The Philter

April 4, 2008

Dancing about architecture

The name of the music section of this blog—“Dancing about architecture”—is inspired by the oft-quoted line “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” In my description of the category I attributed this quote to Elvis Costello, but with something less than 100% confidence, because I was pretty sure I’d seen it attributed to others over the years. Today I ran across a Web page that credited Steve Martin, and so I decided to investigate.

Turns out there is no definitive answer to the question of who first uttered this pithy phrase. A very informative brief put together by one Alan P. Scott—which you can see here—dissects the matter in some detail.

As Scott notes, in addition to Costello and Martin, the line has at one time or another been attributed to each of the following people:

• Laurie Anderson
• William S. Burroughs
• David Byrne
• John Cage
• George Carlin
• Miles Davis
• Nick Lowe
• Charles Mingus
• Thelonious Monk
• Mark Mothersbaugh
• Martin Mull
• Frank Lloyd Wright
• Frank Zappa

It’s quite a diverse and accomplished group, and I think that it must be a very great honor to have the saying attributed to you. With any luck, some confused Web surfer of the future will honor yours truly in this way.

On balance, the most likely suspects seem to be Costello and Mull. Scott cites an interview with Costello in a 1983 issue of Musician magazine in which he is quoted thusly: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it’s a really stupid thing to want to do.” This does not firmly establish, however, that he was the first to say it.

Several sources—including, apparently, Costello himself—name Martin Mull as the originator of the phrase. I find this especially interesting in light of the Steve Martin connection, S. Martin and Martin M. being always linked in my mind as groundbreaking ironic/musical comics who went on to become noted Hollywood art lovers with increasingly undistinguished acting careers. Since I’m a Mull fan, and I think he never gets the credit he deserves as the author of such classic tunes as “Santa Doesn’t Cop Out on Dope” and “Licks Off of Records,” I’m going to go ahead and award the prize to him. Let it be so noted.

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March 10, 2008

Go Away White

It is with no small amount of anticipation that I have awaited the release of Go Away White, the first Bauhaus album to come out since I started listening to them circa 1985, two years after they broke up. This is my first ever chance, then, to listen to newly released material by one of my favorite bands. The CD arrived from Amazon yesterday and is sitting now on my desk, shrinkwrapped. I am a little scared of it. My expectations are sky-high; nothing less than a transcendent experience will do, and that’s just setting yourself up for disappointment, isn’t it?

It sure looks good. In contrast to the old Bauhaus albums, all of which were predominantly black, it is almost entirely white. The cover image is some kind of angel (or devil) (something with wings, anyway) with its back turned. All the text is in white as well—the embossed title on the front is easy to read, the song titles on the back much less so. But with some squinting I can make them out: The first song is called “Too Much 21st Century,” the last song “Zikir.” Further study reveals that in the songwriting credits David J. is using his last name, Haskins, for the first time.

I find this change in art direction interesting given that the last song on the last original Bauhaus album, “Hope,” was uncharacteristically uplifting for a band whose modus operandi was to live on the dark side. Will this album pick up from there and be all inspirational-like? The song titles “Black Stone Heart” and “Endless Summer of the Damned” indicate otherwise.

Alright, time to stop pussyfooting around. It’s 10:22 and the shrinkwrap is coming off.

Inside there’s a white-on-black sticker that seems to show what the cover would have looked like in Ye Olde Bauhaus Style. There’s a little more information in again very hard-to-read text on the inside cover. Apparently the cover image is something called “Bethesda, angel of the healing waters” by Dominique Duplaa. The disc itself has the Bauhaus logo in a similar white-on-white motif.

10:27: The disc is in the player.

10:28 “Too Much 21st Century” begins with a grinding guitar riff; the rhythm section kicks in; and there’s Pete Murphy’s voice. We’re in business. The guitar sounds very Love and Rockets-ish; the bassline reminds me of “Rain” (the Beatles’ “Rain,” not Tones On Tail’s). Lyrics reference “Swing the Heartache.”

10:32. “Adrenalin”: Fuzztone guitar, some sort of Latinate muttering from Murphy. Later he starts shouting “Shift, crank, pull.” Then back to the muttering. Is it German? Who knows?

10:38: “Undone”: Not the Guess Who song. Not a great song either. Getting a little worried.

10:42 “International Bulletproof Talent”: Some sort of glam-rock. First line a reference to T. Rex. There’s David J. (Haskins) on backing vocals; haven’t heard Daniel Ash’s voice yet, I don’t think. Seems like kind of a waste.

10:46: “Endless Summer Of the Damned”: Sounds most like old Bauhaus so far. More rough edges, loud, Murphy summoning up that demonic bellow. But sort of catchy too. Two thumbs up. End of Side 1, I guess?

10:51: “Saved”: Sax intro from D. Ash. Operatic vocal, makes me think of “The Three Shadows” or “Crowds.” What’s that bit at the end? Let’s rewind real quick. “You are entering a pearl corridor/Lying on your crimson spot/I become unconscious/Saved.” Always was hard to tell what Murphy was talking about.

10:58: “Mirror Remains”: Some kind of statement on aging? “We put the clocks forward/we put the clocks back/the mirror is never fooled.” Dialogue in the middle. Peter: “Needs a solo there of some kind.” Daniel: “This is the solo!” One-note piano at the end.

11:03: “Black Stone Heart”: There’s the title: “I come with this darkness and go away white.” Reverb guitar (see also: “Movement of Fear”), whistling, piano again. Nice groove from Los Bros. Haskins. Multitracked Murphy vocals over squealing Ash guitar. Me likey.

11:07: “The Dog’s a Vapour”: Classic Bauhaus with a touch of Hot Trip to Heaven-era L&R. Guitar kicks in at about 4:15 mark. Builds to a powerful crescendo, climax, whatever you want to call it.

11:14: “Zikir”: The denoument. Quiet and atmospheric; Murphy chanting “Loves me. Loves me not.” Things finish on a mysterious and ambivalent note.

11:18: And there we have it. I can breathe a sigh of relief; I’m not completely blown away, but there’s a lot of potential here. I think it’ll grow on me. But in the meantime I feel like listening to Mask, Burning from the Inside, Pop, Express, and maybe Earth-Sun-Moon. Back in a few hours.

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February 12, 2008

Pop Down the Years

I am pleased and proud to report that after many years, my old coffee-drinking buddy Knox Bronson has completed his first full-length vocal album, Pop Down the Years. Knox’s sound is hard to pin down. Certainly he is influenced by the greats of the last few decades—The Beatles, Donovan, David Bowie, Eno, Kraftwerk—but in his hands it all becomes something else again, less a fusion of pop, electronic music, and art-rock than a suggestion that these distinctions were artificial to begin with.

But why should I blather on? Writing about music, after all, is like dancing about architecture.

You can hear some songs on his MySpace page:

http://www.myspace.com/sunpopblue

or on his Web site:

http://www.knoxbronson.com/

or buy the digital download on Amazon:

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January 15, 2008

Break on Through (or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Like the Doors)

One of the solaces of getting older is that the passionate prejudices of your youth start to fade. As time passes you become less determined not to like certain things, and the appeal you previously refused to acknowledge is able to break through the clouds and make itself seen.

For instance: From the time I was a teenager, I was eager to tell anyone who would listen exactly why and how much I hated the Doors. Most of it had to do with Jim Morrison and the whole idea floating around that he was some kind of Great Poet. To me Jim Morrison was always the guy who wrote these lines:

If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar

I mean, that has to be the most awkward, tin-eared couplet in the history of pop music. And then there was the whole Morrison mystique, the Lizard King business. Apparently he was considered some kind of sex symbol, but why should I care? And so what if he was arrested for waving his willie at a paying audience? Anyone with a penis could do that, but I’d really prefer that they not.

And while we’re at it, yes, I know that the Doors were named after The Doors of Perception, Aldous Huxley’s book about his mushroom experiments. That particular nugget of data is not quite as mind-blowing as you might think. Huxley, by the way, was a real writer, unlike….

Well, never mind. Old habits die hard. Anyway, my anti-Doors policy was severely tested during my senior year in college when my landlord and I discovered that my portable CD player and his towering studio monitors made a lethal combination. My tastes at the time ran to bands like Love and Rockets, That Petrol Emotion, and Camper Van Beethoven, but what he most wanted to hear at top volume was the first Doors album. I did not relish the thought but decided to politely keep my feelings to myself, and was somewhat alarmed to discover that while I still hated “Light My Fire,” songs like “Break on Through” and “The Crystal Ship” actually sounded pretty good blasting through the dining room floor into my basement abode.

Not long after that I saw Apocalypse Now for the first time and discovered that a) it was quite possibly the greatest movie ever made and b) it made prominent use of a Doors song, “The End.” I am so damn stubborn, though, that I still didn’t change my mind. Even when I found out that Hunter Thompson was a Doors fan, I refused to yield.

But as the years have passed, I’ve gradually softened my no-Doors-allowed doctrine. And when I saw last week that someone had posted a two-disc Best Of on the CD-swapping site I frequent, I was tempted. Fast forward to this morning, and there I am listening to “Riders on the Storm” on headphones. My younger self would have been appalled, but while I still think Morrison was kind of a clown, it doesn’t bother me much anymore. Once you forget all the blather and just think of the Doors as a rock band, they’re a pretty good one. Especially “Waiting for the Sun.”

The next major hurdle I need to get over is Led Zeppelin. As long as I can remember, there’s been the Zeppelin people on one side and me on the other side, and I’ve felt pretty secure about my position. That Robert Plant wail…I just can’t see why a person would choose to sing that way, except as a joke. And the lyrics: “I’m gonna give you every inch of my love”…is that supposed to clever somehow? It’s just the lyrical equivalent of Morrison swinging his johnson around. But then every once in a while I hear something like “When the Levee Breaks” and I say, hmm, maybe there is something. So that, um, levee may, er, break one day too, which will leave the Yes/ELP school of overblown prog-rock as the last segment of the R’n’R spectrum for which I have no use whatsoever. That’s one thing that’s not going to change…at least I hope not. You’ve got to have some standards in this life.

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January 8, 2008

Rock'n'Roll Presidents' Day

As I have mentioned in years past, today is the shared birthday of David Bowie, Bill Graham, and The Elvis Presley (as Andy Kaufman used to call him). Sort of rock’n’roll Presidents’ Day. Quite frankly, I resent having to work today, and as a protest I will just go through the motions while quietly humming a mashup of “Mystery Train” and “The Bewlay Brothers.”

In other rock news, I was delighted to learn yesterday that the boys from Bauhaus will be releasing a new album, their first since 1983’s Burning from the Inside, on March 3, March 8, or March 10, depending on which source you believe. According to bauhausmusik.com,

Go Away White was recorded in 18 days at Zircon Skye in Ojai, with singer Peter Murphy, bassist David J, guitarist Daniel Ash, and drummer Kevin Haskins playing together as a band in one room, taking first takes as final cuts.

Which, if it were anyone else, would worry me. Playing live in the studio is fine, but why first takes? And if you’re using first takes, why would it take 18 days? But there’s always been something magical about Bauhaus, so I choose to believe that it will be great. After all, reunion tours usually suck, but theirs was awesome, including a scorching performance of their version of “Ziggy Stardust”—which brings us full circle back to David Bowie, and lets me get on with my day.

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November 15, 2007

What I've Been Wondering

Here’s what I’ve been wondering: You know the song “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” written by George and Ira Gershwin and performed by just about everybody, from Frank Sinatra to Fred Astaire to Billie Holliday to Louis Armstrong? Well, who exactly are “they” in this song, and why do they want to take it away? What does this sinister conspiracy of away-takers stand to gain from their campaign of away-taking? I tell ya, it’s driving me crazy, it’s driving me nuts. Any help would be appreciated.

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October 2, 2007

Paranoid android? Maybe. Maybe not.

Note to Radiohead: Stay off the streets.



All the music biz talk these days is about Radiohead, how they've broken free of the industry by selling their new album without the help (or is it, now, burden?) of a record company. And good for them. Their approach is extremely smart: by letting people name their own price, they look groovy and egalitarian. By offering a deluxe $80 version for the hardcore fans, they guarantee that they'll still make tons of money. And by cutting the jackals of the Long Plastic Hallway out of the loop, they get to keep all the lucre for themselves.

But if I was Thom Yorke and company, I would be watching my back. I wouldn't walk the streets without protection, and I'd get the corner table in the restaurant and sit facing the door. Don't forget that the record industry and the mob are, for all intents and purposes, one and the same. Am I saying that goons hired by, say, the RIAA will try to make an example of Radiohead? Only in my most paranoid delusions would I think that. But your most paranoid delusions sometimes turn out to be right. It won't look like assassination, of course...it'll be an "obsessed fan," or maybe mysterious overdoses...anyway, I hope I'm wrong. But, seriously, Radiohead, be careful out there.

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September 18, 2007

As Yoda might have put it: Experienced, are you? Experienced, have you ever been? You will be. You will be.

Today is the anniversary of the 1970 death of Jimi Hendrix, an occasion which I mark every year by dressing all in black and burning a very small guitar.

This year also marks the 40th anniversary of the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s debut album, Are You Experienced?, released 9/23/1967. John Ridley, in a recent Huffington Post piece, called Are You Experienced? “the most important music album ever.” He was being hyperbolic to make a point, but who am I to argue? I was in utero when the album came out, and here we are many many years later still talking about it. That’s got to mean something.

Perhaps the most shocking thing about Jimi’s continued impact is that, if you do the math, he was only in the limelight for a little over three years. It’s hard not to wonder would have happened if he had lived. Would he have become a washed-up relic of another era like Clapton? Would he have had a long fallow period followed by a late-career renaissance like Dylan? Would he have been shot down by some nutjob like Lennon?

We’ll never know. Musically, he probably had some innovations left in him, but he was already on somewhat of a downward arc by the time he died. Compare Jimi’s legendary 1967 performance at Monterey—where he is flamboyant and innovative but still within the context of actual, definable songs played by a tight band—with the 1970 Berkeley performance where he’s so whacked out on dope that he often seems to forget what song he’s playing. It’s a bit sad, and you hate to think of Jimi going any further down that rabbit hole. On the other hand, maybe he would have cleaned up and gotten his act together. Again, we’ll never know.

But one thing we can say with certainty is that his cachet as an icon would only have been diminished had he lived on. All the real titans of cool, the ones that move posters in bulk, did the whole die-young-good-looking-corpse thing: James Dean, Marilyn, Morrison, Guevara, Cobain. (You might say Elvis is an exception, but I think that in the popular imagination Young Elvis and Old Elvis are actually two different people; Old Elvis killed Young Elvis and ate him. Hence the postage stamps.)

Still, depressing as it is to think of a fat, doddering Hendrix trying to play guitar with his dentures, I think he deserved the chance to walk around on Earth and breathe the air a little longer. So today’s lesson for all you kids out there is: If you’re going to mix hard drugs with prescription medication while partying with your Swedish girlfriend, when you pass out in the bathtub, make sure it’s on your stomach.

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July 20, 2007

Daydream Nation

Apparently, Sonic Youth was
institutionalized for a while last
year. But all is well now.

Last night I had the opportunity to see Sonic Youth at the Berkeley Community Theatre—always a favorite venue—playing their historic recording Daydream Nation in its entirety. Despite the obscene heat, a good time was had by all. Highlights:

● That lovely, chiming cascade of notes that kicks off “Teenage Riot.” This is one of those great album openings that the album itself can’t quite live up to. Truth to tell, I’ve always thought Daydream Nation was overrated. It’s uneven, overlong, and at times willfully obnoxious; but for the duration of this guitar intro, you’re charmed into believing that this time, everything will be perfect.

● The chugging riff of “Total Trash.” They could have jettisoned three or four of the lesser songs and just played this again instead, and I would have been happy.

● Thurston Moore’s hair. Although he must be at least in his mid-40s by now, Thurston still has top-quality rock’n’roll hair, which he whirls about joyfully while torturing his guitar.

● Seeing Pavement bassist Mark Ibold toddle onstage for the encores. Apparenly he’s found gainful employment filling in for Kim Gordon while she sings and dances, and good for him.

● The encore of “Do You Believe in Rapture,” an exquisite song from SY’s latest album, Rather Ripped (named, I just learned—and I can’t believe I didn’t know this already—for the much-loved, long-defunct Berkeley record store).

It had been awhile since I went to this kind of rock concert, where everybody mostly stands and looks, with the occasional headbanging thrown in. Having been away from it for awhile, it struck me as odd; there was this quality of “Let’s all stare at these strange animals who make music.” As if Sonic Youth were howler monkeys or something. It made me kind of understand the opening act, an enigmatic group who played an endless, ethereal drone while seated in a circle, paying no attention whatsoever to the audience. This is worthy of further thought; but my available time for today is at an end.

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July 17, 2007

In Praise of Television

Someone took this picture of Television, and I thank them for it.

I stand here before you today to sing the praises of Television. Not the medium—though, yes, I love that too—but the band: Tom Verlaine (gtr/voc), Richard Lloyd (gtr), Fred Smith (bass), and Billy Ficca (drums). I specifically wish to single out for praise their debut and masterpiece, 1977’s Marquee Moon. Their second album, Adventure (1978), and self-titled comeback album (1991) are both worthy in their own ways, but Marquee Moon stands alone.

Ye Olde Jeffe Greene introduced me to this album some years ago via old-fashioned audio-magnetical cassette tape, and I was amazed at its sublime balance of aggression and precision. This year, Marquee Moon turns 30, and it has not dated one iota. I pulled the CD (well-scuffed and due for replacement) out of the stacks last week and haven’t been able to stop listening to it. I am listening to it right now. From the first hammering chords of “See No Evil” to the last wistful notes of “Torn Curtain,” this is that rarest of treasures: a full-length recording without a single weak point or misfire. All killer, as we used to say, and no filler.

Because they were part of the New York/CBGB/late-70s scene, Television are often lumped in with the punk and new wave bands of the era, but this is mostly an accident of history. Nothing against bands like Blondie, the Ramones, or my beloved Talking Heads, but Television’s brand of virtuosic, cinematic rock is a different animal altogether. Marquee Moon, with its whipcrack rhythms and strategically intertwining guitar lines, may be the most structurally perfect guitar-based music ever made.

Some people find Tom Verlaine’s voice—technically suspect and borderline whiny—to be an obstacle. I think it fits the music perfectly, and anyway, with a different singer Television would have been a different band. And that would have been unfortunate, because no one was qualified to take their place.

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June 21, 2007

Pipes of Peace

Paul McCartney loves animals so much that he feeds them his own fingers.

And here we are, nearly halfway through two thousand and seven. It’s getting late, very late in history. With that in mind, I think it’s time to finally heal a great rift that has lingered on for far too long, a tribal conflict so ancient that those involved have a hard time remembering why it started in the first place.

I am speaking, of course, of the ongoing hostilities between the John and Paul camps. Not that there’s really much of a Paul camp anymore—you’re hard-pressed to find anyone who will stand up in public and take Paul’s side in any debate of relative merits—so maybe what I really mean is, between the John camp and Paul McCartney himself.

To put it briefly and clearly, it’s time to give Paul a break.

Because, let’s face it, he isn’t going to be around forever. (A full-page portrait accompanying a recent New Yorker interview shows him looking wizened, weary, and droopy, though still with a fabulous—albeit artificially black—head of hair.) And he’s suffered plenty in recent years, what with Linda dying and the new wife not working out so great, not to mention having to listen to ten thousand “When I’m 64” jokes. So I for one am prepared to make an effort to forgive Paul his excesses and celebrate his achievements. Well, I can’t forgive “Silly Love Songs,” but I am willing to overlook it in the interest of moving past this destructive conflict.

The anti-Paul forces—and I have at times counted myself among them—accuse him of being an empty vessel, a sentimental hack with no real point of view and a prediliction for the easy and cheesy side of pop music. And certainly there is no lack of evidence for these accusations. On the other hand, he was a fairly important cog in the genius machine we call The Beatles. He wrote “You Never Give Me Your Money.” He played bass on “Rain.” He told Charlie Manson to kill those people. What more do you want?

You know who was a pretty big Paul fan? John Lennon. “Paul was one of the most innovative bass players who ever played bass,” Lennon said in 1980. He was also known to be enchanted by McCartney songs like “For No One” and “Here, There, and Everywhere.” And let us not forget, if it hadn’t been for his desire to compete with McCartney, Lennon never would have become the songwriter he was.

So I hereby, officially and in public, foreswear hating on Paul so long as we both shall live. (I’ll even listen to his new album, as long as I can get it for less than $4 or burn it off somebody.) I encourage you to do the same. Then maybe one day we can all get together, sit down, and smoke the peace pipe. Afterward we’ll order pizza—vegetarian, of course, for Paul’s sake.

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May 31, 2007

Bands I've Seen

Inspired by Cecil and Jeff, I've decided to post here—mainly as a bulwark against deteriorating brain function—the official list of Bands I've Seen. Latest addition: Manu Chao at the Bill Graham Civic, last night. That's right, I'm still hip, baby.

It's a little terrifying to consider how much money is represented here, not to mention all the so-called "convenience fees" extorted from me by those bastards at Ticketmaster. Today, all I have to show for it are ticket stubs and memories, many of the latter fuzzy at best. But I have no regrets, except maybe not taking earplugs to that Thinking Fellers show, which I think caused about 20% of my rock'n'roll-related hearing loss. Or if I have regrets, they're shows I didn't see. Like the Lou Reed show that got cancelled because of the L.A. riots—you know, the one we had fourth-row tickets for. And in the words of the Butthole Surfers (seen three times that I can remember): "It's better to regret something you have done than to regret something you haven't done. And by the way, if you see your mom this weekend, be sure and tell her...SATAN!"

AC/DShe (x2)
Ade, King Sunny
Air
Amadou & Mariam
Ash, Daniel
Bauhaus
Beck (x3)
Belly
Beta Band
Beulah (x2)
Blackalicious (x2)
Black, Frank (x4)
Blind Boys of Alabama
Bowie, David (x3)
Breeders
Brian Jonestown Massacre
Built to Spill (2008)
Burnett, T-Bone
Butthole Surfers (x3?)
Buzzcocks
Camper Van Beethoven (x?)
Cave, Nick
Chao, Manu & the Radio Bemba Sound System
Chilton, Alex
Clinton, George & the P-Funk All Stars
Costello, Elvis
Cracker
Cramps
Cure
David, Anthony
Del the Funkyhomosapien
Depeche Mode
Devo (x2)
Dimmer
Doe, John (x2)
Dr. John (x3)
Eskimo
Fall
Flaming Lips
fIREHOSE
Foetus
Funky Meters (x?)
Gabriel, Peter
Galactic
Grateful Dead
Guy, Buddy
Harvey, PJ
Hooker, John Lee
Hooters
Jane’s Addiction
Jazz Butcher (x2)
Jesus & Mary Chain (x3)
King, B.B.
Kool Keith (x2)
Kraftwerk
Latryx
Levy, Barrington
Lords of the New Church
Los Lobos (x3)
Love and Rockets (x4)
Loved Ones
Low Pop Suicide
Lyrics Born
Malkmus, Stephen
Meat Puppets
Monks of Doom
Morphine
Murphy, Peter
Musselwhite, Charlie
Naked, Buck & the Bare Bottom Boys
Negativland
Oranger
Overwhelming Colorfast
Ozomatli
Pavement (x4)
Pere Ubu
Perry, Lee
Pixies (x4)
Presidents of the USA
Rev. Horton Heat
Richman, Jonathan
Roots
Semisonic
Shriekback (x2)
Siouxsie and the Banshees
Sierra Leone Refugee All-Stars (2008)
Sippy Cups (x3)
Sisters of Mercy
Sly & Robbie/Taxi Gang
Soft Boys
Sonic Youth
Spencer, Jon Blues Explosion (x2?)
Spiritualized
Starlight Mints
Sugar
Television
They Might Be Giants
Thinking Fellers Union Local 282
Thin White Rope
Throwing Muses (x2)
Tin Machine
Tortoise
Voice Farm (x?)
Waits, Tom
Wire
Wolfgang Press
Wu-Tang Clan
Young Fresh Fellows
Ze, Tom

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May 9, 2007

The Wild, the Beautiful and the Warriors

Enabled by the wonderful capabilities of the Interweb, which apparently is a series of pneumatic tubes connecting my home to every used record store on Earth, I have been adding some old classics to my CD library lately. Take, for instance, the eponymous 1977 debut by Ultravox, at that time known as “Ultravox!” for some unfortunate reason. In contrast to the later, smoother Ultravox of “Vienna” fame—for whom I also have a significant weakness—this version mixed a lot of punky energy into their stew of Bowie/Roxy/Eno/Velvets/Kraftwerk influences. The result is an ungainly hybrid of an album poised midway between punk and new wave, dating from an era before the two had split into identifiable genres.

Forcefully produced by Steve Lillywhite and Eno Himself, Ultravox! benefits greatly from the clarity of a digital remaster, at least compared to the old, scratched-up vinyl on which I always heard it before. The album’s centerpiece is the epic “I Want to Be a Machine,” which starts with “Space Oddity”-esque acoustic guitar, segues into bass-heavy Krautrock, and finishes with Billy Currie’s violin leading us off to some kind of interplanetary hootenanny. Very strange, as is “My Sex,” which references Brel-via-Bowie’s “My Death” but with droning Eno synths and lyrics like “My sex waits for me/Like a mongrel waits, downwind on a tightrope leash.” The whole enterprise is kept from floating away by Stevie Shears’ jabbing guitar and high-caliber bass-and-drum work from Chris Cross and Warren Cann, displayed to good effect on the dubwise “Dangerous Rhythm.”

Would you like it? Hard to say. For me, this is music from the salad days, and so I am preternaturally fond of songs like “Life at Rainbow’s End” and “The Wild, the Beautiful and the Damned.” I have a kindred spirit, it seems, in actor/director/Chloe-Sevigny-onscreen-blowjob-receiver Vincent Gallo, who is quoted thusly in the liner notes: “I connected with the first Ultravox LP in such a deep way that everything changed.” For someone hearing it for the first time now, Ultravox! might sound like grand, operatic rock with a vibrant urgency, or it might sound like self-important gibberish. How you feel will depend in part on what you think of lead singer Dennis Leigh a.k.a. John Foxx, who has one of those distinctive but wobbly voices that make voice coaches cringe.

Myself, I like it, although even I have to call shenanigans on the vinyl raincoat ensemble he wears on the cover. But then, who cares about fashion? Not deep thinkers like Vincent and me. He’s a fan of the Buffalo Bills, as I am of the Golden State Warriors, who are suddenly, shockingly, fashionable. Bet you wondered how I was going to bring up the Warriors, didn’t you? You probably didn’t think I could do it. But I am in championship form right now, just like Matt Barnes.

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February 8, 2007

The Envelope, Please

After deliberating for thirty-nine days, as required by law, I am ready to name my album of the year for 2006. And the Philly goes to…wait for it…yes, the winner is Game Theory by the Roots.

This decision was influenced only partly by the fact that ?uestlove, Black Thought, et. al. put on a mind-blowing performance at the Fillmore Auditorium last night, a performance that I was privileged to witness thanks to the thoughtfulness and generosity of the girl with the lead foot. Truly, if there’s a better band on the planet right now, I’d like to know their name. Although the Roots generally get filed under “hip-hop,” there was nary a turntable in sight; instead, we got a full band including a four-man horn section anchored by the formidable Tuba Gooding Jr., who did things with his enormous instrument that really ought to be impossible. They not only played superb arrangements of their own material, they also paid homage to James Brown with powerful renditions of “Get on the Good Foot” and “Funky Drummer”; stripped down to guitar, drums, and tuba for a 10-minute-plus, multi-movement version of Bob Dylan’s “Masters of War”; and covered both “Jungle Boogie” and “Roxanne,” the latter with ?uestlove on falsetto vocals. If the Roots come to your town, by all means do whatever you have to to be there.

Anyway, back to Game Theory. After the spotty Phrenology and the more satisfying The Tipping Point, the Roots have achieved some sort of pinnacle with this latest release. It’s hard, really, to even name highlights; the album is crammed full with one great song after another, running the gamut from swaggering to introspective, from accessible to experimental, from old-school to futuristic. It must be heard to be believed. Who said nothing good ever came out of Philadelphia? Actually, it was me, but apparently I was wrong.

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January 15, 2007

Just in case you doubted...

that Simon Cowell is a flaming jackass (and there’s no reason why you should, but still):

LOS ANGELES, Jan 11 (Reuters Life!) - Don’t expect to see Bob Dylan joining the celebrities on “American Idol” anytime soon.

One of the show’s judges, Simon Cowell, says he has never bought a Dylan record because he “bores me to tears.”

The British pop impresario says in the February issue of Playboy that he would “plug my ears and run in the other direction” if he were to see a 21-year-old Dylan singing “Blowin’ in the Wind.”

Cowell, 47, is not known for holding back when it comes to issuing verdicts on the wannabe stars who flock to the top-rated talent show. Last season, he said a female contestant was so fat that the stage should be enlarged, and he suggested that another hopeful should shave his beard and wear a dress.

On the other hand, he told Playboy that inaugural champ Kelly Clarkson is “a young Aretha Franklin,” and he much preferred her music to Dylan’s.

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January 4, 2007

Dancing with the Elders

Today I’ve been listening to Matador Records’ deluxe reissue of the third—and arguably best—Pavement album, the aptly titled Wowee Zowee. I tend to have mixed feelings about these reissues, because of that voice in my head that says “Well here you are again, pinhead, paying good money for an album you already own.” But damn, you get a lot for your 14 bucks here. First off, Wowee Zowee itself, spiffy-sounding but still a riddle wrapped in an enigma all these years later. Then 32 bonus tracks, which is, you know, a lot of music. They’re not all gold (Soundz), but the perverse logic that guided Malkmus, Stairs and co. at the time dictated that they must bury their catchiest songs (“Easily Fooled,” “Give It a Day,” “Kris-Kraft”) on B-sides and EPs. Those are all here, along with a Schoolhouse Rock cover (“No More Kings”) and the mighty “Gangsters and Pranksters,” which contains the timeless couplet “Gangsters treat their ladies right/While pranksters curse their chickless plight.”

The whole thing comes wrapped up in a groovy package with an informative and nice-smelling booklet. My only complaint is that the back-cover cartoon with the wizard exclaiming “Pavement ist Rad!” is nowhere to be found here, and that’s just wrong.

Anyway, I figured this gave me an excuse to bust out my own sort of bonus track, this previously unpublished review from 1995.

Pavement, Wowee Zowee

Steve Malkmus has one of the biggest brains in music today. Lots of stuff bouncing around in there, colliding and fusing and fragmenting—much of it incomprehensible to you and me, but enough gets through to keep you intrigued. Here we have a guy who has written more than one song about California water politics in his time, who has insisted to an interviewer that one song was equally concerned with the Civil War and tennis.

Pavement found itself in a quandary at the beginning of 1995, having achieved somewhat of a commercial breakthrough with 1994’s Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. They clearly lived in fear and dread of the kind of massive success that would alienate their cult fan base, as evidenced by a willfully obnoxious Tonight Show butchery of their sort-of-hit single “Cut Your Hair.” At the same time, their music harbored a fiercely persistent pop tumor that could not easily be excised without killing the patient.

Wowee Zowee is their resolution of this paradox. It takes a careful, calculated step backward from the brink of mass acceptance without resorting to mere antisocial noisemongering (Steve Albini does not produce). The 18-song album is frontloaded with slow, dark, mellow songs, with the exception of the single “Rattled by the Rush,” itself a lurching, goofy, Zeppelinesque piece unlikely to turn up in MTV’s “Buzz Bin” anytime soon. Then it starts jumping around wildly, from punk rock to pseudo-country to gothic drone to pseudo-funk to art-rock epic.

But you know what? It works. By loosening their grip on the reins, Pavement has allowed their sound to grow organically in numerous new directions without sacrificing that underlying whatever-it-is that makes them Pavement. They have always been and continue to be a guitar band, but new instruments (piano, theremin, pedal steel, cello) are mixed in artfully. Whatever genre they seem to be dabbling in is Pavementized, tamed and made to serve the whole. The whole affair feels loose, unhurried and even jolly, in pleasant contrast to the legion of cookie-cutter Tortured Artists who currently litter the rock landscape. If Crooked Rain was Pavement’s Abbey Road (and it was, believe me), this is their White Album: sprawling,self-indulgent, stylistically incoherent, brilliant.

What’s more, Pavement seems, perhaps inadvertently, to have discovered the secret of Time Control. At sixty minutes the album, if listened to straight through, seems more or less eternal. (If you don’t like it, this would be a bad thing; if you do, it’s like a bottomless jar of cookies.) A short song (take for instance “Black Out,” 2:10) feels two or three times as long as it actually is; when they do write a truly long song (“Half a Canyon,” 6:08), it feels positively symphonic in scope. This could have practical application in the future, perhaps replacing suspended animation in interstellar travel.

Earlier in 1995 Might magazine’s Paul Tullis named Pavement “World’s Greatest Rock Band,” and I have to go along with him, perhaps modifying the title to “The Last Great Rock Band.” Over the last few years the genre’s champions have been disappearing all across the spectrum, from the Pixies to the Grateful Dead. Only quixotic contrarians like Malkmus and friends still think rock is worth saving, and they themselves would never admit as much; but, miraculously, they have done it, at least for now.

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December 10, 2006

Back in Black

Like most people, I owned AC/DC’s Back in Black on vinyl back in the day. Then, at some point, I decided that AC/DC was not cool and sold it. I’m here today to tell you that I made a terrible mistake. Over the Thanksgiving holiday, I found a copy of the CD of laying around at my dad’s place, and I made a duplicate for my own use, in clear violation of all the relevant laws and statutes. I’ve been listening to it and let me just say: Back in Black, like, rules.

I am embarrassed with myself for saying that. But there’s something about listening to AC/DC that sharply reduces your IQ in a most enjoyable way, like nitrous oxide or a frontal lobotomy. Over the years they perfected a formula that bypasses all the higher brain functions and speaks directly to the reptile brain, awakening the slumbering Sleestak that lurks deep within us all. (Or at least those of us with a Y chromosome. I can’t speak for the species’ better half.)

Generally speaking, I’m more a proponent of the Bon Scott years—”It’s a Long Way to the Top (If You Wanna Rock’n’Roll)” may be the greatest rock song ever recorded—but there’s simply no denying the Brontosaurean power of this album. It kicks off with the grinding intro to “Hell’s Bells,” a riff of gothic majesty worthy of the Sisters of Mercy. (Right now I am imagining a parallel universe in which Sisters frontman Andrew Eldritch was tapped to replace Bon Scott; but never mind.)

Then, of course, Brian Johnson starts singing. I’ve always found Johnson’s voice problematic. On the one hand, it is so unlike a human singing voice that it almost becomes another instrument, adding some interesting textures to the music. On the other hand, it often falls into the Diamanda Galas/Jon Anderson category of “Sure, it’s amazing that you can sing like that, but why would you want to?”

Johnson’s lyrics are also a problem. It’s hard to defend something like “Givin’ the Dog a Bone,” which is so crude it can only be called single entendre. Bon Scott’s lyrics were equally sexist and vulgar (“Big Balls,” anyone?), but he had an impish quality that made it all work somehow. Johnson sounds like he really means this stuff, and sometimes the results are cringeworthy. Then again, he did add the phrase “Knockin’ me out with those American thighs” to the lexicon, so I have to give him some amount of credit.

In any case, what makes Back in Black such an enduring pillar of Rawk is the music. AC/DC’s precision-jackhammer attack*—with Angus and Malcolm Young on lead and rhythm guitar, ably assisted by underrated rhythm section Phil Rudd and Cliff Williams—is operating at peak efficiency here, stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another. You can’t argue with a song like the title track, or the mighty “Rock’n’Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution.” There’s just no point. Resistance is useless.

But the real revelation this time around was “You Shook Me All Night Long.” In the 80s I got really sick of this song because I heard it blasting out of one too many pickup trucks owned by one too many unpleasant people. But taken on its own terms, this is a towering piece of rock’n’roll sculpture. It’s so high you can’t get over it, so wide you can’t get around it, and as heavy as an elephant that just quit smoking.

I find that in writing about AC/DC, one finds oneself constantly returning to adjectives such as “powerful” and “heavy.” Partly, again, it’s the brain damage, but also the band’s powerful heaviosity renders all other adjectives unnecessary. When my time comes, I want to listen to an AC/DC mix starting with “Highway to Hell,” including “Noise Pollution,” “You Shook Me,” “Girl’s Got Rhythm,” and a few others, and concluding with the one-two punch of “It’s a Long Way to the Top” and “High Voltage.” Then I want you to throw that fuckin’ radio into the tub with me.

( Sports writers are a kind of rude and brainless sub-culture of fascist drunks whose only real function is to publicize & sell whatever the sports editor sends them out to cover… Which is a nice way to make a living, because it keeps a man busy and requires no thought at all. The two keys to success as a sports writer are: (1) A blind willingness to believe anything you’re told by the coaches, flaks, hustlers, and other “official spokesman” for the team-owners who provide the free booze … and: (2) A Roget’s Thesaurus, in order to avoid using the same verbs and adjectives twice in the same paragraph. Even a sports editor, for instance, might notice something wrong with a lead that said, “The precision-jackhammer attack of the Miami Dolphins stomped the balls off the Washington Redskins today by stomping and hammering with one precise jack-thrust after another up the middle, mixed with pinpoint-precision passes into the flat and numerous hammer-jack stomps around both ends… —Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72)

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November 15, 2006

Hold Me Closer, (Your Name Here)

You know the Elton John song “Tiny Dancer”? It goes like this:

Hold me closer, tiny dancer

Well tonight, a certain young person told me that she’d always thought Elton was saying

Hold me closer, Tony Danza

And now I’ll never hear the song the same way again. I’m happy about that.

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October 30, 2006

What's Blowing My Mind (Part 2)

The Kinks

I know the Kinks are a great band. I’ve known it for a long time. And yet for some reason I keep forgetting it, so every time I’m reminded it comes as this great revelation.

My most recent Kinks phase began when I was watching an old episode of The Sopranos that used the song “Living on a Thin Line” (a rare Dave Davies vocal, that one). Then, thinking of Halloween-related songs, I remembered the song “Sleepwalker,” which I had only on a cassette I got from Bob (thanks, Bob). This led me to seek out a compilation of the Kinks’ later-period hits called Come Dancing.

Tragedy struck when the CD arrived and “Sleepwalker” was mysteriously missing from the running order. Turns out there are two versions of the album extant, and the one I had ordered was not the one I received. But in the end I couldn’t return it, because the songs that are on it are so freakin’ excellent. “Juke Box Music.” “Rock’n’Roll Fantasy.” “Low Budget.” The Kinks were so right-on they could even make disco work—check out the whomping backbeat on “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman.” I won’t forget about the Kinks again anytime soon, and neither should you.

“Sex and Candy”

You look up “one-hit wonder” in the dictionary and you see a picture of Marcy Playground, and you wouldn’t even know it was them if it wasn’t captioned “Marcy Playground.” But their one hit, a woozy slice of Malkmusian pop called “Sex and Candy,” is one hell of a tune. It popped into my head the other day, and thanks to the Internet and 99 cents, it was mine in no time. Well worth the money.

Bright Red/Tightrope

I know I heard this album when Laurie Anderson released it back in 94, but I guess I didn’t really listen to it. Or maybe it’s the other way around. Anyway, the point is, I didn’t come to appreciate its beauty until very recently. Crisply and economically produced by Brian Eno, Bright Red/Tightrope is less aggressively weird than other Laurie Anderson albums—although still weird enough (see: “The Puppet Motel”). For the most part it is filled with real songs, languid and melodic and addictive as Mugwump semen. Anderson’s paramour Lou Reed guests on a wonderful song called “In Our Sleep,” and this is where we run up against the limits inherent in writing about music. (“Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.”) I can’t possibly hope to express its true glory here; you’d just have to hear it for yourself. Come by the house some time and I’ll play it for you.

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October 29, 2006

What's Blowing My Mind (Part 1)

To paraphrase Clark Gable, “You should have your mind blown, and often, and by someone who knows how.”

Here are a few of the things that have been blowing my mind lately (in the area of music, that is; there are other things, too, that need not be gotten into here; The Prestige was one of them).

We Are the Dead

I plucked this song off David Bowie’s Diamond Dogs for a Halloween mix I was making, and I’m all, like, wow…. It’s funny, on an album full of great songs, no one song stands out so much. But take any one of them out of context, and you realize just how phenomenal it is. This particular tune starts off sweet and lyrical, then turns metallically ominous, then changes back, then changes back again, all so seamlessly that it really seems like one song. Check it out and tell me I’m wrong. I dare you.

Osmium

This album, vintage 1971, was the first release from Parliament after George Clinton broke away from the other Parliaments to explore the possibilites inherent in the combination of soul music and LSD. As you might expect, it is a truly widescreen psychedelic funk experience, grounded in the heavier side of soul but branching off in all sorts of strange directions. Its breadth is such that it can encompass a country song built around the Jew’s harp (“Little Ole Country Boy”), a gospel song built around the harpsichord (“Oh Lord, Why Lord”), and a song Pink Floyd would have written if they’d been from Detroit (“The Silent Boatman”). The CD adds a bunch of great bonus tracks, including two monster-hits-that-should-have-been, “Come in Out of the Rain” and “Fantasy Is Reality.”

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October 1, 2006

You've got to pick up every stitch

I just realized that in Monday’s entry on fantasy covers, I made one important omission (important to me, anyway), and it has to do with Donovan’s “Season of the Witch.” I would like to hear it performed á la “Smells Like Teen Spirit.” If you don’t know this song, go find it right now and imagine it done with Pixies-derived loud/quiet/loud dynamics, the guitars kicking in on the chorus and Kurt Cobain shrieking “Must be the season of the witch!” at the top of his lungs. Dude, sweet.

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September 24, 2006

What I Want

So here’s what I want, what I really really want: a computer program that will let you feed in the name of a song and the name of an artist, process for a few seconds, then spit out a believable cover version. For instance, I would like to hear Tom Waits doing “Joy to the World” (the Three Dog Night song, not the Christmas carol—can’t you just hear him croaking out “Jeremiah was a bullfrog”?), or Frank Sinatra singing the Velvet Underground’s “Sunday Morning.” I would pay real money to hear the Sisters of Mercy covering “You’re So Vain” or the Pixies’ version of “I’m So Tired.” In fact, I would probably have the Pixies do the whole White Album, just to hear what it sounded like.

Can somebody out there in cyberspace make this happen, please?

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August 7, 2006

We can't rewind, we've gone too far

Put the blame on Duran Duran.

I’ve been thinking a lot about the 80s lately. The recent 25th birthday of MTV was for me a bittersweet occasion, and not just because it marks those of us who can remember life before MTV as officially Old. It’s also because I feel about those days of the early 80s the way some people feel about the 60s: It was an era when things were changing, the old rules no longer applied, and anything seemed possible. And looking back now with the right set of eyes, you can definitely see the high-water mark—the place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

The mid-70s had been the era of disco and progressive rock, twin blights that threatened to extinguish music as we know it. (I am grossly oversimplifying, of course. There was a lot of great music in the mid-70s—consider the work of David Bowie, Kraftwerk, and Lee Perry just for starters—but I’m making a point here.) Then just when things were at their bleakest, along came punk and new wave. Never mind the Sex Pistols, how about heroes of the revolution like Devo, Wire, Gang of Four, X, the Clash, the Cure…well, it’s a long list…anyway, this new generation of artists overthrew the status quo and suddenly the future looked bright again. Well, exciting anyway, if not always bright. (Bauhaus, I’m talking to you.)

Then MTV came along, and partly because it was marketed to kids my age, and partly because it had 24 hours to fill every day, it gave exposure to a lot of these new artists. By 1981 we were already well into the second stage of the revolution, where some of the originators had fizzled out and been replaced by a deluge of bandwagon-jumpers. Even so, MTV gave airplay to people who never made it on radio or had been pigeonholed as one-hit wonders. Sure, “Whip It” had been a big hit for Devo, but only MTV played “Beautiful World.” Rock radio paid lip service to the Clash, but never played them aside from “Train in Vain” and the songs from Combat Rock. Did you ever hear “Radio Clash” on an AOR station? I don’t think so, but you saw it on MTV.

Back in those days, when MTV actually played music videos, it was a good place to discover new bands. I’d never heard of X before I saw the video for “The Hungry Wolf” on 120 Minutes. My first prolonged Bowie exposure came from the videos from Scary Monsters. And if, as an MTV viewer, you tended to end up with records by people like Naked Eyes, Classix Nouveaux, and EBN-OZN in your collection, was that so bad?

So where did it all go wrong? I blame Duran Duran. Not that they were the worst band around—they had some good songs, in fact—but the videos featuring the Durannies, pretty young men in pastel 80s fashions, were the beginning of MTV’s slide from innovation to mere trendiness. It was inevitable anyway; given the power of the medium, it was only a matter of time until the agents of the Long Plastic Hallway were going to swoop in and take over. Pretty soon mainstream artists dominated MTV, then it started doing half-hour shows instead of playing videos, and so on until it became the all-day crapfest it is today.

Too bad. For a minute there it looked like quality music and mainstream music were going to become, if not one and the same, at least agreeably overlapping. I know that sounds naïve today, like thinking that everyone’s going to start practicing peace and love and wearing flowers in their hair, but it was a different time. Maybe this generation coming up now, the MySpace kids, will finally dislodge the Plastic Mafia from its dominant position in the music industry. Probably not, but it doesn’t hurt to dream.

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June 4, 2006

Steven Seagal Plays the Blues

It’s true, you know. He’ll be playing a concert at the Fillmore this week—apparently in a kimono—and were I a man of means, I would make the trip just out of sheer freakshow curiosity. And who knows, maybe I’d be surprised. Seagal makes a case for his blues credentials in today’s interview with Aidin Vaziri:

Q: These are original songs?

A: Well, I had to do a couple of covers because on the album I had the whole Muddy Waters band and I wanted to show respect to them, so I did a couple of songs by Howlin’ Wolf and Muddy.

Q: How did you get those guys to play on your album? Did you use rope?

A: I’m friends with all those guys. I live in Memphis. I’ve been in the blues for some 30-odd years. I know them all.

Q: Nobody knows this. It’s like breaking news.

A: I hate to tell you this, but a lot of people know it. I’ll give an example, OK? If I played with B.B. King a hundred times that many times around the world, do you think anyone might have seen it? And I’ve played with a lot more cats than B.B. King all over the world. Lots and lots of times. Believe me, there’s a lot of people out there that know.

I am fascinated by the question, “If I played with B.B. King a hundred times that many times around the world, do you think anyone might have seen it?” Is he saying that he actually did play with B.B. King a hundred times, or is that some kind of zen riddle, like “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Seagal, as we all know, is a self-styled Buddhist sage, which leads to this exchange:

Q: As far as you know, are you the only blues-playing Buddhist?

A: I’m sure that’s not true at all. There’s probably hundreds of thousands of blues-playing Buddhists.

Imagine that, a veritable army of string-bending, kimono-clad Buddhists. I picture them holed up in the jungle with Seagal as Col. Kurtz (as you can see from the picture, he’s well on his way to Kurtz-style girth). When trouble is brewing somewhere in the world, the Buddhist Guitar Army parachutes in, gets the warring sides to meditate together, lays an ass-kicking on any holdouts, then plays the blues all night. Tell me, what problem couldn’t they solve?

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May 25, 2006

Selvin Watch

Like most of us, I was overjoyed when the Chronicle’s Joel Selvin “retired” a few years back. And yet he keeps popping up with disturbing regularity. Recently, he wrote a profile of local music mogul Will Bronson where he managed to misspell the subject’s name every time it appeared.

Then yesterday he wrote a piece about T-Bone Burnett. I’m not sure what Selvin is calling himself these days, but “writer” is surely one of them, and yet the following sentence appears in his article, describing the difficulty that Reese Witherspoon had recording the soundtrack for Ring of Fire:

Burnett watched one afternoon as she literally exploded in frustration, pounding her way through doors out of the house.

That’s right: Reese Witherspoon literally exploded at T-Bone Burnett’s house in Brentwood. Selvin doesn’t address any of the questions raised by this revelation, such as: Was anyone showered with gristle when the lovely young actress spontaneously combusted? Why was it not reported in the mainstream press? And who was that collecting Witherspoon’s Oscar?

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February 28, 2006

The Year in Music, Part 7

Various Artists/A Celebration of New Orleans Music

Various Artists/Our New Orleans

Various Artists/I Believe to My Soul

Dr. John/Sippiana Hericane

Today’s theme is pretty simple: the proceeds from all these CDs go to hurricane relief. Of course, you could accomplish more by just giving your money directly to, say, Habitat for Humanity, but where’s the fun in that? Anytime you can do a small good deed by buying music, I figure you’re ahead of the game.

This being Fat Tuesday and all, I’ve ingested a little too much single-malt scotch to go into any great detail, but these are all loaded with good music. If I had to pick one, it would probably be A Celebration of New Orleans Music, which is seriously—as they like to say down there—fonky, with an upbeat vibe that feels right on this most auspicious of days. In case you didn’t know, February 28, 2006 is not only Mardi Gras Day and the new moon, but also the last day of The Most Dangerous Month of the Year.

I’ve gone on the record many times with my feelings about February, which in my mind just takes up space between New Year’s and spring. But now that it’s over, I’m feeling generous about the second month, which to be honest was not half bad this year. The groundhog notwithstanding, the weather was mostly gorgeous, interspersed with heavy rain that will no doubt make for a spectacular season. My cats are happy and healthy, I made a few bucks this month, and my orchids started blooming a few days ago.

As I write this, the sun is setting over Oaktown. The few clouds remaining from our last rainstorm are glowing sweetly pink and blue. (You can’t have a top-notch sunset without a few clouds; there has to be something to catch the light.) Meanwhile, the Mardi Gras revelry is in full swing in the Crescent City. Some people thought it was weird to have a big party in the midst of all that devastation, but it makes perfect sense to me. When things are really fucked, that’s when you need a good time most of all. So what the hell: Laissez les bon temps etc. etc. We’ll figure everything out tomorrow, I’m sure.

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February 23, 2006

The Year in Music, Part 6

Amadou & Mariam/Dimanche á Bamako

Blackalicious/The Craft

So what do the Oakland hip-hop duo of DJ Chief Xcel and MC The Gift of Gab have in common with Amadou & Mariam, a blind husband-and-wife team from Mali? Plenty, in my mind. I’ve been a fan of Blackalicious since I heard a track from their A to G EP on the radio circa 1998, and of Amadou & Mariam since I heard their song “Mon Amour, Mon Cherie” in the Emeryville Tower Records around the same time. Though they work in very different idioms, both are heavily beat-centric and capable of dizzying, ecstatic heights when they’re clicking on all cylinders.

Which is not always. I’ve found Amadou & Mariam’s previous albums vaguely disappointing, I think because their music depends on a peculiar kind of magic to make the simple, repetitive grooves levitate. The magic doesn’t always work—most of the time, but not always—and when it doesn’t, the songs just kind of lie there.

I was hoping that Dimanche á Bamako, produced by genre- and border-hopping reggaephile Manu Chao, would be that great Amadou & Mariam album I’ve been waiting for. And it is tantalizingly close. The stylistic mix of Chao’s continental melange and Amadou & Mariam’s bubbling African stew mostly works, though at times this threatens to turn into a Manu Chao album—not that there’s anything wrong with that. Many of the songs, like “M’Bife,” “Senegal Fast Food,” and “Politic Amagni,” are minor miracles. If it weren’t for a couple of lesser tracks, this would be the Holy Grail. As it is, the search continues; in the meantime, there’s a lot to enjoy on Dimanche á Bamako.

The Craft is the third Blackalicious album, following 2000’s near-masterpiece Nia and 2002’s Blazing Arrow, which was a bit of a letdown. Not awful, just a little too slick and unsure of its direction. I was hoping that Gab and Xcel, as groovy a couple of guys as you’ll find in the Long Plastic Hallway, would bounce back with a winner.

And The Craft is certainly an improvement on its predecessor, leading off with the jaw-dropping one-two punch of “World of Vibrations” and “Supreme People.” The latter has shot up right near the top of my list of favorite hip-hop tracks on the strength of its body-slamming rhythm and sharp lyrics:

Supreme people livin’ with their back aligned
Up against the wall cause these days are asinine
Living in a money matrix how cats survive
Some will fade away and wither, others will blast a nine
Kings and queens workin’ nine to fives and makin’ nothing
Searching for a deeper purpose in life
This can’t be life
With all this work this can’t be right
With no money in my pocket I just can’t see right
I used to try to preach to young ‘uns like “Do right, kids”
Nowadays all I can say is “Get it how you live”

Eh, it’s not quite the same without that beat, but never mind. Other highlights include “Powers,” a female-praising anthem laced with electric guitar, and “Lotus Flower,” with guest vocals by George Clinton. Unfortunately, The Craft runs out of steam on what those of us raised in the vinyl age would call the B side. Message songs like “The Fall and Rise of Elliot Brown” and “Black Diamonds and Pearls” are kind of clunky, which is a problem a lot of “conscious” hip-hop artists have—how do you make a serious point without being a drag? Answer: Go back and listen to “Supreme People.” If the music’s right, the message goes down nice and smooth.

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February 4, 2006

The BOC & Me

This picture doesn’t do much to buttress my case in favor of the BÖC. That’s guitar hero Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser, resplendent in whitesuit, on the right.

Lately I’ve been deriving a lot of pleasure from listening to the music of the Blue Öyster Cult. I say this willingly and in public, despite knowing that the government is going to put me on some kind of list.

The BÖC doesn’t get a lot of respect—it cost me next to nothing to pick up a copy of their 2-CD collection Workshop of the Telescopes. And to be honest, the first disc is a waste of time, filled with early-period sludge like “Flaming Telepaths” and “Harvester of Eyes.” But the second disc is a whole different story. It leads off with “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” an FM staple for 30-some years now, and recently further immortalized by the Christopher Walken “More Cowbell” sketch. With its chiming, insistent riff, eerie harmonies, and ample cowbell, “The Reaper” is every bit as pointless to resist as the Reaper himself.

From there the hits just keep coming: “Godzilla” and “E.T.I.” are all-time air-guitar classics. “Veteran of the Psychic Wars,” co-written by unfortunately named science fiction author Michael Moorcock, is a landmark in the history of nerd-rock. Unlike a lot of 70s bands, the Cult didn’t go all to hell in the 80s, producing brilliant singles like “Take Me Away” and “Burnin’ for You,” which was in heavy rotation in the early days of MTV and still sounds great. My only complaint: whoever put together this compilation left off “Joan Crawford Has Risen from the Grave,” quite possibly the BÖC’s finest moment.

So don’t hate on the Blue Öyster Cult. Not only did they influence everyone from Spinal Tap to the Sisters of Mercy, they were self-consciously ironic in the 70s, two full decades before it became fashionable. If only they’d been smart enough to get Brian Eno to produce some of their albums, they could have been the Talking Heads of heavy metal. But there probably would have been less cowbell.

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Posted by bill at 11:24 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack

February 3, 2006

The Year in Music, Part 5

Beck/Guero

Devendra Banhart/Cripple Crow

The year in question, by the way, is 2005, and you may well ask: Do I feel guilty that this thing has now stretched into February, when everybody else did their year-end wrap-ups in December? Maybe a little, but not really; I think summing up the year before it’s actually over is a little hasty, and anyway thoughts take time to filter down. It’s like collecting rain in a bucket—it takes as long as it takes, so why be in a hurry?

Anyway, on with the music. I’m hard-pressed to explain why I’m putting these two albums together. I’m sure there is an affinity between them, it’s just hard to put your finger on. Beck is an established veteran, Banhart a relative newcomer (albeit a prolific one). Cripple Crow is spare and acoustic, with a sound that could have been achieved just as easily in 1969; Guero is all Pro Tools and the Dust Brothers, with an ultramodern low end and every note in digitally perfect position.

Why, then, do I think they’re two sides of the same coin? For one thing, both of these guys like to sing in Spanish, although Banhart—who grew up partly in Venezuela—is a lot more serious about it. For another, while Beck’s folkie side is not much in evidence on Guero, we know it exists from albums like One Foot in the Grave. Again, though, the resemblance is fairly superficial. Beck approaches folk music from the bluesy, Mississippi John Hurt side, while Banhart is most definitely a disciple of Donovan; his brand of folk is spacy, contemplative, and unapologetically hippiefied. The former is whiskey-drinking folk, the latter dope-smoking folk, and while in one sense that’s splitting hairs, in another sense the two are worlds apart.

In the end, I think the connection has less to do with style and more with personality. To really get to the point I’m trying to make, I have to once again invoke the name of that eternal touchstone, David Bowie. In the last 15 minutes I’ve started developing a theory that a big part of Bowie’s appeal has to do with the fact that he grew up in public—or, more to the point, continually evolved without really “growing up,” that is, losing his youthful elasticity. In the 70s we saw him trying on different identities much as a teenager might. His vaunted androgyny was really not so much gay as soft and unformed, innocent, but suggestive of a sexuality that could develop in any direction. In subsequent years we’ve seen a more “adult” Bowie: sometimes a shrewd, successful careerist; sometimes a damaged man struggling to shake off his addictions and recover his creative spark. Today’s Bowie is a happy, productive family man who’s finally showing signs of mortality—a face that’s starting to look worn and a heart that’s given out on him once. But even so, he’s never lost a certain boyishness, which is quite in evidence on that TV ad where he steals Snoop Dogg’s medallion and smiles impishly.

Both Beck and Devendra Banhart have that same man-child quality. Beck, at 35, is just beginning to look like he might be old enough to drink. Artistically, he’s not so much settled down as integrated his many facets into a style that is now identifiably his own. Guero touches on the playfulness of Odelay, the psychedelic lyricism of Mutations, and the haywire-robots-on-coke vibe of Midnite Vultures, and while you could call the results schizophrenic, you could also just call it a Beck album.

Banhart could be his younger brother who’s just dropped out of college, sporting a noticeably Jeebus-like beard and shaggy curls. You don’t have to look very hard to see his childlike tendencies: Take, for instance, Cripple Crow’s eighth track, “I Feel Just Like a Child.” Or its fourth track, “Long Haired Child”; sixteenth track, “Chinese Children”; or penultimate track, “Little Boys.” On this last one the obsession turns a bit disturbing, as when Banhart sings “I see so many little boys I want to marry.” But the effect is less perverse than willfully provocative, as when Bowie was telling journalists he was gay, milking suggestiveness for all it was worth. Which begs the question, can you be consciously childlike? If you know you’re doing it, it’s not really innocent, is it? Well, never mind. Why ruin Cripple Crow by overanalyzing it? It’s a great listen for a rainy day, anodyne for gray skies, crunchy and comforting as five-bean chili. No more analysis for today.

Posted by bill at 2:36 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack

January 25, 2006

The Year in Music, Part 4

Brian Eno, Another Day on Earth

John Cale, Black Acetate

These two geezers have nothing left to prove to anybody; they could have retired to their country chateaus long ago, quite satisfied with their accomplishments. Come to think of it, their careers have been almost exactly parallel. Both first made a name for themselves in a vastly influential band that they left after two albums (Roxy Music for Eno, the Velvet Underground for Cale). In both cases, the band never sounded quite the same again, which is not to say that Roxy and the VU’s later albums were worse—just different. Cale and Eno were X factors who lent unique qualities to Roxy Music, The Velvet Underground and Nico, For Your Pleasure, and White Light/White Heat. Their contributions were musical, certainly—Eno with his synthesizers and tape machines, Cale with his viola, bass, and vocals—but also conceptual. Both are musical strategists with adventurous, and therefore restless, minds. This explains why they left their bands so soon, although the heavy shadows cast by Bryan Ferry and Lou Reed may have had something to do with it.

In the 70s, both Eno and Cale made a series of acclaimed solo albums while also finding time to produce landmark records by other people. Cale specialized in debut albums, which he produced for the Stooges, the Modern Lovers, Patti Smith, and, strangely enough, Squeeze. Eno, of course, produced Devo’s first album and beloved trilogies by David Bowie and Talking Heads. In the 80s, Eno made a bazillion dollars by producing huge-selling albums for U2, while Cale kind of dropped off the radar (mine anyway). According to the All-Music Guide, he released a bunch of albums that I’ve never heard—they could be great for all I know—and produced Happy Mondays’ Squirrel and G-Man Twenty Four Hour Party People Plastic Face Carnt Smile (White Out).

In 1990 the two men, who had previously guested on each other’s solo albums, released a collaboration called Wrong Way Up—an excellent, if a tad slick, pop album that never got the attention it deserved. Around that same time Cale made the similarly underrated Songs for Drella with Lou Reed, and Eno released the uneven Nerve Net, which was the last thing I bought by either one of them.

Then, next thing you know, it’s 2005. How’d that happen?

When I heard last summer that Eno was releasing a new album of vocal songs, his first in a long time, I got moderately excited. I’ve always loved his voice; it’s technically not the greatest, but it has a certain character that I find friendly and appealing. And sure enough, Eno does sing on Another Day on Earth, but despite my best efforts, I’ve never quite fallen for this album. It’s perfectly fine, and has some great songs like “Bottomliners” and “Just Another Day,” but it’s hard not to compare it to, say, Taking Tiger Mountain. Which is unfair. Asking Eno to make another Tiger Mountain is like asking Bowie to make another Ziggy, Bob Dylan to make another Blonde on Blonde, or the Stones to make another Exile on Main Street. It can’t be done.

So comparisons aside, my complaint about Another Day is that it’s too clean, too digital. It makes one nostalgic for the gloriously analog days of yore. Which brings me to John Cale’s 2005 release, Black Acetate. Cale’s always been a contrary character, by turns lyrical and abrasive, classically trained but with a fondness for, as he called it on 1975’s Slow Dazzle, “Dirty Ass Rock’n’Roll.” On Black Acetate he uses all the latest technology—I’m told he learned Pro Tools in San Francisco, at the same place Cecil did—but ends up sounding wonderfully scruffy and retro.

Like Eno, Cale doesn’t have the greatest voice, and he does strange things with it here: the falsetto on “Outta the Bag,” the choked, raspy vocal on “In a Flood.” But somehow or other it all works—for me, anyway. Your mileage may vary; but how you feel about this album will pretty much depend on how you’ve felt about Cale all along. At 63 he’s the same curmudgeon he was at 30, and Black Acetate can legitimately take its place alongside Fear or Helen of Troy. So give Grandpa his props.

Posted by bill at 7:50 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack

January 12, 2006

The Year in Music, Part 3

50 Foot Wave/Golden Ocean
Julian Cope/Citizen Cain’d

Question: To what extent does one have the responsibility to report the bad news, and to what extent is it better just to keep it to yourself?

For instance, we have here two albums by artists that I’ve been quite fond of in the past, but whose latest work leaves me cold. Should I write about them, or in the interest of being positive, should I leave well enough alone? My initial instinct was the latter, but I decided to listen to them one more time through just to be sure, and doing so raised the question that I started with.

The tone of both of these albums is overwhelmingly negative. On Golden Ocean, the first full album by Kristin Hersh’s new trio 50 Foot Wave, she turns the volume up to 11 and screams herself hoarse on every song. This is seriously noisy stuff—and not the sculpted noise of, say, Throwing Muses’ University, but aggressive, abrasive noise. It doesn’t sound like Kristin’s enjoying herself; more like she’s going through therapy.

A similar sense of foreboding hangs over Julian Cope’s 2005 solo album Citizen Cain’d. In the 90s, Cope (or Copey, as those of us who are hip with the lingo like to call him) released a remarkable series of albums reflecting his obsession with the fate of Mother Earth. Those records—Peggy Suicide, Jehovahkill, 20 Mothers, and Interpreter—were suffused with a pop sensibility and leavened with a sense of hope; not so Citizen Cain’d, which is unrelentingly pessimistic. Song titles include “Hell Is Wicked,” “World War Pigs,” “The Living Dead,” and “The Edge of Death.” While it has its moments of brilliance, this cannot by any means be called an enjoyable listening experience.

With Copey, as with Kristin, I find myself wondering, is it something in his personal life that’s causing all this negativity? Or is he just reflecting the dire state of the modern world, or is it some combination of the two? The lyrics of Golden Ocean tend more toward the personal, and those of Citizen Cain’d more toward the political, but it’s entirely possible that they’re just two different expressions of the same underlying feeling. In general, I’m a lot more sympathetic toward an artist who’s addressing a global situation than one who’s working out their personal issues in public. When I hear somebody going through a Plastic Ono Band-style catharsis on record, I always think, “Well, that’s nice for you. What about us, the audience? Why on