I'm
writing this from sunny, gaudy Las Vegas, where the first thing you learn when
you step off the plane is how to say "no." The first time an official-looking
person hands you a flyer, asks where you're from, and offers to set you up with
a good deal on dinner and a show, you might be curious enough to listen to the
pitch. But once you realize that it's all a scheme to get you to hear a
time-share presentation—and that every other flyer-slinger on the strip
has the same goal—you start saying "not interested" even if someone just
smiles and waves at you. That's the problem with the whole salesman/prospect
relationship: it corrupts the very notion of "friendliness." Salesmen start by
asking about your family and in no time flat, their questions forge a syllogism
designed to make it impossible for you not to buy a side of beef—even if you don't have
the freezer space.
When
people ask me how this project is going, and whether I miss listening to new
music at all, my usual response is that the pangs come and go. Every week or
two an album comes out—or I get a press release for an album that's about to come out—and I start
to pine for that old feeling of opening up a much-anticipated CD for the first
time, and listening to it cold, not knowing whether the songs that stand out
immediately will seem too obvious a month from now, or if the common reaction
of mild disappointment will gradually transition to grudging affection, and
then fiercely protective love. Listening to a new album is kind of like moving
someplace new—or even just going on vacation—in that it takes a day
or two before you can orient yourself, and realize where you're going to be
spending most of your time
And
yet, this week in Vegas, while surrounded on all sides by machines and people
working to turn my head and pluck my wallet, I realized that there's plenty
about keeping up with new music that I don't miss. I don't miss the off-balance release schedule,
which has critics and editors struggling to find material to fill the space one
week, and then having to compress and oversimplify their thoughts on a stack of
worthy records the next. And I don't miss the steady flow of hype and pitches
that often determine what's worth writing about. When this project ends, I'm
going to take my time to pick-and-choose what I'd like to catch up with, with
no sense of obligation beyond my own curiosity and natural inclinations.
Because whether it's buying meat, looking at rental property, or falling in
love with a new album, it's really better to move at your own pace, without
getting swayed by the promise of a free buffet.
****************
Since
I'm technically on vacation and would rather be floating on an inner tube down
the man-made concrete river behind my hotel, this week's column will be a short-ish
follow-up to Week Seven's "The State Of The Popless," answering some recurring
questions that have come up in the comments and in my conversations with
friends:
"You've
said this project is partly about what you can get rid of. So how's that part
going? How much are you deleting each week?"
I'd
say I'm eliminating about a fifth of my collection, give or take. But it's hard
to pin down exactly, because I'm mainly transitioning the way I store my music.
Some of the artists that haven't received a "strikethrough" notation on the
"also listened to" list, I've still dumped their actual CDs, and am only
keeping their best songs on my hard drive. And some of the artists that have gotten stricken only had one
or two songs on my hard drive the first place. When this whole project is done,
I expect that my physical CD collection will be cut roughly in half, and will
contain only box sets, albums I consider good-to-great, and hand-picked
compilations burned onto disc for backup purposes. And nearly everything in
that collection should fit on my hard drive.
"You've
only made it through F, and the year's almost a third of the way done. Are you
going to be able to finish listening to your whole collection by December?"
Well,
there may have to be some adjustments made to the timetable down the line. If
I've crunched the numbers correctly, even though I've only gotten through six
letters of the alphabet, I'm still about a third of the way through my
collection. (Yes, 6 x 3 = 18, not 26, but there are some dud letters yet to
come.) But I took this week off, and I've got another vacation coming in June,
and the Toronto film festival for a week in September, so there will be some
setbacks. I've been thinking up some contingency plans in case I need to go
into overtime in '09.
"What's
surprised you most about the project so far?"
Mainly
how much I've learned from you readers, and how the Popless comments section
has become a fairly relaxed, not-too-obnoxious place for people to talk about
their favorite bands and to grill me about what's been left out or unremarked
upon. I'm always surprised to see which acts you think I've missed the boat
on—some of which I've heard and have never given much time to, and some
of which I've never even heard of. I've tried to be comprehensive in my
music-listening life, but like everyone, I have gaps.
Then
again, some of those missing artists are only absent for clerical reasons.
Until last week, there were about 40 or so multi-artist anthologies and
soundtracks that I'd never gotten around to loading onto my hard drive, and
though most of the artists on those sets I only have one or two songs by, some
of them are well-represented in my vinyl or cassette collections, and so one
song would've been excuse enough to write a little something, or at least to
acknowledge that I'm aware of them. Now that all those comps are
loaded—along with some full albums I mistakenly missed during my weekly
pass through my physical CD collection—there should be fewer accidental
gaps.
But
as a way of nodding to completism (as well as giving me an easier workload this
week), here's a rundown of some great songs I've missed over the first 15
weeks—some of which are by artists that I'd always meant to write more
about. At the end of the rundown you'll find an abbreviated list of other
"name" acts that came up in this week's sweeping-up process.
The
Missing
Al
Green, "Back Up Train"
I
had Green on the "also listened to" list way back in Week One, and left him out
of the mix primarily because the only song I had on my hard drive at the time
was "Let's Stay Together," which I figured everyone already knew was awesome. I
was still establishing a process back then, and when I was doing my weekly
sweep for CDs that needed to be added to my hard drive, I forgot my Al Green
anthology, because it didn't occur to me to flip through my CDs all the way to
the "G"s. Now I flip through my entire collection every few weeks, and then
stack a big block of CDs behind the couch in our living room—thereby
adding to the clutter that this project was supposed to help eliminate. And
I've finally gotten around to adding more Green. This track pre-dates his big
'70s hits, and I picked it because it stands apart from the sonic unanimity of
those sultry, slow-simmering soul tracks of the '70s "Back Up Train" is a
fairly routine late '60s R&B; number, but Green presides over it like the
genteel preacher man he is, even though he's unable to keep his ecstatic
inclinations tamped down for long.
B.B.
King, "I Got Some Help I Don't Need"
King's
another one I intentionally skipped the first time around because I didn't have
his anthology loaded onto my hard drive. Also, I wasn't really ready—and
I'm still not—to write about the blues, and rock music's appropriation
thereof, and where my sympathies lie. (Here's a preview: When it comes to trad,
I'm pro-adulteration.) Anyway, if I'd written about King a few months ago, I
would've pointed out that some of my favorite music by the classic blues
guys—King, Muddy Waters, et cetera—comes from the late '60s and
early '70s, when the attention of bands like Led Zeppelin and The Rolling
Stones made old-school electric blues commercially viable, giving the masters
the chance to head back into the studio and record classic-sounding songs in
somewhat modern styles. In this 1972 single, King generates a late-night, urban
vibe, giving the proper frame to his technical proficiency and emotional
remove.
Banda
Black Rio, "Maria Fumaça"
I
got this one off a terrific compilation called Samba Soul 70, which pulls together songs
from the post-Tropicalismo movement in Brasil, when artists were borrowing from
American R&B; more than rock and psychedelia, and the result was songs like
"Maria Fumaça," which sound like the theme song to some syndicated late
afternoon talk show, given a Latin twist.
The
Bar-Kays, "Son Of Shaft"
With
all due respect to Isaac Hayes' original "Theme From Shaft," this riff on
Hayes' hit recorded by his labelmates The Bar-Kays is an ideal way for people
suffering from "Shaft"-burnout to rediscover what makes that song so amazing.
It's not just the bad-ass patter; it's that wickedly snaky guitar riff, which
uncoils dangerously across a floor of brass.
[pagebreak]
Barry
Black, "Mighty Fields Of Tobacco"
I've
written about Eric Bachmann's work with Archers Of Loaf and Crooked Fingers,
but up to now I'd skipped covering his solo albums and this striking
Archers-era side project, in which he invited friends from the North Carolina
music scene to help him realize his post-rock/classical-minimalism fantasies.
Frankly, before I heard Crooked Fingers for the first time, I had hopes that
Bachmann was going to head more in this direction, combining the slacker-punk
of the Archers with more freewheeling instrumental experiments—sort of
like he did on AoL's All
The Nations Airports.
I think Dignity
& Shame
by Crooked Fingers comes closest, but I miss the outright what-the-hell-ism of
Barry Black's first album (though not so much its dreary follow-up).
The
Beefeaters, "Don't Be Long"
I'll
be revisiting the killer five-disc late '60s/early '70s Elektra retrospective Forever Changing quite often in the weeks to
come (now that it's finally loaded on my hard drive), but I'll kick things off
with this early effort by the band that would become The Byrds. As a precursor
to The Byrds' poppy jangle, "Don't Be Long" is pretty good, even if the pieces
aren't yet all in place. There's a grandeur that's missing. This is more like
two miles high, not eight.
Bjork,
"The Boho Dance"
I
wrote about Bjork when she came up back in Week Five, but I didn't include a
sample track because in the early going I wasn't yet putting up a track for
every artist. Now that I'm able to pluck this song from last year's
not-always-successful Joni Mitchell tribute album, I'll retroactively give
Bjork her moment of audio. "The Boho Dance" happens to be one of my favorite
Mitchell songs, and though I miss Mitchell's jazzier arrangement from The Hissing Of Summer
Lawns, I
think Bjork's decision to make this a vocal showcase proves both the sturdiness
of the original and the power of Bjork's voice to command attention.
Bloc
Party, "Blue Light"
When
readers pointed out the absence of this band from Week Six, it was one of the
first times that I realized I had some major, unintentional gaps on my hard
drive. It's not like I'm a huge Bloc Party fan—I like about half of each
of their albums, plus a few otherwise uncollected songs from the EPs and
singles—but I have a really strong 50-minute homemade Bloc Party
anthology I listen to fairly often, and it's highlighted by this song, which
transcends the band's various post-punk influences and presents something
simple, personal and oddly pretty.
Blossom
Dearie, "Figure Eight"
This
I got from The
Squid And The Whale
soundtrack, and it's one of the many songs from that movie that brought home
how much Noah Baumbach's troubled boyhood ran in tandem with my own. This is
such a lovely song, and one that I'd all but forgotten in my adulthood until I
started showing the Schoolhouse
Rock DVD to
my number-obsessed son, and my wife and I both found ourselves tearing up when
this song appeared. (That closing line about infinity—so unexpected, so
poignant—slays us every time.) It's remarkable how deep an impression the
music of our youth can leave. It can be as powerful a memory trigger as smell.
And you don't even have to wait until you get older to get nostalgic. A few
weeks ago, as I was revisiting Elliott Smith, my kids were playing in our front
room when Smith's cover of this song came up, and they immediately stopped what
they were doing and looked at me. "Dad, can we watch Schoolhouse Rock?," my daughter asked, for the
first time in months. Why yes. Yes you can.
Boogie
Down Productions, "South Bronx"
As
I recall, nobody even pointed out the absence of BDP back in Week Six, which
I'm worried says something about the group's enduring influence. Most of my
Boogie Down Productions and KRS-One records are on cassette, but I do have Criminal Minded on CD, and while that
record—considered by some to be proto-gangsta-rap—doesn't really
reflect the more challengingly political artist KRS-One would become, it's
arguably his best album from a groove perspective. Credit goes to DJ Scott La
Rock, who was killed after Criminal Minded was released. And songs like this "my hip-hop youth"
memoir point the way towards the quirkily personal and weirdly educational
tracks to come on By
All Means Necessary
and Ghetto
Music.
Bruce
& Clifton Green (w/Tweedie Gibson), "My Lord Help Me To Pray"
I
used to be on Rounder Records' mailing list, and about a decade ago they sent
me Kneelin'
Down Inside The Gate,
a strange and beautiful collection of Bahamian gospel. The interplay of these
three voices—from the evangelical to the aspirational to the downright
weird—encompasses pretty much the whole of the Christian religion. It's
like the holy trinity of gospel vocals.
The
Caravans, "Walk Around Heaven All Day"
And
here's an entirely different kind of gospel song, culled from the Vee-Jay
records box set. I like the spareness of this track: just a free-form organ and
piano, and a vocal that emphasizes the peaceful aimlessness of the afterlife.
The
Chesterfields, "Ask Johnny Dee"
The
wonderful compilation CD86 collects singles from the UK
indie-pop movement of the mid-to-late '80s, and this song is more on the poppy
end, in that aside from the lo-fi production, it could fit alongside something
by The Smiths or The Lightning Seeds. But that production also helps make the
song, giving a sense of what it's like to stand in the shadow of stardom, and
feel insignificant.
Cold
Grits, "Funky Soul"/ David Sea, "Let's Just Get Together"
Here's
two tracks from the quite fine The Soul Of Neal Hemphill, a collection of R&B; singles from the
Birmingham scene. The Cold Grits song is a greasy instrumental that verges on
the manic, while the David Sea song is decidedly mellower. The latter has a
simple sentiment—damn it, let's just screw already—but Sea imbues
it with boyish sweetness.
Deerhoof,
"The Galaxist"
I
avoided writing about Deerhoof in Week Eleven because I couldn't find my copy
of Friend Opportunity, the album of theirs I like
best. (It turned out to be in my car.) I like the other Deerhoof albums
reasonably well too, but Friend
Opportunity
is damn-near perfect in the way it shifts from experimental to hooky to riffy
without a clear sense of logic. I had a hard time picking a song from any other
album that encompassed what I love about Deerhoof, and a hard time settling on
just one from Friend
Opportunity.
I settled on "The Galaxist" because it captures the albums full range: its
weirdness, its rockiness, its beauty.
Elephants
Memory, "Old Man Willow"
I
saw Midnight
Cowboy for
the first time in a bowdlerized TV version when I was in high school, and when
I found the soundtrack at a used record store shortly afterward, I bought it in
large part because I wanted a copy of this song, which plays during the movie's
psychedelic party scene. I'd never quite heard music like this before I saw Midnight Cowboy, because I hadn't yet bought
my first Velvet Underground record, and wasn't yet into the output of 4AD. I'm
still kind of amazed that "Old Man Willow" made it onto a movie soundtrack,
because while it's easy to dismiss the song as some movie producer's clichéd
idea of "hippie music," it's far more avant-garde in conception and execution
than the fake go-go sounds that populated most of the era's youthsploitation.
This song's kind of a mind-blower, to tell the truth. I think the guys and gal
in Deerhoof may have listened to it a few times.
The
English Beat, "She's Going"
If
I'd had The English Beat loaded two weeks ago, they definitely would've been a
"piece of the puzzle," because I listened to I Just Can't Stop It and Special Beat Service about as much as I listened
to anything during my high school infatuation with '80s Britpop. Special Beat Service in particular—as
represented by this song—is a pretty amazing album, pushing beyond the
simplicity of two-tone to encompass a variety of emerging immigrant cultures,
all while asserting the band's "Englishness" in the form of a sound in step
with the breezy style of early '80s radio.
Eric
B. & Rakim, "I Know You Got Soul"
I
have to confess that I didn't really get Eric B. & Rakim the first time
around, probably because they were more club-oriented than the other hip-hop of
their era, and at the time I was more into the rock-minded minimalism of
Run-DMC and Boogie Down Productions and the assaultive maximalism of Public
Enemy and The Beastie Boys. In 2008, "I Know You Got Soul" is more where my head
is at, hip-hop-wise.
Fear,
"Let's Have A War"
I
used to have a theory that nobody ever bought the Repo Man soundtrack; they just had a
copy they either duped or stole from somebody else. Now that my Repo Man soundtrack is loaded up, I can
talk about some of the tracks that introduced me to L.A. punk. I almost wrote
up Circle Jerks' "Coup D'Etat" this week, but I like this classic Fear track a
lot more, probably because it's so beefy that it could almost pass for a
hardcore version of Van Halen. It's also got the perfect sentiment for a punk
anthem, at once witty and pissy. "There's too many of us" indeed.
Fela
Kuti, "Zombie"
See
Femi Kuti entry, two weeks ago. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.
Among
the rest…
Aaliyah, Alabama 3, Albert King, All-Time Quarterback, Alternative TV, Arvo
Part, Ash, Ashford & Simpson, The Avengers, Barenaked Ladies, Béla Fleck,
Bert Jansch, Better Than Ezra, Big Head Todd & The Monsters, The Black
Crowes, Blaine Sprouse, Blancmange, The Blue Notes, Blues Traveler, BMX
Bandits, Bomb The Bass, Book Of Love, Boyz II Men, Brian Eno, Busta Rhymes,
C&C; Music Factory, The Canadian Brass, Candlebox, Carla Thomas, Carly
Simon, Chaka Khan, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Chumbawamba, Cibo Matto, Circle Jerks,
Collective Soul, Crash Test Dummies, The Cult, Dada, Das EFX, David Holmes,
Dead Prez, Deana Carter, Deborah Harry, Deee-Lite, Deep Blue Something, The
Dentists, Des'ree, The Dickies, The Dictators, The Dils, Divinyls, Eddie Floyd,
Eddie Kendricks, EMF, The Emotions, En Vogue, Erasure, Everlast and Faust
Next
week: The regular format resumes, with coverage of artists ranging from Gang Of
Four to Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, plus a few words on pop and politics.