Sunday, June 30, 2013

Resolution Destitution

Still in the record store, even after a daydream about 1978, and having gone out on a limb with the Fall, I hedged my bets with something that was certified Nutboy-Approved.


Alien Lanes by Guided By Voices, which Nutboy likes more than Bee Thousand (thought by many to be their best). 

For a while, I wasn't hearing it, but Nutboy has this weird way of being right just when I’m tempted to start feeling superior.

Bee Thousand itself is sort of a pseudo “great album” - the radically lo-fi sound, the sloppy execution, the great songs - and at first Alien Lanes sounds like a photocopy of it. (I was even playing “match the song to it’s counterpart on BT.) So it’s great twice removed. Except it doesn’t have any tunes as memorable as “Tractor Rape Chain”, “Queen of Cans and Jars” or “Mincer Ray”. Even so, I could see how someone would like it if they heard it first, but not otherwise.

But now, two months later, I’m warming up to it. The more I listen, the less it sounds like its predecessor.  And there’s something to be said for a record with 28(!) songs (in 41 minutes!), very few of which are duds.  There are still the annoying parts - like the snoring that is a prominent part of “Ex-Supermodel” - but it wouldn’t be GBV without that. And while I could complain that, in theory, such short songs can cut off the momentum just as it would normally get going, in practice, it turns out that the songs finish just about when you’d want them to.

So, all in all, not great, not pseudo great. Just pretty damned good.  B+

"Little Whirl"

2013 So Far:
1. Japandroids
2. Tame Impala
3. Sugar
4. Guided by Voices
5. Iron & Wine
6. Phil Ochs

Sunday, June 23, 2013

Secret History: 1978

Although 1977 is more important for music, 1978 is more important for me (although I had to get 1977 out of my system first), because this was when I began to notice.



It all started with Talking Heads More Songs About Buildings and Food. Not the first punk album ever. Just my first. When I first heard the spare “Take Me to the River” (Stupid me, not knowing much about Al Green, I thought they wrote it) on the radio, it was such a relief from all the overproduced crud clogging up the airwaves at the time. And I thought the name was kind of cool, too.


My first listen consisted of me holding onto four little islands of brilliance - “Thank You For Sending Me An Angel” (one of the all time great album openers), “Good Thing”, “Take Me” and “The Big Country” - amid a sea of weirdness. “Found a Job” was the strangest of all, sitting there at the end of side one as if to say well what did you think of that? and You ain’t seen nothing yet! .  


On each new listen another gem would reveal itself. It took about a week for it all to kick in.. By then, “Found a Job” had gotten into my DNA..


More Songs... was the only one of these records I’d actually get that year.  The rest would have to come later.  I guess I needed a rest.



Remember when Elvis Costello was so angry? This Year's Model captures it perfectly. His shortest, bitterest and maybe best album.



Parallel Lines by Blondie is THE pop album of the era.  



The Vibrators Pure Mania doesn’t hold up as well as some other records, but it’s got a lot of vroom still in it.



The Ramones Road to Ruin is the perfect balance of the Ramones punk style and tuneful accessibility.



Give Em Enough Rope is no one's favorite Clash album, but that doesn't make it bad, does it?
"Last Gang in Town"



Neil Young - Comes A Time
Hands down the most beautiful Neil Young album (Harvest? Please!), coming out at a point when people weren’t sure he was up to it anymore.  Well, the first time they thought that.



Looking at my list, I don’t see anything very surprising or original. So maybe it’s not much of a secret history, is it?  These are the obvious new wave albums for the time.  What worries me is what I’m forgetting from the non punk side of the road.  


But by then, I’d made a decisive turn and, unlike Neil Young, for me there was no going back.


Well, for a while anyway."

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Resolution Disillusion, or Jaybee Makes a New Friend

When we last left off I was returning, along with a couple of other albums, a 2-CD Roy Harper retrospective to the record store bin. At $16.99 it was a bit much to spend for a lot of music by a folkie I’d heard of but never actually heard.


So, what was I actually going to buy, after having spend a good hour in the store?


How about 2-CD retrospective of a punk band I’d heard of but never actually heard?  Why, you ask? Because it was a whole buck cheaper than Roy Harper. That’s why!


At my advanced age, I’ve learned the value of time, and can ruthlessly limit the amount of it I spend with negative people. Misanthropes, on the other hand, can be tremendously entertaining. At least if they’re accompanied by a guitarist and drummer who are game.


And it helps if you’re a funny misanthrope. Check out the hilarious cover, which rips off the famous Elvis one. And Mark E. Smith does Phil Ochs one better by eschewing the gold suit and, well, looking like Mark E. Smith.


If there’s a way to be annoying while delivering a song, Mark E Smith will find it. I typically have no patience for such tactics, so why am I enjoying this record so much?  Maybe because he’s so committed to being annoying.  There’s the weird vocal tic he stumbles upon midway through “New Face in Hell”. You can almost hear him thinking oh my god that’s annoying, let me do that for the rest of the song. And how he sings like he’s got a head cold (what, you couldn’t have used a tissue before the take?) on “The Man Whose Head Expanded”. And I use the term “sings” lightly. He’s more of a declaimer/disdainer/crazy person on the subway.


If this greatest hits collection is to be believed, the Fall started out at the very beginning of the punk movement, but never quite sound like it. No loud fast guitar chord-based songs.  Varying their attack throughout, no two songs sounding alike. Each one having its own unique riff, beat or arrangement. It’s main link with punk would be Smith’s unremitting disdain for … well pretty much everything.  But it never quite gets tiresome.


And unlike a lot of punk bands that burst like supernovae and then disappeared, the Fall keeps making music to this day. Thus making it impossible for dilettantes like myself to ever really “get into them” as the hippies used to say. They’ve put out dozens of albums, and this collection just scratches the surface.


I doubt I’d ever want to hang out with Mark E. Smith. Before the first beer was done, he’d tell me exactly what he thought of me. And he doesn’t seem to like a whole lot. So if ever I saw him walking down the street in that ugly sweater, I’d hide in the alley.


But thanks to a canny use of ever changing musicians who articulate and elaborate on his vision so well, listening to his music is a blast. A-

"Mr. Pharmacist"

Sunday, June 2, 2013

Resolution Dissolution


I’d made a New Year’s resolution to only get mp3s this year. I wanted to save room, mostly. I hate having a lot of stuff around. Yes, even CDs. It reminds me that I’m a member - in very good standing - of our consumer culture.


Well I made it to April 19 anyway. Not bad for me. And certainly better than those other two resolutions pertaining to alcohol and desserts. In a way, you could say I gave up CDs for Lent.

It was International (Intergalactic?) Record Store Day and I would have felt disloyal not supporting at least one. I’d certainly done enough to support that struggling mom and pop site, amazon.com.

And it’s just as well, because I’d been dying to get new music, and for all my research resulting in a list of over 5,000 potential albums to buy, I couldn’t find a single one I could get enthusiastic about.

But it’s funny how your thinking changes when all you can do is browse. No allmusic or metacritic at your fingertips. Just CDs and your instincts.

Oh, and vinyl. I’d tell you about it but just makes me feel old and sad. Okay, if you insist:

It was hard enough back in 1989, making the transition from vinyl to CD. Now I have to consider making the transition back again to vinyl. This is how one comes to hate young people. Can’t we all just get old? Okay, not a great idea.

So there I was on a line outside Other Music. (Yes, there was a line! And I was on that line! I was one of the in-crowd! By far the oldest, but there nonetheless.) There was a nice young man (I find myself saying shit like this more and more now) at the front of the line, letting people in a few at a time, to make sure it didn’t get too crowded! I told him about my soon to be broken resolution, and he said something I knew to be true but that I needed to hear:

“Aw, come on! Mp3s are no fun!”

Anyhow, there I was looking and looking - picking up all sorts of things but not feeling love for any of them and putting them down again. It was the usual winnowing process which now includes the possibility that I could do better price-wise on line.  

At one point I was holding the following:

  • Essential Blue Oyster Cult, which I put down because, despite what I’d heard about them, I really only like “Reaper”. And smart guys like me are only supposed to like them ironically, something I can only do so much of.
  • Mama’s Gun by Erykah Badu, who was really good in “Block Party”, but I wasn’t in the mood for a trip outside my ever contracting comfort zone. It was springtime afterall. Time for some happy, peppy bright chimey guitar pop stuff to melt those icicles
  • A Roy Harper retrospective. Although it never stopped me before, jumping in head first into a 2-CD-set- by-a-folkie-I’d-not-heard-anything-by-before is never a good idea.  
  • The Knife - Silent Shout. New, cool, and I wanted it, but at 2 CDs, I knew I could do better pricewise, etc.

So I put them all back.  (A shocked silence follows.)

So what did I end up with?  What? You don’t care? Okay,  now I’m going to make you wait until next time.