The Geezer's Guide to Buying CDs

I'm probably unlike you in that I buy a lot of CDs that I’ve not heard before. I don't mean that I haven't heard the whole thing. I mean that I haven't heard it at all. Sometimes I have no clue, other than what I’ve gathered from a review, what I’m about to hear. This is occasionally dismaying when the music actually starts. But just as often it’s thrilling. I’ve already written about the problem with buying CDs that you’ve already heard. I figure my batting average is at least as good as yours.

As far as actually tracking down stuff, I recommend checking your usual haunts once or twice. But if you can’t find it, consider joining a music club (I’m in BMG, and they aren’t bad at all). This will put a greater selection at your finger tips. If you still can’t find it, just order the damned thing from Amazon or J&R and be done with it. Your time is too valuable. You’re not a teenager who can haunt record stores for days at a time. 

Vinyl albums were risky to buy used, because they could be full of scratches, but were arguably (the arguer being the guy who sold it to you) playable. CDs either work or don’t work. If you can find them used, buy them. I’ve gotten some great albums this way (Randy Newman’s “Faust”, Old 97s “Fight Songs”, Elliot Smith’s “XO”). I've saved some money, too, but it does takes a lot of time to go through the bins and, well, it’s kind of pathetic. So if you must do it, be discreet. If necessary, wear a disguise.

Now, all of the above is geared towards tracking something down that you’ve already decided you want. The other way of shopping is to browse. You can spend a lot of time doing this, too, but it's usually more fun. It depends what you find. I'll admit that it takes a keen eye to discern between the pathetic bargain shelf mole and the perfectly respectable browser. (I think it’s all in the posture, myself. I do recommend dressing up like you’re on your lunch break from your important job. Everyone will see right through this, but they’ll appreciate the effort you’re making.)

Another thing I love to do is window shop. CDs are expensive so I try to keep my instinct to overbuy in check. But around my birthday I like to treat myself. (The spouse long ago learned that I’m impossible to buy a gift for, so my trip to the record store saves everybody lots of trouble, although I’m not above asking for a box set. By the way, don’t buy a box set from a record store! Look it up in your record club. Even with shipping, it’s GOT to be cheaper).

I browse the aisles, picking up whatever strikes my fancy. The reason I do this is because there’s no telling if I’ll find a lot of stuff or nothing, so I cast my net wide. That way I don’t end up with nothing to show for the time spent. There have been times when I had 30 or 35 CDs, and I'd only gotten up to the letter J. I’ve somehow convinced myself that there is dignity in this.

Now begins the paring process. I look at those 35 CDs and ask myself a series of questions.

1. Does it a nice cover? (What? It helped me pick up a very good Charles Mingus album. Besides, you want your friends to say, “Hey, what a nice cover!”)  
2. Is the title on the edge of the jewel box vertically centered? Again, you may not see the relevance here, but remember, this will take up precious space on your shelf. You’re probably going to end up with a neck cramp while reading the titles. It'll only be worse if the titles are unreadable. (On LPs, this area used to be called the “slug line”. I don’t know if they still call it this. This has kept me from buying many an album, which is a good thing. After all, there are children to be fed.) 
3. How many CDs do you already have by this artist? If you have a few, is this one going to be worthwhile? Maybe there’s another artist who you haven’t tried yet who deserves some of that attention. When in doubt, skip it. 
4. How about the price? They can vary wildly. The only problem with some of the cheaper ones is that they may be older albums that will soon be re-mastered, with bonus tracks added. Ah, but now they’re expensive again. Your call. 
5. How much music is on the CD? This can be tricky, as a little of a great thing is better than a lot of crap, but it’s something to consider. A CD can hold almost 80 minutes of music. Typical vinyl albums held less, and averaged about thirty-five minute per. The typical CD has at least 50 minutes of music on it. I hate buying CDs with only about thirty minutes on them. However if I followed this rule slavishly, I wouldn’t own the Shins “Chutes Too Narrow”, one of the best of the decade. 
6. Bear in mind that you should try to balance enjoyment with that horizon broadening that’s intended to ruin a good time. Another good balance is old music vs. current. How about intimidating vs. accessible? Melodic vs. rhythmic? 
7. What are the chances, based on what you know, that you’ll enjoy the CD? This step is optional. (Just kidding.)
   

By now you should be down to less than ten. Put those other CDs back where they belong! This is a pretty sad sight, but it’s the right thing to do. Now pare it down again. (You can leave these rejects lying around. Enough is enough. You’re not a saint. Besides, the security guard is getting suspicious.)

You should end up with about four CDs. You’ll never absorb more than that in the short term.

I predict that you’ll like one CD immediately, two others will be okay to good. You will hate one. Keep an eye on this one. It may be the one that broadens those horizons I’ve been warning you about. While the first three may be infatuations, it’s the one you hate that you’ll form a relationship with. And like some relationships, you might find yourself coming around to if you give it half a chance. But we’ll talk about at another time.

Now get home. Everyone is wondering where the hell you’ve been.

So Just How Weird Are You? - Luna's "Penthouse"

I bought Luna’s “Penthouse” and liked it right away - so much so that I immediately lent it to a co-worker. (By the way, don’t ever lend anything to anyone.). This young lady (twenty-Cover of Penthousesomething) scoffed at it, and pointed out everything that was “wrong” with it. The spaced out, almost shell shocked vocals, the weird lyrics, and maybe the occasional extended instrumentals that she felt had no point.

What? Now it’s got to have a point? If that’s the requirement, it’s time to get rid of the stereo (Remember those?) altogether. Point! I’m not even sure if I have one…

Anyway, I realized that, despite my thinking otherwise, there was stuff that I found perfectly normal that others found weird. That’s okay for me, but a problem when I’m recommending stuff to people.

For instance, I seem to have no problem with weird voices (Perry Farrell of Jane’s Addiction or Wayne Coyne of the Flaming Lips, even Freedy Johnston), but I just seem to accept it as part of a package. Indeed, sometimes it’s the essence of the package.

When I read a negative review for an album I like, I’m often amused to find that the supposed flaws are the very things that I consider to be the record’s defining characteristics. In fact, they’re the things I like the most about it, or, at the very least, the very things that makes the album unique.

I mean, what’s more fun? Abiding by the rules or breaking them? In fact, the flaw would appear to be the …point. If the record has nothing unique about it, what is its reason for even existing?

And getting back to Luna (remember Luna?), I found those shell shocked vocals to be quiet appropriate for the times – I bought it right before 9/11. And yes, some of the lyrics were strange (especially the “Meows” at the end of my favorite song), but the guitars were right up my alley. So those instrumental breaks were wonderful

I LIKE the fact that Big Star’s original of “September Gurls” (greatest pop song ever?) ends with a missed beat. The Beatlesque cover by the Bangles is smooth as silk, and thus, merely excellent. Alex Chilton’s guitar solo in the original, is practically absent of technique – but thrilling, while the fancy break in the cover version is technically perfect, but only…nice.

Don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing at all wrong with something that’s smooth and well executed. There’s nothing wrong with balance and harmony. But songs are like friends. After a while the perfect ones get on your nerves. It’s the imperfect ones that are more endearing, and leave the more lasting impression.

--- Now playing: Big Star - September Gurls via FoxyTunes

--- Now playing: The Bangles - September Gurls via FoxyTunes

--- Now playing: Luna - Freakin' and Peakin' via FoxyTunes

A Geezer's Guide to Finding Good Music

So, I’ve convinced you that you’re missing out on something, and your pride won’t let you admit that you’re just totally out of touch. You want to think you’re kinda cool, but your running out of evidence to support this.

I’m only kidding. You love music, but you doubt that there’s been anything made in the last thirty years that measures up the 1964-75 period. But you’re willing to try something out. I’m here to help.

First, ignore commercial radio. It’s a dead end. If you hear a song you like, don’t worry, you’ll hear it again (and again and again). If you hear a second song that you like from the CD, you will probably hear that one a lot, too.

There is a remote possibility that the CD will have a lot of other songs that are just as good, but don’t count on it. There’s a reason why the songs you heard were “released as singles”, whatever that means. The artist or record company thinks they are the best things on the CD, and they want you to buy it.

And when you really get down to it, by the time the radio gets through with an actual good CD, you’ve probably heard all those good songs as many times as you need to. I’ve often made the mistake of buying an unquestionably great album, that I later realize I’ve already heard as much as I needed.

Thus, I’ve gotten to the point of using the radio to pass the time, but not to expand my horizons. It’s been a long time since I’ve heard a great song on the radio that I felt compelled to rush out and buy. Such songs often don’t have a long shelf life. It’s the musical equivalent of a relationship that should have stayed as a one night stand.

There’s always “college” radio. Program a station it on your car radio and put it on every once in a while. If you like what you hear, keep it on. If you don’t, just change the channel for a while. If you don’t like what you hear for a while, this does not mean that the station sucks. It just means that it is no worse than the other crap you usually put on. Come back to it later.

Unlike commercial radio, if you hear a song you like, YOU WILL NEVER HERE IT AGAIN, so pay attention to the deejay when he announces the song and band.

If I do hear a great song on the radio, I will simply note the name of the song and the artist and bide my time. (Of course if I were thirty years younger I’d probably just download the damned song and be done with it. But I’m not, and besides I’m an album guy, not a single guy. I need to be able to hold the object in my hand. In the meantime, if the song gets played to death, I probably don’t want the CD anyway.)

If you hear about a great album from someone you trust, you might consider getting it. But let’s face it. Who do you trust? Your friends? Please. Their taste is probably even worse than yours. That’s why they’re your friend. You need to have someone you can feel smarter than. But all kidding aside, they’re your friend despite their taste not because of it.

I look into the album and artist on AMG, which is great resource for finding out more about the music that interests you. It includes band biographies, discographies, and ratings (which are somewhat less reliable).

Then there’s Metacritic, which tries to calculate an aggregate score based on numerous reviews and listener reactions.

A lot of publications have year end polls. My favorite is the Pazz and Jop (get it?) Poll in the Village Voice, which is strongest in terms of the number of critics who participate. This ensures a certain degree of variety in taste and styles of music. Check out several polls and note whether you’ve heard of any bands or not. If you’ve heard of them all, you can stick with this publication, if you like. But if you want to broaden your horizons, look at the ones that only mention a few that you recognize. This may be your jumping off point.

After having done this, note if there are any CDs that just keep popping up on various polls. You might want to check some of these out just to know what the hell is going on.

Lastly, I suggest that you read some reviews. Yes, there, I said it. Read what some critics have to say about it. This does not mean that you slavishly buy whatever they suggest and feel compelled to like it because they do. It just means that you’re listening to the opinion of someone who’s heard the album, and has had to put some thoughts together on it. I fail to see why this approach isn’t at least as valid as buying whatever your friend with the drinking problem suggests.

Some friends of mine (gotta love em!) proudly state that they don’t pay attention to critics, while blindly swallowing the blurbs plastered on movie ads whole, as though they weren’t written by quote whores, or the studio itself. At least a critic has to get up there every day, say what’s on his mind and defend it. That’s where you come in. It’s your option to agree or disagree.

But by now, you're intrigued by some of the names that keep popping up. It's time to start your list.

More later.

Why Don't You Know About These Guys? - Fountains of Wayne's "Welcome Interstate Managers"

If “Welcome Interstate Managers” had been released in 1969, we’d all still be fondly remembering it as a classic, while looking down on "today’s music”. But it is today’s music. It isn’t Cover of Welcome Interstate Managers“obscure” to anyone who follows pop music today. But you don’t, do you?

I remember being at an older friend’s house years ago. I was in my twenties, and he was in his thirties. He could afford cable, and had on MTV. The video for “Radio Free Europe” by REM came on. At the end of it, the older one shook his head, half in bewilderment and half in dismissal, saying “never heard of ‘em”.

The bewilderment was the most honest part of the reaction. But it still begged the question – why not? Well, work, kids, bills. In other words, he was a normal guy in his thirties. (I, however, am still abnormal, which is why I still follow these things.)

I guess he assumed that he still had his finger on the pulse of popular culture. It’s understandable because he had been listening to an AOR ("Album Oriented Rock") station for years. It's possible that this station was great in 1969, but now it was overplaying what was to become known as “classic rock”, along with lousy current music.

But of course he was deluding himself. He was no longer in the demographic that heard every new development in pop music. It didn’t help that AM radio sucked during the seventies. So he listened to AOR, assuming he was hearing what there was to be heard. No wonder he thought that they don’t make good music anymore.

And now, as much as popular culture may seem to be rammed down everyone’s throats, it doesn’t mean that the good stuff – stuff that would keep you enthusiastic about music - is going to be easy to spot. That went out with the sixties. There’s just too much stuff now. You have to separate the wheat from the chaff.

Anyway, back to Fountains of Wayne. Remember them?

I must confess that when I unwrapped “Welcome Interstate Managers” it, I immediately began having doubts. Oh, no, I thought. Did I really need to own more “product” even if it was my favorite kind (guitar based pop music)? The first listen didn’t encourage me either. It sure seemed like guitar based pop product that would now take up precious space on my CD shelf. Wouldn’t that space be put to use with another stab at jazz, world music, or another genre that I really should get to know better?

Then I began to notice that at every point where a cliché would have been enough to get by, there was either a smart turn of phrase, or a better hook than absolutely necessary. Just when you think you’re listening to another not-bad-at-all-so-far pop album (around track four) that should be leveling off about now, things hit a peak for three straight songs. Several very good songs follow, and things finish up with two big bangs and then a sigh.

You may have heard “Stacy’s Mom” already, but it’s far from the best thing on the record. My vote goes to the beautiful “All Kinds of Time”, but I wouldn’t argue if you said “Valley Winter Song”. The rest is so varied and enjoyable that we’d never agree on second favorites. Well, that doesn’t tell you very much except how much I liked it. But I think you will, too.

You’ll also notice several themes of running through the record – career, alcohol, love - and how they bump into each other until you are ready to lose your soul. And how your boss is always there willing to buy it.

I thought that people in my age range would identify with this, so I bought it for several friends who were all turning fifty this year. I know that if the music doesn’t get them (it will) the words will (they will). I haven’t picked up anything else by FOW yet. (My sister, however, who turned me on to this CD, did. They are now her favorite band.)

Let me know what you think of it.

----Now playing: 
Fountains of Wayne - All Kinds of Time via FoxyTunes

They Just Don't Make Good Music Anymore

What a crock.

If you're around my age, though, you might believe that it's true. So I'll be writing for you.

Lots of good music is being made all the time, but it’s not likely that you’ll find it on the radio anymore. Radio is too busy fulfilling a set of rigid expectations in order to hold an audience share than to challenge listeners with something even slightly different, and risk having them change the channel. They’re in a very competitive business and heads roll at the drop of a Nielsen point. Their motto is “What you don’t play can’t hurt you.”

The trouble with always fulfilling expectations is that over the long term, it leads to some very boring art. It’s the artist who’s supposed to be creative, not the audience. How can you continue to have good art or ever surprise an audience if it's that same audience that decides what is to be created?

This is not easy for my age group to swallow. We grew up in the sixties and the music then seemed to expand our horizons painlessly. Maybe we were just blank slates and it all hit us at the right time. In any case, it may have spoiled us. Not in the sense that we got used to great, and then we stopped getting it. But rather that great took on different forms and we stopped being able to keep up with it. We expected everything to just come to us. I don’t think we can do that anymore.

So you can't just have good music find you. You have to seek it out. Read reviews, find critics who you can compare your tastes to and use the web to track things down about the stuff that you like. Now, you may just be too busy to do this, so I guess this is where I come in.

And just who the hell am I, anyway? Good question. No one special, really. Just someone who loves music and has tried to keep keep things fresh by trying out new things. It's paid off in a big way, because I can honestly say that I still get the same intense pleasure from music that I did during the sixties, and don't think that music has gotten worse since then.

So I'll be writing about albums that have affected me in some way, usually good. Of course, I’m limited by the size of my record collection and my own very subjective taste. So think of these albums not only as “Jaybee’s favorite albums”, but also as points of departure. Not everyone is going to love every bit of Talking Heads' "More Songs About Buildings and Food" the way I do, but maybe it can be your doorway to punk/new wave/whatever like it was for me.

And, oh yeah. It works both ways. You have to open your goddamn ears, and maybe your mind, too. If your expectations are very rigid, no amount of research will help. You just won’t like what you hear, and reject it on first listen. Then you’ll find yourself with a very finite pool of artists to draw from. And when even you admit that their records are starting to suck, you’ll have nowhere to go. If however, you don’t let, say, James Mercer’s startling wail near the beginning of the Shins’ "Chutes Too Narrow" throw you, you’re in for a real treat.

Because the bottom line is to have fun. You know, find joy and stuff. And don’t you usually find it in the unexpected?

I want to make you love music again. I don't mean like music. I mean love music. Don’t tell me you like music. Everyone likes music. Who cares? I hate people who like music. They are responsible for the billions of CDs that sit unused on bookshelves, ruining the environment. They buy a CD and perhaps enjoy it, but are never obsessed with it.

Life's so much more fun when you occasionally obsess about something to the point of foolishness.

--------- Now playing: The Shins - Kissing the Lipless via FoxyTunes