miniseries they made (that got me to investigate the book way back when) was well-done, but some changes from the book were glaring, such as making Barlow the vampire basically Nosferatu, rather than the urbane sophisticate he is in the book. The ending is also very
effective—which isn't always the case with King.
Grade: A
The Shining (1977)
It's hard to separate the novel from the classic Kubrick film,
but I had actually read the book just before the film came out and recall being
very disappointed by how unfaithful the film was to the book. I have since come
to appreciate the film on its own terms, and the book on its own terms, as
separate entities. (It's also hard not to separate either from the old Simpsons
parody of the movie—"That's odd...usually the blood gets off on the
second floor.") The main point of departure is the doomed character of
Jack Torrance, who in the book is a decent guy battling some demons (alcoholism, a hairtrigger temper) which the evil spirits of the
hotel tap into. In the movie, when you cast Jack Nicholson, you're already
bringing the crazy.
The creepy elements (like the feral topiary animals) work
much better in the book than on film; in fact, they had remade it as a
miniseries in the 90s starring a very miscast Steven Weber—and the topiary
animals were rendered in very cheesy CGI. Some things are best left to the imagination.
Grade: A
Night Shift (1978)
His first short story collection, Night Shift has some great hits and
some very terrible misses, which range all over the stylistic map and span genres. Hands down
the scariest story is "The Ledge," about a guy forced to walk a
narrow ledge around the top of a skyscraper. Not for the agoraphobic.
"Children of the Corn" is also a good one. "I Am the
Doorway" is a science-fiction tale that would not have been out of place
as an episode of the original Outer Limits. But then you have
things like "The Mangler," about a possessed laundry folding machine,
which is just as laugh-out-loud goofy today as it was when I first read it back in the early 1980s.
"Trucks"—about, well, possessed trucks—is also kind of silly.
"The Lawnmower Man" also is not without it's silliness. But when Night
Shift is good, it's really good. "The Surf," about a deadly virus,
almost acts as a short dry run for the next novel.
Grade: B-
The Stand (1978)
An attempt at an American Lord of the Rings, it mostly succeeds.
It's his first epic, and it sprawls effectively (I did not read the "uncut" version he released in the 1990s). It quickly gets into things,
as the disease shows up within the first 100 pages. There is one chapter where
he describes how one person can create a chain reaction of infection that is
eerily realistic. The Holland Tunnel scene always creeped me out. If there is a
weakness to the book, it's the climax, which seems rushed and unsatisfying, as
there is no real "stand," per se. The good guys are captured by
Randall Flagg in Las Vegas (appropriately, the locus of the evil people),
they're tied up, and there isn't even any banter between them before (spoiler
alert) a lunatic explodes a nuclear bomb. Then we get another 100 pages of two
characters trying to walk back to Boulder. Heck, he spent far more time
describing the minutiae of committee meetings. Still, it's a really great epic.
Grade: A
The Long Walk (1979) (as Richard Bachman)
The first book King published under the pseudonym Richard
Bachman was 1977's Rage, about a teenager who takes one of his high school
classes hostage. The book was implicated in "inspiring" a real-life
school shooting, and King was so mortified that he insisted the book go out of
print, the only one of his books to be so. So I did not read it. The second
Bachman book was The Long Walk, sort of Speed meets The Hunger Games. In some
alternate America (which is never overtly described, but partially revealed in
small bits of dialogue), the big annual sporting event is the titular Long
Walk, where 100 teenagers must walk nonstop. If they slow to below 6 mph, they are
warned; three warnings, and they are shot dead. Whoever outlasts all the
others, wins. It really is quite compelling, and though it's not a thick book,
I read it in two sittings. Very dark, but good. Suzanne Collins almost
certainly read it.
Grade: A
The Dead Zone (1979)
Back in the day, I read The Dead Zone when it first came out in
paperback, and remember not liking it all, that much, for some reason I can't recall. I think I had some recollection that it was told almost entirely through letters (I once tried to write an epistolary novel but I could never afford the postage), but it turns out that only a few letters appear here and there. Weird.
However, upon
rereading it, it is one if my favorite of the early Kings—and I think it's
best for a while (we get into a bit down downhill slide, but maybe Christine will turn out to be not as bad as I remember). It's also hard to disassociate it from the excellent David
Cronenberg adaptation starring Christopher Walken, although they took some liberties (as usual). Funnily enough, the one chilliung (as it were scene from the movie—where Johnny Smith has a vision that the kid he is tutoring will, with his hockey team, fall through some ice—does not appear in the book; instead, it's a fire at a restaurant hosting high school graduation dinner. Both are effective. The book also delves more into
the background of the decidedly unpleasant politician Greg Stillson.
Grade: A
Firestarter (1980)
Kind of a "Carrie Jr.," Firestarter
is good, but a bit of a comedown from the roll King had been on. It's not bad,
but not a lot happens. I do like the fact that the narrative starts in medias
res, and the back story is gradually revealed. The device of having Charlie
McGee's pyrokinetic abilities be the result of CIA-like experiments, and not
anything supernatural, is a unique twist for King, and kind of works. The "bad guy"—John Rainbird"—is not your typical villain. King also adds some interesting twists to both Charlie's and her father Andy's mental powers.
Still,
you wait for the ultimate climax when Charlie unleashes the full brunt of her
power. It does not disappoint.
Grade: B
In the next batch, more Bachman, a rabid dog, and I give the first volume of The Dark Tower a shot...which I had never read before. It's a long flight to Las Vegas, and hopefully I won't run into Randall Flagg or the Trashcan Man. Speaking of which, it took me almost 30 years to figure this out, but back in 1983, a band called The Alarm had a bit of a hit with a song called "The Stand," which was all over the radio, and on MTV. I liked it (sort of—they were in that early 80s U2/Big Country group of guitar bands) but only realized while reading the Wikipedia page about The Stand (the novel) that the song was actually about the book. Go figure.
This being trade show season, that is not an idle question. #128
The Police ZenyattÃ
Mondatta
1980
The five Police records form a
kind of sine wave of quality: 1978’s Outlandos
D’Amour was okay (“Roxanne” was one
highlight), 1979’s Regatta de
Blanc was much better, Zenyattà Mondatta
really really good, 1981’s Ghost in
the Machine not quite as good, and Synchronicity was okay. (The latter was the one with all the hits, but
it really is a very spotty record.) And then they broke up. Zenyattà ’s opener “Don’t Stand So Close to Me” is probably the
quintessential Police song, about a love struck schoolgirl who’s hot for
teacher (to coin a phrase), complete with Lolita reference. The first Police song I ever heard was “De Doo
Doo Doo, De Da Da Da”—make fun of the title if you will, but the point of the
song is that the narrator is at a loss for words. “When the World is Running
Down You Make the Best of What’s Still Around” is another highlight. Gotta love
the Monk-like
“Canary in a Coalmine”:
You say you want to spend the
winter in Firenze
You're so afraid to catch a dose
of influenza
You live your life like a canary
in a coalmine
You get so dizzy even walking in a
straight line
My favorite song on here—for
personal reasons (see above)—is “Man in a Suitcase”:
Another key for my collection
For security I race for my
connection
Bird in a flying cage you’ll never
get to know me well
The world’s my oyster a hotel
room’s a prison cell
Must I be the man in a suitcase
And the title? Wikipedia tells us:
“[Drummer Stewart] Copeland has claimed that the group arrived at the album's
title after deciding it should roll off the tongue. Zenyattà Mondatta are
invented portmanteau words, hinting at Zen, at Jomo Kenyatta, at the French
word for the world (‘le monde’) and at Reggatta, from the previous album’s
name, Reggatta de Blanc.” Well, that clears that up!
I know what you’re thinking: “With all the great Talking
Heads albums—Remain in
Light, Fear of Music, Speaking
in Tongues, heck, even Talking
Heads 77—you pick this one? Really?” Well, er, yes. As I have said before,
context is everything. True, I had seen the video for “Once in a Lifetime” in
1980, and “Burning Down the House” was all over the place in 1983. Oh, and
let’s not forget the film Stop Making Sense in 1984. But Little Creatures was the first album I bought by the Talking Heads,
as I really liked “Road to Nowhere.” More importantly, I bought this two weeks
before I left for freshman year of college, and it always reminds me of the
fall of 1985. Indeed, I recall hearing “And She Was” playing a lot while
walking around the SU campus (but not levitating).
What I particularly like about Little Creatures is that it was a much simpler record than the three
that had preceded it, which were all very good, but very dense, challenging
records. (And it took me a very long time to like Fear of Music, which always rubbed me the wrong way like a lot of
“Enossified” stuff does at first.) The music is much more accessible, which
usually means “dumbed down” or “poppy” and there is some of that, but Talking
Heads 77 was also very accessible without
sacrificing quality. This was also the first album of theirs in a while that had songs
that meant something; on the last two albums, the lyrics were just random fragments
strung together. (As an example, read
the lyrics
for “Burning Down the House” and see if you can discern any kind of meaning.)
Here, “And She Was” was about a levitating girlfriend, “Stay Up Late” is about
harassing a newborn (not really mean, but kind of funny), and in “Television
Man”:
When the world crashes in into my living room
Television man made me what I am
People like to put the television down
But we are just good friends
And at the end of the album:
There’s a city in my mind
Come along and take that ride
And it’s all right, baby, it's all right
And it’s very far away
But it’s growing day by day
And it’s all right, baby, it's all right
They can tell you what to do
But they'll make a fool of you
And it's all right, baby, it’s all right
We’re on a road to nowhere
The cover, by Reverend Howard Finster, is a good example of
what we lost when we shrunk album art down to CD size, and then did away with
it entirely in the iTunes age. (Finster did the cover for REM’s Reckoning a year earlier.) An unprepossessing album from the
Heads that would actually be their last really cohesive album. True
Stories, the soundtrack to David Byrne’s
first movie (he’d later be called a “Renaissance
Man” by Time magazine), would
really only be distinguished by containing the song “Radiohead” which gave a
certain other band an idea for their name. The band’s 1988 swan song Naked was pretty bad.
I came to Hüsker Dü via singer/guitarist Bob Mould’s solo
albums, of which there were two at the time I delved into the Hüsker
discography, although I only have a couple of their records. But Zen Arcade
could very well be their masterpiece, as messy as it is. A double album when
released on vinyl, it is sprawling, and is ostensibly a concept album, albeit a
very loose one. It ranges from hard pop (“Never Talking to You Again,” “Pink
Turns to Blue”) to experimental jams (“Reoccurring Dreams,” “Dreams
Reoccurring”) to weird sound collages (“Hare Krsna”), to lo-fi shriekfests
(“Beyond the Threshold,” “I'll Never Forget You”).
Despite all the experimentation, it is a loud, hard,
relentless record that does take a lot of effort to get all the way through, at
least in one sitting. Here, Grant Hart—the drummer, and other
singer/songwriter—demonstrates the quieter pop side of the band (such as it
is). The tinny, inconsistent production actually suits the material. I recall
playing this a lot on my Walkman in the very early 90s; it made a very strong
impression on me, and I still put it on occasionally. The teen angstyness
doesn’t quite hold up once one has aged beyond a certain point—then it’s time
to put on the Sugar records (see later in this list).
Hüsker Dü were from Minneapolis, and perhaps it is for this
reason that on the CD single for “Makes No Sense At All” they did a cover of
“Love Is All Around” (yes, the theme from The Mary Tyler Moore Show) that has
to be heard to be believed.
In 2006, I was wandering around the music department of my
local Borders—back in the days when they actually used to have products for
sale (actually, back when Borders existed at all)—and was investigating the
albums they had on those listening stations. One of them was the debut album
from England’s Arctic Monkeys, which I put on pretty much at random. I liked
what I heard, picked it up, and the album stayed in heavy iPod rotation for,
well, three years and more. It was only much later that I discovered that they
were one of those overhyped “next great thing” bands of the sort I usually
quite detest (The Strokes come to mind). But I had been blissfully unaware of
the hype and came to them of my own accord, and pretty much at random. The
Arctic Monkeys are an interesting case study in how the music industry could
actually function successfully if someone in it had a clue. The band generated
a tremendous amount of early buzz in the UK by circulating demos of their songs
via MP3s before they ever even had a record out. They caught on and by the time
Whatever People Say I Am, That’s What I’m Not was released in January 2006—by indie label Domino, and not any of the
major labels they could have gone with—pent-up demand led the album to sell
more than 225,000 copies in the first week alone, becoming the fastest-selling
album in the UK ever.
That’s all well and good, but is it any good? Obviously I
think so. Like a number of albums I like, especially latter-day records, there
is nothing startlingly original, just an effective synthesis of everything that
has come before. They are a garage-y post-punk outfit, riffs galore played at
almost breakneck pace. What distinguishes them, though, is singer Alex Turner’s
first-person narrative-based songs that typically document Jack-the-lad British
nightlife—carousing, drinking, pulling the birds (or trying to, usually
unsuccessfully), which is not surprising given that the bandmembers were all of
about 18 years old when the album came out.
The album kicks off on a raucous note, as Turner declares in
the opening lines of “The View from the Afternoon”:
Anticipation has a habit to set you up
For disappointment in evening entertainment but
Tonight there'll be some love.
Or maybe not, although this could serve as a user manual for
a mobile phone circa 2006:
And she won’t be surprised, no she won’t be shocked
When she’s pressed the star after she’s pressed unlock
And there’s verse and chapter sat in her inbox
And all that it says is that you’ve drank a lot.
And then:
And you can pour your heart out around three o’clock
When the 2-for-1’s undone the writers block.
That’ll happen. One of the hits from album was “I Bet You
Look Good on the Dancefloor” (“Your name isn’t Rio, but I don’t care for
sand”—too bad these guys weren’t even alive when Duran Duran released “Rio”),
where they “dance to electropop like a robot from 1984.” Is that what we all
did in 1984? I must have missed that.
They are not averse to British colloquialisms that make one
glad for Google; “And I’m so tense, never tenser/Could all go a bit Frank
Spencer?” (in “You Probably Couldn’t See for the Lights but You Were Staring
Straight at Me”), “Frank Spencer” referring to a particularly inept male.
(There is also the famous Northern English slang term “Mardy Bum,” which
apparently means “Someone who complains a lot, moans about their life, and so
on.”) I also never really got the song title “Red Light Indicates Doors Are
Secured” until a year later when I was in the back of a London cab. Indeed, the
narrator is talking to his mate in the back of a cab while he occasionally
interrupts to talk to the driver:
See her in the green dress? She talked to me at the bar
How come it’s already two pound fifty? We’ve only gone about
a yard
Didn’t you see she were gorgeous, she was beyond belief
But this lad at the side drinking a Smirnoff Ice came and
paid for her tropical reef
And I’m sitting going backwards, and I didn’t want to leave
It’s High Green, mate, via Hillsborough, please.
As for the titular red light, the guy really didn’t want to
leave the party:
Drunken plots hatched to jump it, ask around are you sure?
Went for it but the red light was showing
And the red light indicates doors are secured.
They really do have red lights that show when the cab is
moving.
The band slows down for “Riot Van,” a tale of underage drinkers
and their run-in with the cops:
‘Have you been drinking son, you don’t look old enough to
me’
‘I’m sorry, officer, is there a certain age you’re supposed
to be?..nobody told me’
Up rolled the riot van
And these lads just wind the coppers up
Ask why they don’t catch proper crooks.
It’s a fair question. Still, for all the carousing, he draws
the line at ladies of the evening: “And I’ve seen him with girls of the
night/And he told Roxanne to put on her red light/They’re all infected but
he’ll be alright/Cause he’s a scumbag, don’t you know.”
I question whether these guys’ parents were alive when The Police recorded “Roxanne”!
Lines like “And just cause he’s had a couple of cans/He
thinks it’s alright to act like a dickhead” don’t exactly display a Noel
Coward-esque wit, but still... Turner directly addresses the music industry in
the song “Perhaps Vampires is a Bit Strong But...” (“All you people are
vampires!” and “Though you pretend to stand by us/I know you’re certain we’ll
fail”).
The Arctic Monkeys quickly released their follow-up Favourite
Worst Nightmare in 2007, which didn’t
alter the basic formula so much as solidify it. They took their time for their
third album Humbug, which came out this year, and was a more (to use a
dreaded word) mature album, with slower tempos, more diverse instrumentation,
and a mellowing of Alex Turner’s voice (he’s starting to sound like a more
butch Morrissey)—and that he’s finally of legal drinking age. 2011’s Suck It and
See continued in that vein. It’s good
to see that they are serious about their craft, but the first album had that
certain je ne sais quoi.
I first heard of the Flaming Lips was when The Soft
Bulletin came out in 1999, which was
hailed by many to be one of the best albums of that year. I really liked it
and, delving into their past discography found Clouds Taste Metallic, which I still think is their best record. The
Flaming Lips are from Oklahoma, but sound like they are from Mars. They have a
compilation CD called Finally
The Punk Rockers Are Taking Acid, which
sums everything up quite succinctly. Although they were never truly
accomplished musicians (although there was a bit of a rotation in their early
years), they were endlessly creative in the recording studio. They had a modest
alternative hit in 1990 with their first consistently good album In
a Priest Driven Ambulance, and were
signed by Columbia Records. They had an alternative hit with the novelty song
“She Don’t Use Jelly” in 1993, and recorded Clouds Taste Metallic in 1995, the culmination, methinks, of everything
that went before it.
From the opening “The Abandoned Hospital Ship,” with its
weird chiming guitars, to “This Here Giraffe,” to...well, just about any track
on the record. It’s such a weird album I can’t help but like it. The song
titles sum up the odd bent to the lyrics: “Guy Who Got a Headache and
Accidentally Saved the World” (literally—his psychic powers saved the world
“The boy wonder, saves the planet, but destroys his ever-enlarging brain in the
process”), “Kim’s Watermelon Gun” (she won’t give it up until everyone learns
how to love—sort of a cross between Charles Bronson and Gallagher), “They
Punctured My Yolk” (about space travel, believe it or not), “Lightning Strikes
the Postman,” and so on. Wayne Coyne’s lyrics, while a bit surreal, have a
naive innocence to them, and often quite hopeful (“All your bad days will end”).
Musically, it was the last Lips album as a foursome, and the extra guitar helps
give these songs a power they never really had since. I was pretty cool to the
stuff that preceded it (especially the four-CD album Zaireeka, each disc of which had different parts of the same
songs and the idea was to sync four CD players to play them all in
unison...yeah).
The follow-up to The Soft Bulletin, Yoshimi
Battles the Pink Robots, was pretty
good, but I can take or leave what they have done since.
I first heard Al Stewart,
as most people did, on AM radio in the late 1970s, via the hits “Year of the
Cat,” “Time Passages,” and “Song on the Radio.” My mother had the Time
Passages album on LP and I really don’t know what drew me
to it in high school—the interesting lyrics (episodes and themes from history;
Stewart has subsequently been called the “King of Historical Folk Rock”), the
Alan Parsons production...I really don’t know, but I loved this record, and in
college subsequently foundYear of the
Cat and the live album Indian
Summer in a used record store in Syracuse, and they all
got a lot of play. They vanished over the years, but in 2011, Stewart played
Caffe Lena here in Saratoga and I took the opportunity to regain my—and
his—missing discography (although some of it is out of print).
I still love Time
Passages, especially the title track, but also the “trapped
underwater” narrative of “Life in Dark Water” (about the mysterious
disappearance of the crew of the Marie Celeste—the
song actually plays narratively like a Twilight Zone
episode), to the Thomas More bio (“A Man for All Seasons”), to the French
Revolution and “The Palace of Versailles.” “Timeless Skies” was inspired by
Tolkien’s The Silmarillion.
Lyrically brilliant throughout the album, the music rises to meet it perfectly.
This may have been Stewart’s
pinnacle, and while his popularity ebbed through the 1980s, the handful of
records he has done in recent years are still really good, even if they don't
rise to the height of Time Passages.
Oh, and his show at Caffe Lena was phenomenal.
Writer and analyst for the graphic communications industry. Has written about half a dozen books on the subject of computer graphics hardware and software, and writes extensively on the printing and publishing industries.
