Television’s Marquee Moon is #38 on that Rolling Stone list from 1987. I didn’t hear this record until my sophomore year of college, after I started working at WCBN, hosting the stereotypical 3-6 a.m. slot one night every two weeks and spending those three hours running back and forth between the broadcast studio and an old production studio so that I could not only get music out over the air, but also dub four albums every shift. One of the first tasks I gave myself was to track down as many of those 1987 top 100 albums as I could. Marquee Moon was one of those.
And I loved it. The vinyl that I taped it from was a little beat up, and the whole thing just barely fit on one side of a tape, but I loved that thing. It was one of my go-to tapes that winter and I have clear memories of walking to my logic class listening to it and taking an extra lap around a hallway so that I could hear those last few desperate notes of “Prove It” before I sat down to an hour of Venn Diagrams.
And God, it’s still good. The tape has been replaced by two different CD issues, but the thing is still magic. It still crackles with this intensity, this tension, this electricity that’s unmatched, for me, by anything else from that mid-1970s New York punk scene. It’s not just the twin guitars of Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd, either (though they are justly lionized). It’s the skittering drums, always solid, but rarely predictable. It’s Fred Smith’s bass weaving its own melodies around the guitars. It’s the songs themselves, with their interlocking riffs and the bizarre couplets that emerge from Verlaine’s pen, like
My eyes are like telescopes
I see it all backwards, but who needs hope?
Yet it’s the guitars you remember. Lloyd’s more traditional solos and Verlaine’s unexpected jumps and leaps, the flashes of Neil Young rumblestorms and the moments of Richard Thompson fury, the psychedelic raveups and the third-eye explorations. It’s the neurotic, tense quality of Verlaine’s solo on “Friction.” It’s the way the notes of “Prove It” seem choked off, emerging from whatever the guitar equivalent of clenched teeth is. It’s the way the riffs of “Venus de Milo” run around the lyrics with what seems like complete abandon. It’s hearing Lloyd’s solo in “See No Evil” and comparing it to Verlaine’s in “Friction” and wondering just how much of the band’s greatness was driven by fundamental tension between their differing approaches to the guitar.
The only song I’m impatient with now is “Guiding Light,” which, in the context of so much that seems otherworldly, that taps this anxious, desperate nerve so effectively, comes across as predictable, as pat, as out of place. It feels like a song that anyone could have done, whereas the rest of the album is almost dauntingly singular. I remember really liking it in college, appreciating its relative calm, its chiming arpeggios, even Lloyd’s melodic solo, but now I just feel like it drags, and I find myself impatient to get to the glorious barbed wire solo of “Prove It.”
And last thing: this is Television’s debut. The debut. The first record. How many other groups can claim such a debut? How many other first albums are this strong? Big Pink, maybe? Freak Out? Appetite for Destruction? Please Please Me? Slanted and Enchanted?
I don’t know that I’d move it any higher than #38, but I have absolutely no problem with this making the list.
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Thursday, March 11, 2010
Thursday, March 4, 2010
Sgt. Pepper
In 1989, as I discovered an obsession with music that ran as strongly as any other obsession I had in high school, college, or after, I had two guides that kept me hunting for albums that I hadn’t heard, or might not otherwise have heard. Both were mainstream, unconcerned with too much out of the ordinary or in what Neil Young might have called “the ditch.” Any time I found myself in a bookstore, I searched for books of “the best albums of all time” or comprehensive collections of reviews, but it was these two lists – probably because I owned them – that I came back to more than others, that I read over and over, that, in the end, I almost memorized. Both were from Rolling Stone: in 1987, in celebration of the magazine’s twentieth anniversary, the staff published a list of “The Greatest Albums of the Last Twenty Years,” and in 1989, it published its list of “The Greatest Albums of the 1980s.” It’s that first list that I’m concerned with now.
Obviously, it’s limited by the two decade boundary, as well as by the magazine’s boomer bias and its insistence on focusing almost entirely on rock. But I’m not interested in complaining about that, really. Instead, now that I’ve heard, over the course of my own two decades of listening, all of those “Greatest Albums,” I want to go back and listen to them again and think about not only what they’ve meant to me (if anything), but what they mean now and to what extent they hold up.
I’ll choose albums more or less randomly.
But I’ll start with the magazine’s number one: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Everyone’s heard it. Everyone knows it. It’s as enshrined as The Beatles themselves in rock ‘n’ roll history.
But it’s really not that great.
Now, I love The Beatles. I’ll stump all day for Please Please Me and Revolver as phenomenal collections. I’ll make a case for Rubber Soul and Hard Day’s Night as a tiny bit flawed but still great. I’ll argue for “Twist and Shout” as fundamental to what it means to be human. I’ll listen to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “Help” absolutely anytime. I’ll take Lennon’s vocals on “You Really Got a Hold on Me” over Smokey Robinson’s, even.
But I can’t get behind Sgt. Pepper’s. Not at this point. In high school, I loved it, but mostly because I felt like I was supposed to. I thought “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was clever. Trippy, even – whatever that means. I figured “Fixing a Hole” had to be a wild metaphor for self-investigation and that therefore it was awesome.. I justified my love of it by pointing to the album’s supposed “concept,” and to the sound effects, and to the way that instruments moved around the stereo spectrum. In college, I stopped listening to anything on it beyond “A Day in the Life.” Now, I find myself most drawn to a couple of tracks that I tended not to like twenty years ago: “Lovely Rita” (mostly for the introduction; after that, it’s maybe a little too cutesy) and “Good Morning” (for the rhythm shifts and for the way it runs perfectly into the title track’s reprise). I still love “A Day in the Life” and probably always will. “Getting Better” is a solid song, but it’s the first one on the album and it’s the fourth track in.
“When I’m 64,” though? Awful. “Will you still need me / will you still feed me.” That’s what McCartney actually sings. “Will you still feed me?” As if the relationship is already one of medical dependence. Meanwhile, “Within You, Without You” is insufferable. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is a throwaway, a solid vocal melody obscured by sound effects and silliness. And “She’s Leaving Home” is maudlin and about four minutes too long.
I know that the album has fallen from its lofty mid-80s position as the great rock record, and I know that it was a big part of that Kill Your Idols book, but, even given that, it’s still overpraised. Should it make a list of the 100 best albums of 1967-1987? Maybe. Especially if “importance” is at all a factor in the judging. But should it be number one? Absolutely not.
Obviously, it’s limited by the two decade boundary, as well as by the magazine’s boomer bias and its insistence on focusing almost entirely on rock. But I’m not interested in complaining about that, really. Instead, now that I’ve heard, over the course of my own two decades of listening, all of those “Greatest Albums,” I want to go back and listen to them again and think about not only what they’ve meant to me (if anything), but what they mean now and to what extent they hold up.
I’ll choose albums more or less randomly.
But I’ll start with the magazine’s number one: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
Everyone’s heard it. Everyone knows it. It’s as enshrined as The Beatles themselves in rock ‘n’ roll history.
But it’s really not that great.
Now, I love The Beatles. I’ll stump all day for Please Please Me and Revolver as phenomenal collections. I’ll make a case for Rubber Soul and Hard Day’s Night as a tiny bit flawed but still great. I’ll argue for “Twist and Shout” as fundamental to what it means to be human. I’ll listen to “I Want to Hold Your Hand” or “Help” absolutely anytime. I’ll take Lennon’s vocals on “You Really Got a Hold on Me” over Smokey Robinson’s, even.
But I can’t get behind Sgt. Pepper’s. Not at this point. In high school, I loved it, but mostly because I felt like I was supposed to. I thought “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” was clever. Trippy, even – whatever that means. I figured “Fixing a Hole” had to be a wild metaphor for self-investigation and that therefore it was awesome.. I justified my love of it by pointing to the album’s supposed “concept,” and to the sound effects, and to the way that instruments moved around the stereo spectrum. In college, I stopped listening to anything on it beyond “A Day in the Life.” Now, I find myself most drawn to a couple of tracks that I tended not to like twenty years ago: “Lovely Rita” (mostly for the introduction; after that, it’s maybe a little too cutesy) and “Good Morning” (for the rhythm shifts and for the way it runs perfectly into the title track’s reprise). I still love “A Day in the Life” and probably always will. “Getting Better” is a solid song, but it’s the first one on the album and it’s the fourth track in.
“When I’m 64,” though? Awful. “Will you still need me / will you still feed me.” That’s what McCartney actually sings. “Will you still feed me?” As if the relationship is already one of medical dependence. Meanwhile, “Within You, Without You” is insufferable. “Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite” is a throwaway, a solid vocal melody obscured by sound effects and silliness. And “She’s Leaving Home” is maudlin and about four minutes too long.
I know that the album has fallen from its lofty mid-80s position as the great rock record, and I know that it was a big part of that Kill Your Idols book, but, even given that, it’s still overpraised. Should it make a list of the 100 best albums of 1967-1987? Maybe. Especially if “importance” is at all a factor in the judging. But should it be number one? Absolutely not.
Thursday, July 30, 2009
Intentionality + My Morning Jacket
And so, as a teacher and a student of literature, I tend to assume intentionality when I read. That is, if I read something on page 200 of a novel that seems like it connects to something from page 3, or if an image toward the end of a book dovetails perfectly with a question that gets raised earlier in the book, or if a particular verb in a poem works exceptionally with a specific idea that the poem seems to explore, I assume that the author intended exactly such connections.
Thus, I assume it's no accident, no coincidence, that Borges has the narrator of "The Babylon Lottery" specify, of all things, a mask factory.
Likewise, I assume it's no accident that in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the boy not only has a nightmare of a penguin that moves without winding, without anything to move its mechanical insides, but also that a gang of marauders, of road agents, are likewise described in very mechanical terms. Not that the boy's nightmare is explicitly about evil roving gangs, or that the penguin is (god forbid) a symbol of such gangs, but that the sum of an image of something moving without purpose, without intent, without any motivation at all and an image of Definite Evil winds up (as you might guess, or as might be obvious) being greater than either individual image. If that makes sense. What, after all, could be more frightening to most humans than the notion that we're all moving / existing / living without purpose, without reason? (Isn't Ahab's greatest fear that he might punch through the mask, punch through the wall, and find that there is nothing, absolutely nothing behind it?
Likewise, I assume it's no accident how often words and images associated with blindness arise in the opening of Joyce's "Araby."
And films, too. I have to assume that even Steven Spielberg was thinking when he inserted that shot of the truck's tailpipe kicking out exhaust five minutes into E.T.
But I don't tend, except in isolated cases, to give the same benefit of the doubt, if that's what it is, to music. Or, not to lyrics, anyway. Sure, if something is explicitly put together as a "concept album," then it kind of begs that sort of attention. Or, if an artist goes out of his way to use the same words or names or images (like Van Morrison's use of "Cypress Avenue" as a setting), I might go looking. And, certainly, I'll find myself assuming musical / chordal associations between songs on an album. But not that often. And not in the same way as I do with books or poems. So, when I was running earlier today and My Morning Jacket's "Anytime" shuffled up and I heard Jim James sing, "Words only got in the way / But then I found another way to communicate," I wanted to assume a connection between that claim and the fact that the opening song on the album (Z, maybe a top ten entry for the last decade, for whatever that's worth) has a "Wordless Chorus." But, ultimately, I had the exact reaction that I try to push my students away from when reading: must have been an accident. A happy one. Maybe even a meaningful one, but an accident nonetheless.
Thus, I assume it's no accident, no coincidence, that Borges has the narrator of "The Babylon Lottery" specify, of all things, a mask factory.
Likewise, I assume it's no accident that in Cormac McCarthy's The Road, the boy not only has a nightmare of a penguin that moves without winding, without anything to move its mechanical insides, but also that a gang of marauders, of road agents, are likewise described in very mechanical terms. Not that the boy's nightmare is explicitly about evil roving gangs, or that the penguin is (god forbid) a symbol of such gangs, but that the sum of an image of something moving without purpose, without intent, without any motivation at all and an image of Definite Evil winds up (as you might guess, or as might be obvious) being greater than either individual image. If that makes sense. What, after all, could be more frightening to most humans than the notion that we're all moving / existing / living without purpose, without reason? (Isn't Ahab's greatest fear that he might punch through the mask, punch through the wall, and find that there is nothing, absolutely nothing behind it?
Likewise, I assume it's no accident how often words and images associated with blindness arise in the opening of Joyce's "Araby."
And films, too. I have to assume that even Steven Spielberg was thinking when he inserted that shot of the truck's tailpipe kicking out exhaust five minutes into E.T.
But I don't tend, except in isolated cases, to give the same benefit of the doubt, if that's what it is, to music. Or, not to lyrics, anyway. Sure, if something is explicitly put together as a "concept album," then it kind of begs that sort of attention. Or, if an artist goes out of his way to use the same words or names or images (like Van Morrison's use of "Cypress Avenue" as a setting), I might go looking. And, certainly, I'll find myself assuming musical / chordal associations between songs on an album. But not that often. And not in the same way as I do with books or poems. So, when I was running earlier today and My Morning Jacket's "Anytime" shuffled up and I heard Jim James sing, "Words only got in the way / But then I found another way to communicate," I wanted to assume a connection between that claim and the fact that the opening song on the album (Z, maybe a top ten entry for the last decade, for whatever that's worth) has a "Wordless Chorus." But, ultimately, I had the exact reaction that I try to push my students away from when reading: must have been an accident. A happy one. Maybe even a meaningful one, but an accident nonetheless.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
The Goldenrods
I've been reading probably too much about Detroit lately, but, in the course of some of that reading, I came across this photo, to which I can only say (and this comment has nothing, nothing, nothing to do with the photo series itself): Farewell, los Goldenrods. El mundo hardly knew ye.
In any case, check out the photo essay: the Urban Prairie.
Friday, June 12, 2009
This Is Uncalled For
A couple of days, the iPod shuffled up, back to back, the Beatles' "Ticket to Ride" and the Wallflowers' cover of "I'm Looking Through You."
A completely random occurence, obviously. A roughly one in 12,000 chance that "Ticket to Ride" gets shuffled up. And once that song ends, a roughly one in 12,000 chance that the Wallflowers' cover of "I'm Looking Through You" gets shuffled up. Not that big of a deal. Trivial, really.
But it's exactly that kind of random occurence, of course, that gets people to believe in a higher intelligence directing the chaos that surrounds us. After all, is it not a sign of intelligence that the iPod knew to follow a Beatles' song (particularly a track that, in many ways, pointed the way toward Rubber Soul) with not just another Beatles' song, but a cover by a different band. That's some Intelligent Design, no? Some Wise Old Benevolent Being Shit, no?
It's the chaplain, in Catch-22, who "would have yielded to reason and relinguished his belief in the God of his fathers... had it not been for such successive mystic phenomena as the naked man in the tree at that poor sergeant's funeral weeks before and the cyptic, haunting, encouraging promise of the prophet Flume in the forest only that afternoon: Tell them I'll be back when winter comes."
Right, Mr. Tappman. It's mystic phenomena. Or maybe, maybe, it's just Yossarian without his clothes.
It's our ability to reason run through (or perhaps clouded by) our need to find a reason.
Incidentally, I liked Catch-22 more this year than either of the last two years. Not sure why. At the end of last year, I was ready to leave it on the shelf for a few years and teach something else instead. Now, it's back in consideration for next year's rotation.
A completely random occurence, obviously. A roughly one in 12,000 chance that "Ticket to Ride" gets shuffled up. And once that song ends, a roughly one in 12,000 chance that the Wallflowers' cover of "I'm Looking Through You" gets shuffled up. Not that big of a deal. Trivial, really.
But it's exactly that kind of random occurence, of course, that gets people to believe in a higher intelligence directing the chaos that surrounds us. After all, is it not a sign of intelligence that the iPod knew to follow a Beatles' song (particularly a track that, in many ways, pointed the way toward Rubber Soul) with not just another Beatles' song, but a cover by a different band. That's some Intelligent Design, no? Some Wise Old Benevolent Being Shit, no?
It's the chaplain, in Catch-22, who "would have yielded to reason and relinguished his belief in the God of his fathers... had it not been for such successive mystic phenomena as the naked man in the tree at that poor sergeant's funeral weeks before and the cyptic, haunting, encouraging promise of the prophet Flume in the forest only that afternoon: Tell them I'll be back when winter comes."
Right, Mr. Tappman. It's mystic phenomena. Or maybe, maybe, it's just Yossarian without his clothes.
It's our ability to reason run through (or perhaps clouded by) our need to find a reason.
Incidentally, I liked Catch-22 more this year than either of the last two years. Not sure why. At the end of last year, I was ready to leave it on the shelf for a few years and teach something else instead. Now, it's back in consideration for next year's rotation.
Friday, June 5, 2009
More Rain in Virginia
We're essentially underwater here in Burke on another rain rain and more rain day. It's a beautiful rain, though, and a beautiful morning. One of those fully saturated, completely green, somewhat dark, but somehow not gray mornings. Would I take it over sunshine and crystal air on a late October afternoon? No, but I sure ain't going to get mopey over it either.
A student claimed a few days ago that Charles Mingus' "Better Git it in Your Soul" is fundamentally life-affirming, fundamentally joyful. And he's right, of course. I replied that I couldn't imagine hearing that song and not feeling good, that, in some way, if an individual hears that song and does like it, well, then that individual probably doesn't actually like music. And it reminded me of a conversation from, like, 18 years ago, and my attempt to express that, no matter how straightup ugly the world might be at times, and no matter how theoretically bleak any particular aspect of the future might look, and no matter how frighteningly empty the prospect of Old Mister Fucking Death He Self might be, I couldn't imagine getting too, you know, like, depressed about it because Bob Dylan existed, because 100 Years of Solitude existed, because Astral Weeks existed, because A Love Supreme existed. Maybe it's a copout, to let art, even challenging art, be a consolation, but I suspect that's only the case if you make art nothing but a mask for pain, or a distraction from hurt.
Plus, there are rivers, mountains, and trees. And the sound that water makes running over rocks. And the end of "When Doves Cry." And Terence Malick's Days of Heaven.
In any case, if you don't have a copy of the Mingus track with you at the moment, get yourself a quick fix via the Interwebs. And if the "Oh yeah!" just before the one minute mark doesn't raise at least a small smile, and if the fundamental drive of the song doesn't at least make you want to get up and move just a tiny bit, then, um, rewind and try again.
("Rewind" just threw me, all adolescent-y into my family's 1987 Chevrolet Nova. For a few seconds, I could sense, exactly, with the first two fingers of my right hand, how it felt to push the rewind and fast-forward buttons simultaneously in order to activate the tape deck's auto-reverse function and flip to the other side of the cassette. And how it felt to root around one-handed on the floor of the car for a tape that had slipped down behind the passenger seat, trying to keep an eye on the road, a foot near the clutch, and another foot in relatively constant pressure on the gas pedal).
Sidenote: OMFD He Self is via Pynchon.
Sidenote: In a 1916 letter, Wallace Stevens wrote, "Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood."
A student claimed a few days ago that Charles Mingus' "Better Git it in Your Soul" is fundamentally life-affirming, fundamentally joyful. And he's right, of course. I replied that I couldn't imagine hearing that song and not feeling good, that, in some way, if an individual hears that song and does like it, well, then that individual probably doesn't actually like music. And it reminded me of a conversation from, like, 18 years ago, and my attempt to express that, no matter how straightup ugly the world might be at times, and no matter how theoretically bleak any particular aspect of the future might look, and no matter how frighteningly empty the prospect of Old Mister Fucking Death He Self might be, I couldn't imagine getting too, you know, like, depressed about it because Bob Dylan existed, because 100 Years of Solitude existed, because Astral Weeks existed, because A Love Supreme existed. Maybe it's a copout, to let art, even challenging art, be a consolation, but I suspect that's only the case if you make art nothing but a mask for pain, or a distraction from hurt.
Plus, there are rivers, mountains, and trees. And the sound that water makes running over rocks. And the end of "When Doves Cry." And Terence Malick's Days of Heaven.
In any case, if you don't have a copy of the Mingus track with you at the moment, get yourself a quick fix via the Interwebs. And if the "Oh yeah!" just before the one minute mark doesn't raise at least a small smile, and if the fundamental drive of the song doesn't at least make you want to get up and move just a tiny bit, then, um, rewind and try again.
("Rewind" just threw me, all adolescent-y into my family's 1987 Chevrolet Nova. For a few seconds, I could sense, exactly, with the first two fingers of my right hand, how it felt to push the rewind and fast-forward buttons simultaneously in order to activate the tape deck's auto-reverse function and flip to the other side of the cassette. And how it felt to root around one-handed on the floor of the car for a tape that had slipped down behind the passenger seat, trying to keep an eye on the road, a foot near the clutch, and another foot in relatively constant pressure on the gas pedal).
Sidenote: OMFD He Self is via Pynchon.
Sidenote: In a 1916 letter, Wallace Stevens wrote, "Unfortunately there is nothing more inane than an Easter carol. It is a religious perversion of the activity of Spring in our blood."
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
A Little More Big Star
And, by the way, if you can imagine a way to improve the drums in "September Gurls," I'd love to hear what it is. If they got any closer to the edge, the song would fall apart. Any tighter and the song would lose its perfect ragged edge.
Friday, May 29, 2009
Big Star
I've been on a bit of a Big Star kick lately, especially Radio City. Today, listening to it, I was struck by the perfection of these lines:
Sometimes I think
She'll make me forget
What I need the most to remember.
Now, those are perfect lines of poetry, necessarily, but they are perfect popsong lines. They capture so well the simultaneous longing, fear, desire, and uncertainty that is adolescence and that is rock and roll.
Radio City. The song is "Way Out West." The band is Big Star. If you buy the CD as it's currently available, you also get the band's debut (#1 Record). 24 great songs, folks, including "Thirteen," "Ballad of El Goodo," and "September Gurls." About as good as ultra-polished (but ragged) 1970s poprock magic could get.
Paul Westerberg: "I never travel far without a little Big Star."
Sometimes I think
She'll make me forget
What I need the most to remember.
Now, those are perfect lines of poetry, necessarily, but they are perfect popsong lines. They capture so well the simultaneous longing, fear, desire, and uncertainty that is adolescence and that is rock and roll.
Radio City. The song is "Way Out West." The band is Big Star. If you buy the CD as it's currently available, you also get the band's debut (#1 Record). 24 great songs, folks, including "Thirteen," "Ballad of El Goodo," and "September Gurls." About as good as ultra-polished (but ragged) 1970s poprock magic could get.
Paul Westerberg: "I never travel far without a little Big Star."
Thursday, May 28, 2009
Neil Young's Archives (Take Two)
I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but I ordered the Blu-Ray version of the Archives box. I can't justify it, necessarily, and I'm sure that, like Dave Eggers writes, "None of this was necessary," but I thought about it, considered it, decided against it, considered it some more, laughed it off, thought about it, and finally ordered it.
The way I figure it: if nothing else, getting older, getting a job, achieving some form of financial independence and (relative) comfort, must carry with it some perks, right? And one of those perks -- at least as I have found -- is that, within reason, if there is, let's say, a book I want to read, or a piece of music I want to hear, or some crazy spontaneously-fermented barrel-aged funkness from Belgian that I want to try, I can buy the damn thing.
So I bought the damn thing.
And maybe the Blu-Ray set is not within reason, but, you know, it's not like throwing the money into a retirement fund is any more within reason.
The way I figure it: if nothing else, getting older, getting a job, achieving some form of financial independence and (relative) comfort, must carry with it some perks, right? And one of those perks -- at least as I have found -- is that, within reason, if there is, let's say, a book I want to read, or a piece of music I want to hear, or some crazy spontaneously-fermented barrel-aged funkness from Belgian that I want to try, I can buy the damn thing.
So I bought the damn thing.
And maybe the Blu-Ray set is not within reason, but, you know, it's not like throwing the money into a retirement fund is any more within reason.
Monday, May 18, 2009
Neil Young's Archives
For those interested in such things, there is a quasi-demo for disc eight of Neil Young's archives. Not a demo for the CD version, clearly, but the DVD or Blu-Ray rendition. It's not a complete look (video doesn't play, for example), but it is an intriguing taste (if I may mix my sensory appeals).
Friday, May 15, 2009
Dylan Stops Time
I let Bob Dylan back into my life this winter. I do this every couple of years. He’s never fully banished, but in an off-time, I might listen to the occasional record (say, one a week), maybe put on a live recording every month or so, and focus my energy elsewhere – Neil Young, perhaps, or Sam Cooke, or Bill Evans, or the Hold Steady, or A Tribute to Jack Johnson.
But then something happens: a new outtake is found mouldering in an obscure Columbia vault somewhere, or Dylan puts a new song on a soundtrack, or the particular spiral of a falling leaf strikes me, or I get fascinated by the shape of a snowflake, or I read an out-of-context quote somewhere about the sound of the second acoustic guitar on “Desolation Row” and I’m off. Three out of four records I play are Dylan’s. Eight out of ten songs. I read or re-read books, articles and essays. I construct playlists with nothing but alternate takes of released songs. I revise my Infidels running order. I evangelize on the holy beauty of “Shelter from the Storm” and its relationship to “Up to Me.” I compare the three different studio takes of “Idiot Wind” (the test pressing, the one on The Bootleg Series Volume Two, and the one released on Blood on the Tracks). I pretend that there is some value in the time I spend considering how the post-2000 live arrangement of “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” fundamentally alters not just the mood of the song but its very meaning.
In any case, here’s what I’m obsessed with today (and if I knew how to embed an audioclip, I would, so feel free to step up and help out): the way that Dylan played and sang “Mr. Tambourine Man” in 1966. Now, I love the slow, scarred 1995 examples (the pathos of a line like “My weariness amazes me” sung in the ravaged but unbeaten mid-90s voice is undeniable), and the more stately arrangements of late 2000, but these versions from 1966 are on an entirely different planet. Part of it is the warmth of the voice: it’s that thick Blonde on Blonde voice as it works its way through the cascading images, that voice already so different than the one that sang it upon the song’s completion two years earlier. And part of it is the suspend-time, suspend-disbelief harmonica solo, particularly the final one, as Dylan whirls around two or three motifs, circles them again and again before finally settling on a piercing, insistent, and ex-ten-ded high note, holding it, holding it, holding it before finally releasing. Part of it is the knowledge that that final, breathless crash into the song’s conclusion would be followed by a short break and then the Sonic Death Monkey wallop of Dylan and the Hawks crashing at terminal velocity into “Tell Me Mama” and the rest of the electric set. But mostly, and in particular, it’s this: in the final verse, Dylan sings, “Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
(And it’s not just that line that’s killing me, although it is a quintessential bit of Dylan writing: an impossibility pushed across as a wish, its seeming positive nature undercut by the knowledge that even if we could arrive at tomorrow today, every today we’ve ever lived is now yesterday, is now behind us, and living for the sake of the past, like living for the sake of the future, takes us, if nothing else, firmly outside of today. It’s annihilation. It’s the desire to escape today and the promise that tomorrow, he will focus on today, but some part of him knowing (as it must know) that, of course, by tomorrow, today is the past. And, perfectly, the preceding lines are, “With all memory and fate / driven deep beneath the waves”).
In this version, on this night, on this tour, Dylan sings it as, “Let me forget about two-mah… row.” He inserts this pause, this space, this emptiness, this possibility in between the second and third syllables of “tomorrow.” It stops time. And that hesitation, that pause, that breath, sends me back to the song over and over (and reminds me of Paul Williams’ insistence that the performance of a song is, in fact, the song).
It’s that pause. It’s all of the tension created as Dylan makes you wait. And makes you wait. It’s what he does with the harmonica a minute later, but here it’s his voice. Worlds are created in that pause. And then, fully, thickly, wonderfully, he finishes it. Resolves the tension. Puts time into motion again. Takes us out of suspended animation (a state of bliss, perhaps, but also a living death) and sets us free.
It’s a good thing.
You can hear it, by the way, on The Bootleg Series Volume Four: Live 1966. Which you should own already: the concert contained within, truly, is Some Important Shit.
But then something happens: a new outtake is found mouldering in an obscure Columbia vault somewhere, or Dylan puts a new song on a soundtrack, or the particular spiral of a falling leaf strikes me, or I get fascinated by the shape of a snowflake, or I read an out-of-context quote somewhere about the sound of the second acoustic guitar on “Desolation Row” and I’m off. Three out of four records I play are Dylan’s. Eight out of ten songs. I read or re-read books, articles and essays. I construct playlists with nothing but alternate takes of released songs. I revise my Infidels running order. I evangelize on the holy beauty of “Shelter from the Storm” and its relationship to “Up to Me.” I compare the three different studio takes of “Idiot Wind” (the test pressing, the one on The Bootleg Series Volume Two, and the one released on Blood on the Tracks). I pretend that there is some value in the time I spend considering how the post-2000 live arrangement of “Tryin’ to Get to Heaven” fundamentally alters not just the mood of the song but its very meaning.
In any case, here’s what I’m obsessed with today (and if I knew how to embed an audioclip, I would, so feel free to step up and help out): the way that Dylan played and sang “Mr. Tambourine Man” in 1966. Now, I love the slow, scarred 1995 examples (the pathos of a line like “My weariness amazes me” sung in the ravaged but unbeaten mid-90s voice is undeniable), and the more stately arrangements of late 2000, but these versions from 1966 are on an entirely different planet. Part of it is the warmth of the voice: it’s that thick Blonde on Blonde voice as it works its way through the cascading images, that voice already so different than the one that sang it upon the song’s completion two years earlier. And part of it is the suspend-time, suspend-disbelief harmonica solo, particularly the final one, as Dylan whirls around two or three motifs, circles them again and again before finally settling on a piercing, insistent, and ex-ten-ded high note, holding it, holding it, holding it before finally releasing. Part of it is the knowledge that that final, breathless crash into the song’s conclusion would be followed by a short break and then the Sonic Death Monkey wallop of Dylan and the Hawks crashing at terminal velocity into “Tell Me Mama” and the rest of the electric set. But mostly, and in particular, it’s this: in the final verse, Dylan sings, “Let me forget about today until tomorrow.”
(And it’s not just that line that’s killing me, although it is a quintessential bit of Dylan writing: an impossibility pushed across as a wish, its seeming positive nature undercut by the knowledge that even if we could arrive at tomorrow today, every today we’ve ever lived is now yesterday, is now behind us, and living for the sake of the past, like living for the sake of the future, takes us, if nothing else, firmly outside of today. It’s annihilation. It’s the desire to escape today and the promise that tomorrow, he will focus on today, but some part of him knowing (as it must know) that, of course, by tomorrow, today is the past. And, perfectly, the preceding lines are, “With all memory and fate / driven deep beneath the waves”).
In this version, on this night, on this tour, Dylan sings it as, “Let me forget about two-mah… row.” He inserts this pause, this space, this emptiness, this possibility in between the second and third syllables of “tomorrow.” It stops time. And that hesitation, that pause, that breath, sends me back to the song over and over (and reminds me of Paul Williams’ insistence that the performance of a song is, in fact, the song).
It’s that pause. It’s all of the tension created as Dylan makes you wait. And makes you wait. It’s what he does with the harmonica a minute later, but here it’s his voice. Worlds are created in that pause. And then, fully, thickly, wonderfully, he finishes it. Resolves the tension. Puts time into motion again. Takes us out of suspended animation (a state of bliss, perhaps, but also a living death) and sets us free.
It’s a good thing.
You can hear it, by the way, on The Bootleg Series Volume Four: Live 1966. Which you should own already: the concert contained within, truly, is Some Important Shit.
Wednesday, April 1, 2009
Prog Rock Glory
Thanks to a roundabout link from a link from a link to a link, I happened upon what everyone else in the world, in the Facebook Nation, has already done: the album cover generation cultural meme game internet funkness. So I played along. Who doesn't like two minutes of diversion, especially when those two minutes cloak themselves in a quasi-scavengerhunt costume.
Here's how it works:
1. Get a random Wikipedia page. That's the name of your band.
2. Get a random quotation. The last four or five words of the last quote of the page is the title of the band's album.
3. Get a random flickr photo. The third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover.
And, should you wish, you can then Photoshop the bajeezus out of the photo, layering in your band's name, your album title, etc.
Fantastic. It's Wu-Name magic.
Here's what I came up with:
Garden of Allah: As If Men Were Listening
Of course, it didn't stop there: the two minutes it took to click through (and revel) then became twenty minutes of imagining the sound, the biography, the press materials, and potential reviews of the album. But, really, when you're given such a gift as that name, that title, and that photo, how can you not play with it?
At first I thought the band would be a lost one-album wonder from early 1970s England, another anonymous pastoral-prog outfit with its roots in fuzzy psychedelia but attempting to hitch a ride on Ian Anderson's flute by playing a lot of acoustic intros to otherwise riff-heavy songs, and to capitalize on the fact that the bass player once shared a flat with one of the guys from Caravan.
But then I saw that album cover, screaming its allegiance to the digital Now, to 37 minutes with Photoshop, and the bio shifted, jumped thirty years forward.
It turns out that Vancouver, as I imagined it, has a crazy underground progrock scene (rife with divisions between the folk-proggers, the neo-metal proggers, the secret Rush fans, the obscure Italian scenesters, and those who hold all their rehearsals in German). Garden of Allah, first formed in 1999, initially fancied itself a King's X-style power trio, but has since added two members -- keyboard and a multi-instrumentalist who plays mandolin, mandocello, and mellotron -- and now swears allegiance to all things Frippish, but sounds like a poor man's Tull.
As if Men Were Listening is a concept album of sorts, albeit one whose storyline is much more suggestive than overt, perhaps a nod to Roy Harper circa Stormcock (and, in fact, on the band's My Space page, you can download a cover of Harper's "The Same Old Rock.") Both of the side-long suites open with acoustic passages, decorated with the occasional mandolin riff, building to grandiose segments of layered vocals, crashing electric chords and, inevitably, an organ solo. The tracklisting:
1. Millenial Blues
2. Infinite Regress (a fragment)
3. Eight Stones Left
4. The Future is Then (finale)
Signing off with a Wu-Name flashback: The Illegitimate Muslim Fundamentalist is over and out.
Here's how it works:
1. Get a random Wikipedia page. That's the name of your band.
2. Get a random quotation. The last four or five words of the last quote of the page is the title of the band's album.
3. Get a random flickr photo. The third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover.
And, should you wish, you can then Photoshop the bajeezus out of the photo, layering in your band's name, your album title, etc.
Fantastic. It's Wu-Name magic.
Here's what I came up with:
Garden of Allah: As If Men Were Listening
Of course, it didn't stop there: the two minutes it took to click through (and revel) then became twenty minutes of imagining the sound, the biography, the press materials, and potential reviews of the album. But, really, when you're given such a gift as that name, that title, and that photo, how can you not play with it?
At first I thought the band would be a lost one-album wonder from early 1970s England, another anonymous pastoral-prog outfit with its roots in fuzzy psychedelia but attempting to hitch a ride on Ian Anderson's flute by playing a lot of acoustic intros to otherwise riff-heavy songs, and to capitalize on the fact that the bass player once shared a flat with one of the guys from Caravan.
But then I saw that album cover, screaming its allegiance to the digital Now, to 37 minutes with Photoshop, and the bio shifted, jumped thirty years forward.
It turns out that Vancouver, as I imagined it, has a crazy underground progrock scene (rife with divisions between the folk-proggers, the neo-metal proggers, the secret Rush fans, the obscure Italian scenesters, and those who hold all their rehearsals in German). Garden of Allah, first formed in 1999, initially fancied itself a King's X-style power trio, but has since added two members -- keyboard and a multi-instrumentalist who plays mandolin, mandocello, and mellotron -- and now swears allegiance to all things Frippish, but sounds like a poor man's Tull.
As if Men Were Listening is a concept album of sorts, albeit one whose storyline is much more suggestive than overt, perhaps a nod to Roy Harper circa Stormcock (and, in fact, on the band's My Space page, you can download a cover of Harper's "The Same Old Rock.") Both of the side-long suites open with acoustic passages, decorated with the occasional mandolin riff, building to grandiose segments of layered vocals, crashing electric chords and, inevitably, an organ solo. The tracklisting:
1. Millenial Blues
A. White Saturday
B. Time's Passion
C. The Shadow of History
D. Year of the Manticore
2. Infinite Regress (a fragment)
3. Eight Stones Left
A. The Lonely Iconoclast
B. Humanity's Fountain
C. Never the Shire
D. Twilight Oracle
4. The Future is Then (finale)
Signing off with a Wu-Name flashback: The Illegitimate Muslim Fundamentalist is over and out.
Monday, March 30, 2009
New Dylan
It's another month before Dylan's new album drops (see that? "Drops." That's how I roll, kids. See that? "Roll." That's how I roll, kids. See that? Pete and Repeat were in a boat. Pete fell out.) but you can pick up a track (downloadable) from bobdylan.com if you get there today (Monday).
It's "Beyond Here Lies Nothin'" and, if the song is any indication, the album should be pretty damn good. Not necessarily better than Love and Theft or Modern Times, but right in that same vein of consistent, pretty damn good craftsmanship that he's been mining pretty damn well for the last decade. And the accordion that leads off every story about the album works for the song, the whole thing an odd-at-first-glance melange of loping shuffle and dirty guitar, of border trumpets and 1950s Chicago studio magic. It's a little like the swampy mudfunk of Time Out of Mind but with the production approach of the last two records -- not too much of the Lanois reverb (though the drums are fairly wet). Plus, it might just redeem the "Black Magic Woman" beat (and progression, for that matter).
See that? Melange...
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Harper's Band
Harper -- to be four in April -- has a band.
I'm in favor of that.
(And I'm fully aware of the dangers of And Then My Kid stories, but will that stop me? No, it will not).
Its name is Mex Fluoride. Its members are as follows:
Vocals: Beef
Guitar: Buller
Drums: Flyer
Keyboards: I'm The Tallest Mouse
Harper typically takes the role of Beef.
Mex Fluoride is most well-known for its songs "Texas Texas (Won't You Go Away)" and "Put Your Hand Down," but those who see the band frequently may have heard "Drop the Cheerio" or perhaps a cover of "Suffragette City" or "Run to the Hills."
I have no idea where this comes from. I mean, I know where the Bowie and Iron Maiden covers come from, but the rest of it? Do I know its origin? No, I do not. It's like when he opened his own restaurant over the summer and named himself, as cook and owner, Greasy Sanders.
Regardless, I'm proud of the kid.
I'm in favor of that.
(And I'm fully aware of the dangers of And Then My Kid stories, but will that stop me? No, it will not).
Its name is Mex Fluoride. Its members are as follows:
Vocals: Beef
Guitar: Buller
Drums: Flyer
Keyboards: I'm The Tallest Mouse
Harper typically takes the role of Beef.
Mex Fluoride is most well-known for its songs "Texas Texas (Won't You Go Away)" and "Put Your Hand Down," but those who see the band frequently may have heard "Drop the Cheerio" or perhaps a cover of "Suffragette City" or "Run to the Hills."
I have no idea where this comes from. I mean, I know where the Bowie and Iron Maiden covers come from, but the rest of it? Do I know its origin? No, I do not. It's like when he opened his own restaurant over the summer and named himself, as cook and owner, Greasy Sanders.
Regardless, I'm proud of the kid.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Springsteen's New Album
I like Bruce Springsteen. I do. He’s never going to be a member of the Pantheon (Bob Dylan / Neil Young / Van Morrison / Stevie Wonder), nor will any of his records, outside of, say, Born to Run, ever crack the personal top thirty. Much as I might like them, I’ll never evangelize for Darkness on the Edge of Town like I have for the Band’s second album, or listen obsessively to Nebraska like I have to Al Green’s Call Me. I’ll collect the occasional concert recording to get a sense for what people mean when they refer to particularly legendary concerts by him. And I’ll even await new records with some degree of enthusiasm. Not as any kind of superfan, but as someone who is interested.
All this by way of saying that I’ve heard Working on a Dream and I’m not impressed. The songs are ultimately okay, if not necessarily as “worked” as those on Magic, but the production kills the thing. Just kills the thing.
(A sidenote: I’m not a fanatical “loudness is killing everything” prophet o’ doom, but there’s no doubt that a lot of recordings are brickwalled, over-compressed, and hard to listen to).
It’s this friable, high, trebly, bright, mechanical shine that holds us at arm’s length. It becomes not fun as a listening experience. And, for Mr. Springsteen, that must be a sort of nasty irony: you write fun, sunshine radio songs that, thanks to the mastering, no one can enjoy listening to.
And it’s not like I have phenomenal ears. A few years of club shows and too many hours in the basement with loud guitar and drums have, I’m sure, left me with at least a few gaps in my audible tone range, but even I can hear how ridiculous the production is and how poorly it frames the songs. Same thing with Magic, really – and those were better songs, even.
Maybe I have to get over that with Mr. Springsteen. Maybe I have to accept that, with the exception of three, maybe four records, he’s not going to make something with a sound I like as much as the songs.
(Those exceptions: The Wild / Innocent, Born to Run, Nebraska, and, arguably, Darkness, though even that last one has a disappointing drum sound that keeps something like “Badlands” from being the piledriver it could be).
Born in the USA and Tunnel of Love both suffer from dated sound (instrumentation) and awful, dated production (those gated drums and that keyboard-wash over everything). I like those songs, for the most part, but I can’t, just can’t, listen to “Dancing in the Dark” because of how it sounds.
Most problematic about Magic and Dream: the older albums (even USA and Tunnel) have a sense of dynamics. Everything, essentially everything on the two latest – every note, every riff, every cymbal splash – is placed at the same (maximum) volume throughout the records. Any place that a song could get louder, any moment in which a dynamic shift might be natural, winds up distorted instead. And, in almost every case, the instrumentation is the same from the beginning of each song to the end. There’s no build, neither in dynamics nor in arrangement. That accelerating race through “Thunder Road”? Won’t happen. You know that moment when the drums, the guitars, finally crash in on the piano figure in “Backstreets,” how that makes you feel? You won’t (and can’t) find that here.
And I know that an album is an ultimately disposable product, and no one’s asking – or, at least, I’m not asking – for the same song to be written over and over again, but to make entire albums that sound like “Night” (maxed out and crashing all the way through) doesn’t seem like the way to make a product that might last. Songs like Magic’s “Living in the Future” or Dream’s “This Day” deserve better.
All this by way of saying that I’ve heard Working on a Dream and I’m not impressed. The songs are ultimately okay, if not necessarily as “worked” as those on Magic, but the production kills the thing. Just kills the thing.
(A sidenote: I’m not a fanatical “loudness is killing everything” prophet o’ doom, but there’s no doubt that a lot of recordings are brickwalled, over-compressed, and hard to listen to).
It’s this friable, high, trebly, bright, mechanical shine that holds us at arm’s length. It becomes not fun as a listening experience. And, for Mr. Springsteen, that must be a sort of nasty irony: you write fun, sunshine radio songs that, thanks to the mastering, no one can enjoy listening to.
And it’s not like I have phenomenal ears. A few years of club shows and too many hours in the basement with loud guitar and drums have, I’m sure, left me with at least a few gaps in my audible tone range, but even I can hear how ridiculous the production is and how poorly it frames the songs. Same thing with Magic, really – and those were better songs, even.
Maybe I have to get over that with Mr. Springsteen. Maybe I have to accept that, with the exception of three, maybe four records, he’s not going to make something with a sound I like as much as the songs.
(Those exceptions: The Wild / Innocent, Born to Run, Nebraska, and, arguably, Darkness, though even that last one has a disappointing drum sound that keeps something like “Badlands” from being the piledriver it could be).
Born in the USA and Tunnel of Love both suffer from dated sound (instrumentation) and awful, dated production (those gated drums and that keyboard-wash over everything). I like those songs, for the most part, but I can’t, just can’t, listen to “Dancing in the Dark” because of how it sounds.
Most problematic about Magic and Dream: the older albums (even USA and Tunnel) have a sense of dynamics. Everything, essentially everything on the two latest – every note, every riff, every cymbal splash – is placed at the same (maximum) volume throughout the records. Any place that a song could get louder, any moment in which a dynamic shift might be natural, winds up distorted instead. And, in almost every case, the instrumentation is the same from the beginning of each song to the end. There’s no build, neither in dynamics nor in arrangement. That accelerating race through “Thunder Road”? Won’t happen. You know that moment when the drums, the guitars, finally crash in on the piano figure in “Backstreets,” how that makes you feel? You won’t (and can’t) find that here.
And I know that an album is an ultimately disposable product, and no one’s asking – or, at least, I’m not asking – for the same song to be written over and over again, but to make entire albums that sound like “Night” (maxed out and crashing all the way through) doesn’t seem like the way to make a product that might last. Songs like Magic’s “Living in the Future” or Dream’s “This Day” deserve better.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Random iPod Song
The Whatnauts: "Why Can't People be Colors Too?"
If the bouncing bassline and the occasional wah-wah licks couldn't place it, the title alone should date this one fairly clearly to the early '70s. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and if you're looking for medium-tempo generic soul, that's a fine era to do a little diving.
And there's nothing wrong with the song, either.
And, for that matter, there's nothing particularly right about it.
It comes in, nods its head a few times, makes its point
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Why can't people be colors, too?
and gets out before overstaying its welcome. Nothing surprising, nothing enlightening, no hint of tension and, thus, nothing to get released from.
Did A Tribe Called Quest sample these drums for something?
If the bouncing bassline and the occasional wah-wah licks couldn't place it, the title alone should date this one fairly clearly to the early '70s. Nothing wrong with that, of course, and if you're looking for medium-tempo generic soul, that's a fine era to do a little diving.
And there's nothing wrong with the song, either.
And, for that matter, there's nothing particularly right about it.
It comes in, nods its head a few times, makes its point
Roses are red
Violets are blue
Why can't people be colors, too?
and gets out before overstaying its welcome. Nothing surprising, nothing enlightening, no hint of tension and, thus, nothing to get released from.
Did A Tribe Called Quest sample these drums for something?
Thursday, December 18, 2008
Long Shadows
Two little bits of Dylan today:
1. In an interview in Uncut, Chris Shaw, an engineer on Dylan's last several albums, talks about recording "Moonlight," a song from Love and Theft. As part of that discussion, he relates this anectdote:
The thing was, there’s a lyric on the song where Bob sings, "The leaves cast their shadows on the stones," and, when he was singing it live, he was reading his lyrics off a piece of paper, and, I guess, for a split-second, he got dyslexic, because on the live take, he actually sang, "The leaves cast their stadows on the stones." So, the only time I did any editing on that song, was when I heard this word "stadows" go by, I knew he meant shadows, because I had the lyric sheet in front of me. So, when I tried a remix, I took the vocal, and I found a "sh" from somewhere else, and I chopped the "st" out and put that in, so he was singing "shadows," y’know. And Bob was listening to all these mixes, and he kept saying, "Nah, man, I really wanna use that rough mix." Finally, I said, "Well, you know, on the rough mix, you don’t sing 'shadows,' you sing, 'stadows.'" And he took a long hit on his cigarette, and he kind of looked at me deadpan, and he went, "Well, you know: stadows." So, at the final mastering, we figured that we really couldn’t let that stadows go by, because everybody would give him shit about it, so we did sliver edit, literally just for the "sh," like a 15 milisecond edit.
I love that, the image of Dylan sitting for a second, taking a drag of his cigarette, and then saying, "Well, you know: stadows." Perfect. Poetry.
The whole interview is here at Uncut.
2. This longish piece on recording Blonde on Blonde, which includes a fair amount of discussion of the New York sessions for the album. Well worth reading.
1. In an interview in Uncut, Chris Shaw, an engineer on Dylan's last several albums, talks about recording "Moonlight," a song from Love and Theft. As part of that discussion, he relates this anectdote:
The thing was, there’s a lyric on the song where Bob sings, "The leaves cast their shadows on the stones," and, when he was singing it live, he was reading his lyrics off a piece of paper, and, I guess, for a split-second, he got dyslexic, because on the live take, he actually sang, "The leaves cast their stadows on the stones." So, the only time I did any editing on that song, was when I heard this word "stadows" go by, I knew he meant shadows, because I had the lyric sheet in front of me. So, when I tried a remix, I took the vocal, and I found a "sh" from somewhere else, and I chopped the "st" out and put that in, so he was singing "shadows," y’know. And Bob was listening to all these mixes, and he kept saying, "Nah, man, I really wanna use that rough mix." Finally, I said, "Well, you know, on the rough mix, you don’t sing 'shadows,' you sing, 'stadows.'" And he took a long hit on his cigarette, and he kind of looked at me deadpan, and he went, "Well, you know: stadows." So, at the final mastering, we figured that we really couldn’t let that stadows go by, because everybody would give him shit about it, so we did sliver edit, literally just for the "sh," like a 15 milisecond edit.
I love that, the image of Dylan sitting for a second, taking a drag of his cigarette, and then saying, "Well, you know: stadows." Perfect. Poetry.
The whole interview is here at Uncut.
2. This longish piece on recording Blonde on Blonde, which includes a fair amount of discussion of the New York sessions for the album. Well worth reading.
Wednesday, December 17, 2008
The Mynah Birds
Hip-O Select's The Complete Motown Singles, Volume Six has an otherwise unreleased single by the Mynah Birds, the short-lived group that at one point boasted both Neil Young AND Rick James as members.
Yep, that Neil Young.
And that Rick James.
I've listened to the single (both sides) a few times in the last week and it's pretty good. Not life-changing, as two songs by Rick James and Neil Young could be, but still pretty damn good. The A-Side, "It's My Time" is a sort of Nuggets-esque piece of fuzzy garage-soul that works well. Not particularly similar to anything else Motown had going in 1966, but still effective. The B-Side "Go On and Cry" is almost British in its sound and tone -- and while that might seem even more bizarre than the whole idea of the group, according to what I remember of Young's biography Shakey, Rick James, more than anything else, wanted, at this point, to be Mick Jagger. (And that's awesome in its own right. Here you have Mick Jagger trying desperately to be a black American and, in so doing, inspiring Rick James to be a white Englishman. How can you not love that?)
And then James got busted for being AWOL from the Navy.
And Neil left for Los Angeles.
And Motown never released the single (until now).
And there's supposedly a whole album somewhere that Motown threw in its vaults when Gordy and Company canned the Mynah Birds' single. Perhaps to emerge when Neil's Archives get released? Someday?
Yep, that Neil Young.
And that Rick James.
I've listened to the single (both sides) a few times in the last week and it's pretty good. Not life-changing, as two songs by Rick James and Neil Young could be, but still pretty damn good. The A-Side, "It's My Time" is a sort of Nuggets-esque piece of fuzzy garage-soul that works well. Not particularly similar to anything else Motown had going in 1966, but still effective. The B-Side "Go On and Cry" is almost British in its sound and tone -- and while that might seem even more bizarre than the whole idea of the group, according to what I remember of Young's biography Shakey, Rick James, more than anything else, wanted, at this point, to be Mick Jagger. (And that's awesome in its own right. Here you have Mick Jagger trying desperately to be a black American and, in so doing, inspiring Rick James to be a white Englishman. How can you not love that?)
And then James got busted for being AWOL from the Navy.
And Neil left for Los Angeles.
And Motown never released the single (until now).
And there's supposedly a whole album somewhere that Motown threw in its vaults when Gordy and Company canned the Mynah Birds' single. Perhaps to emerge when Neil's Archives get released? Someday?
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
The Lost Dylan Album
Not Columbia's Dylan, the one with "Spanish is the Loving Tongue" and "Big Yellow Taxi," but the potential extra record contained within the outtakes and soundtrack work on Tell Tale Signs, the latest volume of the Bootleg Series.
Along with the pleasure of the collection itself, one of the great things about this volume is the possibility of creating an entire additional record to stand alongside Love and Theft and Modern Times. As those are both fantastic records in their own right, and each better than 1997's "comeback" Time Out of Mind, how could a person not want another? And not just a different reading of the songs, as in the "New York" version of Blood on the Tracks, and not just an ideal version of an otherwise mediocre record, like the one you can create from Infidels and its outtakes, but an entirely new thing, an entirely new companion, an entirely new set of googley-moogley eyes with which to see the world.
Or mostly new, anyway.
Here's what I came up with, using studio material only, and while striving for a (relatively) concise single disc and a (relatively) unified sound. And, with the exception of the leadoff track, using only material from Tell Tale Signs.
Things Have Changed
Someday Baby
Can't Wait (version one)
Mississippi (probably version one)
Red River Shore
Marching to the City (version one)
Tell Ol' Bill
Huck's Tune
Cross the Green Mountain
(And those who order early get a "Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache" bonus track).
The two uncertainties I have with it are the use (and/or placement) of "Marching to the City," which is a great song, but one I can't quite get to fit in the sequence, and the version of "Mississippi" to use. Soundwise, and sequencewise, the best fit for "Mississippi" would actually be the released Love and Theft version. If I use that one, then I move it to the two-slot, flipping it with "Someday Baby." That's a better sequence, but I can't quite, in good conscience, simply give up and use the already-released take. Not yet, anyway. Maybe later.
The other consideration is that this is, for all intents and purposes, a CD-based track order. If I were releasing this on vinyl, I'd make a couple of other changes. That version would look like this:
Side One:
Things Have Changed
Mississippi
Can't Wait
Marching to the City
Side Two:
Someday Baby
Tell Ol' Bill
Red River Shore
Huck's Tune
Cross the Green Mountain
Provided, of course, that the math works for song and side timings.
"Dreaming of You" gets left out for not quite working with the sound of the rest of the record, by the way. And "Can't Escape from You" becomes a b-side. And, while I like it, I can't get "Ain't Talkin'" to fit anywhere.
I don't know. Maybe I'm too easily amused.
Along with the pleasure of the collection itself, one of the great things about this volume is the possibility of creating an entire additional record to stand alongside Love and Theft and Modern Times. As those are both fantastic records in their own right, and each better than 1997's "comeback" Time Out of Mind, how could a person not want another? And not just a different reading of the songs, as in the "New York" version of Blood on the Tracks, and not just an ideal version of an otherwise mediocre record, like the one you can create from Infidels and its outtakes, but an entirely new thing, an entirely new companion, an entirely new set of googley-moogley eyes with which to see the world.
Or mostly new, anyway.
Here's what I came up with, using studio material only, and while striving for a (relatively) concise single disc and a (relatively) unified sound. And, with the exception of the leadoff track, using only material from Tell Tale Signs.
Things Have Changed
Someday Baby
Can't Wait (version one)
Mississippi (probably version one)
Red River Shore
Marching to the City (version one)
Tell Ol' Bill
Huck's Tune
Cross the Green Mountain
(And those who order early get a "Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache" bonus track).
The two uncertainties I have with it are the use (and/or placement) of "Marching to the City," which is a great song, but one I can't quite get to fit in the sequence, and the version of "Mississippi" to use. Soundwise, and sequencewise, the best fit for "Mississippi" would actually be the released Love and Theft version. If I use that one, then I move it to the two-slot, flipping it with "Someday Baby." That's a better sequence, but I can't quite, in good conscience, simply give up and use the already-released take. Not yet, anyway. Maybe later.
The other consideration is that this is, for all intents and purposes, a CD-based track order. If I were releasing this on vinyl, I'd make a couple of other changes. That version would look like this:
Side One:
Things Have Changed
Mississippi
Can't Wait
Marching to the City
Side Two:
Someday Baby
Tell Ol' Bill
Red River Shore
Huck's Tune
Cross the Green Mountain
Provided, of course, that the math works for song and side timings.
"Dreaming of You" gets left out for not quite working with the sound of the rest of the record, by the way. And "Can't Escape from You" becomes a b-side. And, while I like it, I can't get "Ain't Talkin'" to fit anywhere.
I don't know. Maybe I'm too easily amused.
Monday, December 15, 2008
Tell-Tale Signs
Okay, so the Hold Steady made another solid record this year, and, okay, I enjoy the Fleet Foxes album more than I thought I would, but the best release of 2008 -- that I heard -- is the latest volume in Dylan's Bootleg Series: Tell-Tale Signs. Seriously.
And I know it's a compilation.
And I know it's material that was recorded, in some cases almost 20 years ago.
But nothing else this year can come close to it for consistency, for coherence, for brilliant moments, and for the way that it makes you rethink what the musician (Dylan) is capable of at any given moment.
As a single volume in the series -- technically the "Eighth," but only the sixth to be released as the first three volumes were released as a box set -- this is up there with the original collection and the 1966 Judas Concert. It's that good.
Consider the way that it reinvents "Most of the Time" as an acoustic companion piece to "Wedding Song" from Planet Waves. Or the way that "Someday Baby" becomes viable, becomes an actual song instead of merely a placeholding downtempo shuffle on Modern Times. Or the way that "Born in Time" acquires passion, interest, humanity, and perhaps even beauty. Or the way that the first "Can't Wait," stripped of Lanois' sturm-und-echo-drang, discovers the anguish at its heart.
And on and on. The demo of "Dignity." The Supper Club version of "Ring Them Bells." The wholescale reinvention of "Tryin' to Get to Heaven" (from the special edition third disc, which is, um, available in a variety of ways). The World Gone Wrong outtake "32-20 Blues."
Not everything is magic, of course. The three versions of "Mississippi," while intriguing, ultimately don't make for a completely new listening experience in the same fashion as "Can't Wait" or "Most of the Time."
And, and, AND, you get "Cross the Green Mountain" (otherwise available only on a soundtrack to a movie nobody cares about) and "Huck's Tune" (another soundtrack piece) and, critically, "Red River Shore," one of the finest (and most perfectly Dylan-like) pieces he's recorded in two decades. And if you can listen to "Red River Shore" and not want to hear more from the man, then you probably never will.
Seriously -- "Red River Shore." It's revelatory. It's like hearing "Blind Willie McTell" and wondering how the hell that got left off of Infidels back in 1983. It's that good. As is the whole of the set.
Good enough to create an entire "lost album" just from the last decade of the outtakes and soundtrack work, an album to rival Love and Theft and Modern Times. No easy feat.
And I know it's a compilation.
And I know it's material that was recorded, in some cases almost 20 years ago.
But nothing else this year can come close to it for consistency, for coherence, for brilliant moments, and for the way that it makes you rethink what the musician (Dylan) is capable of at any given moment.
As a single volume in the series -- technically the "Eighth," but only the sixth to be released as the first three volumes were released as a box set -- this is up there with the original collection and the 1966 Judas Concert. It's that good.
Consider the way that it reinvents "Most of the Time" as an acoustic companion piece to "Wedding Song" from Planet Waves. Or the way that "Someday Baby" becomes viable, becomes an actual song instead of merely a placeholding downtempo shuffle on Modern Times. Or the way that "Born in Time" acquires passion, interest, humanity, and perhaps even beauty. Or the way that the first "Can't Wait," stripped of Lanois' sturm-und-echo-drang, discovers the anguish at its heart.
And on and on. The demo of "Dignity." The Supper Club version of "Ring Them Bells." The wholescale reinvention of "Tryin' to Get to Heaven" (from the special edition third disc, which is, um, available in a variety of ways). The World Gone Wrong outtake "32-20 Blues."
Not everything is magic, of course. The three versions of "Mississippi," while intriguing, ultimately don't make for a completely new listening experience in the same fashion as "Can't Wait" or "Most of the Time."
And, and, AND, you get "Cross the Green Mountain" (otherwise available only on a soundtrack to a movie nobody cares about) and "Huck's Tune" (another soundtrack piece) and, critically, "Red River Shore," one of the finest (and most perfectly Dylan-like) pieces he's recorded in two decades. And if you can listen to "Red River Shore" and not want to hear more from the man, then you probably never will.
Seriously -- "Red River Shore." It's revelatory. It's like hearing "Blind Willie McTell" and wondering how the hell that got left off of Infidels back in 1983. It's that good. As is the whole of the set.
Good enough to create an entire "lost album" just from the last decade of the outtakes and soundtrack work, an album to rival Love and Theft and Modern Times. No easy feat.
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