This album is a marker for me, a placeholder, a doorjamb. It came out in the spring of 1997 which was a very full time for me, as Cashel would be born on Halloween several months later. If you tested my DNA you would find microcosmic snippets of these songs in there.
I know many people who are big fans of this band and most of them dislike this album. Most of them had flipped over the first Foo Fighters record which I have never gotten into. In fact, I don't own any other Foo Fighters music. I've heard the songs and like them, I enjoy Dave Grohl immensely and root for them, but I never needed anything but 'The Colour And The Shape'.
There are a few albums like this in my collection. I knew they were in the pantheon the first time I heard them, I listened to them obsessively until I could sing every note (and by every note I mean every vocal, every guitar solo, every bass line, every drum roll, EVERYTHING), and I consistently revisit them once the initial obsession has passed.
From what I can tell, Grohl was going through a break up and much of the album delves into this difficult territory. It's hard not to layer Cobain over everything which gives it a whole different level of depth and tragedy, something that doesn't detract at all. It's like Mickey Rourke in 'The Wrestler'. The movie isn't about Mickey Rourke fucking up his movie career but those echoes certainly add to the impact the story has.
So it is with this album. For me, a guy who was in a trying relationship of his own, it hit me like a ton of bricks. From the gentle opening notes of 'Doll' which segue violently into 'Monkey Wrench', it is clear that we are in for a tough ride.
Actors all have little tricks for getting at difficult emotion. Or good actors do. Years later doing my cousin's play 'Searching For Certainty' in Los Angeles, I would use 'The Colour And The Shape' to channel myself into the state I needed to be in. My character has been pining away for 9 years over the girl that got away in college. He takes a road trip to New York and has a dinner with her in which he finally comes clean. They kiss. The pent up emotion lets loose and he begins to cry at this dream which has finally come true.
This is what this album sounds like to me. A triumph, a moment so hard-earned that your celebration has a wide swath of regret braided into it. You wish you could merely jump for joy but you paid such a price in getting there that your capacity for that kind of unfettered positivity has diminished. You receive your trophy, it is in your image, but it needs crutches to stay on its pedestal.
To my taste, the sound on this album perfectly represents that kind of contradiction. The guitars are crisper than crisp but still pack major punch. The drums are powerful and full of abandon but never stray over into bombast. Grohl's singing is emotionally spot on, to the point that he disappears and the song becomes its own performance. This album is alive to me, it has a personality and a point of view. It hurts.
To this day if I need to cry for any reason, all I have to do is try and sing along to 'February Stars'. I simply can't get through that song without having the primal response I had when I first heard it, when I felt as if I'd never be happy again, but at least I was admitting I had to try.
I said you'd find snippets of this album in my DNA which is true. The strange thing is, it hit me so hard it felt like it had been there my whole life. As if I'd been born with this album. Just like Dave Grohl. And I would like to give him a prize for it, one that didn't have to use crutches to hold itself up.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
Thursday, March 19, 2009
19 Greatest Albums: Let's Hope It's Beck or Jeff Buckley - 'Grace'
The year is 1997. It is May and New York is blossoming. Maria is pregnant with what will turn out to be Cashel. We work together at The Hub, a channel on AOL. I am writing a column a week as Legs Urbano, investigating urban legends for the Urban Legends website.
It seems an impossibly naive time in the city. The internet boom is in such full force that money is being thrown at anyone with an idea. People still smoke in bars. Clinton is flirting with the whole world. In fact, one of the legends that had started to surface on my site was that Clinton had had an affair with an intern. Unlike the albino alligator in the sewer, this one was true.
Even that brewing scandal seems quaint now that we've had 9/11, Abu Graib, Cheney hunting old friends, fake yellowcake, and the collapse of the economy. We all gathered every morning at the offices in midtown and played ping pong until we had good ideas. We were making it up as we went along.
Several years earlier, when Maria still lived in Providence and we were doing the long distance dating thing, Jeff Buckley was playing an in-store appearance at a record store in Providence. I took the bus up and we went and sat on the floor as he sang a short set of material from 'Grace'.
In person he was somewhat of a disappointment. He was not as handsome as he seemed in the shots on the album and this made that seem like a bit of a pose. He was sort of a runt, stringy hair, a bit of a dirtbag.
But when he sang, all of a sudden the James Dean beauty that infused the photos on 'Grace' appeared like a shot. He became larger, larger than he'd seemed, larger than life. Then the song would end and he would shrink back down to the little scrawny dude who just didn't know what to do with all these people watching him. He seemed like a monk who all of a sudden has to pray in front of an audience.
To anyone who wasn't around when the album came out, you might not be able to fully grasp the feeling he brought out in people. He influenced so many singers that his style seems inevitable, like something that was there all along. But, no. If you go back to 1994 there was a grunt and groan aesthetic born from grunge that was passing for emotional depth. Jeff Buckley shot an arrow through the heart of that bullshit.
I can't help but compare the sound of 'Grace' to the vision I have of New York prior to 9/11. There is a simplicity and ease that can never be duplicated.
Working for an internet startup in those days meant that I was something of a town crier to my friends who weren't connected to the internet. So when word started coming in that a 'young white male rock musician' had passed away, I was one of the few who knew about it. There was a short period of time when those were the only details we had. Young white male rock musician. It was rumored to be Buckley but no one knew for sure.
One of my coworkers, no doubt busy creating a slide-show that would seem prehistoric today, spoke out into the common space...
"Let's hope it's Beck."
I've always been startled by the blackness of that comment, which never fails to make me laugh. And it seemed like after we found out who it really was, everything started to come apart at the seams.
Less than 4 years later, my marriage would be over, The Hub would be long gone, Bush was President, and the city was in flames. Thank god you could still stand in a bar and have a smoke.
But not for long.
It seems an impossibly naive time in the city. The internet boom is in such full force that money is being thrown at anyone with an idea. People still smoke in bars. Clinton is flirting with the whole world. In fact, one of the legends that had started to surface on my site was that Clinton had had an affair with an intern. Unlike the albino alligator in the sewer, this one was true.
Even that brewing scandal seems quaint now that we've had 9/11, Abu Graib, Cheney hunting old friends, fake yellowcake, and the collapse of the economy. We all gathered every morning at the offices in midtown and played ping pong until we had good ideas. We were making it up as we went along.
Several years earlier, when Maria still lived in Providence and we were doing the long distance dating thing, Jeff Buckley was playing an in-store appearance at a record store in Providence. I took the bus up and we went and sat on the floor as he sang a short set of material from 'Grace'.
In person he was somewhat of a disappointment. He was not as handsome as he seemed in the shots on the album and this made that seem like a bit of a pose. He was sort of a runt, stringy hair, a bit of a dirtbag.
But when he sang, all of a sudden the James Dean beauty that infused the photos on 'Grace' appeared like a shot. He became larger, larger than he'd seemed, larger than life. Then the song would end and he would shrink back down to the little scrawny dude who just didn't know what to do with all these people watching him. He seemed like a monk who all of a sudden has to pray in front of an audience.
To anyone who wasn't around when the album came out, you might not be able to fully grasp the feeling he brought out in people. He influenced so many singers that his style seems inevitable, like something that was there all along. But, no. If you go back to 1994 there was a grunt and groan aesthetic born from grunge that was passing for emotional depth. Jeff Buckley shot an arrow through the heart of that bullshit.
I can't help but compare the sound of 'Grace' to the vision I have of New York prior to 9/11. There is a simplicity and ease that can never be duplicated.
Working for an internet startup in those days meant that I was something of a town crier to my friends who weren't connected to the internet. So when word started coming in that a 'young white male rock musician' had passed away, I was one of the few who knew about it. There was a short period of time when those were the only details we had. Young white male rock musician. It was rumored to be Buckley but no one knew for sure.
One of my coworkers, no doubt busy creating a slide-show that would seem prehistoric today, spoke out into the common space...
"Let's hope it's Beck."
I've always been startled by the blackness of that comment, which never fails to make me laugh. And it seemed like after we found out who it really was, everything started to come apart at the seams.
Less than 4 years later, my marriage would be over, The Hub would be long gone, Bush was President, and the city was in flames. Thank god you could still stand in a bar and have a smoke.
But not for long.
Wednesday, March 18, 2009
20 Greatest Albums: Joe Strummer &The Mescaleros - 'Rock Art & The X-Ray Style'
As far as I'm concerned, this entire Top 50 List could consist entirely of Beatles, Clash, Rolling Stones, and Replacements albums. So in order to shake it up and distinguish it from other similar lists, I've forced myself to include questionable entries, i.e. albums that I wrote, my sister and cousins wrote, and 'Chinese Democracy'.
So no, this album by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros is not better than 'London Calling'. 'London Calling' has its place in the pantheon as one of the greatest albums of all time in any genre. So why should I write about Joe Strummer in place of that? Because.
I came to Los Angeles several times before moving here. Two days after Cash was born I was flown out on a callback for a beer commercial. That was my first time in LA. The second time I came I booked myself into an Extended Stay hotel for a couple of weeks and tried to scare up some meetings. The third time I came...well, that's what this review is really about.
Earlier that year, my cousin Mike had been visiting New York. As usual, debauchery and comedy ensued. This might have been the beginning of the 'Law and Order' skit that we've been amusing ourselves with, whereby a regular civilian when faced with homicide detectives, continues vigorously polishing silverware or stacking cantaloupes instead of sitting the hell down and answering the questions.
And Mike played me Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros. I remember we were riding in a cab somewhere, it was already quite late, and Mike said in that insistent tone I've come to expect great things from, "Dude, you've gotta listen to this album."
The Clash had been the true template for the band I'd been in in high school. As much as I love The Replacements, The Clash are the true height of rock and roll. Some famous quote called them "The Only Band That Matters" or something to that effect. And I think in many ways that was true. For my friends and I, their breakup was as crushing as The Beatles had been to the Baby Boomers.
And then Joe Strummer disappeared. Mick Jones pushed the boundaries of popular music with his rock/rap outfit Big Audio Dynamite, music that is still influencing the scene today. If you check out their stuff you'll not be able to believe it was recorded in the '80's.
But Joe Strummer? He was our Springsteen. Imagine that for the next TEN YEARS Bruce Springsteen was silent. Well, that's what Joe Strummer did. That's how punk rock that fucker was.
He'd put out the excellent 'Earthquake Weather' in 1989, he'd done some work with The Pogues, but it all felt like after-thoughts, like he'd decided to have some fun.
But when 'Rock Art & The X-Ray Style' snaked out of those headphones into my ears in early 2000 in a cab shooting up 6th avenue, I knew this was no after-thought.
Cut to LA. I'm again visiting knocking on mostly closed doors. This time, due to financial considerations, I'm staying at Cashel's uncle, my former brother in law's house. But I'm spending most of my time with Mike and Lisa in Venice. Mike excitedly tells me that Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros are playing The Troubador, the famed West Hollywood club. Mike immediately snaps up tickets.
I shoot up the 10 in my teeny Ford Aveo rent-a-car. In some strange fit of fiscal irresponsibility I've paid for every bit of insurance one can buy, even though my credit card supposedly covers me anyway. I am jazzed about the prospect of seeing one of the few heroes I have.
I exit the 10 onto Crenshaw. At the top of the ramp I skirt right through the tail end of a yellow light. It's about 2AM so traffic is slight. About 50 yards up Crenshaw is the ramp from the 10 going in the other direction. As I take my left onto Crenshaw that light turns green. I continue through it, thinking about Joe Strummer.
As I cross under the light, I see out of my peripheral vision a car barreling up the ramp. I realize they are not stopping at the light. They've come off the highway and must be going close to 50MPH. I brace for impact.
All is quiet. I spin, lights trace, wheel turns. I whip the wheel to keep myself from flying into the oncoming traffic of the other lane. I do either a 360 or a 720, I'm still not sure which and I come to a stop in the lane I was in but facing in the opposite direction. Imagine a car parked in a lane facing the wrong way. My brain was boggled.
The car that hit me was a giant American model. They'd taken a left onto Crenshaw, plowed through me and now pulled over on the overpass.
Here's where things get kooky.
In my head I can see the driver get out of the car and take a few steps in my direction. They are maybe 20 yards away. They are either a tall skinny black man or a short fat black woman. Both images are equally real in my memory. Perhaps there were two people in the car but I guess I'll never know. Because he/she got back in their damaged car and took off.
I sat stunned in my crumpled Aveo. An SUV was stopped at the light in the lane going the other direction. We were separated by the divider. The woman leaned out of her car and said, "You should get out of the car...you're gonna get hit again."
I thought that seemed like a sensible idea so I put the hazards on and stepped out of the car. I walked around it onto the median strip. I felt soft and over-inflated. I sat down on the ground and called 911. Then I called Mike. He said he was leaving immediately from Venice and would be there in 20 minutes.
I could now see the damage to the passenger side of the car. It was considerable. The car had struck my car right over the back wheel well, which had saved my life. If it had hit me a second sooner it would have caught my car right in the middle and pushed me into oncoming traffic where I'd have been hit head on. As it was the whole left side was punctured and indented from the impact.
More kookiness ensued.
As I sat there, a car came chugging up from the ramp where my hit-and-run attacker had come from. This car was on fire.
A small white car, perhaps a Toyota Celica or something along those lines. It rolled to a stop directly across the street from me and the driver got out. He was a small Mexican man wearing a baseball cap. He ran across the street to a house yelling, "Agua! Agua!" Another man, perhaps his father, came running out with a bucket of water and proceeded to douse the engine. I knew this was a bad idea but I was still too shocked to try to communicate with them. The hissing from the water hitting the hot engine block sounded heinous.
The fire truck came and put the car out. It took a few attempts to explain to the firemen that these two cars were completely unrelated to one another. They asked if I was hurt and I didn't think that I was. Although my head was ringing and my ears were stuffed with cotton.
Mike came. He waited for me until the cops came which was quite some time. Apparently, if you're ever in a car accident in LA and need assistance, you have to say that you thought the other person had a gun. Then the cops will rush right over to you. But if there isn't a gun involved they have better things to do.
Needless to say it was pretty cut and dried since it was a hit and run. The extra insurance paid for the car which was totaled. I went back with Mike to his apartment and gingerly went to sleep, but not before I terrified Melody by leaving her a voice message which said something like...
"Hey babe. Got into a car accident. I'm at Mike's and I'm just gonna go to sleep."
She freaked out! Pictured me like the folks in the movie who just want to lie down after head trauma. But no, it wasn't that severe. However, I was rattled to a very intense degree. I was sore all over, very emotional, spacey, irrational...you name it.
We didn't go see Joe Strummer.
I don't care about the car. I don't care about the occasional aches and pains I still get. I don't care about the shudder when I cross that intersection again, which I do at least 10 times a week.
No. I care that those fuckers drove up the Crenshaw ramp and killed my last chance to see Joe Strummer in person. He'd be dead in a year. They didn't kill me, though. You hear that whoever the fuck you are? You didn't get me.
So no, this album by Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros is not better than 'London Calling'. 'London Calling' has its place in the pantheon as one of the greatest albums of all time in any genre. So why should I write about Joe Strummer in place of that? Because.
I came to Los Angeles several times before moving here. Two days after Cash was born I was flown out on a callback for a beer commercial. That was my first time in LA. The second time I came I booked myself into an Extended Stay hotel for a couple of weeks and tried to scare up some meetings. The third time I came...well, that's what this review is really about.
Earlier that year, my cousin Mike had been visiting New York. As usual, debauchery and comedy ensued. This might have been the beginning of the 'Law and Order' skit that we've been amusing ourselves with, whereby a regular civilian when faced with homicide detectives, continues vigorously polishing silverware or stacking cantaloupes instead of sitting the hell down and answering the questions.
And Mike played me Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros. I remember we were riding in a cab somewhere, it was already quite late, and Mike said in that insistent tone I've come to expect great things from, "Dude, you've gotta listen to this album."
The Clash had been the true template for the band I'd been in in high school. As much as I love The Replacements, The Clash are the true height of rock and roll. Some famous quote called them "The Only Band That Matters" or something to that effect. And I think in many ways that was true. For my friends and I, their breakup was as crushing as The Beatles had been to the Baby Boomers.
And then Joe Strummer disappeared. Mick Jones pushed the boundaries of popular music with his rock/rap outfit Big Audio Dynamite, music that is still influencing the scene today. If you check out their stuff you'll not be able to believe it was recorded in the '80's.
But Joe Strummer? He was our Springsteen. Imagine that for the next TEN YEARS Bruce Springsteen was silent. Well, that's what Joe Strummer did. That's how punk rock that fucker was.
He'd put out the excellent 'Earthquake Weather' in 1989, he'd done some work with The Pogues, but it all felt like after-thoughts, like he'd decided to have some fun.
But when 'Rock Art & The X-Ray Style' snaked out of those headphones into my ears in early 2000 in a cab shooting up 6th avenue, I knew this was no after-thought.
Cut to LA. I'm again visiting knocking on mostly closed doors. This time, due to financial considerations, I'm staying at Cashel's uncle, my former brother in law's house. But I'm spending most of my time with Mike and Lisa in Venice. Mike excitedly tells me that Joe Strummer & The Mescaleros are playing The Troubador, the famed West Hollywood club. Mike immediately snaps up tickets.
I shoot up the 10 in my teeny Ford Aveo rent-a-car. In some strange fit of fiscal irresponsibility I've paid for every bit of insurance one can buy, even though my credit card supposedly covers me anyway. I am jazzed about the prospect of seeing one of the few heroes I have.
I exit the 10 onto Crenshaw. At the top of the ramp I skirt right through the tail end of a yellow light. It's about 2AM so traffic is slight. About 50 yards up Crenshaw is the ramp from the 10 going in the other direction. As I take my left onto Crenshaw that light turns green. I continue through it, thinking about Joe Strummer.
As I cross under the light, I see out of my peripheral vision a car barreling up the ramp. I realize they are not stopping at the light. They've come off the highway and must be going close to 50MPH. I brace for impact.
All is quiet. I spin, lights trace, wheel turns. I whip the wheel to keep myself from flying into the oncoming traffic of the other lane. I do either a 360 or a 720, I'm still not sure which and I come to a stop in the lane I was in but facing in the opposite direction. Imagine a car parked in a lane facing the wrong way. My brain was boggled.
The car that hit me was a giant American model. They'd taken a left onto Crenshaw, plowed through me and now pulled over on the overpass.
Here's where things get kooky.
In my head I can see the driver get out of the car and take a few steps in my direction. They are maybe 20 yards away. They are either a tall skinny black man or a short fat black woman. Both images are equally real in my memory. Perhaps there were two people in the car but I guess I'll never know. Because he/she got back in their damaged car and took off.
I sat stunned in my crumpled Aveo. An SUV was stopped at the light in the lane going the other direction. We were separated by the divider. The woman leaned out of her car and said, "You should get out of the car...you're gonna get hit again."
I thought that seemed like a sensible idea so I put the hazards on and stepped out of the car. I walked around it onto the median strip. I felt soft and over-inflated. I sat down on the ground and called 911. Then I called Mike. He said he was leaving immediately from Venice and would be there in 20 minutes.
I could now see the damage to the passenger side of the car. It was considerable. The car had struck my car right over the back wheel well, which had saved my life. If it had hit me a second sooner it would have caught my car right in the middle and pushed me into oncoming traffic where I'd have been hit head on. As it was the whole left side was punctured and indented from the impact.
More kookiness ensued.
As I sat there, a car came chugging up from the ramp where my hit-and-run attacker had come from. This car was on fire.
A small white car, perhaps a Toyota Celica or something along those lines. It rolled to a stop directly across the street from me and the driver got out. He was a small Mexican man wearing a baseball cap. He ran across the street to a house yelling, "Agua! Agua!" Another man, perhaps his father, came running out with a bucket of water and proceeded to douse the engine. I knew this was a bad idea but I was still too shocked to try to communicate with them. The hissing from the water hitting the hot engine block sounded heinous.
The fire truck came and put the car out. It took a few attempts to explain to the firemen that these two cars were completely unrelated to one another. They asked if I was hurt and I didn't think that I was. Although my head was ringing and my ears were stuffed with cotton.
Mike came. He waited for me until the cops came which was quite some time. Apparently, if you're ever in a car accident in LA and need assistance, you have to say that you thought the other person had a gun. Then the cops will rush right over to you. But if there isn't a gun involved they have better things to do.
Needless to say it was pretty cut and dried since it was a hit and run. The extra insurance paid for the car which was totaled. I went back with Mike to his apartment and gingerly went to sleep, but not before I terrified Melody by leaving her a voice message which said something like...
"Hey babe. Got into a car accident. I'm at Mike's and I'm just gonna go to sleep."
She freaked out! Pictured me like the folks in the movie who just want to lie down after head trauma. But no, it wasn't that severe. However, I was rattled to a very intense degree. I was sore all over, very emotional, spacey, irrational...you name it.
We didn't go see Joe Strummer.
I don't care about the car. I don't care about the occasional aches and pains I still get. I don't care about the shudder when I cross that intersection again, which I do at least 10 times a week.
No. I care that those fuckers drove up the Crenshaw ramp and killed my last chance to see Joe Strummer in person. He'd be dead in a year. They didn't kill me, though. You hear that whoever the fuck you are? You didn't get me.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
21 Greatest Albums: Dr. Mars - 'Up In The Air, Vol. 1'
Dr. Mars is a mysterious band. My cousin Liam is Dr. Mars. And yet, they remain a band and mysterious.
I've started this review three times now and I am finding it hard to express just how this music strikes me. I was going to go song by song and dissect just why each one is a perfect little jewel. But now that I sit down to do that I find something lacking in that approach.
Why? It's too literal. And this music is anything but literal. It is visceral. To say that Dr. Mars echoes the sound of Bowie, The Beatles, The Ramones, The Clash, T Rex, glam rock, Queen, etc. is to put you in the arena but it doesn't put you in your actual SEAT. The beauty of 'Up In The Air, Vol. 1' is that is invokes those sounds you've been hearing since you started listening to music but somehow it turns them around, faces them in a new direction, puts them in a new context. So you are at once comforted and exhilarated.
But what pushes this music from pure enjoyment into genius is the tension that exhilaration is faced with when it is paired with the underlying theme of the album. There is a narrative that shoots through the songs, one of a great love challenged by some strange and unwieldy ideas. A man and a woman in an urban landscape wrestle with their suspicion that aliens have landed and are trying to contact them. Dr. Mars himself explained this story to me at one time but I've probably telephone-gamed it into something else.
Here is the story as I understand it.
They are in love. She is convinced that aliens are among us. At first he is concerned for her sanity and worries that the woman he loves has lost her mind. She slowly convinces him that she isn't crazy, that she has seen x,y,z and while she doesn't have an ET in her closet eating Reese's Pieces, some strange things have certainly been happening. His love for her ushers him into this world of deciphered messages, hidden meanings, as Dr. Mars says, '...scanning for cyphers and clues'.
His willingness to see her point of view sends him into a madness all his own. He yearns to break free from this Earth, to see, to KNOW. So while the idea of aliens might seem B-movie, here it is understated enough to achieve allegory.
By the end of the album they have left all normalcy behind and are ready to board, to vanish, to let their love take them away from everything they've ever known.
Scary. Romantic. Funny. And it rocks.
Now, I'm sure that I've changed some details here and perhaps Dr. Mars could write a synopsis for me someday, but that isn't really the point. You could listen to this album without knowing any of this and your response would still be enormous. The territory covered is perfect fodder for anthemic rock songs...love, doubt, fear, regret, sex, and yes, UFO's.
All great rock and roll front men are mythic figures. They place themselves outside of our experience so that they can better reflect a wider range of human truth. So, sure, Bowie seems to be singing about some cat named Ziggy Stardust. But really, he's singing about you.
When Dr. Mars imagines himself 'seein' home through the dome/wavin' back', we are the ones who have boarded the ship. We are zooming into space forever, leaving all we know behind us in the hopes of some great adventure. We are up in the air.
I've started this review three times now and I am finding it hard to express just how this music strikes me. I was going to go song by song and dissect just why each one is a perfect little jewel. But now that I sit down to do that I find something lacking in that approach.
Why? It's too literal. And this music is anything but literal. It is visceral. To say that Dr. Mars echoes the sound of Bowie, The Beatles, The Ramones, The Clash, T Rex, glam rock, Queen, etc. is to put you in the arena but it doesn't put you in your actual SEAT. The beauty of 'Up In The Air, Vol. 1' is that is invokes those sounds you've been hearing since you started listening to music but somehow it turns them around, faces them in a new direction, puts them in a new context. So you are at once comforted and exhilarated.
But what pushes this music from pure enjoyment into genius is the tension that exhilaration is faced with when it is paired with the underlying theme of the album. There is a narrative that shoots through the songs, one of a great love challenged by some strange and unwieldy ideas. A man and a woman in an urban landscape wrestle with their suspicion that aliens have landed and are trying to contact them. Dr. Mars himself explained this story to me at one time but I've probably telephone-gamed it into something else.
Here is the story as I understand it.
They are in love. She is convinced that aliens are among us. At first he is concerned for her sanity and worries that the woman he loves has lost her mind. She slowly convinces him that she isn't crazy, that she has seen x,y,z and while she doesn't have an ET in her closet eating Reese's Pieces, some strange things have certainly been happening. His love for her ushers him into this world of deciphered messages, hidden meanings, as Dr. Mars says, '...scanning for cyphers and clues'.
His willingness to see her point of view sends him into a madness all his own. He yearns to break free from this Earth, to see, to KNOW. So while the idea of aliens might seem B-movie, here it is understated enough to achieve allegory.
By the end of the album they have left all normalcy behind and are ready to board, to vanish, to let their love take them away from everything they've ever known.
Scary. Romantic. Funny. And it rocks.
Now, I'm sure that I've changed some details here and perhaps Dr. Mars could write a synopsis for me someday, but that isn't really the point. You could listen to this album without knowing any of this and your response would still be enormous. The territory covered is perfect fodder for anthemic rock songs...love, doubt, fear, regret, sex, and yes, UFO's.
All great rock and roll front men are mythic figures. They place themselves outside of our experience so that they can better reflect a wider range of human truth. So, sure, Bowie seems to be singing about some cat named Ziggy Stardust. But really, he's singing about you.
When Dr. Mars imagines himself 'seein' home through the dome/wavin' back', we are the ones who have boarded the ship. We are zooming into space forever, leaving all we know behind us in the hopes of some great adventure. We are up in the air.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
22 Greatest Albums: Siobhan O'Malley - 'Alibi Bye'
So my sister Siobhan has just released a killer second album. No sophomore slump for her, no sirree! Her first album, 'Permanent Markers' is wonderful in its own right, with a homemade feel and emotional intensity. This album keeps those qualities, yes, but the production and instrumentation are far more intricate.
Siobhan is always quick to list her influences. She is a voracious listener and soaks up all sorts of styles and genres. She's also, in spite of her willingness to write, sing, and record songs, rather shy of the spotlight and kudos. So while I think that her deference to those who influence her writing is classy, I also think it deflects attention from this groundbreaking music.
The range of styles on 'Alibi Bye' is breathtaking. This is not all of the songs on the album, but merely a taste of the whole.
'Give Me The Creeps' is a rollicking rock song with a bite.
'I Might Have To Deal Drugs In Order To Afford To Live In This City' uses a funk r&b guitar lick and a tempo change to underscore its bleak picture of the economic reality of the life of an artist in New York City.
'It's Not Yesterday' is an alt.country heart breaker which has my favorite line on the album...'There's nothing like denial to blur your periphery'. It also is one of those songs that instantly gets into your consciousness and you find yourself singing the chorus while brushing your teeth.
'A Future Me' is that rare bird, a song without a trace of rancor. It details the pure love of a girl for her older sister. Granted, I'm part of this family so it hits me very square in the gut but I defy anyone with any sense of familial tenderness to hear this song without breaking into tears of joy.
'Squinting Optometrist' is...I mean, just look at the title. Do I even need to say anything else?
'The Fundy Bay Forecast' is an epic. Modern love leaves most of us at one point in a state of bleakness so total that we are unable to move, breathe, eat, sleep, or most important, consider loving again. This song is like a dark psalm attempting an exorcism the singer doesn't believe will work.
'Avenue C'd' ends the album and takes all the emotion of the previous songs and funnels it into a pinpoint of helpless rage and despair. I can barely listen to this song without having to check into a spa.
Now, the subject matter is often difficult, the emotion is deep and disturbing, but with the sound of this album, Siobhan gives the listener a lifeline, and by doing so she positions herself as a kind of humorous shaman, guiding us through our own treacherous terrain.
So, yes. Siobhan is influenced by Sheryl Crow. She loves Elvis Costello. She digs Mariah, Beyonce, Britney, etc. She invokes Cat Power somehow. But with this album she has declared that these people are peers, not idols.
Somewhere, sometime, a young girl with a guitar will listen to this album. And then she'll think, "I wish I could write like Siobhan O'Malley."
Siobhan is always quick to list her influences. She is a voracious listener and soaks up all sorts of styles and genres. She's also, in spite of her willingness to write, sing, and record songs, rather shy of the spotlight and kudos. So while I think that her deference to those who influence her writing is classy, I also think it deflects attention from this groundbreaking music.
The range of styles on 'Alibi Bye' is breathtaking. This is not all of the songs on the album, but merely a taste of the whole.
'Give Me The Creeps' is a rollicking rock song with a bite.
'I Might Have To Deal Drugs In Order To Afford To Live In This City' uses a funk r&b guitar lick and a tempo change to underscore its bleak picture of the economic reality of the life of an artist in New York City.
'It's Not Yesterday' is an alt.country heart breaker which has my favorite line on the album...'There's nothing like denial to blur your periphery'. It also is one of those songs that instantly gets into your consciousness and you find yourself singing the chorus while brushing your teeth.
'A Future Me' is that rare bird, a song without a trace of rancor. It details the pure love of a girl for her older sister. Granted, I'm part of this family so it hits me very square in the gut but I defy anyone with any sense of familial tenderness to hear this song without breaking into tears of joy.
'Squinting Optometrist' is...I mean, just look at the title. Do I even need to say anything else?
'The Fundy Bay Forecast' is an epic. Modern love leaves most of us at one point in a state of bleakness so total that we are unable to move, breathe, eat, sleep, or most important, consider loving again. This song is like a dark psalm attempting an exorcism the singer doesn't believe will work.
'Avenue C'd' ends the album and takes all the emotion of the previous songs and funnels it into a pinpoint of helpless rage and despair. I can barely listen to this song without having to check into a spa.
Now, the subject matter is often difficult, the emotion is deep and disturbing, but with the sound of this album, Siobhan gives the listener a lifeline, and by doing so she positions herself as a kind of humorous shaman, guiding us through our own treacherous terrain.
So, yes. Siobhan is influenced by Sheryl Crow. She loves Elvis Costello. She digs Mariah, Beyonce, Britney, etc. She invokes Cat Power somehow. But with this album she has declared that these people are peers, not idols.
Somewhere, sometime, a young girl with a guitar will listen to this album. And then she'll think, "I wish I could write like Siobhan O'Malley."
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
23 Greatest Albums: Liz Phair - 'Anything But Exile In Guyville Just To Piss Off Those Who Only Like Exile In Guyville'
Living in Los Angeles affords you all sorts of strange golden opportunities. For example, this weekend? My girlfriend and I somehow wound up with free tickets to see Joan Rivers in her autobiographical play at the Geffen. One minute you are wondering what you are going to do with your Saturday, and the next Joan Rivers is blaming the Malibu fires on Suzanne Somers's vagina.
One of these fluke nights out came pretty early on in my new life in LA, so it was probably 2004. My cousin called me up and asked what I was doing that night. Whenever he asks me that, I pretty much give over to the fact that SOMETHING is going to go down and I'm going to be a part of it.
Turns out a last minute benefit concert was happening at The Knitting Factory. I don't remember what they were raising money for (breast cancer, perhaps) but a whole crew of us descended on the club.
I had been to The Knitting Factory in New York many times. My impression of the NY club was mixed...there was a too-cool-for-school vibe to the whole place that I found vaguely oppressive. I found myself wishing I'd worn a leather wristband with big metal snaps; or a Kangol hat cocked at an angle. This caused a knee jerk reaction in me to become MORE mainstream. I found myself bringing up how much I liked Guns 'n Roses Use Your Illusion or singing Cheap Trick just to undercut the overly hip underground voodoo bullshit.
But the Los Angeles version felt very different to me. I'd been lucky enough to actually play a gig at the club directly upon my arrival...covering The Replacements' 'Here Comes A Regular' with a great band called The Broken Remotes. They were called Wiley back then. I took pictures of the band and the crowd while I was on stage. It was a great way to debut on the West Coast.
Part of the appeal of The Knitting Factory for me is its location. It isn't tucked away on some dingy lower Manhattan side street that adds credibility to outsider status. Nope. The LA K.F. is in a mall right near Mann's Chinese Theater. You walk the pavement to get to it and you meet up with Spiderman, Darth Vader, various hobbits and goblins, and Marilyn Monroe. Tourists meander, families bicker...it is NOT cool.
For me, this has the unexpected effect of upping the cool factor for everything that goes on inside the club. It feels like an oasis, not a snide one-upmanship factory. The benefit benefited from this atmosphere...philanthropy, altruism, rock and roll, in a mall??? That's America, baby.
This would be my first time in the club as a spectator and I was in for a treat. Liz Phair was going to perform. She'd been catching flak for months because her latest album was too mainstream. I find the vitriol aimed at Liz Phair to be something akin to the feminist version of the crowd booing Bob Dylan when he went electric at Newport. Bitter people who don't want to expand their perception to include whatever the artist has in mind.
I had always liked Liz Phair, bought all of her albums, followed her career. But it wasn't until the night of this benefit concert that it truly dawned on me...I HAD A CRUSH ON LIZ PHAIR. I am not one to take appreciation of work as romantic interest. I don't lust after actresses. When I was 13 I cut out a picture of Katarina Witt from Sports Illustrated and hung it on my wall, but that is as close as I ever came to that kind of idolatry.
Imagine my surprise when I started getting nervous as her slot on the bill approached. I felt like I was on a date and wanted to impress. I checked my teeth for spinach. I chewed a piece of gum. I patted my hair into place. I tucked and untucked my shirt countless times. What the hell was wrong with me? Turns out it was lucky I primped.
Whoosh, there she was. It is not a large club so I was quite close. She wore a microscopic pink skirt with some sort of vest over a t-shirt, high heels, no tights. She had a guitarist, bassist, and drummer to accompany her. They did a set that drew liberally from her albums, but focused a good deal on her latest, the one maligned in music circles as being somehow a sell out.
One of these songs is about her little boy and how he has dealt with the divorce of his parents and the new man in her life. I'd heard it on the album and liked it, but hearing her play it live truly drove it home in a new way. Perhaps it was because I was separated from my son at the time, he being in Maine starting first grade. Perhaps it was due to some sort of psychic unbalance because of my new surroundings, my new life. But the weight of my own divorce and ongoing separation anxiety combined with Liz Phair's voice and words to pack a devastating punch for me.
So now, in addition to the schoolboy crush thing that had been happening, she had just helped me deal with my own broken heart. I wept discreetly, eyes welled to overflow throughout the entire song.
Then as they readied for the next one, she got a bit turned around with her guitar and chord. She turned her back on the audience to confer with her band mates and the chord rose slightly, carrying her already teeny skirt with it. A flash of white greeted the crowd. If they were anything like me, they were mesmerized by this inadvertent exhibitionism. No catcalls, no 'hey, Liz, your skirt is hiked up'. Nope. She casually shook the chord, freeing her skirt to drop back to its intended place.
Soon she left the stage to thunderous applause.
As I socialized and sipped my beer, I found myself rehashing her performance with everyone I spoke with. It had just the right mix of ease and effort. We were all blown away.
I made my way towards the back of the club to pick up another beer. Suddenly and before I knew it I was walking right towards her. She seemed to be 3 feet tall, impossibly delicate. She glowed with energy from the show. She thought she recognized me and held her arms out to hug me.
I said, "You don't know me..." But she hugged me anyway. Her scent engulfed and disoriented me. She laughed that she didn't know me but had thought she did. Still holding her, I told her how she had affected me with her song 'Little Digger'. She thanked me in a way that said she appreciated my situation as a single parent.
I continued on my way to the back of the club but I never did get that beer. I was already drunk on Phair.
One of these fluke nights out came pretty early on in my new life in LA, so it was probably 2004. My cousin called me up and asked what I was doing that night. Whenever he asks me that, I pretty much give over to the fact that SOMETHING is going to go down and I'm going to be a part of it.
Turns out a last minute benefit concert was happening at The Knitting Factory. I don't remember what they were raising money for (breast cancer, perhaps) but a whole crew of us descended on the club.
I had been to The Knitting Factory in New York many times. My impression of the NY club was mixed...there was a too-cool-for-school vibe to the whole place that I found vaguely oppressive. I found myself wishing I'd worn a leather wristband with big metal snaps; or a Kangol hat cocked at an angle. This caused a knee jerk reaction in me to become MORE mainstream. I found myself bringing up how much I liked Guns 'n Roses Use Your Illusion or singing Cheap Trick just to undercut the overly hip underground voodoo bullshit.
But the Los Angeles version felt very different to me. I'd been lucky enough to actually play a gig at the club directly upon my arrival...covering The Replacements' 'Here Comes A Regular' with a great band called The Broken Remotes. They were called Wiley back then. I took pictures of the band and the crowd while I was on stage. It was a great way to debut on the West Coast.
Part of the appeal of The Knitting Factory for me is its location. It isn't tucked away on some dingy lower Manhattan side street that adds credibility to outsider status. Nope. The LA K.F. is in a mall right near Mann's Chinese Theater. You walk the pavement to get to it and you meet up with Spiderman, Darth Vader, various hobbits and goblins, and Marilyn Monroe. Tourists meander, families bicker...it is NOT cool.
For me, this has the unexpected effect of upping the cool factor for everything that goes on inside the club. It feels like an oasis, not a snide one-upmanship factory. The benefit benefited from this atmosphere...philanthropy, altruism, rock and roll, in a mall??? That's America, baby.
This would be my first time in the club as a spectator and I was in for a treat. Liz Phair was going to perform. She'd been catching flak for months because her latest album was too mainstream. I find the vitriol aimed at Liz Phair to be something akin to the feminist version of the crowd booing Bob Dylan when he went electric at Newport. Bitter people who don't want to expand their perception to include whatever the artist has in mind.
I had always liked Liz Phair, bought all of her albums, followed her career. But it wasn't until the night of this benefit concert that it truly dawned on me...I HAD A CRUSH ON LIZ PHAIR. I am not one to take appreciation of work as romantic interest. I don't lust after actresses. When I was 13 I cut out a picture of Katarina Witt from Sports Illustrated and hung it on my wall, but that is as close as I ever came to that kind of idolatry.
Imagine my surprise when I started getting nervous as her slot on the bill approached. I felt like I was on a date and wanted to impress. I checked my teeth for spinach. I chewed a piece of gum. I patted my hair into place. I tucked and untucked my shirt countless times. What the hell was wrong with me? Turns out it was lucky I primped.
Whoosh, there she was. It is not a large club so I was quite close. She wore a microscopic pink skirt with some sort of vest over a t-shirt, high heels, no tights. She had a guitarist, bassist, and drummer to accompany her. They did a set that drew liberally from her albums, but focused a good deal on her latest, the one maligned in music circles as being somehow a sell out.
One of these songs is about her little boy and how he has dealt with the divorce of his parents and the new man in her life. I'd heard it on the album and liked it, but hearing her play it live truly drove it home in a new way. Perhaps it was because I was separated from my son at the time, he being in Maine starting first grade. Perhaps it was due to some sort of psychic unbalance because of my new surroundings, my new life. But the weight of my own divorce and ongoing separation anxiety combined with Liz Phair's voice and words to pack a devastating punch for me.
So now, in addition to the schoolboy crush thing that had been happening, she had just helped me deal with my own broken heart. I wept discreetly, eyes welled to overflow throughout the entire song.
Then as they readied for the next one, she got a bit turned around with her guitar and chord. She turned her back on the audience to confer with her band mates and the chord rose slightly, carrying her already teeny skirt with it. A flash of white greeted the crowd. If they were anything like me, they were mesmerized by this inadvertent exhibitionism. No catcalls, no 'hey, Liz, your skirt is hiked up'. Nope. She casually shook the chord, freeing her skirt to drop back to its intended place.
Soon she left the stage to thunderous applause.
As I socialized and sipped my beer, I found myself rehashing her performance with everyone I spoke with. It had just the right mix of ease and effort. We were all blown away.
I made my way towards the back of the club to pick up another beer. Suddenly and before I knew it I was walking right towards her. She seemed to be 3 feet tall, impossibly delicate. She glowed with energy from the show. She thought she recognized me and held her arms out to hug me.
I said, "You don't know me..." But she hugged me anyway. Her scent engulfed and disoriented me. She laughed that she didn't know me but had thought she did. Still holding her, I told her how she had affected me with her song 'Little Digger'. She thanked me in a way that said she appreciated my situation as a single parent.
I continued on my way to the back of the club but I never did get that beer. I was already drunk on Phair.
Friday, March 6, 2009
25 Greatest Albums: Husker Du - 'Zen Arcade'
Punk rock was all about stripping away the excess of mainstream classic rock. Hardcore was all about moving past even the constrictions of the punk movement. This movement wasn't chronicled in any broad cultural way but played itself out in inky self-printed zines and curbside club confrontations. 1983 was a moment of great promise in this small community, with everyone sharing a dissatisfaction with the status quo of 'regular' music while simultaneously sensing some sort of zeitgeist shift.
Husker Du came to the stage like marauders intent on defiling the sacred cows of non-conformity. Oh, we're not supposed to have guitar solos? Well just listen to Bob Mould shred on a flying V and know that Eddie Van Halen wasn't the only guitar god slinging hash that year. We're supposed to have mohawks and wear leather jackets? Just look at us in our midwestern shit-kicking get-ups. Drummers only sing in Night Ranger and The Eagles? Watch Grant Hart howl and pound.
Double album rock operas are bloated and pretentious?
Get a load of this, fuckers. 'Zen Arcade' is 4 sides of experimental, emotionally wrenching, loosely themed, bone-crushingly heavy and tragic music. When word got out that Husker Du was releasing a DOUBLE album, the hardcore community got its collective knickers in a twist.
When you look at the cover, you already know that this isn't your basic 28 minutes of sloganeering and teenage anger. The stacked cars of the junkyard. The crude colorization. The two slightly stooped figures. An iconic image. One that perfectly captures the alienation and decay contained therein.
In an oft told story, Husker Du had been spurned by Twin/Tone Records, the Minneapolis record label famous for The Replacements. They fled the local scene and signed with SST, the mother of all '80's indy labels, which was owned and operated by Greg Ginn who doubled as the creative force behind Black Flag. This was a strange union of midwest gay art house noise and sun soaked Southern California cock rock.
The 'gay' part of this story mirrors the strange oversight much of frat house America had in ignoring Freddie Mercury and even the name of his band. Both writers in Husker Du were gay but this never was discussed until well after the band broke up. American Hardcore, for all its supposed liberality and progressive thinking, was highly homophobic and aggressive.
It is also important to consider the conditions under which Husker Du recorded 'Zen Arcade'. They flew to Redondo Beach. They did a bunch of speed. They recorded 25 songs in 40 hours. They mixed 25 songs in 45 hours. At the end of 85 hours, they'd spent $3,200 and they had a 4-sided monster whose reverberation is still being felt today.
Most of the songs clock in between 1:45 to 2:20. What this does is lend epic status to the songs that stretch out even to 3:30 and beyond.
We follow a disaffected teen as he runs away from home. This is never explicit in the lyrics but it has come to be common knowledge among fans of the band and album. The opener is 'Something I Learned Today' which careens around just the way a kid storming out of his house might. It moves directly into 'Broken Home, Broken Heart' which lets us know how our journey is starting. The tone shifts with the third song, a shimmering acoustic chamber of regret by Hart called 'Never Talking To You Again'. The strange convergence of a punk anger and a folk sensibility makes for a tragic little interlude.
Things start to disintegrate and fracture here. Mould sings of 'Chartered Trips' which could be the actual trip the kid is on or a drug reference. Either way his surroundings have ceased to be familiar. They are obliterated with 'Dreams Reoccurring' which is an eerie wordless collage of piano and feedback. 'Indecision Time' is a buzzsaw of confusion and 'Hare Krsna' shows us how a vulnerable lost soul could find comfort in such an erasure of a personal trajectory.
And that's just Side 1.
During Side 2 the journey becomes increasingly treacherous. He moves 'Beyond the Threshhold' through 'Pride', 'The Biggest Lie, 'Masochism World' and eventually finds himself 'Standing By the Sea'. This song is a perfect Act ender, in that we've followed this flight, which has seemed to move from precariousness through false revelation and winds up in what ought to be a contemplative peace. But looking at the ocean is not a redemptive force. In fact, the waves of feedback create a mounting anxiety which threaten to sweep us away.
The sound, emotion, and energy of Side 3 are all at a higher emotional maturity. He has gone through the crucible of adolescence and has emerged scarred but somehow glorious. In 'Somewhere' which kicks the side off, Hart howls into his past and tries to imagine a place where 'the dirt is washed off with the rain/where there's happiness instead of pain'. Two songs later, Mould turns the view outward as the narrator starts to place himself in a larger context. 'Newest Industry' throws us into a soylent-green type dystopia where individuals are sucked into a machine that uses them without regard for their humanity. The familial anger of the teen who fled his dysfunctional household has realized that his parents are merely products of the society which birthed them. The side ends on an absurd note, as 'The Tooth Fairy and The Princess' proves that fairy tales have become obsolete in a world that chews up and spits out its young.
Side 4 is where Husker Du project 'Zen Arcade' past noble experiment into the land of genius and generosity.
'Turn On The News' is their finest moment on record. The narrator has synthesized all of his experiences into a new sort of consciousness. He is no longer trapped by his own story. He has looked past his own pain and sees how much trouble has befallen all of us. Hart screams for us to 'Turn On The News' as Mould shreds a guitar into an unholy alliance between Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Band and The Clash. When you stop to think that this is essentially a live track, your sense of the album all of a sudden shifts into overdrive. This is a perfectly articulated world view.
And then they BLOW IT ALL TO HELL AND BEYOND. Earlier there had been the short instrumental experiment of 'Dreams Reoccurring'. Well, when dreams reoccur, you wind up with 'Reoccurring Dreams'. This is the 'Dark Side of the Moon' of the hardcore world. Thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds of backwards looped screaming feedback guitar, piano plinking and crashing cymbals and drum rolls. When you commit to the whole piece it is like being dragged into a fun-house mirror where you can't see yourself, you only see shapes and figures that have totemic and symbolic meaning. Moments happen and disappear. Then they reappear in different forms. Your sense of narrative and narration is stripped completely away. They make you forget that they are a three piece power trio. Your perception of them will not hold.
If 'Turn On The News' is the knockout punch, 'Reoccurring Dreams' is a sick and twisted victory lap around a stadium that is tearing itself apart.
After this album came out, everyone knew that hardcore wouldn't be able to hide its light under a bushel for much longer. The world was waiting.
Husker Du came to the stage like marauders intent on defiling the sacred cows of non-conformity. Oh, we're not supposed to have guitar solos? Well just listen to Bob Mould shred on a flying V and know that Eddie Van Halen wasn't the only guitar god slinging hash that year. We're supposed to have mohawks and wear leather jackets? Just look at us in our midwestern shit-kicking get-ups. Drummers only sing in Night Ranger and The Eagles? Watch Grant Hart howl and pound.
Double album rock operas are bloated and pretentious?
Get a load of this, fuckers. 'Zen Arcade' is 4 sides of experimental, emotionally wrenching, loosely themed, bone-crushingly heavy and tragic music. When word got out that Husker Du was releasing a DOUBLE album, the hardcore community got its collective knickers in a twist.
When you look at the cover, you already know that this isn't your basic 28 minutes of sloganeering and teenage anger. The stacked cars of the junkyard. The crude colorization. The two slightly stooped figures. An iconic image. One that perfectly captures the alienation and decay contained therein.
In an oft told story, Husker Du had been spurned by Twin/Tone Records, the Minneapolis record label famous for The Replacements. They fled the local scene and signed with SST, the mother of all '80's indy labels, which was owned and operated by Greg Ginn who doubled as the creative force behind Black Flag. This was a strange union of midwest gay art house noise and sun soaked Southern California cock rock.
The 'gay' part of this story mirrors the strange oversight much of frat house America had in ignoring Freddie Mercury and even the name of his band. Both writers in Husker Du were gay but this never was discussed until well after the band broke up. American Hardcore, for all its supposed liberality and progressive thinking, was highly homophobic and aggressive.
It is also important to consider the conditions under which Husker Du recorded 'Zen Arcade'. They flew to Redondo Beach. They did a bunch of speed. They recorded 25 songs in 40 hours. They mixed 25 songs in 45 hours. At the end of 85 hours, they'd spent $3,200 and they had a 4-sided monster whose reverberation is still being felt today.
Most of the songs clock in between 1:45 to 2:20. What this does is lend epic status to the songs that stretch out even to 3:30 and beyond.
We follow a disaffected teen as he runs away from home. This is never explicit in the lyrics but it has come to be common knowledge among fans of the band and album. The opener is 'Something I Learned Today' which careens around just the way a kid storming out of his house might. It moves directly into 'Broken Home, Broken Heart' which lets us know how our journey is starting. The tone shifts with the third song, a shimmering acoustic chamber of regret by Hart called 'Never Talking To You Again'. The strange convergence of a punk anger and a folk sensibility makes for a tragic little interlude.
Things start to disintegrate and fracture here. Mould sings of 'Chartered Trips' which could be the actual trip the kid is on or a drug reference. Either way his surroundings have ceased to be familiar. They are obliterated with 'Dreams Reoccurring' which is an eerie wordless collage of piano and feedback. 'Indecision Time' is a buzzsaw of confusion and 'Hare Krsna' shows us how a vulnerable lost soul could find comfort in such an erasure of a personal trajectory.
And that's just Side 1.
During Side 2 the journey becomes increasingly treacherous. He moves 'Beyond the Threshhold' through 'Pride', 'The Biggest Lie, 'Masochism World' and eventually finds himself 'Standing By the Sea'. This song is a perfect Act ender, in that we've followed this flight, which has seemed to move from precariousness through false revelation and winds up in what ought to be a contemplative peace. But looking at the ocean is not a redemptive force. In fact, the waves of feedback create a mounting anxiety which threaten to sweep us away.
The sound, emotion, and energy of Side 3 are all at a higher emotional maturity. He has gone through the crucible of adolescence and has emerged scarred but somehow glorious. In 'Somewhere' which kicks the side off, Hart howls into his past and tries to imagine a place where 'the dirt is washed off with the rain/where there's happiness instead of pain'. Two songs later, Mould turns the view outward as the narrator starts to place himself in a larger context. 'Newest Industry' throws us into a soylent-green type dystopia where individuals are sucked into a machine that uses them without regard for their humanity. The familial anger of the teen who fled his dysfunctional household has realized that his parents are merely products of the society which birthed them. The side ends on an absurd note, as 'The Tooth Fairy and The Princess' proves that fairy tales have become obsolete in a world that chews up and spits out its young.
Side 4 is where Husker Du project 'Zen Arcade' past noble experiment into the land of genius and generosity.
'Turn On The News' is their finest moment on record. The narrator has synthesized all of his experiences into a new sort of consciousness. He is no longer trapped by his own story. He has looked past his own pain and sees how much trouble has befallen all of us. Hart screams for us to 'Turn On The News' as Mould shreds a guitar into an unholy alliance between Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, the Band and The Clash. When you stop to think that this is essentially a live track, your sense of the album all of a sudden shifts into overdrive. This is a perfectly articulated world view.
And then they BLOW IT ALL TO HELL AND BEYOND. Earlier there had been the short instrumental experiment of 'Dreams Reoccurring'. Well, when dreams reoccur, you wind up with 'Reoccurring Dreams'. This is the 'Dark Side of the Moon' of the hardcore world. Thirteen minutes and forty-seven seconds of backwards looped screaming feedback guitar, piano plinking and crashing cymbals and drum rolls. When you commit to the whole piece it is like being dragged into a fun-house mirror where you can't see yourself, you only see shapes and figures that have totemic and symbolic meaning. Moments happen and disappear. Then they reappear in different forms. Your sense of narrative and narration is stripped completely away. They make you forget that they are a three piece power trio. Your perception of them will not hold.
If 'Turn On The News' is the knockout punch, 'Reoccurring Dreams' is a sick and twisted victory lap around a stadium that is tearing itself apart.
After this album came out, everyone knew that hardcore wouldn't be able to hide its light under a bushel for much longer. The world was waiting.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
26 Greatest Albums: Nirvana - 'Nevermind'
This has been posted here as 'Quelle Chanson, Non?' already. But since I went back in time to France yesterday, I thought I'd stay there for another day.
Quelle Chanson, Non?
My fifth year of college (!) was spent abroad in Orleans, France at L’Universite d’Orleans. Up until that point, I’d lived in Rhode Island all my life. From the time I was 15 until that year my main contact with the world outside of Little Rhody was through various punk rock bands.
This is what ’83 to ’91 looked like for me…
7Seconds were from out West and toured relentlessly, singing melodic breakneck hardcore punk that thematically took on ‘important’ issues like racism, sexism, and ‘the-world-doesn’t-understand-our-mohawks-ism’.
Minor Threat were from D.C. and not as upbeat as 7Seconds. They were more attuned to the forces that lay behind the ills of society and therefore less inclined to sing passionately about being able to change it. They later morphed into Fugazi, another of my all-time favs.
The Midwest was represented by a two-headed hydra of searing punk rock, The Replacements and Husker Du. The Replacements were the ill-advised Thursday night booze-off before a big test and Husker Du was the all-night study session for a political science exam that devolves into a meth-fueled rage against some machine.
All these bands were connected to other lesser lights. Before the internet, there was DIY (Do It Yourself) punk rock. They started their own record labels, they printed their own LP’s, they drew their own posters. They toured the country in vans sleeping on the couches of their biggest fans.
Rolling Stone didn’t write about them, radio wouldn’t touch them with an any length foot pole, MTV was already in the business of creating megastars, and the majority of the public winced at anything that was LOUD. I vividly remember playing a Replacements song for a friend of mine in high school. This guy was a musician, a guitar player who liked heavy metal for Pete’s sake, but he simply COULD NOT HEAR THE SONG. All he heard was noise.
This scene would be replayed throughout the late ‘80’s for me, both in high school and in my first few years in college. I had my circle of like-minded friends. There were four of us. Tom, Justin, Joe, moi. We were occasionally a band, but more often than not we were intense spectators. To be a fan of this music meant a certain level of danger. Concerts were rag-tag affairs in which the crowd threw itself against itself as ferociously as possible. There were violent elements who were attracted to this kind of freedom and we often found ourselves rescuing punk maidens from slam-dance circles and avenging uncalled for elbows with punches. Skinheads, completely missing the point, weren’t dancing so much as they were trolling for conflict. Depending on our mood, we either gave it to them or didn’t.
Outside the shows this underground element would collide with ‘normal’ American life. The leeriness of capitalism was astounding. The feeling of ‘us vs. them’ was overwhelming. Restaurants would refuse to serve you. Store owners would deny you their products. Business owners would REFUSE YOUR MONEY. I could romanticize that whole aspect as having added some level of enjoyment, but to be honest, it just sucked. I had thousands of ‘what is the deal with THAT’ conversations with my co-conspirators. The justifications we concocted on behalf of our oppressors could never quite be pinned down into any certain set of criteria. Suffice it to say, we were, by definition, outsiders.
Did this status affect my view of said mainstream? In other words, was I as much of a douchebag to the world as the world was a douchebag to me? Of course not. I bought ‘Thriller’ like everyone else. I rocked out to Van Halen’s ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’. I lusted over Sade. I never cared for Madonna, but I didn’t SPIT at people who did. I even had some classic rock in the collection. My tastes ran towards punk rock but I could appreciate Duran Duran, perhaps the weirdest boy band ever. And Prince was from Minneapolis like my other two favorite bands. What wasn’t there to like about Prince?
But my open-mindedness was definitely not reciprocated. For some reason the music that meant the most to me was not just disliked, it was seen as a threat.
So, college happened in there somewhere. In between punk rock concerts, I did a ton of plays at the wonderful University of Rhode Island theater department. I had a series of disastrous relationships and abused alcohol. I HAD A BLAST.
I kept three majors. Theater, English, and French. My youthful enjoyment of Inspector Clouseau had improbably turned into a major. Thus everything about my French studies seemed vaguely comedic to me. The opportunity to live in France for a year was going to be a laugh riot. I’d completed 4 full years of college and only needed 9 credits to graduate. 5 classes per semester equals 15 credits, so you do the math. Over the course of my two semesters in France, I only needed to do less than one semester of work. France was in trouble, people.
That summer wasn’t exactly a victory lap of an exit. I got Lyme’s Disease and went through a horrific breakup. I left the country an emotional wreck and very unhealthy. In fact, I took the last of my antibiotics right before I got on the plane, hoping they’d done their work. I invested in an expensive CD Walkman and a small set of speakers. I brought two notebooks of CD’s with me, perhaps 20 of my favorites.
My first couple of months in France were primarily recuperative. I went to classes with my other Foreign Exchange students, I ate pleasant dinners with my host family, I went to every movie in town to get used to listening to French when I didn’t have to respond. I read in my little dorm room. I ate the same meal twice a day at the cafeteria. Slowly the language unfurled itself to me and social situations became bearable.
Two of my American friends had joined a local American football team and made some French friends. This was what I was after. Instead of hanging out with my classmates, other non-French speaking foreigners, I began hanging out primarily with French people. But America was about to reach out to me.
The campus of L’Universite d’Orleans is a 20 minute bus ride outside of the city of Orleans. We all began to spend far more time in the city and very little on campus. On one of these excursions, we stopped in at FNAC. FNAC (said as one word by the French, hilarious) was the French version of Tower Records. In a ‘holy shit I feel old’ side note, Tower recently disappeared off of the face of the planet.
I’d been in France a couple of months and I’d yet to buy any music, preferring instead to start smoking. So I wasn’t all that into going to FNAC, to be honest. I loitered, looking at French chicks. A song came on over the in-store stereo system. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING ANYTHING THAT FOLLOWS.
My memory of this moment is like one of those long unbroken movie shots…the camera starts up in the very highest corner of the store. The song begins and slowly the camera begins to swoop, capturing the silly French fashions, the funny haircuts, the multi colored crazily buttoned jackets, the pointy shoes, late ‘80’s American culture re-appropriated back to Europe and funneled inappropriately into Mass Appeal. The focus of the shot narrows in on the face of an obviously American post-teen. As the music builds, the camera nears his face as his mouth opens, his toes tap, his head bounces. He is obviously AMAZED at this sound. The sound obliterates everything else.
The camera stays in close up. The song ends. The next voice you hear you have to try to imagine a little bit. Do you remember the morning rock DJ in your town? Do you remember the inherent utter hyperbole in their speech? Now cross that with Inspector Clouseau…
‘Eh, mes amis, quelle chanson, non? C’etait le Number One des Etats Unis, la nouvelle son de…”
Interjection: Did I just hear him say that was the Number One song in the United States? When I flew out of Logan Airport, the number one song was ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’ by Bryan Adams. It had just replaced ‘Rush Rush’ by Paula Abdul. Those were the big hits of the summer. Think about that for a second.
Cut back to gape-mouthed post-teen…
“…la nouvelle son de Nirvana! Smells Like Teen Spirit de l’album Nevermind.”
Dropping the camera metaphor, I could barely believe what I’d been hearing. I tore over to the Rock section and found Nirvana. Sold out. I had heard of them after they put out their ‘Bleach’ album in 1989 but I hadn’t bought the album and knew very little about them. I was almost angry. That song was Number One??? What the hell was going on back there???? I turn my back for one second and all of a sudden everyone can handle loud music??? Not only can they handle it, but it is THE MOST POPULAR SONG IN THE COUNTRY????
I seriously thought about getting on a plane and flying back to the States.
Imagine you work for a political candidate, Mr. So-and-so. You’ve been tirelessly campaigning for years. You’ve poured your heart and soul into a race that people seem ambivalent about at best. By some fluke, you are on a deserted island when the actual voting takes place. Your isolation makes you wonder what ever compelled you to get involved in politics in the first place. A plane flies overhead. Instead of rescuing you, it drops a newspaper on your head. The headline says, “So-and-So Elected in a Landslide!”
I’d spent the better part of ten years catching flak for how loud and out of control my tastes were, how what I liked was actually an affront to decent American consumerism, and that such a horrific assault on art and sound was everything that was wrong with the youth of today.
Bryan Adams was considered a ROCK STAR. Huey Lewis (god love ‘im) was a ROCK STAR. Now, I have nothing against either of these guys, but…come on. ROCK STARS? I don’t think so. Rock stars scare people. David Bowie is a ROCK STAR. Mick Jagger is a ROCK STAR. They scared people! They might even have slept together just to show the world they could do whatever they wanted! ROCK STARS change how people view the world.
I have never felt such a sensation of vertigo as I did that day in that French record store. One listen of that song and I knew that NOTHING would be the same when I got back to America. Name another song that could truthfully make such a claim.
One final note. I only got 8 credits and had to take another class when I got back Stateside. C’est la vie!
Quelle Chanson, Non?
My fifth year of college (!) was spent abroad in Orleans, France at L’Universite d’Orleans. Up until that point, I’d lived in Rhode Island all my life. From the time I was 15 until that year my main contact with the world outside of Little Rhody was through various punk rock bands.
This is what ’83 to ’91 looked like for me…
7Seconds were from out West and toured relentlessly, singing melodic breakneck hardcore punk that thematically took on ‘important’ issues like racism, sexism, and ‘the-world-doesn’t-understand-our-mohawks-ism’.
Minor Threat were from D.C. and not as upbeat as 7Seconds. They were more attuned to the forces that lay behind the ills of society and therefore less inclined to sing passionately about being able to change it. They later morphed into Fugazi, another of my all-time favs.
The Midwest was represented by a two-headed hydra of searing punk rock, The Replacements and Husker Du. The Replacements were the ill-advised Thursday night booze-off before a big test and Husker Du was the all-night study session for a political science exam that devolves into a meth-fueled rage against some machine.
All these bands were connected to other lesser lights. Before the internet, there was DIY (Do It Yourself) punk rock. They started their own record labels, they printed their own LP’s, they drew their own posters. They toured the country in vans sleeping on the couches of their biggest fans.
Rolling Stone didn’t write about them, radio wouldn’t touch them with an any length foot pole, MTV was already in the business of creating megastars, and the majority of the public winced at anything that was LOUD. I vividly remember playing a Replacements song for a friend of mine in high school. This guy was a musician, a guitar player who liked heavy metal for Pete’s sake, but he simply COULD NOT HEAR THE SONG. All he heard was noise.
This scene would be replayed throughout the late ‘80’s for me, both in high school and in my first few years in college. I had my circle of like-minded friends. There were four of us. Tom, Justin, Joe, moi. We were occasionally a band, but more often than not we were intense spectators. To be a fan of this music meant a certain level of danger. Concerts were rag-tag affairs in which the crowd threw itself against itself as ferociously as possible. There were violent elements who were attracted to this kind of freedom and we often found ourselves rescuing punk maidens from slam-dance circles and avenging uncalled for elbows with punches. Skinheads, completely missing the point, weren’t dancing so much as they were trolling for conflict. Depending on our mood, we either gave it to them or didn’t.
Outside the shows this underground element would collide with ‘normal’ American life. The leeriness of capitalism was astounding. The feeling of ‘us vs. them’ was overwhelming. Restaurants would refuse to serve you. Store owners would deny you their products. Business owners would REFUSE YOUR MONEY. I could romanticize that whole aspect as having added some level of enjoyment, but to be honest, it just sucked. I had thousands of ‘what is the deal with THAT’ conversations with my co-conspirators. The justifications we concocted on behalf of our oppressors could never quite be pinned down into any certain set of criteria. Suffice it to say, we were, by definition, outsiders.
Did this status affect my view of said mainstream? In other words, was I as much of a douchebag to the world as the world was a douchebag to me? Of course not. I bought ‘Thriller’ like everyone else. I rocked out to Van Halen’s ‘Runnin’ With The Devil’. I lusted over Sade. I never cared for Madonna, but I didn’t SPIT at people who did. I even had some classic rock in the collection. My tastes ran towards punk rock but I could appreciate Duran Duran, perhaps the weirdest boy band ever. And Prince was from Minneapolis like my other two favorite bands. What wasn’t there to like about Prince?
But my open-mindedness was definitely not reciprocated. For some reason the music that meant the most to me was not just disliked, it was seen as a threat.
So, college happened in there somewhere. In between punk rock concerts, I did a ton of plays at the wonderful University of Rhode Island theater department. I had a series of disastrous relationships and abused alcohol. I HAD A BLAST.
I kept three majors. Theater, English, and French. My youthful enjoyment of Inspector Clouseau had improbably turned into a major. Thus everything about my French studies seemed vaguely comedic to me. The opportunity to live in France for a year was going to be a laugh riot. I’d completed 4 full years of college and only needed 9 credits to graduate. 5 classes per semester equals 15 credits, so you do the math. Over the course of my two semesters in France, I only needed to do less than one semester of work. France was in trouble, people.
That summer wasn’t exactly a victory lap of an exit. I got Lyme’s Disease and went through a horrific breakup. I left the country an emotional wreck and very unhealthy. In fact, I took the last of my antibiotics right before I got on the plane, hoping they’d done their work. I invested in an expensive CD Walkman and a small set of speakers. I brought two notebooks of CD’s with me, perhaps 20 of my favorites.
My first couple of months in France were primarily recuperative. I went to classes with my other Foreign Exchange students, I ate pleasant dinners with my host family, I went to every movie in town to get used to listening to French when I didn’t have to respond. I read in my little dorm room. I ate the same meal twice a day at the cafeteria. Slowly the language unfurled itself to me and social situations became bearable.
Two of my American friends had joined a local American football team and made some French friends. This was what I was after. Instead of hanging out with my classmates, other non-French speaking foreigners, I began hanging out primarily with French people. But America was about to reach out to me.
The campus of L’Universite d’Orleans is a 20 minute bus ride outside of the city of Orleans. We all began to spend far more time in the city and very little on campus. On one of these excursions, we stopped in at FNAC. FNAC (said as one word by the French, hilarious) was the French version of Tower Records. In a ‘holy shit I feel old’ side note, Tower recently disappeared off of the face of the planet.
I’d been in France a couple of months and I’d yet to buy any music, preferring instead to start smoking. So I wasn’t all that into going to FNAC, to be honest. I loitered, looking at French chicks. A song came on over the in-store stereo system. I AM NOT EXAGGERATING ANYTHING THAT FOLLOWS.
My memory of this moment is like one of those long unbroken movie shots…the camera starts up in the very highest corner of the store. The song begins and slowly the camera begins to swoop, capturing the silly French fashions, the funny haircuts, the multi colored crazily buttoned jackets, the pointy shoes, late ‘80’s American culture re-appropriated back to Europe and funneled inappropriately into Mass Appeal. The focus of the shot narrows in on the face of an obviously American post-teen. As the music builds, the camera nears his face as his mouth opens, his toes tap, his head bounces. He is obviously AMAZED at this sound. The sound obliterates everything else.
The camera stays in close up. The song ends. The next voice you hear you have to try to imagine a little bit. Do you remember the morning rock DJ in your town? Do you remember the inherent utter hyperbole in their speech? Now cross that with Inspector Clouseau…
‘Eh, mes amis, quelle chanson, non? C’etait le Number One des Etats Unis, la nouvelle son de…”
Interjection: Did I just hear him say that was the Number One song in the United States? When I flew out of Logan Airport, the number one song was ‘(Everything I Do) I Do It for You’ by Bryan Adams. It had just replaced ‘Rush Rush’ by Paula Abdul. Those were the big hits of the summer. Think about that for a second.
Cut back to gape-mouthed post-teen…
“…la nouvelle son de Nirvana! Smells Like Teen Spirit de l’album Nevermind.”
Dropping the camera metaphor, I could barely believe what I’d been hearing. I tore over to the Rock section and found Nirvana. Sold out. I had heard of them after they put out their ‘Bleach’ album in 1989 but I hadn’t bought the album and knew very little about them. I was almost angry. That song was Number One??? What the hell was going on back there???? I turn my back for one second and all of a sudden everyone can handle loud music??? Not only can they handle it, but it is THE MOST POPULAR SONG IN THE COUNTRY????
I seriously thought about getting on a plane and flying back to the States.
Imagine you work for a political candidate, Mr. So-and-so. You’ve been tirelessly campaigning for years. You’ve poured your heart and soul into a race that people seem ambivalent about at best. By some fluke, you are on a deserted island when the actual voting takes place. Your isolation makes you wonder what ever compelled you to get involved in politics in the first place. A plane flies overhead. Instead of rescuing you, it drops a newspaper on your head. The headline says, “So-and-So Elected in a Landslide!”
I’d spent the better part of ten years catching flak for how loud and out of control my tastes were, how what I liked was actually an affront to decent American consumerism, and that such a horrific assault on art and sound was everything that was wrong with the youth of today.
Bryan Adams was considered a ROCK STAR. Huey Lewis (god love ‘im) was a ROCK STAR. Now, I have nothing against either of these guys, but…come on. ROCK STARS? I don’t think so. Rock stars scare people. David Bowie is a ROCK STAR. Mick Jagger is a ROCK STAR. They scared people! They might even have slept together just to show the world they could do whatever they wanted! ROCK STARS change how people view the world.
I have never felt such a sensation of vertigo as I did that day in that French record store. One listen of that song and I knew that NOTHING would be the same when I got back to America. Name another song that could truthfully make such a claim.
One final note. I only got 8 credits and had to take another class when I got back Stateside. C’est la vie!
Wednesday, March 4, 2009
27 Greatest Albums: Led Zeppelin - 'Remastered Box Set'
I was bludgeoned into liking Led Zeppelin. I'd made it through 4 years of high school and 4 years of college without being sucked in. To my mind, punk did loud better and heavier than this metal. They were tin foil to me, not steel.
I used to rag on my cigarette smoking dirtbag friends in high school who would fumble with their walkmans and cold fingers and light up Marlboros on the Commons and lose themselves in 'Houses of the Holy' or 'IV'. It was 1986 for chrissakes. Do you losers want to come out of the time capsule any time soon? You are missing punk rock.
It was a tragedy to me that these music lovers with an obvious affinity for volume, power, and aggression were wasting their time on a dinosaur when Husker Du was a whole new species.
College did nothing to dissuade me of this opinion in spite of the mullets and dorm room posters and classic rock radio blaring out from Cabriolets, Civics, and Grand Nationals. My tastes broadened to be sure. You can't go to 87,000 theater parties and not change some fundamentals. But I held Zeppelin at more than arm's length the whole time. I turned the channel when 'Stairway to Heaven' came on and I didn't really know too much about the rest of their work.
All of a sudden I'm in Paris.
My two closest friends during my time in France were Dane and Chris. Chris I knew from French classes at URI, Dane is from New Orleans so we met overseas. Dane somehow knew a French guy who had a studio apartment in Paris that we could use whenever we wanted as he traveled the world working for his Dad.
Chris had a childhood friend coming to visit, a next door neighbor who was like a sister to him. We took the train up to Paris to pick her up at the airport. We'd spend a couple of days in Paris and then head back to Orleans.
We bustled her from the airport to the apartment. She was pretty exhausted so we decided to stay in for the night. She is gorgeous by the way and Dane and I are already actively competing for her attention as Chris plays the big brother and tries to keep his lecherous friends away from his innocent charge.
We make a typical French dinner, which is a plate of ham, a plate of cheese, some olives and cornichons, and a couple dozen bottles of wine. We'd planned to go out and see Paris but pretty soon we are having too much fun to go anywhere. The apartment is very small and almost completely bare but for the mattress on the floor. And the compact disc player. And one disc.
Led Zeppelin's catalog, newly remastered for compact disc.
Dane becomes enraged at me when I slur the great Zep. He then proceeds to play their catalog in chronological order as we consume more and more wine. Chris' friend, J. we'll call her, is very aware that Dane and I are good-naturedly vying for her. She dances with one of us, then the other, then declares that she has to take a bath. She does and the presence of a naked girl in the next room sends the party into the stratosphere.
Dane Chris and I are drinking wine, screaming over the screaming Zep, and devouring ham and cheese. You'd think there were 300 people at the party. But there is just us.
Our reverie is interrupted by J. who needs a towel. Towel? There isn't even a chair, you want a towel? But there is something that will serve just as well and it is an appropriate substitute.
An American flag.
The guy who owns the apartment is a lover of America, as many young Frenchies are. He has hung a giant American flag on his wall. We rip it down and fold the naked beauty into the Stars and Stripes. I know it sounds sort of lewd, 3 guys and a drunk teenager fresh off a plane, but it was the sexiest, most innocent display of feminine guile I think I've ever witnessed.
She sat wrapped in the flag for the remainder of the evening, a stand-in for all the girls back home we were missing, the American girls.
Somewhere after midnight but before 5AM I finally got Led Zeppelin. And even though they're Brits, when I hear those drums, those guitars, that voice, I always see a hot naked American enveloped in the symbol of my homeland.
I used to rag on my cigarette smoking dirtbag friends in high school who would fumble with their walkmans and cold fingers and light up Marlboros on the Commons and lose themselves in 'Houses of the Holy' or 'IV'. It was 1986 for chrissakes. Do you losers want to come out of the time capsule any time soon? You are missing punk rock.
It was a tragedy to me that these music lovers with an obvious affinity for volume, power, and aggression were wasting their time on a dinosaur when Husker Du was a whole new species.
College did nothing to dissuade me of this opinion in spite of the mullets and dorm room posters and classic rock radio blaring out from Cabriolets, Civics, and Grand Nationals. My tastes broadened to be sure. You can't go to 87,000 theater parties and not change some fundamentals. But I held Zeppelin at more than arm's length the whole time. I turned the channel when 'Stairway to Heaven' came on and I didn't really know too much about the rest of their work.
All of a sudden I'm in Paris.
My two closest friends during my time in France were Dane and Chris. Chris I knew from French classes at URI, Dane is from New Orleans so we met overseas. Dane somehow knew a French guy who had a studio apartment in Paris that we could use whenever we wanted as he traveled the world working for his Dad.
Chris had a childhood friend coming to visit, a next door neighbor who was like a sister to him. We took the train up to Paris to pick her up at the airport. We'd spend a couple of days in Paris and then head back to Orleans.
We bustled her from the airport to the apartment. She was pretty exhausted so we decided to stay in for the night. She is gorgeous by the way and Dane and I are already actively competing for her attention as Chris plays the big brother and tries to keep his lecherous friends away from his innocent charge.
We make a typical French dinner, which is a plate of ham, a plate of cheese, some olives and cornichons, and a couple dozen bottles of wine. We'd planned to go out and see Paris but pretty soon we are having too much fun to go anywhere. The apartment is very small and almost completely bare but for the mattress on the floor. And the compact disc player. And one disc.
Led Zeppelin's catalog, newly remastered for compact disc.
Dane becomes enraged at me when I slur the great Zep. He then proceeds to play their catalog in chronological order as we consume more and more wine. Chris' friend, J. we'll call her, is very aware that Dane and I are good-naturedly vying for her. She dances with one of us, then the other, then declares that she has to take a bath. She does and the presence of a naked girl in the next room sends the party into the stratosphere.
Dane Chris and I are drinking wine, screaming over the screaming Zep, and devouring ham and cheese. You'd think there were 300 people at the party. But there is just us.
Our reverie is interrupted by J. who needs a towel. Towel? There isn't even a chair, you want a towel? But there is something that will serve just as well and it is an appropriate substitute.
An American flag.
The guy who owns the apartment is a lover of America, as many young Frenchies are. He has hung a giant American flag on his wall. We rip it down and fold the naked beauty into the Stars and Stripes. I know it sounds sort of lewd, 3 guys and a drunk teenager fresh off a plane, but it was the sexiest, most innocent display of feminine guile I think I've ever witnessed.
She sat wrapped in the flag for the remainder of the evening, a stand-in for all the girls back home we were missing, the American girls.
Somewhere after midnight but before 5AM I finally got Led Zeppelin. And even though they're Brits, when I hear those drums, those guitars, that voice, I always see a hot naked American enveloped in the symbol of my homeland.
Tuesday, March 3, 2009
28 Greatest Albums: Fatima Mansions - 'Viva Dead Ponies'
While in France I picked up a copy of an album called 'Viva Dead Ponies' by Fatima Mansions. Fatima Mansions take their name from a housing project in Dublin built in the 1950's. By all accounts, the place is a nightmare.
I seem to recall having a long distance phone talk with my Dad from France where he told me where the name came from. I hadn't heard the group before I bought it so I was running blind. I do this occasionally, buying something solely on the aesthetics of the packaging. I've made a couple of great discoveries and just as many duds. This is by far the best shot in the dark I ever took.
'Viva Dead Ponies' is almost impossible to take in. Stylistically it refuses to be pinned down, '80's synth throwing itself into the gnawing buzz saw of '90's distorted guitar, Irish tenor crooning suddenly dashed upon the rocks of nihilistic punk bellow. Cathal Coughlan, lead singer/songwriter/visionary, takes us on a tour of modern Dublin and it is terrifying.
Here is a track list.
1. Angel's Delight (4:32)
2. Concrete Block (0:16)
3. Mr. Baby (2:53)
4. The Door-to-Door Inspector (4:13)
5. Start The Week (0:25)
6. You're A Rose (3:31)
7. Legoland 3 (0:27)
8. Thursday (3:38)
9. Ceaucescu Flashback (0:13)
10. Broken Radio No.1 (4:38)
11. Concrete Block (0:27)
12. Farewell Oratorio (0:59)
13. Look What I Stole For Us, Darling (3:05)
14. The White Knuckle Express (04:15)
15. Chemical Cosh (01:42)
16. Tima Mansio Speaks (0:17)
17. A Pack Of Lies (02:52)
18. Viva Dead Ponies (05:13)
19. More Smack, Vicar (0:52)
I lost my copy of the album somewhere along the line and it went out of print. Melody tracked it down on eBay and bought it for me. Someday I might have to dedicate a daily post for each of the above songs.
For now I'm going to concentrate on 'You're A Rose', 'A Pack of Lies', and 'Viva Dead Ponies'.
'You're A Rose' is reminiscent of a Bruce Springsteen song played by Duran Duran wasted in a pub. Lyrically it is filled with the kind of paradoxes that litter the landscape of the album. The singer praises his lover for being a 'rose in a crown of thorns' but as the music mounts he describes her attributes as if they are contained in some laundry list of atrocity...
You don't mind the queues, the burning trains
The squalid, mute despair
You don't mind deceiving lovers
You ignore the stinking air
Well, now accept you're just a person
Not the touchstone, not the face
of the ages past, their grandeur
and the death-wish of the Master Race
You're a rose
The pop majesty of the backing track makes for very strange listening. It is one of those pounding anthems of love and devotion that are the backbone of rock and roll. But look a bit closer and Cathal Coughlan eviscerates what stands for loyalty and commitment in 3 minutes of sing-along depravity.
'A Pack of Lies' uses a rolling trill of a piano riff to give us a false sense of security. As this confection bubbles, Coughlan tells the story of a dying woman seduced into a marriage by a foreigner. He brings her back to his homeland and leaves her to die chained to a railing on the ferry. Returning to her country he is now exalted and held up as a leader. The song ends thusly...
The moral of this story is: This land's a victim-farm
Don't you ever feed a beggar here, he'll eat your fucking arm
And don't blaspheme the strong ones if you want to stay alive
Now smile and give them thanks when they say, "Here's a pack of lies!
All of this takes place over what vaguely resembles an Elton John/Bernie Taupin song stripped of all '70's bombast. The keyboard is ALMOST like a real piano, the voice swoons and growls, but all is contained and perfectly okay. In short, it sounds like a lie.
Except for the snippet 'More Smack, Vicar', 'Viva Dead Ponies' is the last straw on the broken back of the album. It is a desert howl funneled through a Dylanesque ghost town. As I listened, I connected it to a tradition. We'll call it the apocalyptic evil epic dirge. The Rolling Stones 'Sympathy for the Devil'. Guns 'n Roses 'Civil War'. The Bands 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'.
These songs tend to have a sort of folk song quality to them. 'Viva Dead Ponies' is no exception. Built mainly around an acoustic guitar, you picture the singer on a cobblestone street with a battered hat upturned and empty. The instrumentation sounds like a hostile invasion, as if the modern world is encroaching upon the purer artistry of another time. I'll reprint these lyrics in full...
(Retail groceries...)
Do you know how Jesus feels
When he's behind his sportscar wheel
And the windscreen glass is all gummed up with blood?
Do you know how old Jesus feels?
For he walks the Earth again
But not in Mecca or in Jerusalem
No, he sells papers and beer in a shop in Crouch End [London, England]
For he walks the Earth again
So-
Viva dead ponies
Come out and fight me
Viva dead ponies
Customers: Drop dead
I have switched the fridges off
And I will burn down this whole stinking shop
I will get drunk and I will break every little Islamical law
For I have switched the fridges off
So-
Viva dead ponies
Come out and fight me
Viva dead ponies
Customers: Drop dead
"Haven't made love for a while.
It's the best way to make a child,"
Said Jesus to the disciples.
He then further said, "If you can't shift
This crate of Brillo pads by Friday
Vengeance will be mine!"
So viva dead ponies
You're afraid to fight me
Customers--pay what you owe!
Viva dead ponies
back from the circus
They lunched with Jesus
Fire in their noses all gone, all gone...
Sadly, Fatima Mansions broke up before I could ever see them live. They released several other albums, one of which I own. But something about this album in particular strikes me so deeply that it almost defies articulation. Cathal Coughlan's voice is an ungodly mix of rasp and velvet, brass and whisper. Nothing can be taken at face value. Almost relentlessly desperate and depressing lyrically, the music counteracts those valleys with almost maniacal heights of release.
If you give over and sing along, you feel as if you are tumbling down whatever walls of Jericho surround you. Only to come face to face with a new unnamed much higher wall. Built out of material you cannot recognize.
This is one for the time capsule.
I seem to recall having a long distance phone talk with my Dad from France where he told me where the name came from. I hadn't heard the group before I bought it so I was running blind. I do this occasionally, buying something solely on the aesthetics of the packaging. I've made a couple of great discoveries and just as many duds. This is by far the best shot in the dark I ever took.
'Viva Dead Ponies' is almost impossible to take in. Stylistically it refuses to be pinned down, '80's synth throwing itself into the gnawing buzz saw of '90's distorted guitar, Irish tenor crooning suddenly dashed upon the rocks of nihilistic punk bellow. Cathal Coughlan, lead singer/songwriter/visionary, takes us on a tour of modern Dublin and it is terrifying.
Here is a track list.
1. Angel's Delight (4:32)
2. Concrete Block (0:16)
3. Mr. Baby (2:53)
4. The Door-to-Door Inspector (4:13)
5. Start The Week (0:25)
6. You're A Rose (3:31)
7. Legoland 3 (0:27)
8. Thursday (3:38)
9. Ceaucescu Flashback (0:13)
10. Broken Radio No.1 (4:38)
11. Concrete Block (0:27)
12. Farewell Oratorio (0:59)
13. Look What I Stole For Us, Darling (3:05)
14. The White Knuckle Express (04:15)
15. Chemical Cosh (01:42)
16. Tima Mansio Speaks (0:17)
17. A Pack Of Lies (02:52)
18. Viva Dead Ponies (05:13)
19. More Smack, Vicar (0:52)
I lost my copy of the album somewhere along the line and it went out of print. Melody tracked it down on eBay and bought it for me. Someday I might have to dedicate a daily post for each of the above songs.
For now I'm going to concentrate on 'You're A Rose', 'A Pack of Lies', and 'Viva Dead Ponies'.
'You're A Rose' is reminiscent of a Bruce Springsteen song played by Duran Duran wasted in a pub. Lyrically it is filled with the kind of paradoxes that litter the landscape of the album. The singer praises his lover for being a 'rose in a crown of thorns' but as the music mounts he describes her attributes as if they are contained in some laundry list of atrocity...
You don't mind the queues, the burning trains
The squalid, mute despair
You don't mind deceiving lovers
You ignore the stinking air
Well, now accept you're just a person
Not the touchstone, not the face
of the ages past, their grandeur
and the death-wish of the Master Race
You're a rose
The pop majesty of the backing track makes for very strange listening. It is one of those pounding anthems of love and devotion that are the backbone of rock and roll. But look a bit closer and Cathal Coughlan eviscerates what stands for loyalty and commitment in 3 minutes of sing-along depravity.
'A Pack of Lies' uses a rolling trill of a piano riff to give us a false sense of security. As this confection bubbles, Coughlan tells the story of a dying woman seduced into a marriage by a foreigner. He brings her back to his homeland and leaves her to die chained to a railing on the ferry. Returning to her country he is now exalted and held up as a leader. The song ends thusly...
The moral of this story is: This land's a victim-farm
Don't you ever feed a beggar here, he'll eat your fucking arm
And don't blaspheme the strong ones if you want to stay alive
Now smile and give them thanks when they say, "Here's a pack of lies!
All of this takes place over what vaguely resembles an Elton John/Bernie Taupin song stripped of all '70's bombast. The keyboard is ALMOST like a real piano, the voice swoons and growls, but all is contained and perfectly okay. In short, it sounds like a lie.
Except for the snippet 'More Smack, Vicar', 'Viva Dead Ponies' is the last straw on the broken back of the album. It is a desert howl funneled through a Dylanesque ghost town. As I listened, I connected it to a tradition. We'll call it the apocalyptic evil epic dirge. The Rolling Stones 'Sympathy for the Devil'. Guns 'n Roses 'Civil War'. The Bands 'The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down'.
These songs tend to have a sort of folk song quality to them. 'Viva Dead Ponies' is no exception. Built mainly around an acoustic guitar, you picture the singer on a cobblestone street with a battered hat upturned and empty. The instrumentation sounds like a hostile invasion, as if the modern world is encroaching upon the purer artistry of another time. I'll reprint these lyrics in full...
(Retail groceries...)
Do you know how Jesus feels
When he's behind his sportscar wheel
And the windscreen glass is all gummed up with blood?
Do you know how old Jesus feels?
For he walks the Earth again
But not in Mecca or in Jerusalem
No, he sells papers and beer in a shop in Crouch End [London, England]
For he walks the Earth again
So-
Viva dead ponies
Come out and fight me
Viva dead ponies
Customers: Drop dead
I have switched the fridges off
And I will burn down this whole stinking shop
I will get drunk and I will break every little Islamical law
For I have switched the fridges off
So-
Viva dead ponies
Come out and fight me
Viva dead ponies
Customers: Drop dead
"Haven't made love for a while.
It's the best way to make a child,"
Said Jesus to the disciples.
He then further said, "If you can't shift
This crate of Brillo pads by Friday
Vengeance will be mine!"
So viva dead ponies
You're afraid to fight me
Customers--pay what you owe!
Viva dead ponies
back from the circus
They lunched with Jesus
Fire in their noses all gone, all gone...
Sadly, Fatima Mansions broke up before I could ever see them live. They released several other albums, one of which I own. But something about this album in particular strikes me so deeply that it almost defies articulation. Cathal Coughlan's voice is an ungodly mix of rasp and velvet, brass and whisper. Nothing can be taken at face value. Almost relentlessly desperate and depressing lyrically, the music counteracts those valleys with almost maniacal heights of release.
If you give over and sing along, you feel as if you are tumbling down whatever walls of Jericho surround you. Only to come face to face with a new unnamed much higher wall. Built out of material you cannot recognize.
This is one for the time capsule.
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