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3rd Favorite Album: More Fun in the New World, by X

Posted on July 26, 2019 | 5 comments

More Fun in the New World. X.
1983, Elektra Records. Producer: Ray Manzarek.
Purchased CD, 1995.

IN A NUTSHELL: More Fun in the New World, by X, is a punk record with more to offer than just slamming and raucous energy – although it has that in spades. Singers Exene Cervenka and John Doe find unusual harmonies on wordy songs about regular folks with regular problems. Guitarist Billy Zoom is a rockabilly wizard, and drummer DJ Bonebrake plays every genre with style and energy. It’s a fun, flaming masterpiece.

NOTE: The setup – below the line ↓ – might be the best part … Or skip right to the album discussion.
~~~~

I don’t think it’s an overstatement to say that one of the top seven happiest days of my life[ref]Since this whole blog is about ranking things, I might as well put this in terms of rank.[/ref] was Tuesday, October 21, 1980. On that night, at approximately 11:20 pm, EST, a couple hours past my 8th grade bed time, I watched on TV as the Philadelphia Phillies won their first ever World Series championship.

I can still feel the goosebumps as, under an old afghan blanket my grandma had knitted, I lay on the couch – as still as possible, so as not to jinx any of the game action – and watched Kansas City Royals centerfielder Willie Wilson swing through a high fastball from Phils reliever Tug McGraw to end the game, and the series. After four years of playoff-caliber teams, My Phillies had finally won The World Series.

Mike Schmidt hits career home run #500, April 18, 1987.

My interest in the team waned over the next 12 years as the Phillies fielded mostly dreadful teams with forgettable players. That’s a stretch that can cause anybody to stop caring.

By the time the Phillies made it back to The World Series, in the fall of 1993, I hadn’t been paying close attention to them in years. I was living in San Francisco and had spent the summer reading about their games in The Chronicle. I couldn’t believe that the year I moved away from the team was the year they were finally good again! I couldn’t wait to sit down and enjoy my team face off against the Toronto Blue Jays.

Another thing that happened in 1993, for which I was as equally unprepared as I was for a championship-caliber Phillies team, was meeting a beautiful young woman named Julia. We were introduced by Mimi, a woman I met in acting school and who worked as a waitress with Julia.

I was new to the city, or, rather, The City, so Mimi introduced me to all her friends, and by late summer of ’93 I was a regular at parties thrown, or attended, by Julia and Mimi and all of their friends. We were all in our mid-20s, having a blast in an incredible city, and that summer just seemed magical.

Julia and I hit it off, as friends, from the very start. We danced into the wee hours at The El Rio, in The Mission District, the very first night we met, then went to El Zocalo for pupusas after that. She was funny and smart and strong and interesting, and perhaps most importantly: she laughed at my jokes. We were friends first, then after a couple months our romance got off to a weird start thanks to a bottle of Port wine that, apparently, I thought was grape juice, given the volume I consumed. Soon after that, she asked me if I wanted to go get sushi with her.

I immediately said yes, agreed to the upcoming Saturday night, and immediately realized that Saturday was Game 1 of The World Series. Yes, The World Series, October, 1993, featuring The Philadelphia Phillies for the first time since 1980, when they’d brought me one of the greatest days of my life. First pitch was scheduled to start at just about the time I would be ordering unagi sushi and maguro sashimi with a woman I liked and who I wanted to impress. If I told her I had to cancel for my favorite baseball team, would she ever want to go out with me again?

I went out for sushi. Julia wore a belt with a baseball belt-buckle. She’s always maintained that my missing a World Series game was evidence of how much I liked her from the start. I’ve always maintained I was simply being polite to a new friend. I’m here today to set the record straight: I really wanted to go out with her instead of watching The World Series. You were right, Julia! (She’s never doubted it. And she’s also pointed out that I could have postponed and she’d have understood!) We’ve been together ever since.

I’ve written before about Julia’s interest in music: she loves music, but isn’t obsessed with artists[ref]Except for Billie Joe, from Green Day, who fascinates her.[/ref] or albums. She doesn’t always remember song titles or band names, but she knows what she likes. When we got together, I immediately went through all of her cassettes and found all kinds of great music I’d never listened to much before: Fishbone, Jimmy Cliff, Prince, Stetsasonic … But the band she introduced me to that I’ve loved the most is the band X.

One of the great things about Julia is that she always has a we-can-solve-it attitude toward problems, and this allows her to look at challenges in a different light and come up with clever solutions. An example of this is her cassette copy of the album More Fun in the New World, by X. It was a cassette she duplicated from an album someone had in college. Whenever I listened to her copy, one of my favorite songs was the opening track: “True Love Pt. #2.” On her copy, it was also the closing track. On the official album, “True Love Pt. #2” only appears once, at the end.

I asked Julia why she recorded More Fun in the New World out of order, and included a song twice. Bear in mind that in those non-digital times, one couldn’t simply press a button to hear a track. Hearing a track on a cassette involved the tricky, time-consuming business of fast-forwarding and rewinding until you homed in on the silence before a song. So why was her cassette out of order? “The last one is my favorite song on the record,” she said, “so I put it first so that I could hear it just by rewinding to the beginning.” And why twice? “It’s my favorite, so I’ll hear it twice!”

This explanation describes so much about her, about our differences, and about why I love her so much. To my mind, and many album fans, the album is a collection of songs, placed in sequence carefully by the artist, to be enjoyed as a whole piece of art. When making a copy of that art, it is imperative to keep it intact, as the artist intended. But Julia assesses situations differently. To her, it’s just a bunch of songs, and it’s your cassette. You can do anything you want! This is the spirit I love: You Can Do Anything You Want[ref]I should say she’s a very moral person, too, so “Doing Anything You Want” does not include unethical, immoral, unkind actions. I don’t want to give the impression she’s some weird Rand-ian, Objectivist Asshole. She is not.[/ref].

I realize that in this age of Spotify and playlists, decades past cassette-duping as a common act, and well into the decline of THE ALBUM as an artistic statement, this story might not deliver as much impact as it once did. But for someone like me, who grew up worshiping the mighty album as the pinnacle of rock/pop music artistry, Julia’s actions were astounding! She put the LAST song FIRST!! Then left it on TWICE! It blew my mind. She’s always challenged my thoughts and beliefs, and this has made me a better person.

And I think I’m also a better person for having been introduced to X! They’re a strange band, a bit rockabilly, a bit punk, with odd vocal harmonies on songs with lots of words. But they kick ass, they’re thoughtful, and their songs are melodic and cool. For example, the true opening track of More Fun in the New World, “The New World.”

The song opens with a guitar fanfare from ace rockabilly guitarist Billy Zoom, then gets right into a description of the decline in American manufacturing after Reaganomics, although they cleverly call the leader “What’s-His-Name,” allowing it to be a timeless song aimed at any political persuasion. One of the key facets of X is the co-lead vocals of then-husband-and-wife team, bassist John Doe and Exene Cervenka. They sometimes sing the same notes, an octave apart, and they sometimes find odd harmony notes, and it always sounds great. As with many other acts I’ve discussed, I don’t mind the unusual vocal sounds of X. On this song, the pair blend nicely. Doe’s syncopated bass during Zoom’s guitar line is really sweet. It’s a cool opener, subtly majestic.

The next song is sort of the co-title track, along with song one, of More Fun in the New World, and together they provide a good definition of the band. Whereas “The New World” is melodic and cool, “We’re Having Much More Fun” is the other side of X.

Billy Zoom is one of those guitarists who rewards close listening. Throughout this song, he adds little grace notes and riffs that sound terrific, for instance, around 0:32, where he places a curlicue before the band enters the chorus. Drummer DJ Bonebrake (who, remarkably, is the only band member whose stage name is their actual, given name!) pushes the tempo as the band hits the chorus. Exene and John sing about Los Angeles, one of their favorite topics, and even though I don’t wanna crawl through backyards and whack yappin’ dogs, they sure make it sound like fun!

The next song, “True Love,” keeps the energy high. The song is another incredible display of guitarist Zoom. His leads after each chorus are high energy, rockabilly blasts. Exene takes the lead this time on lyrics in which the Devil uses his pitchfork to force you into True Love.

The band settles down a bit next on the excellent “Poor Girl.”

This one features John Doe tearing up the lead vocals. The lyrics seem to be about a couple in the throes of heroin addiction, full of violence and apathy and regret. It’s clear that part of the reason the “Poor Girl” is poor is because the singer is a lousy partner. Drummer Bonebrake lays down a Bo Diddly beat in the verse, then pushes the tempo on the chorus, and Zoom’s riffs always sound perfect. It’s almost the quintessential X sound, whereas the next song, “Make the Music Go Bang,” IS quintessential X.

I’ve always thought the perfect title for a biography of the band would be X: Make the Music Go Bang. (Brilliant, Charming and Nasty). This song is one of my favorites on More Fun in the New World, although this album makes it difficult to pick a favorite. This is really a showcase song for guitarist Zoom, who plays a variety of solos, a great example of one being at 1:00. Doe and Cervenka share lead vocals in their typical style, Bonebrake provides a train-beat (referenced in the lyrics), Doe’s swooping bass is cool as shit, and the energy of the whole thing makes me want to dance and jump around.

The band makes quick work of the old Jerry Lee Lewis number, “Breathless,” which was featured in the Richard Gere movie of the same name (and which I saw the band play on David Letterman in my teen years). It really shows off Cervenka’s voice, and is fast and furious, as is the out-of-control rave-up “I See Red,” a sort of hate-song, as opposed to a love-song. “Drunk in My Past” is a pretty accurate first-person account of alcohol abuse set to a rock/swing beat with cool Zoom guitars.

What sets X apart, for me, from the usual punk-y rock band is the variety of songs styles and topics, and More Fun in the New World has lots of variety. A great example of their ability to do more than songs for moshpit soundtracks is the terrific “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts.”

The song is a jaunty number, and Cervenka and Doe immediately state what it’s about: “The facts we hate …” The song is a list of what troubles the band – the futility of two-party politics, the responsibility citizens bear for their government’s actions, even the lack of radio airplay for American punk bands. It’s all set on top of Zoom’s subtly brilliant guitar and Bonebrake’s powerful drumming, and it builds nicely to the end. It’s not the usual punk number.

After “I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts,” More Fun in the New World contains a run of three songs that together make up one of my favorite trifectas on any album. The first is the infectious “Devil Doll.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z4M1WSJIU6Q

This song is furious and fast, and guitarist Zoom hits new heights in his playing. His solo at 1:30 is one of the best, perhaps topped only by his closing solo beginning at 2:33. The song is powered along by Bonebrake’s freight train pace, as Doe and Cervenka sing about, well, a woman with a crazy look. It’s raucous and wild and is followed by the equally raging “Painting the Town Blue.” This one tells the story of a woman with problems who’s leaving her asshole man. John Doe’s bass line is fun and bouncy, and the song has an unstoppable pace that makes me want to dance or yell or fight – so, maybe join a mosh pit? The band always has great energy, and their musicianship is top notch.

Next in the great trio of songs is a bit mellower, but great nonetheless, the rocker “Hot House.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1aKkM0qMb6c

It’s got that introductory guitar, a bluesy, slinky feeling, and Doe voice is strong on lyrics that suggest a poor couple in love, perhaps using too many chemicals? The line “The whole world loves a sad sad song/ That they don’t have to sing” is brilliant, as are many of the band’s lyrics. I haven’t spent much time on them, but they’re worth paying attention to. Exene Cervenka is a poet, and the first songs the band wrote were her poetry set to music by John Doe. Sometimes they’re touching portraits of folks on the edges of society, sometimes they address issues, and sometimes they’re simply a celebration.

Such as my wife’s favorite song on the record, the one she had to hear twice, “True Love Pt. #2,” which is a near-funk workout with lyrics that are a celebration of musical influences.

It’s one of my favorites, too. I like the groove, I like the guitars, I love the lyrics calling out songs from Tammy Wynette’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” to “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.” It’s a fun song which bears repeated listening.

More Fun in the New World has two songs titled “True Love,” three, if you play one of them twice. Maybe that’s what this #3 album is all about – for me, anyway. I can’t listen to it without being astounded by all the great songs and superb performances. And I can’t listen without thinking about Julia! Thanks for introducing it to me, J!

TRACK LISTING:
“The New World”
“We’re Having Much More Fun”
“True Love”
“Poor Girl”
“Make the Music Go Bang”
“Breathless”
“I Must Not Think Bad Thoughts”
“Devil Doll”
“Painting the Town Blue”
“Hot House”
“Drunk in My Past”
“I See Red”
“True Love Pt. #2”

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged 1983, Billy Zoom, DJ Bonebrake, Exene Cervenka, John Doe, L.A. Punk, More Fun in the New World, Philadelphia Phillies, Rockabilly, X

4th Favorite Album: Let Me Come Over, by Buffalo Tom

Posted on July 6, 2019 | 1 comment

Let Me Come Over. Buffalo Tom.
1992, RCA Records/Beggars Banquet. Producer: Paul Q. Kolderie, Sean Slade and Buffalo Tom.
Purchased CD, 1992.

IN A NUTSHELL: Let Me Come Over, by Buffalo Tom, is an album split evenly between spirited rockers and subtly seething quiet numbers, each one performed with emotion and power. Singer/Songwriter Bill Janovitz uses his voice to great effect, making the listener believe in everything he says – even when it’s obscure. Bassist Chris Colbourne and drummer Tom Maginnis provide steady backing for Janovitz’s rage and pathos and joy. Every number requires repeated listens, and brings the power each time.

NOTE: The setup – below the line ↓ – might be the best part … Or skip right to the album discussion.
~~~~

One summer, either 1971 or ’72 or ’73, when I was 4, 5, or 6, my dad became assistant coach of the Ebenezer team in the local “Teener Baseball” league. It’s a league for kids 13 – 15[ref]It’s called “Babe Ruth League” in many places.[/ref], and it’s traditionally been the first experience for baseball players on “the big diamond,” the baseball field the same size they use in the Major Leagues.

The author, front, and his dad, top left. Circa 1972.

Because I was the young, baseball-loving son of the baseball-loving assistant coach, I was immediately made the team bat boy. If you’re unfamiliar with baseball, let me explain: when a player hits a ball, he drops his bat and runs to first base. The bat boy comes onto the field before the next batter and brings the bat back to the bench where the players sit. Very often there is no bat boy, and the next batter simply tosses the castoff bat towards the bench. But if you have an enthusiastic, 5-year-old coach’s son on the bench, it’s kind of cool to let him race out among all those big kids and grab the bat. (It can be scary, too.)

It was an honor to me, and I still remember how proud I felt to be entrusted with this task[ref]I also got to chase down foul balls during games, and bring them back to the head coach, who’d give me a quarter for each one. But lots of kids helped do that, so it wasn’t as special.[/ref]. I felt a bit older than my years, and not just because I got to pick up bats in games. At practice, sometimes the older kids let me bat, and they’d cheer for how hard I hit the ball and how fast I ran. Sometimes they’d play catch with me. Sometimes they’d forget I was nearby and I’d hear them swear or talk about girls.

The entire experience was thrilling, as if I was given access to a world that kids my age never got to enter. Those Teeners seemed so big and mature, and I revered them. I still recall many of their names: Kevin Garmin, Dennis Natale, Jett Conrad, Chuck Fasnacht, and my favorite: star pitcher Scott “Honey Bear” Miller. Over the next few years more names cycled through as I continued my bat boy duties. Falk, Rittle, Groff, Witters, and so many younger brothers of players from previous seasons. All these big kids were doing stuff I couldn’t wait to do myself.

The Author, 1982. C/CF. That uniform was VERY uncomfortable in the heat and humidity.

Eventually I joined a Teener team of my own. Not Ebenezer, however. A series of … let’s say “issues” occurred, which led me to join an upstart crew in the summer of 1980, called The Orioles. I had finally arrived at “The Show.” Okay, I know that “The Show” means the MLB, but even though I played baseball another few years, even into college, I was never as successful again as I was as a Teener. Plus, it’s the league I always strived for, so for me, it was “The Show.”

My time had come. There I was, out on those same baseball fields I’d traveled to with my dad, sitting on the same benches in the same dugouts, this time with a uniform of my own. Why, my dad even helped coach the team one year, when our elderly Coach Bosh, who had coached my dad in the 50s, asked him if he would. I felt really happy to be living the Teener Ball Life.

When you’re a kid, the big kids are doing all the fun stuff. Driving cars, going to late-night movies, hanging out at The Mall … all you can do is wait. And eventually it’s you, and the people your age, who get to do these things, and it feels great. Your time has come.

Making music is another one of those things that older kids and adults did. In the 70s, the hairy grown men and sultry adult women making music felt as distant to me as the Ebenezer Teener team had. But by the early 90s I was in a band, writing songs, and realized that – holy shit! – my time had come! The people making music were now my contemporaries!

Many of these new acts connected with me because they took the music I grew up around – The Beatles, 70s AM radio, funk, Johnny Cash, disco, classic rock, metal, new wave, punk, even Saturday morning cartoons – and threw it all into a virtual blender of guitar, bass, drums and synths to create something new, but familiar. It was a sound for me, by my cohort, tuned to my tastes. I’d resisted new music for a while, but once I dove in, I stayed under for a long time.

Around this time I’d gotten my first place on my own, in a little cabin in a lakeside getaway village called Mt. Gretna. I was earning some decent money as a chemist, and I felt – suddenly – grown up. And for music, I turned to other new grown-ups, like me. Of course, Nirvana was in the mix, and my buddy’s band, Gumball. Dinosaur Jr., with J. Mascis’s furious guitar, was a favorite. Relative old-timers Sonic Youth were in heavy rotation by the lake, as were Scotsmen Teenage Fanclub. Brit shoe gazers Ride[ref]A band my band opened for, a fact I cling to desperately to validate my art.[/ref] and twin Boston acts The Lemonheads and (#19) Juliana Hatfield were favorites. This is also the height of my hip-hop knowledge, as new grown-ups like De La Soul, and A Tribe Called Quest, and slightly older kids Beastie Boys and Public Enemy spent significant time in my CD player. Then there was the “Greatest Hits,” of sorts, the soundtrack to the 1992 movie Singles.

But my favorite album among these new contemporaries, the one that connected with me immediately upon first listen, was Let Me Come Over, by Buffalo Tom. I bought it at a little record store[ref]For you youngsters, a “record store” was a store where physical objects containing music were sold. (Yes, I realize I use this same jokey footnote on every post where I mention a record store. I’m old, and a dad, what can I say? I make the same bad jokes over and over.)[/ref] where my band sold copies of its first cassette. At the same time, I picked up Green Mind, which came with a bright purple t-shirt that my daughter now likes to wear.

Let Me Come Over stuck with me from the very first notes of my very first listen. I still remember sitting in my cottage hearing the rumbling, introductory three-note bass line of the opening song “Staples.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DbNanu4eXiU

That’s bassist Chris Colbourn opening things up, with guitarist/singer Bill Janovitz building a structure of guitars around him. It’s all very simple, rather repetitive, but the band really makes it work. Janovitz is a cagey vocalist who sings with emotion to get the most out of his voice. He does cool things like subtly hesitating as he sings his first “Staple …” Drummer Tom Maginnis has a very Ringo-esque habit of slightly speeding the tempo when needed, as he does here about 0:40, as the second verse begins. Colbourne provides terrific vocal harmonies in verse two, and I love when the chorus first hits, about 1:20. Janovitz provides a noisy guitar solo. The band’s lyrics are usually a bit obscure, displaying Janovitz’s poet tendencies, but this song seems to be about someone who’s love has left and he has no idea why. I tend to shout along to all the songs on this album, even though I don’t know any of the words. It’s a record that demands to be played LOUD!

Next up is a moving song about either a horrible childhood or a lost love, “Taillights Fade.” It’s one of the band’s most popular songs.

This one really shows off all the features that I love about the band. The loud guitars, the emotional vocals, great drum fills. Janovitz really gives his all to the vocals – for example, at 0:46, and each time it repeats. I saw the band live in 1994, and it remains one of the most powerful rock shows I’ve seen. I love the descending bass after each line, and the dense guitar throughout. (By the way, “Cappy Dick,” who can’t help our protagonist even with assistance from Jesus Christ, was a comic sea captain who provided kids activities in the Sunday Comics for years.)

I love the sequence of the album – how it alternates between rockers and slow songs. After a sad song like the last one, the raucous entrance of “Mountains of Your Head” sounds particularly excellent.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HojizlT5uJA

The ringing guitars, the driving drums, the descending riff … I love this song. The voices of Janovitz and Colbourne blend so nicely on lyrics that seem to be about a lovers’ quarrel perhaps? (“What’s on your mind? / If it’s on your tongue you should speak.”) By the third verse it sounds like 13 guitars are strumming along, a dense sound that Maginnis’s drums keep grounded. There’s a nice little piano added at the end, too. The song leads into another beautiful, softer number, “Mineral.” Janovitz belts and emotes on lyrics that, to me, sound like a reflection on an unhappy childhood? Once again, numerous guitars chime and grind throughout creating a powerful soundscape. This song reminds me of being blown away at the 1994 SF concert …

Since I like the sequence of Let Me Come Over so much, I’m going to go straight through, which means that my probably-favorite song on the album is up next, the Faulkner retelling, “Darl.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ORdUhDIM9mg

Perhaps another reason I love this album is that I was reading William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying around the time I got it, and this song is a frenetic first-person account (just as in the book) of the character named Darl. It’s sung by bassist Colbourne, with great harmonies from Janovitz. I love the syncopated melody, and – once again – how Maginnis quickens the pace when needed. There’s a cool guitar solo about 1:25, too. It’s a fast, fun, head-banging song that always sounds great.

The band changes gears once again with the swaying, sea-shanty-esque “Larry.” Like Led Zeppelin, Buffalo Tom has a fondness for song titles that are not part of the lyrics.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZPx48i-quM

I don’t know what Larry is about, but Janovitz’s voice is as affective as ever, particularly around the 4:00 mark. It’s a sad, evocative song, and I don’t know why, but it really moves me. By the end it fades to squealing feedback that seems to sum up everything that’s come before. How can feedback summarize a song, you ask? I don’t understand it, either, but I sure do feel it. And I don’t feel it for long before the band bashes me with the riff-heavy “Velvet Roof,” a song that again, for some reason, again reminds me of a sad childhood. Maybe it’s the “scraggly hair and messed up shoes,” but I wonder if it’s about a kid’s memories of a crazy mom? Anyway, it’s a great guitar rocker with excellent work by the rhythm section.

“I’m Not There” is not a song I enjoy, and I’ll leave it at that. But it does serve as the entry to “Stymied,” a mid-tempo, densely-packed, melodic song with a cool rhythm and bass guitar, that may be about a big lovers’ fight. Many of the songs on Let Me Come Over seem to be about violence and anger, and one of the best and most oblique, lyrically, is the terrific “Porchlight.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J5kXtFiQ2sk

It’s a story song with an upbeat, bouncing rhythm that seems to tell of, maybe, a guy who saw two friends (including an ex, perhaps?) die in a house fire (while making eggs?), one of whom left a voicemail for him earlier in the day? The lyrics have that Steely Dan – Belly thing I love so much of telling a story that kind of makes sense but maybe not? The music and melody are catchy, and once again – Janovitz’s vocal performance makes the song. Around 1:00 he punches the words “chill” and “king” in a significant way, then his voice cracks a bit on “I ain’t here on business.” (Was it a drug deal, [“It’s all work, anyway”] and that’s why he ran away?) Janovitz’s voice is always perfectly imperfect, and that’s why I love it. He sounds like a guy who has to get these thoughts and feelings out RIGHT NOW. Plus he writes awesome songs.

Like the lovely “Frozen Lake.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZNghZzql5CU

If you’ve ever loved and lost, and found yourself pining away for that other person, well, “Frozen Lake” just might be the song you play fifteen thousand times in a row. I may or may not have done this in the fall of 1992. For me, “Porchlight” and “Frozen Lake” are the climax of the album. One fast, one slow, both examples of what I love about the album. That’s not to say “Saving Grace,” with its driving punk angst, or “Crutch,” with its layered, rippling beauty, and poetic lyrics, are lesser songs. They are both outstanding, a fitting closure to an amazing album.

Let Me Come Over is the sound of me realizing my time is now. It’s hard to believe that “now” is so many years ago, but the feeling of arriving stays with you forever. It combines the excitement of running onto diamonds and grabbing heavy, wooden bats for big kids, the anticipation and longing for a time when you’ll get to play, too, and, finally, the pride in handing your own bat to another coach’s son a few years later. You’ll feel it forever, even when it’s gone. You’ll never forget the feeling that your time is now. It feels, to me, a lot like Let Me Come Over.

TRACK LISTING:
“Staples”
“Taillights Fade”
“Mountains of Your Head”
“Mineral”
“Darl”
“Larry”
“Velvet Roof”
“I’m Not There”
“Stymied”
“Porchlight”
“Frozen Lake”
“Saving Grace”
“Crutch”

1 Comment

Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged 1992, Alternative Rock, Beggars Banquet, Bill Janovitz, Buffalo Tom, Chris Colbourne, Great Live Band, Let Me Come Over, Tom Maginnis, Your Time is Now

5th Favorite Album: Oranges and Lemons, by XTC

Posted on June 16, 2019 | 11 comments

Oranges and Lemons. XTC.
1989, Geffen Records. Producer: Paul Fox.
Purchased vinyl, 1989.

IN A NUTSHELL: Oranges and Lemons, by XTC, is a collection of sounds and styles and ideas that delivers thoughtful, fun song after thoughtful, fun song. Main songwriter Andy Partridge keeps his mighty pen of cynicism largely sheathed in this effort, instead producing uplifting songs about the power of love – tempered, of course, by his biting wit. Bandmates Colin Moulding and Dave Gregory are excellent, as always, and the production is over-the-top in a way that sounds like just the right number of kitchen sinks has been thrown in.

NOTE: The setup – below the line ↓ – might be the best part … Or skip right to the album discussion.
~~~~

It’s not shocking to learn that I – a man who has spent the last 7 or 8 years maintaining a widely-read blog about all the records I like – was a child, in the 70s, with a very strong connection to music. The connection included (and still includes) physical reactions to the sounds. A friend and I were recently discussing the first time we experienced chills washing over us simply from hearing a song. It happened when we were kids, and for him it was CCR’s “Up Around the Bend.” For me, it was The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”

The technical term for that sensation is “frisson,” and it’s a regular, physical part of my music-listening experience, as are dancing[ref]Much to my kids’ dismay.[/ref], laughing, whistling, singing, and even tears. The tears usually come from a lyric and melody that combine to heighten each other’s impact. For example, when I listen to The Replacements‘ “Here Comes a Regular,” I’m almost always on the verge of tears.

As a child, however, the experience of hearing a song could be too much for me to bear. The potential physical impact scared me, so I’d turn off these scary songs before I could find out what they might do to me. I was a 70s AM radio kid, listening to WLBR 1270-AM at the time, and it played only the blandest, mellowest, dentist-officeiest pop music of the era. The songs that frightened me WERE NOT the loud, horrorshow pieces that were popular then. WLBR didn’t play, so I didn’t hear, or even know about, Black Sabbath or Alice Cooper or The Crazy World of Arthur Brown. I didn’t know about the scary punks or the creepy art-rockers.

The songs that scared me were the sad songs, and I’m not talking about the kitschy, melodramatic story-songs of the 70s. Songs like “Run Joey Run” or “Billy Don’t Be a Hero“or “The Night Chicago Died” seemed goofy to me even as a young boy – which isn’t to say I didn’t love them! And I could recognize the point of sad love songs, so these didn’t scare me. The sad songs that scared me were the ones that seemed to express adult concerns that I couldn’t understand. Oblique lyrics (to my 7 year-old mind), when coupled with a minor key, made me feel like things were somehow out of control. When singing grown-ups expressed concerns about things I didn’t understand, I felt a physical response that made me turn off the music.

I found the phrase “There’s got to be a morning after,” from “The Morning After,” the theme to the disaster-film The Poseidon Adventure, quite upsetting, as it seemed ludicrous that a grown-up would even raise the question of whether a new day would come. The Sandpipers’ folky hit, “Come Saturday Morning,” made me wonder why the prospect of visiting a friend would seem so … foreboding. And “MacArthur Park” (the Richard Harris version, not Donna Summer’s disco hit) was just … weird. I still feel residual Willies[ref]As a pre-teen I caused an accidental injury, and in the car ride to the hospital the McCartney song “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey” was on the radio, and I’ve never been able to listen to that record since. However, that association has a cause. These others do not.[/ref] from these songs, even just hearing a few seconds while I prepare the link.

A classic scary song for me is the Diana Ross smash, “The Theme from Mahogany.” (It’s interesting that 3 of the 4 are movie songs, where emotional impact is paramount.) “Do you know where you’re going to?” the song asked, and it wasn’t the improper grammar that disturbed me. As a 9 year-old, I found this question too psychologically loaded, too philosophically complex, to bear more than even one verse. (Until just now, I’d forgotten, or maybe I never knew, that the song included the upbeat middle section!) It’s a song that made me shiver as a child, a different sensation than the frisson I described, and it still makes me unhappy, even as an adult. See, as a 52 year-old man, I STILL don’t know where the fuck I’m going (to)!

Thirty (!) years ago I certainly had no idea where I was going (to), but I had somehow decided to pursue a Biology Education degree, and so it looked like I was going to teach school. It seemed like a decent plan – there were plenty of teaching jobs, I’d always loved school, I’d get my summers off … So, I knew where I was going (to), but the destination, the (to), didn’t feel right. As much as I thought teaching would be great, and I’d be a good teacher, something about it felt like the wrong path for me. But I stayed on the path nonetheless.

In the Fall of 1989, my destination every weekday was the Elizabethtown Area High School, in Elizabethtown, PA, where I student-taught Biology classes with a creepy teacher who went to prison for his awfulness. I wore dressy clothes my sisters had picked for me, and drove a bright blue ’76 Plymouth Duster to school every day. That Duster had come with a fancy tape-deck, state-of-the art in 1989, that was probably worth more than half of what I’d paid for the car. Tapes in rotation for my morning commute that year included Vivid, by Living Colour, and Green, by R.E.M., and Oranges and Lemons, by XTC. Pretty soon it was whittled down to simply Oranges and Lemons.

I’ve written before about seeking out Beatle-esque bands in college and becoming an XTC fan. When Oranges and Lemons was released in the Spring of ’89, I went out and bought it on vinyl. I loved it, and part of loving a vinyl record for me in those days included immediately duping it onto cassette so it became portable. It’s a positive record, with upbeat songs celebrating life and love, and dollops of cynicism and doubt to keep things level. As I drove in my Duster each morning, aimlessly drifting toward a future of standardized tests and testy parents, the songs and messages on that cassette soothed my undiagnosed depression. They helped me make it through when I didn’t realize I could take control and decide for myself where I was going (to). The album resonated then, and as I got older and had kids and learned to manage my mental health, it just got better and better.

The opening track is one of the most affirmative and philosophically optimistic songs I know, and it sounds super-cool, too. The Middle-Eastern sound salad of “Garden of Earthly Delights.”

What a start! The song is a welcome letter and instruction manual, of sorts, (“Don’t hurt nobody/ Unless, of course, they ask you”) to newly born babies on planet Earth. It is crammed full of instruments and sounds, and gives the feeling of walking through a Moroccan bazaar (I assume.) I got into XTC as I looked for Beatle-y musicians, and this song is similar to much of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band[ref]I say “similar.” The Beatles are still The King.[/ref], in that beneath all the sounds, the rock instruments are doing fabulous stuff. The whirling electric guitar behind the vocals in the verse (0:15), the chop guitar in the chorus (0:42), the Colin Moulding’s bass throughout, and the excellent Middle Eastern guitar solo by lead XTC-er Andy Partridge (2:15). The song has numerous details that encourage multiple listens, and it’s a fabulous introduction.

The song effortlessly flows into what may be my favorite song of all time, the brilliant “Mayor of Simpleton.”

Speaking of “frisson,” this song almost always delivers it. The precisely meandering bass line is (dare I say?) McCartney-esque, the call-and-response vocals are beautiful, and I love the melody. But the lyrics make it for me, as Partridge ingeniously describes why he’s too dumb for the woman he loves, and why it doesn’t matter. “If depth of feeling is a currency/ Then I’m the man who grew the money tree /And some of your friends are too brainy to see /That they’re paupers and that’s how they’ll stay.” For a person like me, who shivers and tears up at songs, those words resonate. The band put out a clever video for the song, and tried to make it a hit, and while it only hit #72 on Billboard‘s pop charts, it did reach #1 on their “Modern Rock Chart,” whatever that is.

XTC is an interesting band that started as a 5-piece then dwindled over the years. By the time of Oranges and Lemons, it consisted of Partridge, Moulding, and Dave Gregory – each of them guitarists and multi-instrumentalists. Partridge handled the bulk of the singing and songwriting, but Moulding contributed several, including the lilting “King For a Day.”

Due to Partridge’s extreme stage-fright, the band stopped playing live in 1982, but to support this album they made videos and did a few TV and radio performances, usually performing Moulding’s songs. This song has great vocals, including Partridge’s ringing harmonies, and terrific drums by session-man Pat Mastelotto, whose work on the entire record is great. The lyrics also express the view, shared by the band and expressed throughout the album, that money and consumerism isn’t as important as love and art. It has a tremendous bridge (2:10) that seamlessly leads back into the chorus. Sometimes, as my friend Johnny has pointed out, “Colin has Clunkers.” But this song stands out. “Cynical Days,” however, is a Colin Clunker. And Partridge’s “Here Comes President Kill Again,” while promoting a world-view I support, is rather boring.

Another blatant expression of the power of love is the aptly titled “The Loving,” which argues for a Christ-like love for all people. Partridge doesn’t refer to Christ – like me, he’s an atheist – but what he describes is just that. His call for love is more specific on “Pink Thing,” a celebration of fatherhood and his newborn child. (It’s been pointed out that the lyrics very well may refer to his penis. I prefer the former interpretation.)

It’s got a cool calypso beat, with nice guitar figures in the background, and the chord change in the chorus (“That man isn’t fit to enter heaven …”) is fabulous. As usual, the band’s harmonies are tops, and the jazzy guitar solo at 1:55 is really cool, and the ending (2:40 – 3:48) is great. In addition to addressing his child, Partridge assesses his relationship with his dad in the South African-themed “Hold Me My Daddy,” a song Partridge claims he and his father chose not to discuss.

The songs on Oranges and Lemons have a variety of styles. Colin Moulding gets introspective on the rolling, bouncy “One of the Millions,” a bit of an anti-self-help song that tumbles along on a terrific bass line and has some great transitions between acoustic and electric. The angry she-done-me-wrong song “Miniature Sun” is a jazzy, barely-fit-together number. “Chalkhills and Children” is a dreamy ballad that sounds like it could have fit on the band’s previous album Skylarking. And nearly all the songs throw as many sounds and instruments as possible into the mix, including the fabulous “Merely a Man.”

The song opens with a ranging bass line and percussive dual rhythm guitars that together are almost (almost!) funky. The guitars are really cool, and again they approach (but only approach!) the late-era Beatles’ knack for putting multiple cool guitars low in the mix. Nifty guitar fills (1:00, 1:30, etc) abound, and Partridge does some near-scatting on lyrics that are as uplifting and once again espouse the power of love. By 2:00, a trumpet fanfare is added, multiple voices are singing along, and it begins to sound like several guitars have been added. It’s a cool song, probably over-produced, but I love it.

I really love what I think of as an XTC throwback song, “Across This Antheap,” which reminds me of their song “Meccanik Dancing” from the 1978 album Go 2.

XTC started out as an angular guitar band on the definite New Wave edge of the punk movement. By Oranges and Lemons, they’d transitioned into an arty pop band (I’ll refrain from making another Beatles reference … oh wait, I think I just did?), but this number, a long diatribe against a modern life that can trample the human spirit, shows the band still has a foot in the 70s scene – despite the languid intro, and trumpet and violins.

When I was student teaching at Elizabethtown High School, it was the fall semester, which meant I was listening to the album around Halloween. It makes sense, then, that the song “Scarecrow People” remains lodged in my brain.

It’s a warning about global environmental catastrophe, which, obviously, has gone unheeded. It uses the album formula of cool guitar and bass, with lots of noises thrown in. There’s a bridge, at 2:00, that transitions to a weird guitar solo at 2:24, then builds beautifully into the final verse, at 3:00. The song is more evidence that the songwriting on the entire album is brilliant.

The other song I remember as Halloween-y, and one of my favorites on the record, is the freaky, warbly “Poor Skeleton Steps Out,” a collage of sounds that is the band at their most inventive.

The plodding, physical bass supports all sorts of percussive sounds, including an acoustic guitar that sounds detuned, a xylophone that sounds like dancing bones, and – as usual – excellent harmonies. It’s a song about the universality of human beings, and includes Partridge’s usual wit. The song always takes me back to the fall of 1989, driving my Duster to school each morning, but not really knowing where I was going (to). It turned out I never taught professionally, but Oranges and Lemons made my daily drive amazingly enjoyable. Elizabethtown Area High School was only a temporary stop on a 30-year ride that has had multiple stations along the way, and continues moving forward.

But maybe the destination doesn’t really matter much. Back in the mid-00s, when everyone was getting GPS consoles to put onto their dashboards, I instead got a subscription to Sirius satellite radio, and a bulky radio unit to stick onto the dash of my ’98 Saturn wagon. I realized then what that choice says about my outlook: I may not know where I’m going (to), but I’m sure going to enjoy the ride.

TRACK LISTING:
“Garden of Earthly Delights”
“Mayor of Simpleton”
“King For a Day”
“Here Comes President Kill Again”
“The Loving”
“Poor Skeleton Steps Out”
“One of the Millions”
“Scarecrow People”
“Merely a Man”
“Cynical Days”
“Across This Antheap”
“Hold Me My Daddy”
“Pink Thing”
“Miniature Sun”
“Chalkhills and Children”

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged 1989, Andy Partridge, Beatle-esque, Beatlesque, Colin Moulding, Dave Gregory, New Wave, Oranges and Lemons, Uplifting Songs, XTC

6th Favorite Album: Pleased to Meet Me, by The Replacements

Posted on June 2, 2019 | Comments Off

Pleased to Meet Me. The Replacements.
1987, Sire Records. Producer: Jim Dickinson.
Purchased CD, 1991.

IN A NUTSHELL: Pleased to Meet Me, by The Replacements, is a showcase for the songwriting genius of leader Paul Westerberg. From rip-roaring rockers to jazzy torch songs, the album covers a lot of territory. But the star of the show is Westerberg’s songs and their touching, evocative, subtle lyrics. The excellent rhythm section of bassist Tommy Stinson and drummer Chris Mars provide the muscle, and Westerberg’s guitar almost matches lost ‘Mat Bob’s past heroics.

NOTE: The setup – below the line ↓ – might be the best part … Or skip right to the album discussion.
~~~~

You can’t believe everything you read. A big part of growing into adulthood is learning to understand what is, and is not, likely true, and what gradations exist in between. Right now I’ve got kids aged 20 and 15 years old. I’ve watched them come of age in a time where, for example, there is not just journalistic slant, but there are networks dedicated to telling lies to people and presenting it as truth, parroting elected officials who seem to make up stories daily. And they’re not just getting information from networks or traditional media. Nowadays there are a bunch of social media platforms that give any boob with a cellphone a place to present any old story as fact.

Not to sound too grandpa-Simpson about it, but in my day, if you wanted flat out, unprocessed lies, you didn’t (always) turn to the President. If you wanted the best in fiction-as-non-fiction, your best source was always: The Weekly World News.

Back in the 80s, The Weekly World News was what was called a “checkout tabloid,” a magazine printed on newspaper that sat among other such publications, like National Enquirer, Star and Sun, near the checkout lines in supermarkets. However, whereas those others often ran stories that largely dealt with celebrities, and that had a whiff of possible truth, Weekly World News focused on, well, lies. My friend Dan and I used to enjoy reading the stories and laughing our asses off. We had friends who claimed to believe the stories – “They couldn’t print it if it isn’t true!” one classmate angrily scolded us – but nobody really did.

These stories were easy to identify as false. However, I prided myself on also being able to sniff out falsehoods in any publications, particularly music publications. For me as a high schooler, any publication that could dismiss the genius of Rush, such as Rolling Stone regularly did[ref]I was actually surprised to find out that the magazine actually liked a few of their records.[/ref], could not be trusted. So when that magazine gushed about the genius of the band The Replacements, I scoffed. Rolling Stone loved The Replacements, and that was evidence enough for me that the band sucked.

The band did not suck. I’ve written about them twice now, and to recap: I joined a band, and the guitarist loved The Replacements, and pretty soon I did, too. As I was becoming a fan, the band was breaking up, and just about the time I was buying all of their CDs, they were releasing their final one, All Shook Down. As a new fan, and music-crit skeptic, I didn’t fall for the assessments of that record, which ranged from “meh” to “eh” to “ok, I guess.”

I thought (and still think) that All Shook Down is a great record! The song “Nobody” is one of my all-time favorites, a clever story of a guy who’s sure his ex is still holding a candle for him – just as he clearly is for her. “Attitude” is a fun ditty reflecting on main ‘Mat[ref]The band is referred to by fans as “The ‘mats,” short for “The Placemats,” because, well, that’s ‘mats fans for ya![/ref] Paul Westerberg’s main problem in his life. “Merry Go Round” and “When It Began” were the supposed hits, “My Little Problem” was the rockin’ duet with Concrete Blonde’s Johnette Napolitano.

But – as much as I loved the record, when I began listening to the band’s earlier output I understood the critics’ tepid assessment. All Shook Down is great, but those earlier records were brilliant. And Pleased to Meet Me is my favorite of those. Fans who were onboard the ‘Mats bus from the beginning often dismiss this album because original guitarist, Bob Stinson, brother to bassist Tommy, had left the band before it was recorded. I understand their point of view, but as someone who came to the band late, without the baggage of Bob in my own perception of the band, with a classic rock background and a latecomer to punk, Pleased to Meet Me is my favorite Replacements record.

I remember the first time I heard any part of the record. Dr. Dave and I have a cover band, JB and the So-Called Cells, and in 1991 we played at a bar in Hershey, PA, called Zachary’s. The band we opened for, Blue Yonder, played a song of theirs that was okay, but that had a super-catchy refrain: “I’m in love/What’s that song?/I’m in love/With that song.” I told a friend it was a good song; he told me, “They ripped off that chorus from The Replacements.”

The song they ripped off (or honored, you might say) is the wonderful “Alex Chilton,” still one of my favorite songs ever.

It opens with a metallic guitar fanfare from Westerberg, and stellar bass and drums from Tommy Stinson and Chris Mars, respectively. The rhythm section keeps this song teetering on the brink of collapse the whole way through. The lyrics are a tribute to Alex Chilton, who as a teenager hit #1 on the charts as a singer on The Box Tops’ “The Letter.” Westerberg salutes Chilton for his work in the power pop outfit Big Star (“I never travel far/ Without a little Big Star”), who wrote and recorded some of the best guitar pop ever, and are largely forgotten by casual music fans. I love Stinson’s bass behind the chorus, and in the pre-chorus, leading up to Westerberg’s guitar solo at 1:50, and Mars’s habit of adding an extra snare hit some places, like at about 2:17. But what makes the song brilliant is the chorus: “I’m in love … with that song.” It’s perfection.

One of the great things about The Replacements is their ability to meld rip-roaring, punky music to meaningful lyrics that evoke real feelings. The band was famously dysfunctional, and sabotaged every break they ever got. And Westerberg wrote about it in songs like “I Don’t Know,” in which backing vocals by Stinson and Mars offer the band’s reaction to all the hype surrounding the band at the time.

“One foot in the door/ the other one in the gutter,” Westerberg sings. “The sweet smell you adore/ I think I’d rather smother.” Clearly the lyrics show mixed feelings about success. The song opens with weird laughter and goes right into a sax-driven rave-up. It’s a bit restrained from some of their earlier tracks, and the inclusion of horns (I’m sure) pissed off a lot of longtime fans. But the band addressed those fans’ concerns on the opening track, “I.O.U.,” in which Paul states: “I.O.U. nothing.” They really didn’t give a fuck about expectations. “I.O.U.” is another rave-up, this one showcasing Westerberg’s lead guitar work. He spent his teenage years trying to be the next Guitar Hero, until he decided he’d rather write songs, so he has some chops. Longtime fans would likely complain he should’ve kept Bob in the band for his guitar skills, but as Paul states in the song: “You’re all wrong and I’m right.”

Another song about being in The Replacements is the soft, jazzy “Nightclub Jitters,” a torch song about the impersonal nature of playing gig after gig. Tommy Stinson’s upright bass stands out on this track, which also features Westerberg on piano and a sultry sax solo. It seems like a departure for the band, but they’d been putting surprises on punk albums since “Johnny’s Gonna Die,” on Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash.

Westerberg’s lyrics aren’t always self-obsessed messages from the band. In the song “The Ledge,” he takes on the topic of teen suicide, which was too hot of a topic in 1987 and got this video banned from MTV.

Stinson’s pumping bass and Mars’s driving beat propel the song headlong beneath a Peter Gunn-style guitar riff. I like the dual guitars on the song, and the fact that the band throws in a couple three/four measures in the chorus. Westerberg again shows off his guitar soloing ability, including an outro solo after the sound of someone leaping. Vocally, Westerberg always carries a tune as if he’s going to drop it, and while it sounds good here, I like it best when it’s applied to his more personal tracks. For example, on the mid-tempo gem “Never Mind.”

The title, and the attitude it signals, would end up being the rallying cry (or whimper) for Generation X, and it expresses the what’s-it-matter-anyway? feeling behind many of Westerberg’s lyrics. In this case, he can’t find the words to apologize, so decides to move on. (I’ve read this song is about his decision to fire Bob from the band.) Westerberg has an Elvis-Costello-esque gift for a clever turn of phrase, in this case “your guess is (more or less) as bad as mine.” The music is good, but this is one in which the melody and lyrics carry the load.

Westerberg’s lyrics also often rely on one catchy phrase, repeated for maximum effect. In the case of “Valentine,” it’s “If you were a pill/ I’d take a handful at my will/ and I’d knock you back with something sweet and strong.”

I like that after the introduction, Mars’s drums (0:22) seem to speed up the song slightly, providing some punk energy to this now-she’s-gone love song. It’s catchy as hell. The guitar work is pretty cool, if a bit buried in the mix, and Paul pulls off some (dare I say?) Bob-esque riffs (2:45) throughout. Westerberg’s voice is brilliant as ever, particularly on the last, desperate verse (2:20), where he moves the melody to a higher pitch. The song doesn’t match the old punk fury from the band’s early days, but they do include a couple rockers on Pleased to Meet Me. “Shooting Dirty Pool” is a bit like a Rolling Stones deep cut[ref]Producer Jim Dickinson, who was a friend of Keith Richards, said Tommy Stinson was the most rock-n-roll guy he’d ever met, beating out Keith for the title.[/ref]. It also features a 13 year-old Luther Dickinson on guitar. “Red Red Wine” is NOT the UB40 song.

One of the things I love best about the ‘Mats is that every album has at least one Paul solo piece (basically) that is earnest and moving and demonstrates that there’s a deep well beneath all the crazy antics. On Hootenanny, it’s “Within Your Reach.” On Let It Be, it’s “Androgynous.” On Tim, it’s “Here Comes a Regular.” On Pleased to Meet Me, it’s “Skyway.”

It’s a simple acoustic guitar song about a boy watching a girl in the skyway of Minneapolis, the city’s elevated walkway system. But there’s so much more than that. He lacks self-confidence, wearing his “stupid hat and gloves,” waiting for a ride out in the cold, while she walks indoors with the office-job types. He dreams of meeting her, but when she finally ventures onto the street, it’s the same day he’s finally gotten up the nerve to go inside, and so they miss each other. But one gets the sense the diffident protagonist believes it’s his only chance, and he’s missed it. It’s a sweet song, and Westerberg’s delivery is perfect, as is the spare arrangement. It’s another favorite of mine.

Still another favorite song of mine (I know there are several, but that’s why the record is up here at #6!) is the celebratory “Can’t Hardly Wait.”

A simple 6-note riff opens the song, and it’s the foundation for all that follows. It’s another lyrical gem, describing a guy on the road who CAN’T (hardly) WAIT to get home to see his loved one. The imagery is fantastic, from being too drunk to write, to riding in a filthy band van[ref]Which is recalled in former roadie Bill Sullivan’s book about being on the road with The Replacements, Lemon Jail.[/ref] to my favorite: “lights that flash in the evening/ through a crack in the drapes,” gorgeously describing someone waiting at home for him to arrive. There’s a horn section throughout that many fans dislike, and even some orchestral instruments, and I think it all adds to the song’s celebratory vibe.

So listen, you can’t believe everything you read. You can’t even believe this write-up. Go listen to The Replacements and decide for yourself. There’s lots to choose from, from the hardcore punk of Stink to the classic line-up double-live For Sale: Live at Maxwell’s 1986. And just as I came to realize that the music critics were right all along, you might come to realize that Pleased to Meet Me is a tremendous record.

TRACK LISTING:
“I.O.U.”
“Alex Chilton”
“I Don’t Know”
“Nightclub Jitters”
“The Ledge”
“Never Mind”
“Valentine”
“Shooting Dirty Pool”
“Red Red Wine”
“Skyway”
“Can’t Hardly Wait”

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Tagged 1987, 80s Alternative, Chris Mars, Minneapolis, Paul Westerberg, Pleased to Meet Me, Songwriter, The Replacements, Tommy Stinson, Underrated

7th Favorite Album: Reckoning, by R.E.M.

Posted on May 18, 2019 | 3 comments

Reckoning. R.E.M.
1984, I.R.S. Records. Producer: Don Dixon and Mitch Easter.
Purchased Casette, 1984.

IN A NUTSHELL: Reckoning, by R.E.M., is the work of a band doing its own thing, establishing a sound that would define them: thumping drums, jangly guitars, melodic bass, and poetic lyrics. This is the foundation from which the Berry/Buck/Mills/Stipe legend grew, a bit more muscular than their debut. Whether blazing through danceable, upbeat numbers or creating somber moods, Reckoning shows a band discovering its power and unleashing it on the world.

NOTE: The setup – below the line ↓ – might be the best part … Or skip right to the album discussion.
~~~~

“Be Yourself” is perhaps the advice that most parents would place at the top of their list of “lessons to be ingrained in their children as they grow to adults.” It’s a realization that materializes in many adults only after years of heartbreak and embarrassment[ref]Although some know it from childhood.[/ref]. We look back on our former selves, cringe and hope nobody remembers, (or write a blog about it), and vow to pass the lesson onto our offspring so they might avoid the same sort of humiliation. “Listen,” we say, “don’t get caught up in all the popular crap, and all the trendy styles and Jones-Keeping-Upwith. Don’t go along with the crowd just to fit in. BE YOURSELF.”

Children since Neanderthal times have responded with “But Orbuk and Kongko very cool; have nice stick and rock.” They’ve spent their teen years[ref]Or in the case of cavekids, their years ages 7 – 9.[/ref] chasing the contemporary versions of the best animal skins and clubs and shiny leaves and trying to fit into the cool clan. Then one day (hopefully) they finally realize that their own path is the best path and settle into a gently-regretful adulthood. It’s always been true that one of the last parts of the human brain to fully develop is the part that says “Hey, I’m cool with just being me.” (At least I think the science says that.)

One reason, besides simple personal embarrassment, that many parents may look back and cringe is the fact that, in retrospect, it’s clear that many things considered “cool” in our youth were patently ridiculous and silly. When we think of our younger selves, we can recall recognizing “Wait, this doesn’t seem cool. This is utter bullshit.” But we can also recall thinking, “But, I guess since everyone else likes this, it must be ME who’s the weird one.” When we reach adulthood we realize: almost everyone our age ALSO thought it all was utter bullshit. But we all just went along with the crowd.

A case in point from my teenage years of the early to mid-1980s is Popular Music. Nostalgia is all well and good, and it can be fun to look back on the popular music of the 80s and revel in the wackiness and the computers and the poppiness of the era’s hit songs; and the bizarre-looking and, at times, courageous, musical acts; and the ubiquitous movie soundtrack songs. I myself listen to Sirius/XM’s “80s on 8 Big 40 Countdown” every weekend, even though it often plays songs I’d rather not remember. I find masochistic joy in reliving some of those crappy 80s hits.

But let’s face it: much of the music was bullshit. Well, let me rephrase that. The music – the notes and melodies – may have been just fine. The bullshit came because the notes and melodies were processed through a corporate Apparatus that quite unsubtly packaged and delivered its sounds and performers in a style that the Apparatus perceived to be following the cultural trends of the era[ref]Of course, MTV was a huge driver in all this, and looking back maybe I should’ve listened to my parents and turned that stupid channel off. But, nah. It was awesome![/ref]. But at the same time the Apparatus was creating those trends, thus engendering a phony, dog-wagging, entirely UN-organic, carousel of advertising and popular culture that enticed teens to hop aboard and just go with it, and deny their own natural understanding, which was: “This is bullshit.”

I’m quite sure this cycle continues today, and has always been part of Corporate America’s means of marketing products. However, in retrospect, having been a teen in the 80s – the MTV boom-days – the weighty hand of corporate nonsense is so evident in the popular music that it seems unbelievable that I didn’t recognize it at the time. But it never really dawned on me that styling was part of a marketing department’s role. I just took it for granted that if you were a man who played music, you didn’t look normal, like me. You looked like Billy Idol or Prince or Mötley Crüe or Elton John or Rush or Michael Jackson. I just didn’t see many “normal-looking” folks making music.

Okay, there was Huey Lewis, but come on. He already looked like he was about 50 years old in 1983.

Also in the 80s, I found myself drifting toward 70s-era Progressive Rock, featuring songs that were 20 minutes long, multi-part suites with 10-minute organ solos, played by mostly British bands like Yes and Emerson, Lake and Palmer, or North American versions, like Rush or Styx. The more difficult it was, the more I liked it.

Of course, there were plenty of normal-looking folks making rock music in the 80s, playing songs that didn’t require a PhD in Fretboard-shreddery to play. Sometimes they’d show up on MTV, late at night. But they didn’t register with me: if you weren’t a technically brilliant musician, or a crazy-looking, leather-clad freak, I didn’t really think you were a musician. Until a night in 1983, (or maybe early 1984, on a rerun) when I stayed up late to watch my favorite comedian, David Letterman, and he introduced a band that looked suspiciously normal (except for the singer, who had a certain affect to him.)

I liked these normal-looking guys the first night I saw them.

I was hooked from the minute I saw them, and for years (pre-YouTube) I wondered if I’d really seen it. They played two songs, and the singer sat on the stage, ignoring Dave, between them. The songs were infectious and fun and fresh: so fresh that one song was “too new” to have a name. The bass, always my favorite part of rock music, was prominent and played great counter-melodies. The guitarist wiggled and gyrated. The singer just stood and mumbled. I’d heard their song “Radio Free Europe” before, and I knew their weird name – R.E.M. And now I knew I loved them.

But as much as I loved them, their normalcy was, well, WEIRD. This wasn’t the kind of stuff that everyone else I knew listened to. I could easily share my love of 70s hard rock or 80s metal, and my fascination with progressive rock was on the normal bell curve of typical, rural Pennsylvania teen music appreciation. (The left-hand tail, sure, but it was there.) But this little, jangly, frantic group of guys in jeans and shirts – no leather, no feathers, no spandex, no makeup, no multi-zippered jackets or single, sequined glove – seemed like they might be too weird. I bought the new cassette, Reckoning, but I didn’t tell any of my friends. I listened, but was more comfortable sharing my “enthusiasm” for the new Alan Parsons Project single or Rush album. But at home I couldn’t wait to see the MTV piece on them.

I wish now that I’d have sought out other fans, and let myself be, well, myself. (Eventually I did. In college, my high school friend, Josh, and I revealed to each other that we both loved the band!)

The song “too new to be named” on that Letterman show immediately became a favorite of mine. With it’s 12-string opening riff and bouncy beat, and a melody of garbled lyrics that falls on a desperate wail of “I’m sorry!,” the song “So. Central Rain” is a song that sticks.

If you like direct lyrics sung clearly and loudly, you won’t like much of what R.E.M. has to offer, at least not from this era. “So. Central Rain” is apparently about trying to reach a girlfriend to apologize, but if you pick up on that from singer Michael Stipe, I applaud you. The opening 12-string riff, by Peter Buck, is beautiful, and then bassist Mike Mills enters. His bass lines are McCartney-esque: melodic, widely ranging, and often – as on this number – taking the lead. Drummer Bill Berry’s heartbeat bass drum pulls it all together. R.E.M. were never afraid to boost their studio sound with instrumentation. In this song, a piano, played by Mills, is prominent. The band also uses harmony vocals brilliantly, with both Mills and Berry lending their “aahhs” on this track. I love Mills’s riff, about 0:50, which brings the band back into the second verse. This song is sad but happy, and remains a favorite of mine.

Part of the allure of R.E.M. for me has always been the mysteriousness of their lyrics and vocals. In the 80s I was deep into Yes, and their vocalist, Jon Anderson, despite having a vocal style directly opposite Stipe’s, strung apparent nonsense words together. Stipe does the same thing. Can anyone tell me what a “Harborcoat” is? Is this song about a chilly, elderly, Soviet couple? It doesn’t really matter to me – the song sounds super regardless of its meaning.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BO6N8lQMBYM

The song displays Mills’s penchant for counter-melody bass, and is the perfect example Buck’s fast-strumming, arpeggiated technique. Berry’s drums, particularly hi-hat work, are terrific. At 1:17, when three voices blend in the chorus, I get chills, every time. In the second verse, the backing vocals (Berry, I think?) at times obscure the main vocals in a cool-sounding way. There’s a nifty, noisy, harmonica-infused bridge (2:38), then after another verse, Buck’s guitar riff gets more muscular (3:22) to bring it all home. It’s a fantastic song, displaying everything I love about the band.

As does the next song, “7 Chinese Bros.”

The title is taken from a children’s book, Five Chinese Brothers, adapted from a famous Chinese legend, Ten Brothers, about ten brothers with amazing abilities who use them to help their family. One of the brothers can swallow the ocean, thus the lyrics in the chorus. I love how the bass enters at 0:11, over top of Buck’s riff. The drums thump throughout, and Buck’s arpeggiated guitar in the chorus is just super cool. Mills’s bass always appears in unexpected ways, such as at 1:38. I do love Stipe’s subtle vocals on this song. (A version of this song called “Voice of Harold,” with lyrics read from the back of a gospel record, appears on the rarities album Dead Letter Office.)

My favorite song on the record is the driving, danceable “Pretty Persuasion.”

It’s a fun, upbeat song, written early in their careers, with lyrics that don’t say a lot, however, the title says it all. The opening guitar line is pure Buck, shimmery and flowing. Mills’s high-pitched bass enters, then Berry starts his heartbeat drums. The backing vocals are sweet and the melody is catchy. It’s the kind of R.E.M. song I love. The band sort of replicates it with “Second Guessing,” another fast-paced song, with obscure lyrics. I love Berry’s drums in this song, little things like the quick fill at 1:27 before heading back into the verse. Also, this record SOUNDS really good. Don Dixon and Mitch Easter[ref]I have to point out here that I recorded with Easter with my old band The April Skies back in 1991! That’s how cool I am.[/ref] produced it, and they really gave it a full, deep sound.

As a teen, I really loved the faster songs, and I didn’t think much of the slow songs. As I’ve gotten older, these slow numbers have grown on me. In particular, I really like “Time After Time (Annelise).”

It’s a subtle song, with bongos and light guitar. It definitely shows off Stipe’s vocals, as he sings about (possibly) teen suicide? The song builds nicely, and has a cool guitar solo/break about 1:59, with what may be a sitar in the background? The song “Camera” is another slow song featuring Stipe, this time about a friend who died in a car crash. “Letter Never Sent” is mid-tempo, but it shows off the entire band’s vocal abilities, as counter-melody backing vocals from Berry and Mills highlight Stipe’s meandering melody. The lyrics sound beautiful. As usual guitar and drums sound great, and Mills’s bass provides still another melody to follow.

It says much about a band that they can get me to appreciate a song style I don’t usually like. In this case it’s country (or maybe country-rock?), in the form of “(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville.”

It opens with a weird, funk-like bit of a song, the type that would fit nicely on Dead Letter Office (on which the band drunkenly covered “King of the Road.”) It’s a straightforward piece, with some piano thrown in and great harmonies in the chorus. Buck plays some tasty figures over top of Stipe’s lyrics, which take a dark turn in the bridge, where he admits he never really treated his wayward girlfriend all that great. This song was apparently written by Mills in a punk style, then the band got hold of it and created this version. Good job, men!

The album closes on a rip-roaring romp through America, a song reminiscing about old touring days in a van, apparently, with manager Jefferson Holt (“Jefferson I think we’re lost!”)

“I don’t see myself at 30,” Stipe sings immediately, and the song has a sort of free-wheeling, independent, young-adult vibe to it, sung by guys who aren’t concerned about reaching old age. Thirty-five years (!) after the album was released, with R.E.M. in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and roundly regarded as sort of godfathers of alternative rock, this sentiment is kind of funny. But the song still kicks ass, a frantic and loose number with a nifty guitar. A great album-ender.

Just be yourself. What a good lesson. R.E.M. didn’t look like the other 80s pop music acts, they didn’t sound like anything else, and they didn’t seem to care what anyone thought about it. As a teenager in 1984, this was more frightening than any of the weirdoes I regularly saw on MTV. As a 51 year old with kids, this is far more inspiring than I recognized at the time.

TRACK LISTING:
“Harborcoat”
“7 Chinese Bros.”
“So. Central Rain”
“Pretty Persuasion”
“Time After Time (Annelise)”
“Second Guessing”
“Letter Never Sent”
“Camera”
“(Don’t Go Back To) Rockville”
“Little America”

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Posted in Uncategorized

Tagged 1984, 80s Alternative, 80s MTV, Bill Berry, College Radio, Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, Peter Buck, R.E.M., Reckoning

98th Favorite: Chutes Too Narrow, by The Shins

Posted on February 21, 2014 | 7 comments

Chutes Too Narrow. The Shins.
2003, Sub Pop. Producer: The Shins and Phil Ek
Purchased ca. 2004.

IN A NUTSHELL – Guitar pop, with a touch of folk. Soaring vocals wind through complex, memorable melodies, singing beautifully obscure lyrics about … well, they could be about whatever you want them to be about, but the great thing is that YOU WILL KNOW what they mean to you. WOULD BE HIGHER IF – it was a little more rockin’.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Like many Americans, and probably people all around the globe, I really enjoy a good amnesia story. I enjoy movies like Memento
and Spellbound, which offer a dramatic take on amnesia.

I’ve enjoyed episodes of favorite
and not-favorite sitcoms that have used the condition as a (somewhat) comedic device. Best of all, I enjoy true-life accounts, such as the amazing first-person story I recently heard on the radio of David Stuart Maclean’s battle with amnesia brought on by a medication’s side-effect – a story that he put into a new book, The Answer to the Riddle Is Me, that I will be reading!

It should come as no shock that the Hollywood versions of the disease are much different than what happens in real life. And while it may be fun to watch movies about CIA-created assassins

and the unexpected consequences of experimental medical techniques, I can attest to the fact that real-life amnesia is not so interesting or- frankly – as scary as modern entertainment would have you believe. It’s so mundane, in fact, that it happens every day to hundreds of millions of people around the world, and happens for years at a time, but they barely even mention it to one another.

It is called being-a-parent-of-infants-and-toddlers. It is well-documented.

I have two kids, teen(ish) aged now, born about 4.5 years apart. So just as I was recovering from amnesia from the first one, the second one arrived and – like that giant wave at the seashore that you can’t tell is behind you as you groggily stand up from being wiped out by the first one – clobbered me all over again.

There is so much that I do not remember from those early years. I know we had family routines, operating procedures that allowed us to get little kids fed, dressed, to school, daycare … but I don’t remember how we did it. I can’t even imagine trying to do it now.

We must have bought diapers, right? I do remember changing them … but did they just magically arrive in our house through some mysterious portal, along with all the footy-pajamas, bath time foam, sippy cups, Wiggles videotapes and Hulk Hands? And what did those little buggers DO all day, anyway? Play, I would imagine? They must have played. But did they just crawl all over the place? Wouldn’t they have bumped into stuff, fallen down steps and repeatedly hurt themselves? And, okay, I remember putting their Huggies underwear on them, but other than that, did they dress themselves? If so, what did they do about their feet? How smart were they? How did they communicate? And what did they eat? The more I think about it, the more my life with toddlers raises the same questions I have about early hominids.

All this amnesia is clearly caused by lack of sleep. If you don’t have kids, sometime – for kicks – spend 3 to 7 years sleeping only in three hour blocks at night, and 20 minute catnaps during the day once or twice a week, and after that time see if you remember anything. Lack of sleep is damaging to brains. Books have been written about this concept.

At some point, during my own 7 years of amnesia, I must have picked up the CD Chutes Too Narrow, by The Shins, and I sure am glad I did so. I don’t remember when, where, or how I even heard of this band. I know their music was featured in the movie Garden State but I also know I watched that movie just because I liked the CD, so that’s not how I heard of them. I did, for a time during the amnesia – in a last-ditch effort to maintain some tenuous attachment to modern coolness – subscribe to that old magazine Blender

and it’s possible I read about them there. I honestly don’t remember.

But somehow this CD is a part of my life, and even though pacifiers, internal GPS maps of neighborhood playgrounds, an appreciation of Caillou, and all my Laurie Berkner CDs are long gone, Chutes Too Narrow remains.

The band’s singer, songwriter, guitarist, (and only member of the band remaining from this album in today’s lineup) is James Mercer.

The thing you’ll notice first about him is his high voice. The album kicks off with “Kissing the Lipless,” a straight-ahead rock song, a bit on the folk-ish side, with a careening melody that requires an impressive singer to carry. And it’s a good example of the type of songs you’ll find on the album.

There are enough guitars in there to keep me interested, and that melody – again, the melody – is not simple, but still sing-along-worthy.

In a similar vein is “So Says I.”

There’s a 60s-ishness to both of these songs, with acoustic guitar carrying the song and electric guitar filling in. And there is Mercer’s voice again – soaring and gliding.

I started becoming interested in rock music in the heyday of the High-Pitched, Scrotal-Pinched Male Rock Singer. This trend in music probably started with Robert Plant, of Led Zeppelin, and the howling that is so prominent in songs like “The Immigrant Song.” Of course, Plant could do so much more with his voice than simply use the high register, but a wave of high-pitched wailers followed him. The 70s were the heyday, with bands like Rush, Yes, Kansas, Triumph, Queen, and Styx (who had a pair of singers … but not a single testicle between them. Apparently) …

Heavier late 70s/80s bands like Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, Scorpions … all these bands had singers that sounded like they’d aged out of the Castrati choir, but were able to put their attenuated secondary sex characteristics to lucrative use singing about drugs and chicks and warlocks and Satan in guitar rock bands.

So I grew accustomed to the high-pitched male vocalist, and for years sang along to all these artists in an Alvin and the Chipmunks style that sounded perfect in my head, but that I knew was more Rainbow Brite than Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow. So I have a level of comfort with a high-pitched dude singer, and Mercer can really get up there. But he doesn’t wail – he’s more in the Roy Orbison/Michael Jackson vein, guys who just have high pitched voices.

“Turn A Square” is a rocker (well, a Shins rocker, anyway … not exactly AC/DC) with a catchy guitar riff that carries the song, and which features Mercer’s vocal range, offering a good jumping off point to discuss one of the reasons I love this album: lyrics.

I’m a fan of lyrics – all types of lyrics. I like lyrics that are serious and direct, such as “Yesterday,” by The Beatles. I like lyrics that are goofy and nonsense, like “I Am The Walrus,” by The Beatles. I like lyrics that are sophomoric and crude, like pretty much any David Lee Roth lyrics from Van Halen. I like minimalist lyrics – like in Nirvana’s “School,” which has 10 words in the whole song. As long as the lyrics are good, I like them. The difficulty is in determining what “good” is. “Good” to me just means they fit well with the song, and they aren’t too ridiculous. (Unless, such as with Van Halen, ridiculous lyrics are simply the best type to put with the music being played! But even ridiculous lyrics can be bad. See Album #99.)

But of all the lyrical styles, my favorite are probably the oblique kind, in which you hear what the singer is singing, and you know what the words mean, but they conjure an image in your mind that you can’t be sure was the intention of the singer.

It’s a touchy business, writing lyrics in this way, as whenever you leave something up to interpretation, you’re giving each and every maniac, or meth addict, or fundamentalist, or shop teacher or any other nut job out there free reign to come up with any meaning they see fit. And if you get too weird, and you’re not John “You Can Syndicate Any Boat You Row” Lennon, you can just turn everyone off completely. My favorite oblique lyricist is Donald Fagan, from Steely Dan, and Mercer’s lyrics have a lot in common with his.

Mercer does a wonderful job, I think, of conjuring images and letting the listener take over meanings. “Turn a Square” has nice lines about meeting a girl wearing tennis shorts, and the effect it has on him

“Just a glimpse of an ankle and I/
React like it’s 1805”

but then it strangely turns into a lament about the effect she has on him:

“It gets worse every time that we talk/
Can’t afford to be just one in a flock/
But that’s your lot/
When you’re after such a well-made lock/
Who was classically trained to give up”

Frankly, I have no friggin idea what this all means. But it sounds good when he sings it, and it makes me want to sing along. I kind of get the feeling from the song that he met a girl, likes her, but is unsure if the effect she has on him is good or bad … but for all I know the lyric could be about a good bowl of chili he once ate.

Almost all of the songs have a quality whereby I want to sing along, and I try to sing along, but there are so many words packed in, and their meanings don’t help give a context to what I should be singing about, so I end up listening to, say, “Kissing the Lipless” and belting out, “You told us of your new life there,” followed by mumbling “with the bum-de-bumming rounds/ or ba-bum-de something sound/with a secret to be found/ defrayed remembrance/ever seeking something some-something doo-de-criminal.” Then finishing it up with a hearty, “it’s HARD TO LEAVE ALL THESE MO-MENTS BEHIND!!”

But even the obscure lyrics have some nice gems. The song “Young Pilgrims,” a soft acoustic song,

contains the nice lines

But I learned fast how to keep my head up ’cause I/
Know I got this side of me that/
Wants to grab the yoke from the pilot and just/
Fly the whole mess into the sea.

Maybe it should be worrisome that I connect with those lyrics.

“Pink Bullets” is another beautiful, mellow song. In this song, the lyrics tell of a romance that ended too soon (I think):

When our kite lines first crossed, we tied ’em into knots/
And to finally fly apart, we had to cut them off/
Since then it’s been a book you read in reverse/
So you understand less as the pages turn/

All of the songs, both slow and fast, blend the instrumentation perfectly. Acoustic guitar drives most of the songs, but the electric guitar adds nice fills and solos. A few of the songs are embellished with strings, and keyboards are thrown into some, but it’s basically a guitar record. Guitars and melodies – I think you’ll notice a theme through my 100 albums. Guitars and melodies.

I can’t remember getting this CD. But songs like “Saint Simon” and “Fighting in a Sack” have stuck with me. I remember them more than I do lullabyes, legos, and La-La-Loopsy. And I didn’t even have to tattoo the reasons why all over my body!

TRACK LISTING
Kissing the Lipless
Mine’s Not a High Horse
So Says I
Young Pilgrims
Saint Simon
Fighting in a Sack
Pink Bullets
Turn a Square
Gone for Good
Those to Come

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Posted in Albums 100 - 91, Uncategorized

Tagged amnesia, Chutes Too Narrow, folk rock, Gilligan's Island, guitars, High-voiced singers, James Mercer, kids, melodies, memento, parenthood, sub pop, The Shins, toddlers

“In my life I love you more” -The Beatles

Posted on August 18, 2013 | 37 comments

In my attempt to create the definitive list of my 100 favorite CDs, I have been listening daily to almost all of the records in my collection for the past 11 months. I am currently listening to #281, In Your Honor, by Foo Fighters.

I continue to enjoy this project, but it hasn’t been accomplished without some stress.

See, the entire time I’ve worked on it I have been living with a sense of dread. There has been an inevitable, difficult truth awaiting me since the beginning – a fact more troubling than anything I’ve revealed so far in this blog, including my ignorance of celebrated desserts; my realization that I displayed anti-semitic actions and didn’t even remember it; and (perhaps most embarrassing) my love of Seals and Croft. I’ve put off facing this difficult problem for as long as I could. But the time has come for me to meet it head-on. It’s time for me to see if I can handle The Truth.

Here’s how I’ve dealt with The Truth so far: I’ve avoided it. You may have noticed, on my List of Albums Under Consideration, that I have been listening to my CDs (generally) starting from the “Z” end of the alphabet, working back towards “A.” (I store them alphabetically.) In this way, I have listened to CDs for almost a year and I STILL have not listened to any albums by my problem: The Beatles.

For you see, I am a Beatles fan.

A big Beatles fan.

A big big Beatles fan.

Okay, maybe not that big, but big. And I am aware of this bias, and I recognize that my love of them will overshadow any objectivity I may try to bring to this project. And I really don’t want to bullshit both of my readers (sorry for swearing, mom and dad) by pretending I can be objective.

So I’ve been avoiding listening to them.

(Incidentally, this is the same reaction I have when most Bob Dylan songs come on the radio!)

I already know – and I knew when I started this project – that my top ten albums will be (in no particular order) Let It Be, Revolver, Rubber Soul, The Beatles (The White Album), Abbey Road, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, Beatles For Sale, Magical Mystery Tour, Help!, and A Hard Day’s Night. My top 30 would also include Please Please Me, and With The Beatles, I’m sure. (Yellow Submarine might make top 50, but wouldn’t be higher because I always skip the orchestral stuff.)

This prescience would render all my efforts pointless. Why listen to all my CDs to determine the Top 100 when I already know the top 10? To paraphrase Larry Bird, “Who’s coming in 11th?”

I’ve viewed The Beatles as a problem ever since I started the project. I want to give all the CDs I hear a fair listen, but I know I won’t be fair when it comes to the Fab Four.

My Beatles fascination started pretty early. When I was a kid, whenever I was asked what my favorite song was, I’d reply “Strawberry Fields Forever.” My oldest sister had The Beatles’ “Blue Album,” a Greatest Hits collection from the years 1967 – 1970, and I used to love to hear her play it. For some reason, in 1977 – 78, while other kids were getting into Andy Gibb or Kiss or Anne Murray, I was getting into psychedelic pop from ten years earlier.

I also loved the song “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” with the sounds of an audience behind the guitars and drums, and the added orchestral parts. I really thought that The Beatles a) played all those horns and strings and b) did so in front of a live audience; and at the parts where the audience is heard chuckling (40 – 50 seconds in) I always tried to imagine what it was they were doing onstage to make everyone laugh. Were they dancing silly? Doing a pantomime? I can still remember imaginings of long-haired Hippies (my general impression of who The Beatles were) leaping around a stage in Shakespearean dress (for some reason) while playing French horns and electric guitars, causing a staid, rather elderly, British audience in formal attire to laugh uproariously despite themselves.

Through Middle School, and into High School, I still enjoyed hearing my sister’s Beatles album, and I became very familiar with all the songs, big hits like “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da,” “Lady Madonna,” and “Penny Lane,” (which over time came to rival “Strawberry Fields Forever” for top spot on my list.) But I also started to get more enthusiastic about current acts like Cheap Trick, Van Halen, Rush and U2.

Then things slowly started to change. In high school I was friends with Rick, who introduced me to a lot of music. (In fact, he and I – along with his younger brother Steve – formed the first band I was ever in, a short-lived (very short-lived) punk band whose rude (I’m sure) name I can’t remember, but with tuneless songs like “Drop Out, Kill Your Teacher,” and [I’m not proud of this one, but the point of the band was to piss people off …] “Fat Chicks Suck.” I played bass, Rick played guitar, and Steve drummed on the tape recorder with pencils and sang/screamed.) Rick’s favorite band was The Beatles, and since I respected him greatly, I decided I should listen to them more. I have a distinct memory of watching the old USA Network program “Night Flight” with Rick and Steve, and seeing both the Beatles documentary The Compleat Beatles

and the weird Beatles movie Magical Mystery Tour at their house. I soon purchased Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band on cassette.

In college, my Beatles fervor grew. I was now into a serious obsession with “Prog Rock,” – bands like Yes, ELP and early Genesis, but I had met a new friend who was slowly, surely, steering my musical ship toward the wondrous waters of Beatles.

Dave M. Dr. Dave. Phucken Dave. Dave Dude.

“Dr. Dave,” because he is now a Doctor of Pharmacy, one of the smartest people I know, rattling off pharmacological modes of action as easy as song titles from Revolver; “Phucken Dave,” because he is from PHiladelphia, and his language can – at times – be what my mom might describe as “salty” (but only at times – my mom would actually be surprised by this revelation, as I’m sure she’s never heard that “salt”); “Dave Dude” because he is not Taurus, The Black Giant.

When I met Dr. Dave he scared me. It was my first few days of college, I was a small town hick new to the city of Philadelphia, and this young man in the Joe Walsh t-shirt looked and sounded to me like some kind of big-city tough-guy. Before I got to know him, he reminded me of D’Annunzio from Caddyshack.

I was different from most of the folks he knew, as well. Here is a scene from the 80s movie that he thought I stepped out of:

But he turned out to be the friendliest, warmest person I met at college. Dave was/is an excellent guitar player, and he knew The Beatles deeply. He’d make offhanded remarks like, “It’s kinda like the solo George plays in “Honey, Don’t”” or “Ringo plays that ‘Ndah-Ndah!’ organ part on “I’m Looking Through You”” or “Matt Busby! Dig it!” and expected me to understand what he was talking about. I asked questions, the young student at the feet of the Beatle master.

And over time, my knowledge and understanding grew. I listened to the records relentlessly over the next few years. I can remember buying each album: Abbey Road the summer after my freshman year of college; The White Album, junior year (a gift, actually, from my sister); Let It Be later in my junior year; Revolver (UK version) in my senior year (at which time I played “Dr. Robert,” “She Said, She Said,” and “And Your Bird Can Sing” over and over, annoying my roommates, but learning the bass lines for the cover band (JB and the So-Called Cells) that Dr. Dave, his brother and I had formed); Rubber Soul just after graduation; Beatles For Sale, Help!, A Hard Day’s Night and Magical Mystery Tour when I lived in that cottage in Mt. Gretna.

And all through this time I was conversing with Dr. Dave, questioning him, seeking guidance, knowledge, fulfillment. He was my guru, my Beatles-sattva. Also, JB and the So-Called Cells learned a ton of Beatles songs, and played them out. Hits like “Taxman” and “Get Back.” Obscure stuff, too. “Yer Blues.” “Everybody’s Got Something To Hide Except For Me and My Monkey.” “Oh! Darling.” “I’ve Got a Feeling.” “I Dig a Pony.” We played other artists, too, but there was something special about playing songs like “She Said, She Said,” and playing them right and doing it well.

Here’s a photo of JB & The So-Called Cells from January, 1991, onstage at Zachary’s, in Hershey, PA. I’m far right, next to Dr. Dave.

(I don’t really have a mullet in this picture; it just looks that way due to how my hair is cut.)

Anyway, I guess the point to all this is that I spent a whole lot of time listening to, playing songs by, and reading and thinking about The Beatles. They’ve been a sort of hobby of mine. I react differently to them than I do to other bands, even those other bands that I adore. They mean more to me, for reasons I can’t explain.

What I like about them is that they were extremely creative and interesting, but they still always wrote killer melodies (well, almost always…)

Their songs were also deceptively simple. I remember hearing Harry Connick, Jr., (who – granted – has more musical knowledge in his pinkie toenail than I’ll ever have) say that the Beatles music was too simple, and therefore didn’t interest him. This led Dr. Dave to state, “Obviously he’s never tried to play lead guitar on “I’ve Got a Feeling”!” Almost every time I listen to a Beatles song, I hear something I didn’t notice before – a high-hat in “I Want You (She’s So Heavy);” Paul’s voice cracking in “If I Fell;” the fact that Ringo’s vocal for “What Goes On” is in the left speaker, and George’s strange guitar bursts are in the right speaker. A previously unheard breath here, an extra guitar track there, a nifty bass fill there. (Why, just three days ago, Dr. Dave texted me to ask if I ever noticed the three bass notes that begin “Penny Lane”!)

I think by now, summer 2013, peoples’ opinions of The Beatles are probably set. If you like them, you understand. If you don’t like them, I can’t change your mind. And I’m not going to try. I’m just trying to make a decent list of 100 albums without having to use up 10 – 13% of the spots on one artist due to my irrational emotional ties to it.

So I have decided to exclude Beatles albums from my top 100.

I will listen to them all, and I will rank them, but they will be in their own separate Beatles list. It just doesn’t seem fair to the other bands who’ve worked so hard to be pushed out of the top ten just because I have acute Beatlemania.

37 Comments

Posted in Difficulties In Doing This, My Life and Music, Uncategorized

Tagged 1960s Music, Abbey Road, Beatles, Dig It, Everybody's Got Something To Hide Except For Me And My Monkey, Get Back, Help! White Album, I Dig A Pony, I've Got A Feeling, Let It Be, Matt Busby, Oh! Darling, Revolver, Rubber Soul, Sgt. Pepper, She Said She Said, Sister, Strawberry Fields Forever, Taxman, Yer Blues

“We’ve been together since way back when …” – Orleans

Posted on June 6, 2013 | 2 comments

If you saw The Mona Lisa tomorrow, for the first time ever, and it was hanging on the wall of your uncle’s fishing cabin’s screened-in porch, between one of those paintings of dogs playing poker and a Bob Ross mountainscape, and if nobody told you it was the most famous painting ever, would you recognize it as a masterpiece?

Okay, in that context maybe you would. But if she wasn’t “the most visited, most written about, most sung about, most parodied work of art in the world,” would you look at her and immediately decide, “this is so good, it HAS TO be the most famous painting in the world!”?

I thought of The Mona Lisa Fishing Cabin Conundrum (as it will now be known) because I’ve been having trouble coming up with the proper means to describe my impressions of Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours album, which I recently listened to in the car. Now, I’m sure many of you just cringed at my comparison of a 70s soft-rock album to a work of art by Leonardo DaVinci, but in terms of familiarity, I think the comparison is reasonable. Various websites list Rumours as having sold over 40 million copies worldwide, and it is the 5th highest best-selling non-greatest-hits rock record in the US. So clearly many people are aware of its existence. Ask a few friends to name 5 famous paintings and 5 famous rock records, and I think there’s a good chance The Mona Lisa and Rumours would both make most lists.

As would be the case in reviewing The Mona Lisa today, it is hard to appraise Rumours solely on its artistic merits without having your mind tell you “Hey, this is Rumours!” Unfortunately, the Men In Black mind eraser technology is not available to folks drawing a music-blogger-with-a-couple-of-readers salary.

When I was a kid, one of my favorite desserts that my mom would make was something called “No Bake Cheesecake,” by Jell-o. Now, I don’t want to give the impression that my mom wasn’t a great baker. She was, and remains, an excellent baker of cookies, cakes and those twin Pennsylvania Dutch delicacies Shoo-Fly Pie

and Whoopie Pies.

But she has never been the kind of baker to go much beyond the types of desserts that a mediocre sports announcer might describe as being “in her wheelhouse.” So back in the 70s, to add some variety to the dessert menu (which she also allowed us kids to eat for breakfast … [which reminds me of the old TV ad for the cereal Cookie Crisp, in which a boy sharing breakfast with a friend in the backyard (?) asks, “Cookies for breakfast?” to which the cartoon cereal spokes-magician Cookie Jarvis replies, “Heavens No!!” – CJ’s admonition confused me because cookies were standard breakfast fare at our house]) my mom would “mix things up” by mixing up things like No-Bake cheesecake.

I loved it. Then again, I loved all of the pre-packaged, imitation foods of the day: Tang, Space Food Sticks, Spaghettios (with Franks!) and perhaps my favorite of all non-desserts: Mug O Lunch. (Weird fact about me to make your stomach turn: I’ve always kind of enjoyed institutional foods, like school cafeteria or hospital lunches. Maybe it’s because I ate so much of this stuff in the 70s.)

I never thought of “no-bake” cheesecake as anything other than simply cheesecake. It was the only cheesecake I knew. The texture of the filling was creamy, a little stiffer than pudding, but not as firm as, say, imitation butter in a tub, and this very sweet, yet slightly tangy mass was plopped and spread into the loving embrace of a margarine/graham cracker crust. “Cheesecake” was officially my favorite dessert.

When I got to college I started dating a woman, M., who, by probably any standard available, would have been described as “out of my league.” This was the mid-80s, and I was somehow able to accomplish it without the information that is readily available today to hip, young males on the prowl. [Although 70s TV
had provided me with lots of advice on a variety of topics.]) In addition to being more popular and more attractive than me, she was also far more worldly and came from a much wealthier family than me. We didn’t have much in common, but somehow we stayed together for about a year and a half. (If pressed, I’d attribute the tenacity of our relationship to mental illness, alcoholism, self-loathing, lack of communication skills, and an appreciation of a well-told joke; each distributed between us in relatively equal, though constantly varying, proportions.)

I went out to dinner with her and her family sometimes, typically near her parents home in the suburbs of Philadelphia, and often at very nice restaurants. This fact alone attests to the differences between M. and myself, as “going out to dinner” in my family had always meant subs or pizza, McDonald’s or The Red Barn. We just weren’t a family that spent much money going out to restaurants.

At one of my first fancy restaurant dinners with M. and her family (and with my dining history, anything “All-Nite Diner” and up was considered fancy) I was excited to see listed on the dessert menu “New York Cheesecake.” I loved cheesecake, and even though it seemed pretty pricey (one slice probably cost as much as three of the No-Bake boxes of mix from which I guess I figured it was prepared), I knew her family was the type that wouldn’t object to me ordering a slice.

When it arrived, I tried to act nonchalant about the fact that I didn’t know what the fuck this tannish golden giant wedge of not-quite-set Quikrete was that had been placed in front of my face. But my hosts saw my look of distress, clearly, because someone asked, “Isn’t that what you wanted?” Although I hadn’t been completely domesticated by this time in my life, I did have enough couth to understand I needed to be tactful and polite. Thinking quickly, I remarked “No, it’s fine. I just haven’t had the New York style before.”

I ate the cheesecake and pretended to enjoy it, my mouth yearning for the sugary, creamy pudding of the Jell-o brand while it tried to work its way through the lightly-sweetened density of what I now know to be a well-made, tasty cheesecake. I told everyone I liked it (one of many of a variety of lies that M. and I shared) but I vowed to never order cheesecake in a restaurant again. It wasn’t what I remembered it to be, and even if that old, boxed No-Bake dessert wasn’t authentic cheesecake, that’s the version that was familiar and delicious to me.

(I’m happy to report that I now enjoy many kinds of cheesecakes. And if I were to eat a No-Bake Cheesecake, I believe I would still enjoy it, as well.)

I recently listened to Rumours, and it was hard for me to discern if the album was good cheesecake or No-Bake. There are so many songs on it that have played so frequently throughout the years since its 1977 release that the album has almost become part of the ambient world: the birds chirp, cars drive by, “You Make Loving Fun” plays, someone coughs, the sprinklers turn on …

The songs are so familiar that when I find myself singing along I don’t know whether it’s because I actually like the music or because, well … it’s just what you do when “Go Your Own Way” comes on.

Try this test: I will name a song and then give you a line and see if you can sing, or hum, at least 75% of the entire song in your head. (Bonus points if one or more of the songs plays in your head the rest of the day!)

“Dreams” – Thunder only happens when it’s raining.
“The Chain” – And if you don’t love me now/ you will never love me again.
“Go Your Own Way” – Loving you/Isn’t the right thing to do.
“Don’t Stop” – Don’t stop/Thinkin’ about tomorrow.
“You Make Loving Fun” – Sweet, wonderful you/ You make me happy with the things you do.
“Second Hand News” – Won’t you lay me down in the tall grass/ And let me do my stuff.
“Never Going Back Again” – Been down one time/ Been down two times.
“Gold Dust Woman” – Well did she make you cry/ Make you break down/ And shatter your illusions of love.

These are songs of my life. Some of which (“You Make Loving Fun,” “Don’t Stop,” “Dreams”) even WLBR, AM-1270, played in the 70s – songs that my sisters and I now refer to as “pool songs,” because when we’d go to the town pool each day in the summers, these were the songs blaring from the loudspeakers. When my musical tastes “graduated” from 70s pop to Album-Oriented Rock
in the 80s, these pool songs remained part of the playlist, and others from the album (“The Chain,” “Go Your Own Way,” “Second Hand News”) were added. And within the past decade, when I found out – to my horror – that the “cool radio station” I found was not cool at all, but just a gussied up oldies station described by a format called “Adult Alternative,” some other songs (“Never Going Back Again,” “Gold Dust Woman”) made their way into the radio mix as well.

Even though the songs are so familiar, I do enjoy many of them. And there are other songs on the album (“Songbird,” “I Don’t Want To Know”) that I think are good as well. The remaining song, “Oh Daddy,” is rubbish.

A part of me would like to be hip enough to say, truthfully, that I don’t really like Rumours, that it’s too sappy, too overproduced, not rockin’ enough, too voyeuristic into the love lives of the group’s members… But the truth is that I do like it. Just like I like No-Bake Cheesecake. It doesn’t take away from my enjoyment of “New York Style” cheesecake, like Elvis Costello or R.E.M.

One of the reasons I like the album is that I enjoy Lindsay Buckingham’s guitar playing immensely. Even in soft rock, over-produced songs like “You Make Loving Fun,” he has some great guitar work going on in the background. True, he probably didn’t need to put 12 tracks-worth of guitar on it, but hey – it was the 70s. Anything unnecessary was IN! For example, onesies for men:

[Side note – one of the reasons I like Lindsay Buckingham is because of his two major contributions to American Comedy – 1) the theme song to the classic film National Lampoon’s Vacation,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nLiQBV6A7c

and 2) the cover to his 1981 album Law and Order.

Then again, he always seemed to have a penchant for sultry, shirtless album covers

which fortunately has not been maintained now that he’s 63.]

Anyway, I enjoyed the album. I don’t know whether it’s because it’s been so ubiquitous in my life, or if it’s because I think the songs are good.
And I don’t know if the No-Bake Cheesecake analogy really holds. It may be that Rumours is more like toothpaste – it’s hard to tell whether it’s good or it’s bad, it’s just … toothpaste. Sure, I like the taste of it, and I’m glad I have it, but I don’t really think about it much. It’s just part of my life, and I like it. As Stevie Nicks sang on the album, “I don’t want to know the reasons why …”

2 Comments

Posted in Difficulties In Doing This, Uncategorized

Tagged #WPLongform, 70s, Christine McVie, Dessert, Familiar Songs, Fleetwood Mac, Girlfriend, John McVie, Lindsey Buckingham, Mick Fleetwood, Mona Lisa, Overplayed, Processed Food, Restaurants, Rumours, Stevie Nicks

“Just Gonna Have to Be a Different Man. Time May Change Me …” – David Bowie

Posted on May 12, 2013 | 2 comments

Several years ago, while my family was living in a condo without much storage space, I was searching for some item in the hallway closet. I don’t remember what I was looking for, but my kids were very small – younger than 5, I’m sure – so it very well may have been a gift I had put away for them; or a potentially dangerous object I had hidden to keep them safe; or maybe a very large bottle whose contents I felt helped improve my parenting skills.

In my search, I came across a box with a stickynote label – “LETTERS” – printed in a fashion I recognized as my handwriting from the college-age me.

I had been an avid letter-writer in my college days, and all the way through the beginnings of the email era.

I mostly wrote to friends Dan, Dave and Josh. All three of these guys are some of the funniest people I’ve known, and they each had a distinct, clever way of communicating on paper and I always looked forward to their next letter. For some reason, I hadn’t thrown away most of their letters. (I say “for some reason,” as if I don’t know for sure, but I’m quite certain the reason I kept them is because I expected, as a twenty-year old, to lead the kind of life that would culminate with millions (billions?) of people seeking out tidbits from my existence to get an idea of what I was “really” like. I thought people wouldn’t have gotten enough of me in all the novels, music, comedy, and movies I would make – or in all the articles written about me, and TV segments about my life – and that this box of letters would be something for my estate to review, edit and release posthumously; both to help sate my hungry fans’ undiminished appetite for new ERMabilia, but also to maybe provide my heirs with a little more money to purchase that second boat for their extra (but still nice in its own way) vacation home. [Many people share this self-image.] I can only hope Dan and Dave and Josh each have a similar shoebox in their closets.)

Anyway, I dug in for a letter from Josh, because – not meaning to diminish other letter-writers over the years – his letters always had a little something special about them, a turn of a phrase or an interesting way of telling a story – that I thought would have held up well over the years. I opened the letter, imagining myself as a future curator of a museum of the arts that had won the rights to display my memorabilia, excited to find out “what made ERM tick?” and maybe anticipating the book I would write about him, and the interviews I would grant on the topic.

I pulled out a letter from either 1985 or 1986. I know this because I distinctly remember opening the letter and thinking, “I wonder if this will provide insight into why I wore a mullet?”

I tingled with excitement.

Then I read with horror the first sentence from my friend:

“E –

I have to say I was very disturbed to read that you called that guy a kike.”

I folded the letter up, put it back in the envelope, and have never opened that box again. (I didn’t throw the box away, though – I still have my Estate to consider, and that second boat …) It was just too disturbing, for several reasons.

The biggest, most obvious reason is that this was evidence that I was, apparently, a bigoted asshole. I mean, that’s what I’d think if I was the curator/biographer in my dreams – “Geez, despite the Oscars, Pulitzers and scores of humanitarian awards, ERM was actually a bigoted asshole.” And that’s disturbing to think about one’s self.

But nearly as disturbing is the fact that I don’t ever remember using the word “kike.” It’s not a word I even think about using. I was a standup comic for years, and I could imagine, in the service of a joke, a situation in which I might want to use a derogatory term for effect (ironically, to make a point … I’ve done it before), and if I was going to use a derogatory term for Jews in such a case, I think “kike” would probably be the fourth or fifth word I’d consider. (I won’t bore you with a list.)

In addition to being confronted with these upsetting thoughts, I also felt confused because not only was I, apparently, a bigoted asshole, but I was the type of bigoted asshole who not only 1) used the word “kike,” and 2) directed it at another person, but also 3) felt the urge to put the incident in a letter to a friend! Like I was really super-proud!! I was the kind of person you know tangentially in real life, and so accept as a Friend on Facebook, then read a couple of his posts about “nailing chicks” and “the goddam illegals” and so you quietly Unfriend him.

I was a person I didn’t like, and I didn’t remember being him.

Reading that sentence was weird. I don’t remember being anti-Semitic. I don’t remember the feeling of wanting to call someone such a name, or believing there was a reason to distinguish someone with such a term. I know I grew up in a place and time where I was definitely instilled with bigotry and intolerance. And I’m not proud to say it, but I do remember having feelings of superiority over and prejudices toward women, gays and lesbians, African-Americans, Asians, Latinos … pretty much the whole spectrum of non-straight-white-males out there. But the strange thing is that I don’t remember harboring these same feelings toward Jewish people. There were so few Jews where I grew up that I just didn’t “get” the stereotypes.

I knew the Jewish stereotypes because I was a fan of comedy, and many of my favorite comedians – Woody Allen, Garry Shandling, and especially Don Rickles, – were Jewish, and would mention them. I also devoured Mad Magazine, and many of their writers were Jewish and used Yiddish words for a funny effect, and the magazine often tackled the subject of racism in a humorous way, and so touched on all stereotypes. But none of these Jewish stereotypes meant much to me, other than as a punch line for Rickles. Now that I think about it, I’m pretty sure that the first time I even remember hearing the word “kike” out loud was as a high-schooler, in a theater, watching the “classic” film Porky’s II.

(The fact that I saw that film in the theater when it was released is only SLIGHTLY less embarrassing than the fact that I used to be such a bigot.)

So reading that first sentence of that old letter was strange, embarrassing, disorienting and quite shameful: kind of like the first after-gym-class shower in 6th grade.

So, WHAT (you may ask) would make me reveal such a distasteful, humiliating part of my past, and place it out here in the internets, where it will be preserved forever, causing folks who don’t know me to think I am a racist, self-delusional asshole, and those who do know me to question themselves about just how well they really do? Where it could cause harm to myself and my loved ones, professionally, personally and just about any other way possible? And HOW ON EARTH could it EVER relate to music??!!??

I have three words for you: Asia, by Asia.

I bought this CD specifically for this list-making project. I remember loving this album back in high school. My sister had it on vinyl, and I listened to it a lot. At some point, I transferred it to cassette (the old-school form of piracy, which was musically promoted by Bow Wow Wow back in the day …) and it remained in heavy rotation in my walkman,

car stereo and bedroom stereo. At some point, I stopped listening to it, and I hadn’t thought much about it in the intervening years, except to remember, “Man, I used to LOVE that tape!” Even when I heard some (both?) of the hits on 80s radio, I never felt compelled to go out and get a new copy of the record. The bootleg tape version is gone, as my collection of cassettes – which numbered hundreds back in the day – has dwindled over the years to a couple collections of TV theme songs, some mix-tapes from my wedding party, and one or two recordings of various high school concert bands in which I played trombone.

So, I thought – for completeness’ sake – I should re-experience Asia all over again. I found it cheap on the internet (cost twice as much to ship as the CD itself, 3 dollars total) and when it arrived, I put it in the rotation of CDs.

I soon found myself asking the same question I pondered upon reading about my younger, bigoted, angry self:

“Who the fuck WAS I???”

I felt no connection to, had no interest in, and could barely listen to this CD. Steve Howe was in the band, and I always did – and still do – like him. And listening to the CD again, I could pick out bits of his playing that were really cool. But they were buried beneath an avalanche of Geoff Downes’ synthesizer woodles (yes woodles) and John Wetton’s voice, which I believe is the least-soulful voice that’s ever been recorded and put to music, apart from that of Radiohead’s “fitter, happier.”

Carl Palmer played drums on the album, and I always did – and still do – like him, but even a great drummer can’t save this crap. As each song began, I found myself thinking, “Wait, this must be the song I loved … right? It must be coming up … I know there must be a song I loved on this thing …” And as I pressed the “NEXT” button on my car’s CD player in the middle of each song, I thought “Nope. I don’t remember this song at all, and there’s NO WAY I ever loved this thing …”

I could find nothing redeeming about this CD, and I can’t recall how I ever loved it so much. Whatever did I hear in this music, and why – today – does it not even conjure a tiny speck of affinity within me? What the hell happened? Who was I?

And for that matter, how did I ever go from being an Asia fan to being a New York Dolls fan? At what point did a musical ablution rid me of the grime of Emerson, Lake and Palmer and leave behind a gleaming finish of The Beatles, Prince and Maria McKee? And maybe more weirdly, how did I retain my love for Yes and Rush, but still become a fanatic for The Replacements and The Hold Steady? How is all of this possible?

I’ve often felt like I haven’t changed much at all since I was fourteen or so. I still find Caddyshack hilarious, Columbo awesome, and pretty women intimidating (including my wife!) I still like the Phillies, can’t wait to play my next game of pickup hoops, and still await the Hollywood Stardom that is just around the corner for me. But in some ways, I’ve changed immeasurably.

I’m proud to say that I was appalled to read about who I was on that day in 1986 that I wrote to Josh about. And I’m happy to divulge that I took a peek at the second sentence in that letter, in which Josh wrote, “That really doesn’t sound like something you would do,” meaning that whatever it was that happened, my best friend at the time found it out-of-character as well.

Really, all I can imagine is that the incident involved someone I knew fairly well, who was Jewish, and who I was trying to piss off because I was pissed off at him – probably during a pickup basketball game. Of course, this doesn’t make the actions more defensible, but it at least provides a context that I can understand. But who knows? If I was such a fan of something that now, 30 years later, sounds to me like music from a different species’ CD collection, maybe I was parading around at the time wearing a white hood and robe …

It’s shocking to say, but Asia sounded so bad to me that it has the power to make me wonder if I was ever part of a white supremacist group.

Maybe I’m overthinking this whole CD thing.

2 Comments

Posted in My Life and Music, Uncategorized

Tagged #WPLongform, Asia, bad music, bigot, Carl Palmer, change, Don Rickles, Garry Shandling, Geoff Downes, John Wetton, letters, personal development, Porky's II, Steve Howe, Woody Allen

“Day After Day I Get Up And I Say I’d Better Do It Again” – The Kinks

Posted on April 14, 2013 | Comments Off

I’ve been writing this blog for about three months now (just weeks after blogging was pronounced dead … similar to when I got a CB Radio in 1983 and a Sega Genesis box in 2001), trying to post at least every two weeks, and trying to keep on listing the albums I’ve been listening to. It’s harder than I thought it would be!

By the way, here’s a very serious CW McCall “singing” “Convoy”… the song that sparked a revolution in culture, culminating in a fine, fine Kris Kristofferson vehicle.

But I realize, as difficult as this is for me, it’s even harder for you folks out there reading to keep up with my sporadic posts and stay interested! I check my stats, and I’m not lying when I say I average several hundred to a thousand hits a day, but even so, I shouldn’t count on the fact that all my readers are so vigilant that they are aware of what I’m doing all the time.

This came to my attention recently when I met a fervent reader of mine at a music convention of sorts, and he casually asked, “Weren’t you going to do some internet thing about online music or something?”

So I realized that maybe I should take time this week to re-orient folks to what it is I’m doing, and why.

I am listening to all of my CDs and digital albums (well, most of them anyway) and trying to compile my list of the top 100. I listen in my car as I commute, and I make notes so that I can compare the records and finally, some day, make my list.

I started this because I was discussing the inherent bullshittiness of “Best Album Ever” lists with a friend, and so I decided to make a list of my own. I thought it only fair to give each record a listen in some kind of similar context (driving in a car) so I could compare them to each other.

In the meantime, I’m blogging every couple of weeks about music-related ideas that come up while I’m doing my listening.

I have attempted to post the name of each record I’m listening to, and I also tweet the name of the album of the day. Follow me @erm2020.

I expect the list to be complete in … well … 2014??

Okay, all … thanks for reading!!!
ERM

Comments Off on “Day After Day I Get Up And I Say I’d Better Do It Again” – The Kinks

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