The Tenth Annual Jaybee-bies: 2020 Vision

Executive Summary:

Fuck this year. 

Seriously. 

I'll admit this isn't an original sentiment.

Abstract:

Let me set your expectations right up top here by saying please do not read this for any wise words on this horrendous year. I spent enough time on that here, here, here, well, you get the idea. Right now, I'm just going to focus on the newer (to me) music (or whatever) that got me through it. 

However...

Best Humans:

Smarter people than me have identified the heroes and villains. But here's my very short list of the former. If you can't figure out the latter by now, I can't help you

• Every fucking doctor/nurse/tech/health care worker in the country.*
• Every first responder or front line essential worker.*
• Every teacher.*
• Every mom trying to figure out whether to send their child to school and go to work or to stay home with them.
• Anthony Fauci
• Various internet voices like Don Winslow/John Fugelsang etc.

* Sorry to get all topical and everything, but if you agree with these statements, but don't wear a mask you're part of the problem.

Best Books:

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

The unabridged version, running 1400 or so pages. Overlong, but so was the French Revolution (which this book is NOT about, but kind of is anyway). Funny, too.

Air Guitar by David Hickey

High-falutin' but never pretentious art theory, which includes but is not limited to Chet Baker, Female Wrestling, Las Vegas, and Perry Mason.

The Mirror and the Light by Hillary Mantel

Henry VIII was an okay king, a bad husband, and an even worse boss.

The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt

Overlong and perhaps overrated, but with many sublime moments.

Best Movies:

I didn't really see any so I don't really give a shit. Or is that vice versa?

Best TV:

Bojack Horseman

Better Call Saul

The Good Place

Schitt's Creek

Watchmen

Music Awards:

Most Work (But Worth it): Fiona

Most Work (And Possibly Not Worth It): Bill Evans, but the jury is still out.

Most Surprising (and Not Necessarily in a Good Way): Bad Bunny I meant to get Beach Bunny!

Most Disappointing: Bill Evans, but only because he's not Bud Powell or Thelonious Monk.

Best Artist: Fiona (writer, singer, pianist)

The Best:

1. Big Thief: UFOF (2019) Mrs. Jaybee hates all the soft-voiced women I'm listening to lately, but I love the utter simplicity of the songs and arrangements.
2. Purple Mountains: Purple Mountains (2019) Crushing depression has rarely been so entertaining.
3. Fiona Apple: Fetch the Bolt Cutters (2020) Man, this one's a lot of work, but it's worth it.
4. Funkadelic: Motor City Madness (2006) I'm cheating a bit because I usually don't include compilations, but this one deserves it. I was inspired by my going back to an early best of during the depths of the pandemic. This is o obviously rock n' roll that all I can do is scratch my head and wonder how we missed it back then. They picked up where Sly left off and then handed things off to hip hop before disintegrating. 
5. Frank Ocean: Channel Orange (2012) Wonderfully diverse, melodic, and entertaining.
6. Devo: Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo! (1978) For a so-called weird record, this is quite tuneful and consistent. 
7. Fripp and Eno: Evening Star (1975) This is the one where dial things back from the other more experimental - but weirdly fun - one I picked up this year. Pretty, weird, with just a touch of ominous. 
8. D'Angelo: Black Messiah (2015) It's great to hear a band (as opposed to just a singer) chugging through these very funky songs one after the other.
9. Fountains of Wayne: Utopia Parkway (1999) Sharper than their first. Their satire is bolder but manages to retain their humanity.
10. Beyonce: Lemonade (2016) Pretty slick but all that production is put to good use. 

Latecomers like Classic Collaborations with John Coltrane (8 albums!) and The Last Concert by the Modern Jazz Quartet (a double) don't make an appearance. And poor Bill Evans is just too subtle over the course of his 12(!) album collection to crack the top ten. But time is on his side.

Some of the best songs I heard this year can be found here.

Conclusions:

This music is probably even better than I'm saying it is. After all, it had more to do than it would have to in a typical year. It couldn't bring just joy or inspiration. It had to provide a lifeline. That's a lot to ask. Too much, really.

And although there have been glimmers of hope in the last two months, one family member died and another just got Covid, so we are not out of the woods yet.  

I hope 2021 lets us relax a little. But I wouldn't go as far as this.

Be well.

To Infinity and Beyonce

Decade Catch Up: After thoroughly researching the best of the decade polls and methodically identifying what I missed, I resolve to use laser focus to drill down and fill those gaps. That lasts about a week, and then I get distracted by who else, Brian fucking Eno.

Frank Ocean: Channel Orange (2012) This one appeared at or near the top of just about every decade poll I found. Frank Ocean is first and foremost a songwriter. And he’s real good at it. He’s written many for other people, and here he’s out on his own. So this is not an assemblage of songs acquired from other people. It’s his vision. He can also sing and produce, so this is his show all the way. And it’s quite the show. Surprisingly melodic. Surprisingly affluent - a lot of this is about young wealthy people living in California at the beach. There are love songs here, but they’re not just plopped in for the sake of having hits. They’re about people living in this milieu (no, I don’t fucking believe I used that word, either) he’s describing. And the musical background is practically Eno-worthy. A- "Super Rich Kids" Beyonce: Lemonade (2016) Another one consistently atop or near the top of just about every decade end poll I found. This record is surprisingly rocking. And at the same time surprisingly varied in tone (Christ, there’s a country song here), dynamics and volume. I was bracing myself for a histrionic lesson in empowerment from a very powerful diva. The lesson would be correct but it wouldn’t be coming from the right source, and that kind of thing is exhausting. But, by starting quietly and slowly picking up the pace, adding real feeling, this superstar earns my respect (which I assume she was losing sleep over). I guess celebrities have feelings, too. I’m not sitting up at attention all the way through, like with Janelle Monae or Rihanna, but what slips past me seems pleasant enough. And there’s at least one moment that brings a tear to my eye. So, diva or not, it’s not histrionic at all. Pretty damned controlled, in fact. B+

"All Night" Fucking Eno:

Fripp & Eno: (No Pussyfooting) (1973) If allmusic.com is accurate this is Eno’s first record without Roxy Music and, god bless him, he goes hardcore experimental by laying down some drone music that the guitarist from King Crimson Robert Fripp solos over. And. It’s. Not. Bad. At. All. Even pretty every once in a while. But I am occasionally asked by a family member what the hell we're listening to, but that's the effect I'm going for. Oblique Music tells the almost too good to be true story of BBC accidentally playing the tape of the album backward, and when Eno calls to tell them, they say “That’s what they all say”. This deluxe edition includes a backward version, All I can say is it was an honest mistake. B+ "The Heavenly Music Corporation I" Devo: Are We Not Men? No, We are Devo! (1978) The other funny Eno story is about how this radically arty band somehow hooked up with him to produce their first album. It’s hard to remember that back then Eno’s producing attempts were anything but sure things. He even tried to work with Television but that ended real fast. His No New York hard-core punk compilation was widely panned by the artists who were involved. And this love fest. Devo had already been honing their craft and alienating mid-Western audiences for years, so they knew what they wanted. And it sure wasn’t Eno’s kinder, gentler approach. At one point they’re listening to the playback of one of the songs and the band thinks they see Eno turning a know to add something to the mix, and they’re all over him. Hey, what do you think you’re doing making our record sound nice!!??? One wonders now - even Devo - what a real Eno-centric album would have sounded like. But I don’t think he’s returning their calls. But it was an excuse to finally get this record and find out just how weird it really is. And now, with the benefit of forty-odd years, it sounds more consistent and catchy than you’d think. You'll seem like nice folks so I'll give you the hit here. B+

"Satisfaction" But if you really want to know how disturbing these guys were here are just check out some of their early videos Let's start with a relatively benign collaboration with...Neil Young!? “Human Highway” To a warped early version of "My My, Hey Hey": “Hey Hey” To the truly disturbing "Jocko Homo":

Enjoy your Sunday!

Next time, 2019!, or 1812, I'm not sure.

Life - or at least Year - of Brian, Part One

Like a frenemy at work, but way more interesting, Brian Eno has this way of insinuating himself into the most unexpected places. He’s got more mentions in my blog than anyone else, except the Beatles, of course.

You don’t think you’ve heard him but you have. If not his own recordings, certainly his collaborations with Talking Heads, David Bowie, Devo, U2 and a slew of other artists. He even tried to make Coldplay sound interesting again and almost succeeded.

I have a number of his records but I hadn’t gotten anything by him in years.

And yet, he ended up being my Artist of the Year for 2015.

Let me explain.


1972:

While carefully studying the latest issue of National Lampoon, I came across an ad for Roxy Music’s second album, where I first saw Eno. My reaction was one of utter revulsion.

If I thought at the time that David Bowie must have sucked because he was acting gay (what can I say?, I was 15), or that the New York Dolls couldn’t have any talent because they dressed like women, then the made up, strutting, boa-wearing, aggressively androgynous (and on top of all that, balding!) Eno seemed like the worst of the worst.

Here he is at the time:



As you can see, he dressed on the extreme end of the glitter rock spectrum and, like Bowie, was a prime target for anyone with an ax to grind about spectacle as a distraction from music (a legitimate concern), or effeminate guys in general (not so much).

Mind you, I hadn’t yet heard any of the music made by him, Bowie or the Dolls. It wasn’t my finest hour.


1975:

Now at college, prowling the music library I dug up some old issues Stereo Review, and came across a review of one of Eno’s early solo records. The review used the term “rip off rock”. And not in a nice way.

Now it could have been written by someone who genuinely didn’t like the record (I forget which one it was), but it sure had the stench of someone who’d made up his mind before putting it on. And it had the effect of reinforcing my prejudices, and boy did I cling to them.


1978:

It’s pretty clear by this time that Brian Eno was the kind of guy you were less likely to be into if you were into Classic Rock a la Bruce Springsteen, Boston or Led Zeppelin. You’d have had to stray to where, say, the Velvet Underground broke off in their own direction in the late 60s.

And I stayed on the main path, until I finally got curious enough to try Talking Heads More Songs About Buildings and Food - a life changing record (all time top 25) that I don’t enthusiastically recommend to people just because I love it. It’s just a bit too weird, but exactly the amount of weird I needed at the time.

And who’s name did I find on the back? Eno, of course.

By this time, I was having trouble separating him from Bryan Ferry (his old Roxy Music bandmate), and Peter Gabriel from Genesis. (All of them weird Brits.) But his name just kept popping up all over the damn place, and always with the coolest bands.

There was even some graffiti spotted in the Village that said “Eno is God”.  Move over, Eric Clapton!


1980: 

It’s June and I’m supposed to be studying for a final but am instead at J&R Music World, in what would become one of the great record store trips of my life, picking up a sh*tload of records that would push me further down that alternat(iv)e path.

Earlier that year, there was an extensive overview of the music of 1970s in the Village Voice. It piqued my curiosity, and I made some mental notes, but like a good schoolboy, committed to doing nothing about it until finals were over.

I almost made it, too. I told myself I’d be in the store for only an hour or so. Plenty of time to study, I said. I ended up spending half the day there, and only managed about an hour of half-hearted studying in the school library.  Got an A, though!

One of the records mentioned a few times in that article was Eno’s Taking Tiger Mountain (By Strategy).  It was cited by at least two critics, who put it in their list of top ten records of the decade. So I decided that was a good place to start.

Ah kids, watch out for those gateway drugs!

I listened to this record for months - not always in complete ecstasy, mind you.  There was a lot of exasperation, too, as I tried to understand some of the weird things going on.  Friend, and then Roommate, Mike looked back on that time and said “Man, that was a terrible album.”

And I can understand his reaction. Mine was more mixed. There were several great pop moments mixed in with a lot of oddity and experimentation. I couldn’t quite love it because of this seeming inconsistency.

I may have related playing it while getting ready to go to the beach, and was pointedly told it was not “getting ready to go to the beach music”.  My first lesson in context.

But it persisted over the years. becoming a sort of go-to record. And Mrs. Jaybee would tell me she knew I was feeling a little down when I’d put it on.

If I was smarter, I’d give up on things when they first perplexed me. But instead, later that summer I’d double down on Eno and get Another Green World. This turned out to be one of my rare good decisions because it became one of my top five all time favorite albums.

During that same record trip, I’d finally broken down and gotten David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust and the Spider’s From Mars. (What, no New York Dolls, you ask? That's another post.) And now having had David break my cherry, I remembered how Childhood Friend Doreen told me how great Low
was way back in 1977, so at the end of 1980, while trying to repeat the great June record store trip and coming pretty close,  I picked it up, along with “Heroes”.

And I turn the record over, and who’s name do I find? Eno, again.

It turned out that Eno collaborated with Bowie on both records, with Bowie dedicating most of side two (remember side two?) of each record to the tracks that were very Eno-ish.  They would turn out to be a among my very favorite records. Definitely top 100.

Over the next few years, I’d move on to his other 70s records and some ambient stuff, but as time passed I heard Eno the same way you did - as a producer.

Oh, there were the occasional knockout pull-the-car-over-and-just-listen moments, like “Ms. Sarajevo” with U2 and Luciano f*cking Pavarotti. in 1995, but otherwise I decided there were other artists who deserved my attention more, and stopped buying his records.


2015:

So he starts throwing spitballs at me via Shutter Island and Ocean of Sound, with “Lizard Point”, which I still can’t hear.  But you now know how I react to exasperation.

So I thought, okay dude, let’s see what you (still) got, and got Wrong Way Up, which turned out to be one of the musical highlights of the year.

And then I read the liner notes to Yellow Moon and there he is again.

So in the fall, I’m in a record store - I don’t have enough records, you see - and spot a leaflet for a show called “Music for Enophiles” which turned out to be a tribute band doing covers of Eno’s solo work from 1974-1979 - his prime pop period.

Now, one of the things I love about Mrs. Jaybee how she always surprises me. I thought I’d have to drag her to this show, but she reminded me that she liked Brian Eno, too. He was, after all, the soundtrack to our lives when we first started dating.

The band came on and reminded us how powerful these forty year old songs were. We had a great time but I didn’t recognize the last song. So I asked one of the singers, and it turned out to be the title song of his first record Here Come the Warm Jets. How did I not recognize this song? I’d clearly been away too long.

So I decided to give him another try and got The Pearl.

And another, and got Apollo.

And finally, decided to pick up Taking Tiger Mountain on CD.

Oh, and I also got Roxy Music’s second album - For Your Pleasure -  on CD because he’s on that too.

To the point that I came to realize that it’s Brian world and I’m just living in it. Or may he’s still God, and when he loses a sandal, half of his fans get rid of one of their’s, too.

And in case the earlier picture has frightened you off, here’s a picture of him now:



See?  He turned out just like you and me.

Next, I’ll give a quick roundup of his music - limited by what I know, which is at most 30% of his overall output - and make some recommendations.

See you then.

"Burning Airlines Give You So Much More"