I was the kind of kid who would get picked on until a fight happened. Then I would win the fight with fury unchecked. Then I would cry. So it was as if I never won the fight at all...
All I wanted to do was play sports. When I wasn't actually playing sports I was pretending to play sports in my backyard. I was the next left fielder for the Red Sox, continuing the fine tradition of Ted Williams, Yaz and Jim Ed Rice. I romped around our backyard with my glove and hat throwing the ball up as high as I could and diving to catch it at the last second before it hit the ground.
In actual sports it was even more fun. The thrill of competition is acute for me, better than any drug. My year was built around the sport of the season. Baseball in spring and summer, soccer in fall, and basketball in winter. I was always a very good soccer player, a sport where my tenacity could outweigh my average physical traits. I was an average basketball player, being left-handed made it difficult for people to guard me and I was a good shot and a tireless defender.
Baseball? The sport I longed to excel at? For the first two years of Little League I had two accidental bunt hits. I played first base and was a good defender but I couldn't seem to put the bat on the ball. This crushed me.
I had one season of Little League left to me. Somehow something clicked. In the first 8 games I seemed to get a hit every time I came to the plate. I was roping the ball all over the field. Everything seemed to be in slow motion. My stance changed from a straight posture to a deep crouch and I felt like I was launching myself up and out at each pitch, knowing where it would cross the plate and where I wanted to hit it. My batting average was over .500.
I had finally grasped the substance of my dreams.
To this day I believe that I would be playing left field for the Boston Red Sox if only I'd grown to be six foot two two hundred pounds. Alas, I stopped at five foot ten and one fifty.
All that being said, the important point I am making is that anywhere an athletic event was taking place I felt totally IN MY ELEMENT.
But the sensitive kid in me, the one who cried after beating up a bully, that kid had a target on his back IN HIS ELEMENT. People talk about how sports is a great teaching tool, that the leveler of competition shows us how to deal with irrefutable evidence, that working together as a team is a way to socialize young men. But I have come to have a bit of a darker view of the world of sports than that. If those things were true I would have found a home in sports. I did not.
I was too young to know that I was an artist as well as an athlete. I couldn't understand why my skill did not put me in the club. There was something in me that the athletes had disdain for. My skill actually angered most of the 'jocks' I knew. They didn't like that a gangly little guy without speed or power used intensity and desire to keep up with them. I naively thought they would appreciate this. For the most part they did not.
Now as most who know me can attest, my memory is like a piece of Swiss cheese. That has been eaten until nothing remains. I have to turn to my sisters for factual corroboration and my childhood is to me like a movie I saw once and never discussed. Snapshots at best. Books, however, are clear.
I must have read 'Ferdinand the Bull' a thousand times and while everyone always remember him wanting to sit under the tree, I always wanted him to win that damn bullfight. After all, there was a stadium full of fans and a competition to be had.
I didn't think of the irony that his ferocity came from sitting on a bee. I spent my whole life in sports sitting on a bee ON PURPOSE so I could take that intensity and bring it to bear on my opponent. And if my prescription goggles made him overconfident, so be it.
He'd wind up flipped over my back waving his sad red blankie in the air as I turned and snorted and aimed my horns at his heart.
Tuesday, June 2, 2009
Monday, June 1, 2009
New Beginnings
I have spent the last year plus writing about music and the effect it has had on my life, both through performance and recording. I've talked about the music I make, the music I love, the music I've seen.
Other passions in my life? Movies and books. I am not one of the well-rounded people of the world who shape Bonsai trees and whittle statues and cook internationally flavored food. I am addicted to art the way a cocaine addict craves crack. If you told me I'd have to spend the rest of my life at the same job, same pay, same apartment but I would have an infinitely expanding collection of art, music, movies and books, I'd sign up for that deal.
So will I write about movies? I can't quite bring myself to do that. Here's why. Being an actor at heart if not in profession I find it very difficult to criticize in print anyone who has appeared in any movie any time. As Dennis Hopper said about 'Waterworld', "It is just as hard to make a bad movie as it is to make a good one." Movie making is such a collaborative art that to rag on any detail is to nullify the hard work of some guy who made burritos for everyone on that set at 5 in the morning. It negates the good cheer of a boom mic operator who stood with his arms over his head to catch the whimpering cry of a starlet about to be murdered by an alien. I just can't do it. I can't betray my people this way.
That leaves art or books. The fact that my eyes are so bad that I need to stand an inch away from any painting in order to even see it leaves me unwilling to posit myself as any kind of an expert.
Et, voila. Books. The books that have meant the most to me over the years.
And off we go down another Top 50 List...
Tomorrow?
Ferdinand The Bull...
Other passions in my life? Movies and books. I am not one of the well-rounded people of the world who shape Bonsai trees and whittle statues and cook internationally flavored food. I am addicted to art the way a cocaine addict craves crack. If you told me I'd have to spend the rest of my life at the same job, same pay, same apartment but I would have an infinitely expanding collection of art, music, movies and books, I'd sign up for that deal.
So will I write about movies? I can't quite bring myself to do that. Here's why. Being an actor at heart if not in profession I find it very difficult to criticize in print anyone who has appeared in any movie any time. As Dennis Hopper said about 'Waterworld', "It is just as hard to make a bad movie as it is to make a good one." Movie making is such a collaborative art that to rag on any detail is to nullify the hard work of some guy who made burritos for everyone on that set at 5 in the morning. It negates the good cheer of a boom mic operator who stood with his arms over his head to catch the whimpering cry of a starlet about to be murdered by an alien. I just can't do it. I can't betray my people this way.
That leaves art or books. The fact that my eyes are so bad that I need to stand an inch away from any painting in order to even see it leaves me unwilling to posit myself as any kind of an expert.
Et, voila. Books. The books that have meant the most to me over the years.
And off we go down another Top 50 List...
Tomorrow?
Ferdinand The Bull...
Friday, May 22, 2009
1 Greatest Albums: Your Favorite Artist - 'Your Favorite Album'
Here we are at long last. The last entry on the Top 50 Greatest Albums. As I've said before, this is not a list in any kind of order. I rifled through the collection randomly and picked out whatever struck me as an album to highlight for that particular day. If I started over I might wind up with a completely different list altogether.
We've all heard that fun apocalyptic question, 'If you were stranded on a desert isle, what is the one album you would choose?'
The irony in this weighty hypothetical is that we ARE STRANDED ON THE PLANET. We are on our island and we have an infinite number of albums to choose from. When you think about what you might want to be stranded with, you could do a lot worse than lil' ol' Planet Earth. I have been trying to cultivate a new sense of gratitude and wonder and this list has been a big part of that.
How lucky am I that I own such a wide swath of seemingly disconnected music? If you look at this list without thinking about it, you might think that 50 random strangers were each allowed one choice. There is no overlying theme, no sense of singularity to this list. And the variety of what is out there to choose from is expanding exponentially at an almost frightening rate.
A mere decade ago digital recording was still quite expensive and unavailable to the home enthusiast. Now? Any musician with a healthy dose of perfectionism can create their very own masterpiece. Where will this trend be in thirty more years? Will we have direct links to our brainwaves so that once a creative stream is isolated it can be manifested merely through thought? Could happen.
I once dreamed that I was in a strange lush green atmosphere where an idyllic lawn was broken up all around me like in a Picasso cubist fantasy. I sat at a collage of a grand piano in a tuxedo and all around me an orchestra responded to my improvisation. To this date it is still my most treasured musical memory and it NEVER HAPPENED.
Could I retrieve that memory and make it a reality? Do we all have symphonies raging away inside of us just waiting for a chance to be heard? I would say it is more likely than unlikely. I would say that even the most depraved and violent and evil of us have our own personal soundtrack of music that only we could create. To be moving towards a time when those sounds will be more and more accessible is, to a music lover like myself, staggeringly exciting.
Today in the mail I received the latest album by my best friend Justin Brady. It is called 'The Bassoon Years' and it contains a song called 'Sui Generis' that he wrote in honor of my father who recently passed away. This album would have gotten a separate entry if it had come a bit earlier but that just hammers my point home even further.
Justin has been a de-facto O'Malley for decades and something of a son-by-proxy. If Justin and I had been alive during any other period of recorded or unrecorded history I would not have been able to listen to this song, unless he were singing it to me himself. So when people talk about how technology numbs people or leaves them less communicative I say they have a funny way of looking at a full glass and imagining it to be half empty.
So here, perched atop this jalopy of a joyride of a musical Top 50 list, I invite you to tell me what you would take with you if someone put a gun to your head. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Thanks to Mike for suggesting this list. What's next in this space? No idea. Maybe nothing. If you come back and check even once I'm grateful.
Brendan O'Malley
Top 50 List
Begun Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Finished Friday May 22, 2009
We've all heard that fun apocalyptic question, 'If you were stranded on a desert isle, what is the one album you would choose?'
The irony in this weighty hypothetical is that we ARE STRANDED ON THE PLANET. We are on our island and we have an infinite number of albums to choose from. When you think about what you might want to be stranded with, you could do a lot worse than lil' ol' Planet Earth. I have been trying to cultivate a new sense of gratitude and wonder and this list has been a big part of that.
How lucky am I that I own such a wide swath of seemingly disconnected music? If you look at this list without thinking about it, you might think that 50 random strangers were each allowed one choice. There is no overlying theme, no sense of singularity to this list. And the variety of what is out there to choose from is expanding exponentially at an almost frightening rate.
A mere decade ago digital recording was still quite expensive and unavailable to the home enthusiast. Now? Any musician with a healthy dose of perfectionism can create their very own masterpiece. Where will this trend be in thirty more years? Will we have direct links to our brainwaves so that once a creative stream is isolated it can be manifested merely through thought? Could happen.
I once dreamed that I was in a strange lush green atmosphere where an idyllic lawn was broken up all around me like in a Picasso cubist fantasy. I sat at a collage of a grand piano in a tuxedo and all around me an orchestra responded to my improvisation. To this date it is still my most treasured musical memory and it NEVER HAPPENED.
Could I retrieve that memory and make it a reality? Do we all have symphonies raging away inside of us just waiting for a chance to be heard? I would say it is more likely than unlikely. I would say that even the most depraved and violent and evil of us have our own personal soundtrack of music that only we could create. To be moving towards a time when those sounds will be more and more accessible is, to a music lover like myself, staggeringly exciting.
Today in the mail I received the latest album by my best friend Justin Brady. It is called 'The Bassoon Years' and it contains a song called 'Sui Generis' that he wrote in honor of my father who recently passed away. This album would have gotten a separate entry if it had come a bit earlier but that just hammers my point home even further.
Justin has been a de-facto O'Malley for decades and something of a son-by-proxy. If Justin and I had been alive during any other period of recorded or unrecorded history I would not have been able to listen to this song, unless he were singing it to me himself. So when people talk about how technology numbs people or leaves them less communicative I say they have a funny way of looking at a full glass and imagining it to be half empty.
So here, perched atop this jalopy of a joyride of a musical Top 50 list, I invite you to tell me what you would take with you if someone put a gun to your head. Thanks for coming along for the ride. Thanks to Mike for suggesting this list. What's next in this space? No idea. Maybe nothing. If you come back and check even once I'm grateful.
Brendan O'Malley
Top 50 List
Begun Tuesday, August 26, 2008
Finished Friday May 22, 2009
Tuesday, May 19, 2009
2 Greatest Albums: Dr. Dre - '2001 (Instrumentals Only)
I got this one from cousin Timothy and while it doesn't have the aorta piercing emotional resonance it more than makes up for it in the realm of sonic weight.
I'd loved this album when it came out with the vocals on it. Then Timothy moved out and I didn't hear it for a while. Then Timothy moved to LA and he gave me the version without rapping. I can't say it is better than the one with vocals because they are flip sides of the same big money coin. But anyone who thinks that rap music is just an artless theft of grab bag samples would do will to sit down with head phones on and listen to the sound of Dr. Dre's brain.
There are two producers who loom large over the last part of the 20th century. One is Rick Rubin who started with ghetto rap and wound up at Johnny Cash's bedside. The other is Dr. Dre. Rubin is more of a facilitator, a spirit guide, a shaman leading the artist through the wasteland of their own creativity. He has never felt the urge (or has hidden it quite well) to join in the spotlight, to throw his hat into the performance ring.
Dre came out of the gate doing both. On N.W.A.'s 'Straight Outta Compton' it was always Dre's voice that seemed to be the final word. He is without a doubt underestimated as a rapper/lyricist but that is like saying no one ever talks about how good a piano player Beethoven was.
To hear his work stripped of all literary infusion is to reduce it to an almost staggering power. Each snare is infinite, each keyboard plink becomes a bright jewel in a dark and endless void. It is like being enveloped in a finely tuned gleaming hot rod engine, slick oil keeping you from being crushed by the thrust of the pistons, keeping you cool amidst all the combustion.
I'm white and grew up sheltered from the terrible wrath racism and power imbalance wreaks on those who aren't white and sheltered. This album, stripped of words, fills me with the deepest compassion for those who have endured random stops by crooked cops, violent eruptions puncturing everyday life, the overwhelming sense of futility when the odds are so clearly stacked against you.
The power that Dr. Dre wrings out of cold soulless technology is astonishing. This is not some kid making a collage. These compositions are at the cutting edge of both modern human technology and artistic expression. They are perfectly rendered, to the point that you can take the words away and the meaning remains. Try that with a Nirvana record, or a Neil Young record, or a Bob Dylan record. Great as those artists are, the work minus the words is a mere echo.
With Dr. Dre, there is no echo. He shows you the whole canyon. With these instrumental pieces he shows you that there is nothing to be shouted into the canyon. You cannot escape his vision. You may wish you could, but you can't.
Put the headphones on. You will see danger on every corner. You will feel the simple joy of a drive in a convertible with the top down. You will feel that joy drain away in a flash when a power hungry automaton tries to take you down a peg. You will turn to weed to numb the pain but it will only make you angrier. You will wish for the love of a good woman to help you cope with what you face on a daily basis. You will be disappointed when she turns out to have been just another crack in the dam. You will want to lash out in rage against anyone to restore your sense of power. You will feel remorse for the result of that power. You will see danger on every corner. You will feel the simple joy of a drive in a convertible with the top down...
So, yeah, fuck the police.
If they tried to step on Mozart's toes I'd say the same thing.
I'd loved this album when it came out with the vocals on it. Then Timothy moved out and I didn't hear it for a while. Then Timothy moved to LA and he gave me the version without rapping. I can't say it is better than the one with vocals because they are flip sides of the same big money coin. But anyone who thinks that rap music is just an artless theft of grab bag samples would do will to sit down with head phones on and listen to the sound of Dr. Dre's brain.
There are two producers who loom large over the last part of the 20th century. One is Rick Rubin who started with ghetto rap and wound up at Johnny Cash's bedside. The other is Dr. Dre. Rubin is more of a facilitator, a spirit guide, a shaman leading the artist through the wasteland of their own creativity. He has never felt the urge (or has hidden it quite well) to join in the spotlight, to throw his hat into the performance ring.
Dre came out of the gate doing both. On N.W.A.'s 'Straight Outta Compton' it was always Dre's voice that seemed to be the final word. He is without a doubt underestimated as a rapper/lyricist but that is like saying no one ever talks about how good a piano player Beethoven was.
To hear his work stripped of all literary infusion is to reduce it to an almost staggering power. Each snare is infinite, each keyboard plink becomes a bright jewel in a dark and endless void. It is like being enveloped in a finely tuned gleaming hot rod engine, slick oil keeping you from being crushed by the thrust of the pistons, keeping you cool amidst all the combustion.
I'm white and grew up sheltered from the terrible wrath racism and power imbalance wreaks on those who aren't white and sheltered. This album, stripped of words, fills me with the deepest compassion for those who have endured random stops by crooked cops, violent eruptions puncturing everyday life, the overwhelming sense of futility when the odds are so clearly stacked against you.
The power that Dr. Dre wrings out of cold soulless technology is astonishing. This is not some kid making a collage. These compositions are at the cutting edge of both modern human technology and artistic expression. They are perfectly rendered, to the point that you can take the words away and the meaning remains. Try that with a Nirvana record, or a Neil Young record, or a Bob Dylan record. Great as those artists are, the work minus the words is a mere echo.
With Dr. Dre, there is no echo. He shows you the whole canyon. With these instrumental pieces he shows you that there is nothing to be shouted into the canyon. You cannot escape his vision. You may wish you could, but you can't.
Put the headphones on. You will see danger on every corner. You will feel the simple joy of a drive in a convertible with the top down. You will feel that joy drain away in a flash when a power hungry automaton tries to take you down a peg. You will turn to weed to numb the pain but it will only make you angrier. You will wish for the love of a good woman to help you cope with what you face on a daily basis. You will be disappointed when she turns out to have been just another crack in the dam. You will want to lash out in rage against anyone to restore your sense of power. You will feel remorse for the result of that power. You will see danger on every corner. You will feel the simple joy of a drive in a convertible with the top down...
So, yeah, fuck the police.
If they tried to step on Mozart's toes I'd say the same thing.
Monday, May 18, 2009
3 Greatest Albums: Mike Doughty - 'Skittish'
Once again I was driving the streets of southern Rhode Island late at night. These streets are the geography of my soul, the areas I travel regardless of where I actually live. In this case I was physically in Rhode Island but in a larger sense I will ALWAYS be driving the streets of southern Rhode Island late at night.
I was listening to WRIU, the radio station at the University of Rhode Island. This is the station that I first heard The Replacements on, the station that was the soundtrack to my high school punk misadventures, the station that was like a small dark portal to the outside world the entire time I went to college which feels like it lasted 25 years.
Cut to a post 9/11 me. I am a raw nerve. I am struggling mightily to handle the aftermath of a painful divorce, balancing that with the joys of a new relationship, the difficulty of adjusting to a new model of parenthood, one that necessarily must include time spent away from my son. Throw in a little hint of drug/alcohol addiction and major financial stress and what you have is a walking powder keg. 9/11 has left me incapable of dealing with any of this in a healthy way. I'd probably been losing that fight before those motherfuckers blew up my city.
I am back home for a summer stretch. Somewhere in some little dusty studio some college DJ plays a song. It shoots out into the ether. What are the odds that I would be one of the few to hear it? The station can't have a very large audience, especially in the summer and this was a late night show. If there a thousand people tuning in I would be flabbergasted.
The song was an acoustic doozy and it contained the refrain, 'Thank you, lord, for sending out the F train to me'. It also referenced Park Slope, my neighborhood, and basically seemed like someone had read the secret diary of my heart and put it to music.
I had to pull over. I cried. I had a cathartic response. I don't think I had my cell phone on me so I had to wait til I got back to my parent's house to call in to find out what it was. As usual the DJ didn't say anything about it when he recapped his play list. I listened and listened hoping that he would say, 'And that song was...' but he didn't.
There was no answer at the station. The next day I called again and spoke with someone who told me who the DJ was and that they didn't keep logs of what they played. So I'd have to call again when his show was on. In the meantime I feverishly searched for the song on the Internet using key words...'F train'. 'Park Slope'. The show had been categorized as an emo music hour. None of these combinations came up with anything on google.
The unnamed song haunted me. I asked music aficionados if they'd ever heard anything like it. No one knew what I was talking about. I didn't have the artist name or the song name. All I knew was that it was a song about the 'F train'.
Finally I hit upon the right mixture of words and something came up. Mike Doughty. He'd been the lead singer of a band called Soul Coughing that had had some success in the 1990's. One song I knew called 'Circles'. I liked it but it was nothing compared to the stripped down clarity and emotional wallop I'd experienced.
The song was indeed called 'Thank You Lord For Sending Me The F Train'. The album was only available through Doughty's website. I quickly ordered a copy and prepared myself to be underwhelmed by everything else on the album.
My fears were unfounded as 'Thank You' is merely one of many transcendent songs. There is a burning quality to this album, something perfectly realized yet totally out of control. I have heard other Doughty songs and albums and while I can appreciate them - this is one for the desert island.
I'd take you through the songs and try to describe the perfection inherent in each. But that would be like trying to print the echo of the map I have of the streets of southern Rhode Island into your brain. You have your own maps to navigate. I just got lucky enough to hear someone sing about a street I was living on.
And Mike Doughty, if you're out there, I need to let you know that you somehow built a bridge from Park Slope right to those Rhode Island streets, you clued me in that I had a new home, that I'd put down roots, that my homeland had been attacked and that my response to that was about as appropriate as could be. Thank you lord indeed.
I was listening to WRIU, the radio station at the University of Rhode Island. This is the station that I first heard The Replacements on, the station that was the soundtrack to my high school punk misadventures, the station that was like a small dark portal to the outside world the entire time I went to college which feels like it lasted 25 years.
Cut to a post 9/11 me. I am a raw nerve. I am struggling mightily to handle the aftermath of a painful divorce, balancing that with the joys of a new relationship, the difficulty of adjusting to a new model of parenthood, one that necessarily must include time spent away from my son. Throw in a little hint of drug/alcohol addiction and major financial stress and what you have is a walking powder keg. 9/11 has left me incapable of dealing with any of this in a healthy way. I'd probably been losing that fight before those motherfuckers blew up my city.
I am back home for a summer stretch. Somewhere in some little dusty studio some college DJ plays a song. It shoots out into the ether. What are the odds that I would be one of the few to hear it? The station can't have a very large audience, especially in the summer and this was a late night show. If there a thousand people tuning in I would be flabbergasted.
The song was an acoustic doozy and it contained the refrain, 'Thank you, lord, for sending out the F train to me'. It also referenced Park Slope, my neighborhood, and basically seemed like someone had read the secret diary of my heart and put it to music.
I had to pull over. I cried. I had a cathartic response. I don't think I had my cell phone on me so I had to wait til I got back to my parent's house to call in to find out what it was. As usual the DJ didn't say anything about it when he recapped his play list. I listened and listened hoping that he would say, 'And that song was...' but he didn't.
There was no answer at the station. The next day I called again and spoke with someone who told me who the DJ was and that they didn't keep logs of what they played. So I'd have to call again when his show was on. In the meantime I feverishly searched for the song on the Internet using key words...'F train'. 'Park Slope'. The show had been categorized as an emo music hour. None of these combinations came up with anything on google.
The unnamed song haunted me. I asked music aficionados if they'd ever heard anything like it. No one knew what I was talking about. I didn't have the artist name or the song name. All I knew was that it was a song about the 'F train'.
Finally I hit upon the right mixture of words and something came up. Mike Doughty. He'd been the lead singer of a band called Soul Coughing that had had some success in the 1990's. One song I knew called 'Circles'. I liked it but it was nothing compared to the stripped down clarity and emotional wallop I'd experienced.
The song was indeed called 'Thank You Lord For Sending Me The F Train'. The album was only available through Doughty's website. I quickly ordered a copy and prepared myself to be underwhelmed by everything else on the album.
My fears were unfounded as 'Thank You' is merely one of many transcendent songs. There is a burning quality to this album, something perfectly realized yet totally out of control. I have heard other Doughty songs and albums and while I can appreciate them - this is one for the desert island.
I'd take you through the songs and try to describe the perfection inherent in each. But that would be like trying to print the echo of the map I have of the streets of southern Rhode Island into your brain. You have your own maps to navigate. I just got lucky enough to hear someone sing about a street I was living on.
And Mike Doughty, if you're out there, I need to let you know that you somehow built a bridge from Park Slope right to those Rhode Island streets, you clued me in that I had a new home, that I'd put down roots, that my homeland had been attacked and that my response to that was about as appropriate as could be. Thank you lord indeed.
Friday, May 15, 2009
4 Greatest Albums: Graham Parker & The Rumour - 'Squeezing Out Sparks'
What if Salieri weren't second rate? What if Mozart's shadow obscured an equal instead of an inferior imitator? Wouldn't that be a greater tragedy?
Such a thing occurred in the late 1970's. If you went looking for the best album put out by a bespectacled guitar toting new-wave punk with a tight band roaring out of London, you'd probably wind up with Elvis Costello and the Attractions 'This Year's Model' or 'My Aim Is True' from '77 or '78.
But the best album that fits that description from that time period is actually 'Squeezing Out Sparks' by Graham Parker & The Rumour from 1979.
In one form or another, every album that is on this Top 50 List is, to my mind, perfect. They might be filled with mistakes, bad recording quality, even experimental music that fails. But they are perfect, either in the place they hold in my heart or an overall aesthetic.
This is a perfect album through either prism.
It opens with 'Discovering Japan' which is about (in no particular order) the A-bomb, a Japanese woman brokenhearted by the callous attention given to her by GI's, and the new American lover who is obsessed with her but can't break through the cultural barrier. It could also be about mankind hurtling toward a nuclear holocaust. Or hot Japanese schoolgirls. Basically all of the above.
Key lyric? 'I shouted sayonara/It didn't mean good bye'.
So what do you do after you've been burned by an international relationship overwhelmed by the nuclear zeitgeist? You turn to 'Local Girls'. This provincialism leads Parker to ruminate, 'You look all right in that cheap green dress/But every time you swish it round you make me disappear'. While the complications that arise from a globe trotting lifestyle are vast and sexy in their impossibility, Parker winds up spitting to himself, 'Don't bother with a local girl/Don't bother with 'em they don't bother me'.
He then takes a step back to look in the mirror with 'Nobody Hurts You' which contains the Dr. Phil-worthy bromide, 'Nobody hurts you harder than yourself'. Somehow coming from Parker it doesn't feel trite or patronizing but rather a hard-fought grim determinate necessity.
So far the album has been a sexy little joy ride, careening from girl to girl, lost in the ramifications of modern love.
You know that moment in a horror movie when a scene with a laughing crowd of teenagers goes on a wee bit too long? You have a small voice telling you the hit is coming, the fright is waiting, but you don't quite listen fast enough so when the monster jumps out at you it is doubly frightening because you almost saw it coming?
'You Can't Be Too Strong' is that scene in 'Squeezing Out Sparks'. The title of the album comes from a lyric in the song. It is hard to write about this song. It is a song about abortion. The voice of the song alternates from the voice of the mother to the voice of the unborn child. Now, I am a Pro-Choice guy. Read John Irving's 'The Cider House Rules' for a treatise on why.
This song makes me question my beliefs. I come out on the other end still believing in a woman's right to choose but Parker does something extraordinarily brave with this song. I don't even feel comfortable quoting the lyrics here, so perfectly married to the music are they.
The song has a dual effect. One you cannot ignore the central question inherent in the song. You are forced to contemplate your beliefs without any barrier of myth or analogy. And in context, it pushes the album to a higher plane, one in which all human behavior is up for judgment, one where every action however slight can have disastrous consequences.
Hence the next song, 'Passion Is No Ordinary Word'. The singer struggles inside of a relationship where 'The world is easy when you're just playing around with it/Everything's a thrill and every girl's a kill/And then it gets unreal/And then you don't feel anything'. The music throbs behind his moan and we sense his dissatisfaction in a visceral way. Plus it rocks.
He then howls that 'Saturday Night Is Dead' which is perhaps the most self-explanatory song title in the history of rock and roll. His rage has boiled down to the finest point and the next song is the aural equivalent of throwing your hands up in frustration and anger...'Love Gets You Twisted' twists and turns like an old-time dance reel and ends in Parker repeating 'Love gets you twisted/Screw yourself up/Screw yourself up/Screw yourself up up up'.
Here is where the shit starts to storm. The tension within the album has been building, like a tightening screw, like a tautening rope, and you get the sense that something will snap. In 'Protection' he opens with 'So all of you be damned/We can't have heaven crammed/So Winston Churchill said/I could've smacked his head' which is akin to Bruce Springsteen telling FDR to go fuck himself. Paranoia has overrun his synapses and he begins to obsess on negative imagery, saying 'It ain't the knife through your heart that tears you apart/It's just the thought of someone sticking it in'.
In a minor impossible moment of levity he then sits and turns his attention to the sky in 'Waiting For The UFOs'. To give the song that little bit of absurdity it needs, he does not pronounce UFO as three separate letters but all as one word, Yufos. It is hilarious but chilling as we've witnessed his descent into madness until he can no longer relate to people at all but can only obsess about visitation. In what seems like an aside, he muses, 'This new obsession is turning us alien too/Much more resounding my heart just stopped pounding for you'. The prospect of an invasion is the only thing that can kill his love.
In the finale 'Don't Get Excited' what seems like an order is actually a description. He can't feel. The new girl doesn't get it. She tries but his capacity for arousal has been stunted after what he's been through. He croons, 'You try to reach a vital part of me/My interest level's dropping rapidly/It's all excuses, baby/All a stall/We just don't get excited'.
And that is the final fallout from the nuclear disaster which opens the album. How can you get a hard-on in the face of the devastation of the planet? How do you commit to a woman when she can't stop the dead voices in her head? How do you have a good time when Saturday night is dead?
If you'd never heard of Elvis Costello you'd listen to this album and say you'd found a Mozart.
Such a thing occurred in the late 1970's. If you went looking for the best album put out by a bespectacled guitar toting new-wave punk with a tight band roaring out of London, you'd probably wind up with Elvis Costello and the Attractions 'This Year's Model' or 'My Aim Is True' from '77 or '78.
But the best album that fits that description from that time period is actually 'Squeezing Out Sparks' by Graham Parker & The Rumour from 1979.
In one form or another, every album that is on this Top 50 List is, to my mind, perfect. They might be filled with mistakes, bad recording quality, even experimental music that fails. But they are perfect, either in the place they hold in my heart or an overall aesthetic.
This is a perfect album through either prism.
It opens with 'Discovering Japan' which is about (in no particular order) the A-bomb, a Japanese woman brokenhearted by the callous attention given to her by GI's, and the new American lover who is obsessed with her but can't break through the cultural barrier. It could also be about mankind hurtling toward a nuclear holocaust. Or hot Japanese schoolgirls. Basically all of the above.
Key lyric? 'I shouted sayonara/It didn't mean good bye'.
So what do you do after you've been burned by an international relationship overwhelmed by the nuclear zeitgeist? You turn to 'Local Girls'. This provincialism leads Parker to ruminate, 'You look all right in that cheap green dress/But every time you swish it round you make me disappear'. While the complications that arise from a globe trotting lifestyle are vast and sexy in their impossibility, Parker winds up spitting to himself, 'Don't bother with a local girl/Don't bother with 'em they don't bother me'.
He then takes a step back to look in the mirror with 'Nobody Hurts You' which contains the Dr. Phil-worthy bromide, 'Nobody hurts you harder than yourself'. Somehow coming from Parker it doesn't feel trite or patronizing but rather a hard-fought grim determinate necessity.
So far the album has been a sexy little joy ride, careening from girl to girl, lost in the ramifications of modern love.
You know that moment in a horror movie when a scene with a laughing crowd of teenagers goes on a wee bit too long? You have a small voice telling you the hit is coming, the fright is waiting, but you don't quite listen fast enough so when the monster jumps out at you it is doubly frightening because you almost saw it coming?
'You Can't Be Too Strong' is that scene in 'Squeezing Out Sparks'. The title of the album comes from a lyric in the song. It is hard to write about this song. It is a song about abortion. The voice of the song alternates from the voice of the mother to the voice of the unborn child. Now, I am a Pro-Choice guy. Read John Irving's 'The Cider House Rules' for a treatise on why.
This song makes me question my beliefs. I come out on the other end still believing in a woman's right to choose but Parker does something extraordinarily brave with this song. I don't even feel comfortable quoting the lyrics here, so perfectly married to the music are they.
The song has a dual effect. One you cannot ignore the central question inherent in the song. You are forced to contemplate your beliefs without any barrier of myth or analogy. And in context, it pushes the album to a higher plane, one in which all human behavior is up for judgment, one where every action however slight can have disastrous consequences.
Hence the next song, 'Passion Is No Ordinary Word'. The singer struggles inside of a relationship where 'The world is easy when you're just playing around with it/Everything's a thrill and every girl's a kill/And then it gets unreal/And then you don't feel anything'. The music throbs behind his moan and we sense his dissatisfaction in a visceral way. Plus it rocks.
He then howls that 'Saturday Night Is Dead' which is perhaps the most self-explanatory song title in the history of rock and roll. His rage has boiled down to the finest point and the next song is the aural equivalent of throwing your hands up in frustration and anger...'Love Gets You Twisted' twists and turns like an old-time dance reel and ends in Parker repeating 'Love gets you twisted/Screw yourself up/Screw yourself up/Screw yourself up up up'.
Here is where the shit starts to storm. The tension within the album has been building, like a tightening screw, like a tautening rope, and you get the sense that something will snap. In 'Protection' he opens with 'So all of you be damned/We can't have heaven crammed/So Winston Churchill said/I could've smacked his head' which is akin to Bruce Springsteen telling FDR to go fuck himself. Paranoia has overrun his synapses and he begins to obsess on negative imagery, saying 'It ain't the knife through your heart that tears you apart/It's just the thought of someone sticking it in'.
In a minor impossible moment of levity he then sits and turns his attention to the sky in 'Waiting For The UFOs'. To give the song that little bit of absurdity it needs, he does not pronounce UFO as three separate letters but all as one word, Yufos. It is hilarious but chilling as we've witnessed his descent into madness until he can no longer relate to people at all but can only obsess about visitation. In what seems like an aside, he muses, 'This new obsession is turning us alien too/Much more resounding my heart just stopped pounding for you'. The prospect of an invasion is the only thing that can kill his love.
In the finale 'Don't Get Excited' what seems like an order is actually a description. He can't feel. The new girl doesn't get it. She tries but his capacity for arousal has been stunted after what he's been through. He croons, 'You try to reach a vital part of me/My interest level's dropping rapidly/It's all excuses, baby/All a stall/We just don't get excited'.
And that is the final fallout from the nuclear disaster which opens the album. How can you get a hard-on in the face of the devastation of the planet? How do you commit to a woman when she can't stop the dead voices in her head? How do you have a good time when Saturday night is dead?
If you'd never heard of Elvis Costello you'd listen to this album and say you'd found a Mozart.
Wednesday, May 13, 2009
5 Greatest Albums: The Broken Remotes - 'Tonight's Last Stand'
I don't know how to review this album.
Full disclosure. Jon Leahy is the creative force behind this band and he and I are close friends and collaborators. I played my first show in Los Angeles with an early incarnation of Jon's band, he's produced a good bit of my music, and he is basically an honorary O'Malley.
But it is not my closeness to Jon that renders this review a treacherous little ride. His music is unsettling while being deeply satisfying. His lyrics feel like that moment every kid has, standing in the dark of their room, hand stretched out to a closet door, willing themselves to get over the fear and just open the damn door already. Before you open the door what's behind it is real.
His voice is quite often tucked around a killer guitar. He doesn't insist that you hear every word. He is not hiding or mumbling which many of his indie rock brethren do. But the music is so assured that he is confident of how it will land. So he'll whisper, he'll be restrained, he'll let the crash of a drum or the drone of an organ do the talking for him. Until the moment strikes.
When Jon Leahy raises his voice something CONCRETE happens. There is a retroactive aspect to this...when you hear that roar you realize that he has been sitting on it. That he doesn't feel the need to use it unless it is absolutely necessary. That his expression is deliberate.
I can't tell you how many times I've been disappointed in singers when I feel them riding their favorite part of their voice. They aren't concerned with the song or what needs to be said. They are concerned about sounding as good as they can. They are like big sluggers who can only hit fastballs. It's all well and good until someone throws you a nasty curve.
The Broken Remotes write songs that are (to continue the baseball pitching analogy) filled with curves, splitballs, knuckleballs, high heat, brushback pitches, flat out beanballs, and even the occasional wild pitch that flies into the stands.
And like a Rubik's cube one move from completion there is a sense of breathless anticipation to EVERY SINGLE MOMENT on this album. Like the kid outside of the closet. Like a man on a bridge. Like a car about to roll. Like a finger on a trigger.
Somehow they manage to maintain that tension without sending the listener over the edge into some sort of panic attack. Mostly 'coz the shit is fun to sing along to. Leahy's voice has that deceptive quality all great singers have in that you hear it and want to sing along. Then when you do you are struck by how HARD he's actually working, how difficult it is to be a real front man. Go listen to The Broken Remotes and it will help you clear all the posers out of your iPod.
The song titles have what I call totemistic qualities. They seem like physical things. They could be mantras. They have power.
Shut Off The Machines
Stick With Me, Kid
Lose The Swagger
This Time Is The Exception
On The Take
I could type each song on the album but I'll let you discover those for yourselves. Just like you discovered that there was no monster in your closet. But if that's so, why do you still get afraid?
Full disclosure. Jon Leahy is the creative force behind this band and he and I are close friends and collaborators. I played my first show in Los Angeles with an early incarnation of Jon's band, he's produced a good bit of my music, and he is basically an honorary O'Malley.
But it is not my closeness to Jon that renders this review a treacherous little ride. His music is unsettling while being deeply satisfying. His lyrics feel like that moment every kid has, standing in the dark of their room, hand stretched out to a closet door, willing themselves to get over the fear and just open the damn door already. Before you open the door what's behind it is real.
His voice is quite often tucked around a killer guitar. He doesn't insist that you hear every word. He is not hiding or mumbling which many of his indie rock brethren do. But the music is so assured that he is confident of how it will land. So he'll whisper, he'll be restrained, he'll let the crash of a drum or the drone of an organ do the talking for him. Until the moment strikes.
When Jon Leahy raises his voice something CONCRETE happens. There is a retroactive aspect to this...when you hear that roar you realize that he has been sitting on it. That he doesn't feel the need to use it unless it is absolutely necessary. That his expression is deliberate.
I can't tell you how many times I've been disappointed in singers when I feel them riding their favorite part of their voice. They aren't concerned with the song or what needs to be said. They are concerned about sounding as good as they can. They are like big sluggers who can only hit fastballs. It's all well and good until someone throws you a nasty curve.
The Broken Remotes write songs that are (to continue the baseball pitching analogy) filled with curves, splitballs, knuckleballs, high heat, brushback pitches, flat out beanballs, and even the occasional wild pitch that flies into the stands.
And like a Rubik's cube one move from completion there is a sense of breathless anticipation to EVERY SINGLE MOMENT on this album. Like the kid outside of the closet. Like a man on a bridge. Like a car about to roll. Like a finger on a trigger.
Somehow they manage to maintain that tension without sending the listener over the edge into some sort of panic attack. Mostly 'coz the shit is fun to sing along to. Leahy's voice has that deceptive quality all great singers have in that you hear it and want to sing along. Then when you do you are struck by how HARD he's actually working, how difficult it is to be a real front man. Go listen to The Broken Remotes and it will help you clear all the posers out of your iPod.
The song titles have what I call totemistic qualities. They seem like physical things. They could be mantras. They have power.
Shut Off The Machines
Stick With Me, Kid
Lose The Swagger
This Time Is The Exception
On The Take
I could type each song on the album but I'll let you discover those for yourselves. Just like you discovered that there was no monster in your closet. But if that's so, why do you still get afraid?
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
6 Greatest Albums: Green Day - 'American Idiot'
Calling this album a shock is an understatement of the highest order. By the time September 2004 rolled around, Green Day had become an after-thought at best. Fans of the band will dispute this but those are true-believers. If you had said that Green Day's next album would be a blockbuster along the lines of The Police's 'Synchronicity' or Michael Jackson's 'Thriller', you would have been laughed out of the room.
But that is just what happened and more. Somehow these bratty snot-nosed punks pulled a rock opera out of their collective ass that perfectly encapsulated the malaise of Post 9/11 American consciousness. They did wha????
I will again use my son as a barometer. Cash is not huge into music. He has always loved The Beatles, he loves the music of John Williams from Star Wars fame, and he champions the music that I make out of love. As far as modern music goes, he doesn't care, and doesn't even want to. This will probably change once he hits puberty and then he'll start bringing home crazy new stuff but as of now he is in that pre-pubescent state where music just isn't all that important.
But 'American Idiot' struck a major chord with him. He wanted to read the lyrics. He wanted to talk about the meanings behind the songs. He was impressed by the longer epic tunes and equated them favorably to the longer orchestral pieces that he loves so much by Williams and other classical composers. He was/is in AWE of this album.
Now I'm not saying that because my son likes it it is great. But it pierced the dream world of a child and touched the part of his brain that is already an adult. And kids resist that stuff when you try to impose it on them. To me that says that the content of this album is so perfectly achieved that it rids him of the anxiety that contemplating adult questions naturally elicits in an 11 year old. Of course, he was 6 or 7 when it came out and that quality was even more pronounced back then. He didn't want to listen to music in the car; he wanted to talk to me about Star Wars, or Kermit, or spaceships.
For a modern punk rock opera to grab his attention so forcefully that he stopped that kid-like stream of consciousness and TOOK IT IN is a testament to the clarity and force of the songs.
We're both psyched to pick up '21st Century Breakdown' and talk about it in the car. He's almost old enough to sit up front with me.
But that is just what happened and more. Somehow these bratty snot-nosed punks pulled a rock opera out of their collective ass that perfectly encapsulated the malaise of Post 9/11 American consciousness. They did wha????
I will again use my son as a barometer. Cash is not huge into music. He has always loved The Beatles, he loves the music of John Williams from Star Wars fame, and he champions the music that I make out of love. As far as modern music goes, he doesn't care, and doesn't even want to. This will probably change once he hits puberty and then he'll start bringing home crazy new stuff but as of now he is in that pre-pubescent state where music just isn't all that important.
But 'American Idiot' struck a major chord with him. He wanted to read the lyrics. He wanted to talk about the meanings behind the songs. He was impressed by the longer epic tunes and equated them favorably to the longer orchestral pieces that he loves so much by Williams and other classical composers. He was/is in AWE of this album.
Now I'm not saying that because my son likes it it is great. But it pierced the dream world of a child and touched the part of his brain that is already an adult. And kids resist that stuff when you try to impose it on them. To me that says that the content of this album is so perfectly achieved that it rids him of the anxiety that contemplating adult questions naturally elicits in an 11 year old. Of course, he was 6 or 7 when it came out and that quality was even more pronounced back then. He didn't want to listen to music in the car; he wanted to talk to me about Star Wars, or Kermit, or spaceships.
For a modern punk rock opera to grab his attention so forcefully that he stopped that kid-like stream of consciousness and TOOK IT IN is a testament to the clarity and force of the songs.
We're both psyched to pick up '21st Century Breakdown' and talk about it in the car. He's almost old enough to sit up front with me.
Monday, May 11, 2009
7 Greatest Albums: The Streets - 'Original Pirate Material'
London is fucked for me now. All my friends are wankers who owe me money or won't give me a break on the money I owe them. My girl is fucking some other guy and I saw them eating fish and chips out of tiny cardboard containers at some outdoor shop and laughing. Pretty much all I do is drink and smoke and play video games.
The weed seems like it'll help but then I just get all paranoid and creepy. The gray of the city seems to come from inside of me when I'm stoned when what I want is to add some fucking color to shit. The World Cup is going on and I could give two shits. Unless they lose and then I'll probably start a fight with the next Spaniard I see.
See, the trouble is, I blame myself that she's fucking this geezer. I snapped on her about something trite like where she put my hand-held TV after she borrowed it. Don't know why I got so angry but things were never the same after that. I begged her for another chance and she gave it to me but when she started working at that bar in Chelsea I barely saw her. I got a sneaky feeling so I followed her one night after she got out of work and she met this fucking bastard and they smoked up in his car and then she went up into his place. Now when I'm not at darts with my geezers I'm traipsing around SoHo letting them put daggers in me every time they kiss.
Plus I owe a guy a whole lotta cake from this deal I tried to pull off last monf. I bought a bunch of brown (not using that shit yet but you fucking never well know) and passed it on to this numbskull who was trying to get it over to Paris through the Chunnel. Of course he got pinched and now I have to pay up and worry about Scotland Yard all at fuck once.
But, yeah, I still have a good time with my geezers down the pub when I can relax and balance the beer and weed just right. Without them I'd be noffing.
And yeah, this music might be something if I could get some time to work on it. The 808 is busted though. And all I want to write about is how I want to kill the motherfucker who is probably out with my girl right now. Not that I blame her. I did a number on her in the beginning and she just can't let it go.
Memory is a bitch.
I am the last/latest in a long line of outsider philosophers. While I'm scraping along these dirty London streets I am high above it all, staring down at the slate rooftops and pointed steeple spires, and you all seem absurd, rushing about as if your every move mattered past the edge of your molecules. And it don't, homie. It simply don't. All that does matter is a vision of the world that you'll never have, the singular vision, the one that includes all of us, but by very definition this vision is unreachable to any one of us, it cannot be attained. But our belief in that vision while being unable to perceive it is maddening to us so we transfer the intent of thought into meaningless things hoping to infuse them with meaning...a bird, some weed, a football match, a brick of cash. And you'll never see it for what it really is.
Take my word for it. 'Coz I see it all from up here above all you petty little bitches. Don't stop me from crying over her though.
The weed seems like it'll help but then I just get all paranoid and creepy. The gray of the city seems to come from inside of me when I'm stoned when what I want is to add some fucking color to shit. The World Cup is going on and I could give two shits. Unless they lose and then I'll probably start a fight with the next Spaniard I see.
See, the trouble is, I blame myself that she's fucking this geezer. I snapped on her about something trite like where she put my hand-held TV after she borrowed it. Don't know why I got so angry but things were never the same after that. I begged her for another chance and she gave it to me but when she started working at that bar in Chelsea I barely saw her. I got a sneaky feeling so I followed her one night after she got out of work and she met this fucking bastard and they smoked up in his car and then she went up into his place. Now when I'm not at darts with my geezers I'm traipsing around SoHo letting them put daggers in me every time they kiss.
Plus I owe a guy a whole lotta cake from this deal I tried to pull off last monf. I bought a bunch of brown (not using that shit yet but you fucking never well know) and passed it on to this numbskull who was trying to get it over to Paris through the Chunnel. Of course he got pinched and now I have to pay up and worry about Scotland Yard all at fuck once.
But, yeah, I still have a good time with my geezers down the pub when I can relax and balance the beer and weed just right. Without them I'd be noffing.
And yeah, this music might be something if I could get some time to work on it. The 808 is busted though. And all I want to write about is how I want to kill the motherfucker who is probably out with my girl right now. Not that I blame her. I did a number on her in the beginning and she just can't let it go.
Memory is a bitch.
I am the last/latest in a long line of outsider philosophers. While I'm scraping along these dirty London streets I am high above it all, staring down at the slate rooftops and pointed steeple spires, and you all seem absurd, rushing about as if your every move mattered past the edge of your molecules. And it don't, homie. It simply don't. All that does matter is a vision of the world that you'll never have, the singular vision, the one that includes all of us, but by very definition this vision is unreachable to any one of us, it cannot be attained. But our belief in that vision while being unable to perceive it is maddening to us so we transfer the intent of thought into meaningless things hoping to infuse them with meaning...a bird, some weed, a football match, a brick of cash. And you'll never see it for what it really is.
Take my word for it. 'Coz I see it all from up here above all you petty little bitches. Don't stop me from crying over her though.
Thursday, May 7, 2009
8 Greatest Albums: Paul Kelly and the Messengers - 'So Much Water So Close To Home'
I had not read Raymond Carver's short story when I first heard this album so I didn't know what to expect when I heard the title. CD players were new, I was a member of the Columbia House CD club so I was going into debt buying compact discs. This one was an after-thought.
'Sweet Guy' had been on the radio during the fall of '89 and my college life was in full-bore disaster mode. Disaster like a roller-coaster ride, like the moment before you pull the rip-cord on your parachute, the knowledge that you've made some very dangerous choices and the chickens will either be very tasty or coming home to roost and roost fucking hard.
When they came home to roost, they burnt this album onto my psyche. I don't own another Paul Kelly song. I know every note of this album by heart. If you isolated any particular track I could sing it, bass, keyboard, vocals, drums, you name it.
I think I never bought any more music of his because I just couldn't handle another obsession. This is one of those albums that is sheer perfection soup to nuts. Songwriting, performance, production, packaging, perfection.
'You Can't Take It With You' opens the proceedings and it is a sweet pop rock concoction, just a reminder, just a small tap on the shoulder to let you know that you are GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY. The sing-along quality becomes somehow perverse. You are celebrating your own demise, accepting our universal fate by singing in the shower.
Next is 'Sweet Guy' and right away you are put off your guard. It is a rollicking desperate rocker told from the point of view of an abused woman who still can't get enough of her man. He beats her and she keeps coming back for more. She wonders 'what makes such a sweet guy turn so mean'. Now, this isn't uncharted territory, but Kelly sings about it as if HE IS THE WOMAN. This will be a recurring device throughout the collection of songs and it gives the whole work a strange fluid quality, much the way the omniscient narrator does.
He then leaps into sheer romantic territory, embodying a hard-working laborer who can forget all his troubles because he is 'The Most Wanted Man In The World'. The physical connection that he shares with his woman leaves him in wonder at the beauty of the world. From enabling violence to blissful connection, these two songs piggybacked let us know that the whole range of human connection is ripe for exploration.
Next up is 'I Had Forgotten You' and I just don't know how the fuck he does it. There is more melodrama and gossip packed into this song than in the entire 'Desperate Housewives' episode guide. Somehow in a 3 minute rock song that RHYMES, Paul Kelly tells us a story of a man who gets a letter from an old friend. A woman has asked after him. Until the letter arrived he had forgotten all about her. She has been the subject of a lot of talk in the town because she has recently married a man whose wife has just passed away. She had nursed the woman as she died and that connection led them to a romantic relationship. The reader of the letter is then flooded with memories of a long-ago time when he briefly dated the woman. He lays next to his own wife and can barely feel her there. It RHYMES, people.
'She's A Melody (Stupid Song)' follows this and it again takes the opposite approach. Instead of a sucker-punch from a long forgotten flame, this song puts us inside the heart of a man who CANNOT stop thinking about her. In the same way that we get stuck singing some hateful bit of a song, he cannot cease obsessing. To deliberately call to mind those snippets of musical Tourette's and then write a song that embodies that lyrically and musically so that you find yourself humming THIS (STUPID SONG) for days and days is a kind of power that leaves me in awe of Paul Kelly.
In 'South of Germany', Kelly once again becomes a woman. Only this time he is an old woman nearing the end of her life. She's had 7 children. She's led a good life with a good man. But as the end approaches she can't help but think back to an unspecified incident in the South of Germany. A soldier. A love affair. Things would have been so different.
Happy person haunted by memory as well as sad. Kelly seems to be showing us that there is no escape, no hallowed place, no respite from the vagaries of life and love. Even those lucky enough to find and keep a love are still trapped by the specter of what might have been.
'Careless' comes along and it might be the boyfriend from 'Sweet Guy' gone through some enormous transformation. Slowly he sings of having lost his tenderness, of wondering where his kindness went, of how he became so 'Careless'. Once again, the tenor of the song is so bittersweet and the music so gorgeous that to pair it with such hard-fought realization makes for a dagger of emotion.
He jumps back to romance with 'Moon In The Bed' which is a short erotic jolt in which the singer is so turned on by his love that he can only equate it to having a celestial visitor actually under the covers with him.
And just when you think you can relax and enjoy those carnal pleasures, Kelly follows it with a howl of a song called 'No You'. Here all story is stripped away and this narrator keeps waking up astonished to find he is alone, that there is 'No You'. Here the lilting melody is embodied in a searing guitar lick and a snap shot drum which feels like the first slice of cold air hitting you as you trudge to your car the morning after a terrible break-up. There is a hint of romance in the air but it is an after-effect, the image that stays burnt onto your retina once the lights get snapped off.
Here we come to the crown jewel of this perfect album. 'Everything's Turning To White' is Kelly's retelling of the Carver song which gives the album its title. This short story has been re-enacted in the Australian film 'Jindabyne', in 'Short Cuts' by Robert Altman, and probably other times as well.
The song is devastating. For the final time, Kelly becomes a female narrator. She sings a gentle country rock wailer and tells how her husband goes off fishing with his buddies. They find a dead body of a young girl upon arriving at their fishing spot. Instead of rushing to report the find, they move the body out of the way of their fishing and spend three days catching fish. They report it upon returning to civilization.
Something breaks inside the woman when she learns what her husband has done. Or hasn't done really. She feels a million miles away from him. She goes to the funeral and watches. She wonders why he had to go fish there when there was so much water so close to home. In her head, everything's turning to white.
Again, Kelly makes this shit RHYME. It is a lesson in story telling that any artist should pay attention to. There is no extra, the story happens and then ends. The words rhyme but the rhyming is not the point. The story is the point.
Two more songs follow the album but they feel more like bonus tracks to me, proof that life goes on after such atrocity, proof that even the worst of times are followed by other times. And that somehow is worst of all.
Looking back it seems like I knew there wasn't a parachute behind that rip chord. So why did I pull it anyway? Why?
'Sweet Guy' had been on the radio during the fall of '89 and my college life was in full-bore disaster mode. Disaster like a roller-coaster ride, like the moment before you pull the rip-cord on your parachute, the knowledge that you've made some very dangerous choices and the chickens will either be very tasty or coming home to roost and roost fucking hard.
When they came home to roost, they burnt this album onto my psyche. I don't own another Paul Kelly song. I know every note of this album by heart. If you isolated any particular track I could sing it, bass, keyboard, vocals, drums, you name it.
I think I never bought any more music of his because I just couldn't handle another obsession. This is one of those albums that is sheer perfection soup to nuts. Songwriting, performance, production, packaging, perfection.
'You Can't Take It With You' opens the proceedings and it is a sweet pop rock concoction, just a reminder, just a small tap on the shoulder to let you know that you are GOING TO DIE SOMEDAY. The sing-along quality becomes somehow perverse. You are celebrating your own demise, accepting our universal fate by singing in the shower.
Next is 'Sweet Guy' and right away you are put off your guard. It is a rollicking desperate rocker told from the point of view of an abused woman who still can't get enough of her man. He beats her and she keeps coming back for more. She wonders 'what makes such a sweet guy turn so mean'. Now, this isn't uncharted territory, but Kelly sings about it as if HE IS THE WOMAN. This will be a recurring device throughout the collection of songs and it gives the whole work a strange fluid quality, much the way the omniscient narrator does.
He then leaps into sheer romantic territory, embodying a hard-working laborer who can forget all his troubles because he is 'The Most Wanted Man In The World'. The physical connection that he shares with his woman leaves him in wonder at the beauty of the world. From enabling violence to blissful connection, these two songs piggybacked let us know that the whole range of human connection is ripe for exploration.
Next up is 'I Had Forgotten You' and I just don't know how the fuck he does it. There is more melodrama and gossip packed into this song than in the entire 'Desperate Housewives' episode guide. Somehow in a 3 minute rock song that RHYMES, Paul Kelly tells us a story of a man who gets a letter from an old friend. A woman has asked after him. Until the letter arrived he had forgotten all about her. She has been the subject of a lot of talk in the town because she has recently married a man whose wife has just passed away. She had nursed the woman as she died and that connection led them to a romantic relationship. The reader of the letter is then flooded with memories of a long-ago time when he briefly dated the woman. He lays next to his own wife and can barely feel her there. It RHYMES, people.
'She's A Melody (Stupid Song)' follows this and it again takes the opposite approach. Instead of a sucker-punch from a long forgotten flame, this song puts us inside the heart of a man who CANNOT stop thinking about her. In the same way that we get stuck singing some hateful bit of a song, he cannot cease obsessing. To deliberately call to mind those snippets of musical Tourette's and then write a song that embodies that lyrically and musically so that you find yourself humming THIS (STUPID SONG) for days and days is a kind of power that leaves me in awe of Paul Kelly.
In 'South of Germany', Kelly once again becomes a woman. Only this time he is an old woman nearing the end of her life. She's had 7 children. She's led a good life with a good man. But as the end approaches she can't help but think back to an unspecified incident in the South of Germany. A soldier. A love affair. Things would have been so different.
Happy person haunted by memory as well as sad. Kelly seems to be showing us that there is no escape, no hallowed place, no respite from the vagaries of life and love. Even those lucky enough to find and keep a love are still trapped by the specter of what might have been.
'Careless' comes along and it might be the boyfriend from 'Sweet Guy' gone through some enormous transformation. Slowly he sings of having lost his tenderness, of wondering where his kindness went, of how he became so 'Careless'. Once again, the tenor of the song is so bittersweet and the music so gorgeous that to pair it with such hard-fought realization makes for a dagger of emotion.
He jumps back to romance with 'Moon In The Bed' which is a short erotic jolt in which the singer is so turned on by his love that he can only equate it to having a celestial visitor actually under the covers with him.
And just when you think you can relax and enjoy those carnal pleasures, Kelly follows it with a howl of a song called 'No You'. Here all story is stripped away and this narrator keeps waking up astonished to find he is alone, that there is 'No You'. Here the lilting melody is embodied in a searing guitar lick and a snap shot drum which feels like the first slice of cold air hitting you as you trudge to your car the morning after a terrible break-up. There is a hint of romance in the air but it is an after-effect, the image that stays burnt onto your retina once the lights get snapped off.
Here we come to the crown jewel of this perfect album. 'Everything's Turning To White' is Kelly's retelling of the Carver song which gives the album its title. This short story has been re-enacted in the Australian film 'Jindabyne', in 'Short Cuts' by Robert Altman, and probably other times as well.
The song is devastating. For the final time, Kelly becomes a female narrator. She sings a gentle country rock wailer and tells how her husband goes off fishing with his buddies. They find a dead body of a young girl upon arriving at their fishing spot. Instead of rushing to report the find, they move the body out of the way of their fishing and spend three days catching fish. They report it upon returning to civilization.
Something breaks inside the woman when she learns what her husband has done. Or hasn't done really. She feels a million miles away from him. She goes to the funeral and watches. She wonders why he had to go fish there when there was so much water so close to home. In her head, everything's turning to white.
Again, Kelly makes this shit RHYME. It is a lesson in story telling that any artist should pay attention to. There is no extra, the story happens and then ends. The words rhyme but the rhyming is not the point. The story is the point.
Two more songs follow the album but they feel more like bonus tracks to me, proof that life goes on after such atrocity, proof that even the worst of times are followed by other times. And that somehow is worst of all.
Looking back it seems like I knew there wasn't a parachute behind that rip chord. So why did I pull it anyway? Why?
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