After
17 years of professional music-reviewing, Noel Murray is taking time off from
all new music, and is revisiting his record collection in alphabetical order,
to take stock of what he's amassed, and consider what he still needs.
Towards the
end of James Brown's 1967 funk workout "Get It Together," Brown starts passing
out instructions to his band, letting them know when to hit him and how hard,
until finally he instructs the men in the booth to fade the track out because
he has somewhere to be. When I first heard "Get It Together" back in my college
apartment with my three roommates, all of us just about collapsed on the floor
in delighted laughter. "Get It Together" was the coolest thing we'd ever heard,
and we were wowed by everything about it, from Brown's complete command of his
crackerjack unit to his off-the-cuff, stream-of-consciousness approach to
cutting a record. The song seemed to be utterly alive.
Musicians
have long-strived to convey just how much pleasure they get from messing around
and exploring. One of the things I like best about Dennis McNally's A Long
Strange Trip: The Inside History Of The Grateful Dead is the way it covers the band's
struggles to find audio equipment advanced enough to make their albums sound as
intricate as a live show, and their live shows sound as clear as an album. As
much as critics and fans like to use words like "overproduced" or
"thin-sounding" to describe a recording, we sometimes forget that an album is
just like a photograph, a film, or a journal entry, in that it preserves a
time, a place, and a thought. And sometimes that time and place comes with its
own not-so-perfect sound.
That's why
for so many bands—and quite a few of their fans—the ideal for a
record is for it to sound plausibly live, even if it means putting all the
players into the same well-baffled studio at the same time and then rolling
tape. Some go even further, preferring the spontaneity of improvisation and
freeform jamming, because they want to capture a moment that can never be
repeated. There are plenty of fans dedicated to collecting every Dead bootleg
or Miles Davis session, because they know no two will be exactly the same, and
they want to commune with artists by hearing exactly what was going through their
heads—and instruments—at any given minute on any given day. Is this
version angrier? Looser? More playful? Does it break down at some point,
and feature someone barking orders at someone else? If you want to understand
how musicians think, obsessively poring over alternate takes and live shows can
help.
But there's
an alternate school of thought that says all these ephemeral recordings are
just rough drafts, never meant to be given the same attention that one should
give the final work. I have some qualms about the Wilco documentary I Am
Trying To Break Your Heart, but I'm sympathetic to the scenes where Jeff Tweedy is going out of
his head trying to figure out which of the multitude of potential approaches to
the songs on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is the "right" one. I'm sympathetic because I appreciate
that he wants
there to be a "right" one. He wants to release a definitive version that
delivers everything that the song has to deliver. (Or at least he felt that way then; Tweedy and
Wilco have since loosened up to such an extent that their most recent album Sky
Blue Sky is almost
just a blueprint for the more expansive and freeform live shows that have
followed.)
In the
documentary Freestyle, The Coup rapper Boots Riley talks about how much he admires people who
rap off the top of their heads in battles, but how he feels obliged to write
his rhymes down and get them as tight as he can. There's a certain nobility to
that. If you're leaving a song behind for posterity, why not make an effort to
perfect it, right down to scripting the solos? Isn't that more respectful to
the audience and to the art?
Yes, you
sacrifice some of the spark of instantaneous creativity the more you "produce"
a record. But a heavily produced, carefully planned out song can generate some
effects that a live, loose approach can't. Veteran Nashville
musician/producer/writer Jay Joyce introduced his short-lived,
not-that-lamented band Iodine in the thick of the grunge era, pursuing a
heavier, trippier rock sound than he'd gone after in bands like Bedlam and In
Pursuit. The results didn't exactly set the world afire, but Iodine did record
one really good song on their debt album Maximum Joy:
"Flyboy" is
all about its apocalyptic atmosphere, which can only be roughly approximated
live—if only because it would be hard to get the vocals to sound so
whispery in concert, over such loud guitars. As a composition, "Flyboy" is
merely okay. If Joyce had recorded an acoustic version, it would've sounded
slight, but basically fine. If he'd turned it into a funk/reggae vamp and asked
his band to play on until he told them to stop, that might've been fine too
(depending what kind of groove he laid down). But it wouldn't have been this "Flyboy," which in all its
machine-tooled shimmer is exactly the song it needs to be.
I'm of two
minds on the subject of jamming and naturalness, because I too like to
romanticize the idea of a fleeting moment of inspiration, preserved forever.
And I agree that sometimes overthinking a song or a solo can drain its
vitality. But what if the musician is, by nature, an overthinker? In that case,
if they put out a fussy record, they're being as true to themselves as any
free-spirited noodler. And that's an important thing to preserve too.
*****************
Pieces
Of The Puzzle
Iggy Pop
Years Of
Operation
1963-present
Fits
Between Jim
Morrison and Screamin' Jay Hawkins
Personal
Correspondence When
I first started getting into punk and New Wave in the mid-'80s, a lot of
underground rock's old guard were still around, but struggling to adjust. Genre
godfathers like Lou Reed, David Johansen and Iggy Pop regularly released
records that had little of the oomph or edge of their proto-punk classics, and
on the rare occasions that I heard them on the radio or saw them on Saturday
Night Live, I had
hard time connecting that version of them to what I'd read in the rock history
books. Remember: these were the early years of the CD era, and a lot of labels
had let some of their lower-selling catalog titles fall out of print while they
focused on getting their bigger sellers ready for CD. So it wasn't always easy
to find legendary cult albums in stores. My first exposure to Iggy
Pop—aside from David Bowie's versions of "China Girl," "Tonight" and
"Neighborhood Threat"—was the 1986 album Blah Blah Blah, which I won in a radio station
giveaway and generally enjoyed, even though it so awash in mid-'80s synthetics
that it sounded nowhere near as rabid and untamed as I imagined Pop to be. I
finally worked my way back to the real Iggy Pop at the end of the decade, via a
circuitous route that involved reading some persuasive Pop appreciation in
separate collections of Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs articles, hearing The Blake
Babies' cover of The Stooges' "Loose," and finally finding used vinyl copies of The Stooges, Fun
House and Raw
Power for about 15
bucks each (which was a lot for a used record in those days). Even now,
post-grunge, those Stooges records sound rough and sludgy in the best way,
offering the Midwestern primitive variation on West Coast heaviness, dosed
strongly with urban nihilism. For anyone who doesn't understand why the
gracious, grinning, skeletal freak who now appears in movies and on talk shows
was once regarded as a potentially dangerous rock 'n' roll maniac, all it takes
is one cranked-up spin through "T.V. Eye" or "Shake Appeal," and suddenly
history comes to life.
Enduring
presence? As mighty
as The Stooges are—and trust me, I'll be revisiting them when I get to
"S"—my favorite Pop album is his solo effort Lust For Life, which bears traces of David
Bowie's late '70s Euro-decadence, while remaining every inch a rock 'n' roll
record, propelled by the bounding rhythms of the Sales brothers and Pop's most
poetic meditations on drugs, sex, violence and that hollow, lost feeling. If I
were forced at gunpoint to name my personal Top 10 albums, I'm pretty sure Lust
For Life would be
on it. And if I had to distill what rock means to me in five words, they might
well be "Sweet sixteen in leather boots."
Interpol
Years Of
Operation
1997-present
Fits
Between Joy
Division and The Chameleons
Personal
Correspondence I
welcomed Interpol warmly when they rumbled out of New York's neo-underground
scene at the start of the '00s, because the idea of aping 20-year-old post-punk
records hadn't yet devolved into the glut, repetition and creative bankruptcy
that would undo the movement in less than two years. About Interpol's debut
album, I wrote:
The
Walkmen, The Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Radio 4, French Kicks and The Strokes spend
perhaps too much energy recreating old sounds, but they've also revivified the
past, interpreting it through their own distinct personalities. Ditto for
Interpol, the latest New York act to crank up the echo. The morose quartet's
debut LP Turn On The Bright Lights earns the inevitable Joy Division comparison, though
Interpol has a lighter lilt to their bass and percussion, and the two
guitarists' chiming patterns set the band off on the kind of positivist
exploration that the grimly minimalist Joy Division wouldn't have cared to
attempt. Lead singer Paul Banks has a heavy, anguished vocal style, and sings
cryptically bitter lines line like 'friends don't waste wine when there's words
to sell,' but uptempos dominate Turn On The Bright Lights, and Interpol's virtue is the way
their music unfurls from pinched openings to wide-open codas. The album's
highlight of highlights, 'Say Hello To Angels,' kicks off with separate
stabbing guitar riffs and a freight train drumroll before breaking into a spry,
bass-driven bit of alt-pop, reminiscent of The Smiths and Brian Eno; by the
time the song ends with an extended rolling drone, what had seemed initially
chilly and obsessive reveals a surprising versatility.
The
argument against Interpol with each of their two subsequent albums has been
that they haven't really grown much. Which is true. But in a way they've been
perfecting their shtick, and for me at least, Antics and Our Love To Admire have shown a steady improvement.
With each new Interpol record, I find myself thinking that I overrated the
previous one, and that now they've gotten it right.
Enduring
presence? What do
you do with a band that keeps making the same record over and over, only
slightly better each time? Are they bereft of ideas, or just Glorious
Crackpots?
[pagebreak]
INXS
Years Of
Operation 1979-1997
(essentially)
Fits
Between Duran Duran
and The Rolling Stones
Personal
Correspondence
Haven't we all been haunted by songs we can't quite remember? For me, I was
nagged for a half-decade by INXS' "Don't Change," and what made the situation
doubly frustrating is that I knew INXS was the band I was looking for, even
though I didn't know the song. I missed Live Aid when it originally aired
because I was away on a family vacation—and besides we didn't have cable
when I was growing up, so I wouldn't have been able to see most of the show
anyway—but one of my brother's friends taped the whole concert, and after
my brother used some of his summer internship money to buy our household our
first VCR, I borrowed those Live Aid tapes and watched them repeatedly for a
month until I had to give them back. At the beginning of the first tape, my
brother's friend caught the tail-end of INXS' performance at Oz For Africa, so
I saw roughly the last two minutes of "Don't Change," liked it, and then
promptly forgot everything about the song when I returned the Live Aid tapes.
Months later, Listen Like Thieves crossed over to the U.S. market, and I started thinking
about that one INXS song I liked, though I couldn't remember the name, or how
it went. A friend of mine loaned me The Swing but it wasn't on there, and I
bought Kick when
it came out, but it wasn't on there either. It got to the point where I'd
half-convinced myself that I was remembering the wrong song, and that I'd
actually dug "The One Thing" or "This Time." Then I got to college and met a
friend who had Shabooh Shoobah, and while cursorily scanning through it to see if it had
"that song," I finally stumbled across "Don't Change" at the end of the record.
It's a good song, and that was a satisfying moment… though I don't know if it
was worth four years of mystery.
Enduring
presence? Michael
Hutchence's sordid death may have tainted INXS' memory some, but I hope people
who lived through the INXS era can appreciate the Hutchence-led version of the
band as a solid singles act, bringing a healthy amount of shake and shimmy to
arena rock. I saw INXS live on the Kick tour and wasn't necessarily expecting much (except
that they might play "Don't Change," which they didn't), but they put on a heck
of a show, full of energy and momentum. For that show alone, they get a pass
from me; and actually, I've found that when I can't decide what iPod playlist
to dial up, INXS has always been reliable.
Iron & Wine
Years Of
Operation
2002-present
Fits
Between Nick Drake
and The Mountain Goats
Personal
Correspondence I
can't think about Iron & Wine without remembering the somewhat
painful interview experience I had with I&W; main man Sam Beam.
It's not that Beam wasn't a nice guy—he was actually pleasant and
gracious throughout the half-hour we spent on the phone—but the purpose
of our interview was to talk about the use of Iron & Wine songs in
commercials and movies, and how well he thought various directors had
understood and used his work. Beam agreed to the premise beforehand, but on the
day of the interview he revealed that he didn't have much to say. Most of the
time Beam admitted he hadn't seen the movies or TV shows in question, and even
when he did, he didn't have any comment. Which shouldn't be that surprising,
because sometimes musicians are reticent dudes, except that this particular
dude used to be a freakin' professor of film studies! Beam admitted to being a film
buff, but he wasn't the least bit articulate about the art or craft of
filmmaking. I still like Iron & Wine, but as I've written here before, I'm
partial to a certain amount of intentionality in my artists, and Beam is
clearly more of a laid-back, take-what-comes-and-don't-question-it kind of guy.
Or at least that's what he wanted me to believe.
Enduring
presence? Our
former A.V. Club editor
Stephen Thompson spread the gospel of Beam from the moment he heard an advance
copy of Iron & Wine's The Creek Drank The Cradle, and while I didn't become an eager
disciple, I could definitely hear the call. That album—drawn from lo-fi
home recordings—has an otherworldly quality, supplied in large part by
Beam's unnaturally pretty voice and delicate guitar-picking. The Iron &
Wine albums, singles and EPs that immediately followed led me to wonder whether
Beam needed tape hiss and low stakes to spin a mood. Those records sounded
basically fine, but the closer Beam gets to conventional, cleanly recorded folk
and blues, the more, well, conventional Iron & Wine seems. But last year's The
Shepherd's Dog
struck me as a real breakthrough, adding a rhythmic texture that moves Beam
beyond wan folk-pop into something more intuitive and spiritual.
Isaac Hayes
Years Of
Operation
1962-present
Fits
Between Barry White
and Burt Bacharach
Personal
Correspondence
Speaking of memorable interviews, I had a much better
experience talking with Hayes a few years back, even though he called
me about 45 minutes late (after I'd told his publicist that I was going to have
to reschedule), and even though I caught him shortly before he'd decided to
quit South Park,
when he was still shrugging off Parker and Stone's anti-Scientology jokes as no
big deal. (After the story broke about him leaving the show, some articles
cited my interview, which was kind of weird.) Still, while we were on the
phone, Hayes couldn't have been more agreeable. More importantly, researching
Hayes helped me realize how awesome he is. Reviewing the anthology Ultimate
Isaac Hayes: Can You Dig It? around that time, I wrote:
With
his bald head, stylish duds, and basso profundo voice, Isaac Hayes cuts such an
iconic figure that people sometimes forget he contributed more to modern pop
than just 'Theme From Shaft.' Hayes was arguably R&B;'s first 'album artist,'
starting with his landmark 1969 album Hot Buttered Soul, which consisted of only four
songs, all stretched out well beyond single-length. On successive albums
through the early '70s, Hayes infused slow-jam soul with elements of acid rock
and orchestrated pop, forging a unique sound that was quickly copied by
contemporaneous R&B; singers and TV cop-show-theme composers. In their
extended form, the semi-improvised 'raps' that open his covers of 'I Stand
Accused' and 'By The Time I Get To Phoenix' take almost as long as the original
songs; they feature Hayes grappling humorously but sincerely with his romantic
troubles. His cover of 'Walk On By' takes a similarly dramatic turn. Hayes
keeps Burt Bacharach's melody and Hal David's words, but between the lilting
verses and choruses, he lays in sinister fuzz-tone guitar and a symphonic
maelstrom, making simple heartbreak more apocalyptic. Throughout Can You Dig
It?, Hayes
expresses his love of pop in all its forms by remaking it as he hears it, as
the soundtrack to life's most significant and only seemingly significant
moments.
Enduring
presence? As I
wrote in that review, Hayes' larger-than-life public persona may distract from
his innovations as a songwriter and star. Which is a shame, because Hayes'
behind-the-scenes work with Stax at the start of the '60s and his out-in-front
work at the end of the '60s (and into the '70s) is as formidable as any pop
artist of the era, and significant in its willful eradication of genre
boundaries.
Ivy
Years Of
Operation
1994-present
Fits
Between Everything
But The Girl and Sixpence None The Richer
Personal
Correspondence Have
you ever had a craving for a particular kind of food—like, say, a rolled
chicken breast stuffed with spicy cheese, or a fresh-cut fruit salad—but
because locations and circumstances are working against you, you settle for
whatever rough approximation you can find at the nearest fast-food joint?
That's more or less been my relationship with Ivy, a breezy sophisti-pop band that
at the end of the '90s sounded almost like the kind of music I wanted to hear, such that I raved
maybe too much about them. About Ivy's In The Clear I wrote:
The
pop music charts of the early '60s often doubled as diagrams of the widening generation
gap, as the untamed sound of early rock clashed with Vegas-slick entertainers
scrambling to stay hip. Then The Beatles started peppering their albums with
light ballads like 'Yesterday' and 'Michelle,' and The Beach Boys started
working mind vacations like 'Let's Get Away for Awhile' into their repertoire.
Suddenly adult sophistication and pining for the leisure pastimes of the
middle-aged became viable to a group of kids who were used to pursuing wilder
kicks. Since then, rock musicians from Harry Nilsson and Randy Newman to Air
and Ladybug Transistor have dabbled in romanticizing generational displacement.
New York lounge-pop act Ivy is so into the easy-going lifestyle that it
actually licensed one of its songs ('Edge Of The Ocean') for a cruise ship ad.
Ivy has a definite rock edge—guitarist/songwriter Adam Schlesinger, who
splits time between Ivy and Fountains Of Wayne, makes sure of that. But while
Schlesinger's guitar grinds away in the background, lead singer Dominique
Durand whispers smoothly and sadly, and utility man Andy Chase fills the spaces
around her voice with a thick rope of instruments that all describe the same
cool breeze. On Ivy's fourth original album In The Clear, the band sticks with up tempos and
busy arrangements, approximating the feeling of anxious young urban
professionals trying to catch a breath. The record's at once exciting and
relaxing: songs like 'Tess Don't Tell' surge forward like a trans-oceanic jet,
while 'Keep Moving' weaves disco and soft rock into a mix that goes down as
smooth as ice-cold gin, even as Durand sings about how hard it is to get over
the loss of a loved one. The two sides come together on In The Clear's apotheosis, 'Corners Of Your
Mind,' a rush of rapidly-strummed guitars and pounding piano that blows up like
a gust of wind, leaving the listener refreshed and surprisingly
un-mussed.
But here's
the thing: I listened to In The Clear again this week, and it left me almost completely unmoved.
As did Realistic
and Apartment Life.
(Ivy's Long Distance still holds up well though, as does their covers album.) I'm not saying
that my review of In The Clear was "wrong" per se, because the descriptions I think remain
pretty accurate. But that same set of data, today, would probably lead me to a
different conclusion—like that Ivy shows a shade too much emotional
remove to be fully involving.
Enduring
presence? You know
what breezy sophisti-pop band gives me more of what I'm actually looking for?
Swan Dive. But I'll get to them later. As for Ivy, I spent some time this week
trimming their four albums of originals down to a tight 12-song collection,
heavy on Long Distance. In a pinch, that'll do.
Jackson
Browne
Years Of
Operation
1970-present
Fits
Between James
Taylor and Bruce Springsteen
Personal
Correspondence I
don't mean this as a knock on All Music Guide—an incredibly useful
website staffed by dedicated, knowledgeable writers—but I was taken aback
a couple of years ago when I looked up Jackson Browne on AMG and discovered a
set of reviews by William Ruhlmann that are easily the most incisive,
provocative criticism I've ever read on the site. Starting with a
write-up of Browne's debut album and continuing forward, Ruhlmann
mounts a case for Browne's early albums that positions the laid-back
singer-songwriter as an unlikely generational spokesman, summing up an era's
disappointments. Then Ruhlmann takes Browne to task for what he sees as the
commercial compromises of the hit albums The Pretender and Running On Empty, which he believes substitute
cynicism and easy answers for the probing social critique of the first three
LPs. In the reviews that follow, Ruhlmann alternately dismisses Browne as a
hack and goes looking for signs of the artist he once loved. Without ever going
first-person, Ruhlmann pens an analysis that's clearly personal, and though I
disagree with a lot of it—I'm more impressed with Browne's rare moments
of pop craftsmanship than his wandering spirit—I still think Ruhlmann's
generated some superior short-form criticism, in a place where I wouldn't have
expected to find it.
Enduring
presence? My dad
had a copy of Running On Empty when I was a kid—what '70s dad didn't?—but I
hadn't given Jackson Browne a whole lot of thought until a series of events
made Browne fandom seem inevitable. On the special edition DVD of Almost
Famous (one of my
favorite movies of the past decade), director Cameron Crowe talked up Late
For The Sky. Then
Wes Anderson used Nico's version of Browne's "These Days" in The Royal
Tenenbaums (another
of my favorites). Then Browne was inducted into The Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame
with a rambling, funny, jive-y speech by one of my heroes, Bruce Springsteen.
Finally I took the plunge, bought pretty much the whole Browne discography
(minus some of the recent records) and have been getting lost in his winding
tales of lovers and liars ever since. Hooks are hard to come by in Browne
songs, but I love how so many of his best songs are like miniature journeys
with no apparent destination—until, unexpectedly, you arrive.
[pagebreak]
The Jam
Years Of
Operation 1972-82
Fits
Between The Who and
The Miracles
Personal
Correspondence I
fell in love with The Jam because of The Gift, and didn't discover until years
later that most Jam fans consider The Gift to be the weak conclusion to the band's strong run.
Oh, well. When I heard the earlier Jam records I admired their muscle, and the
way Paul Weller and company—who'd developed their chops before punk
hit—had the technical skill to make every brutish note count. But man… The
Gift. I still
prefer it. In just 30 minutes, Weller leads his two mates (plus copious guest
musicians) through pummeling, echoing takes on R&B;, worldbeat, pub rock and
protest folk—all catchy, all snappy, and all brimming with imagination.
To some, The Gift
sounds more like a warmup for The Style Council than a proper Jam album, and I
can understand that. But to me, it's the model of what a good, concise pop-rock
album can be: energized, tuneful, and willing to explore. (See also: Spoon, Girls
Can Tell; Iggy Pop, Lust For Life;
etc.)
Enduring
presence? The Jam
are still more revered in the UK than they are here in the US, though there
have been a few domestic bands with Jam influences (Ted Leo, the aforementioned
Spoon, others), and I'm pretty sure they're still a staple part of the diet of
most dedicated rock fans. The same can't be said of The Style Council or
Weller's solo work, though I count myself a fan of both, and I look forward to
stumping for them later this year.
James Brown
Years Of
Operation 1956-2006
Fits
Between Louis
Jordan and Prince
Personal
Correspondence My pal Jason
Heller already did a great job of writing up James Brown last week,
and his experiences are similar to my own, right down to getting immersed in
the box set Star Time in the early '90s. When I was growing up, Brown was more a tangential
pop figure. Kids of my generation—at least where I grew up—mostly
knew Brown from The Blues Brothers, "Living In America," Eddie Murphy's Saturday Night Live impression, and that weird voice
saying "James Brown" over and over on Tom Tom Club's "Genius Of Love" (a fluke
hit that several kids in my sixth grade class referred to as "that James Brown
song"). Following the advice of pop historians, I picked up a cheap cassette
copy of Live At The Apollo towards the end of my high school years, and was excited by
the record's relentless groove and soul theatrics (especially in the offbeat
ballad "I Don't Mind," as cited by Heller). I can't remember which one of my
college roommates sprung for a copy of Star Time when I was in college, but it
quickly became community property, passed around from car to car and duped onto
cassette by each of us a few times over, in different configurations. In the
beginning, I favored Brown's short, tight early R&B; hits. Later I decided I
liked the longer funk/Afrobeat exercises, because of their one-take immediacy
and complex musicianship. In the late '60s and early '70s, Brown would assemble
all his sidemen (including, for a time, the incomparable Maceo Parker), walk
them through a fairly forward-looking arrangement, and then just vamp until he
felt satisfied. One of the turning points in my Brown appreciation came, oddly
enough, when I saw White Men Can't Jump, in which director Ron Shelton choreographs one of
the basketball sequences to "Super Bad." The connection between athletic
movement and Brown's strutting funk struck me at my core. I love sports, and I
love dense rhythmic interplay. With the physically dynamic James Bown, I get
both.
Enduring
presence? Like Eric
Clapton's Crossroads and Bob Dylan's Biograph, James Brown's Star Time was a landmark in the early box set
era, showing how artists' work and public persona could be recontextualized, to
give them their proper due. It was especially essential for someone like Brown,
who was more a singles artist than an album artist. If someone asks me what
James Brown record to buy, I have to say Star Time (with Live At The Apollo running second). It's expensive,
but worth it.
Stray Tracks
From the fringes
of the collection, a few songs to share….
The Ides
Of March, "Symphony Of Eleanor"
I wasn't
really aware of The Ides Of March until American Idol contestant Bo Bice performed
"Vehicle," a song that I'd always assumed was by Blood, Sweat & Tears. At
the time I was developing an interest in the abbreviated "big band rock" era of
BST and Chicago, so I picked up an Ides Of March two-fer CD with Vehicle and Common Man, and found much of it cheesy but
nonetheless enjoyable, steeped in the late '60s/early '70s rock ideal of
bombast and bullshit. Apparently the big showstopper at a 1970 Ides Of March
concert was their epic-length cover of "Eleanor Rigby," which the band loaded
up with acid-rock guitar solos, tribal drums, horn stings and tone far heavier
than The Beatles' gentle melancholy. And you know what? It's silly, but once
the jam really gets cooking around five or six minutes in, it's not too hard to
imagine being at an Ides show and having the mind blown. (Fun fact: Ides Of March
vocalist/guitarist/songwriter Jim Peterick went on to co-found Survivor, and to
write some of the biggest hits of .38 Special.)
Idlewild,
"I Understand It"
This Scottish
quartet had the bad timing to start out as a neo-grunge act in 1999, right
around the time that the Britpop scene had a run on atmospheric balladeers, and
then shift to hooky modern rock just as music fans on both sides of the
Atlantic started digging the new wave revival. It hasn't helped that the band
has been low on timeless, take-it-to-the-bank songs—though they do have
their moments. The anthemic "I Understand It" contains the kind of openhearted
sentiment and shout-to-the-rafters choruses that should've sparked a fluke hit
(but didn't, at least stateside), and the song makes good use of lead singer
Roddy Woomble's Michael Stipe affectations and his fascination with dissecting
unfixable relationships by describing their watershed moments.
Ike
& Tina Turner, "It's Gonna Work Out Fine"
Though the
widespread stories of Ike and Tina's stormy relationship has made their music a
little trickier to enjoy, this song's stripped-down instrumentation and echoing
production—heavy on Ike's trademark guitar wobble—works almost as a
kind of foreshadowing, undercutting the loving give-and-take between the duo.
This, friends, is what the poets call "irony."
The Ike
Reilly Assassination, "I Hear The Train"
At some
point toward the end of '07, about three months after Reilly's We Belong To
The Staggering Evening had been released, someone on one of the bulletin boards or newsgroups
I read (can't remember which one) cited it as one of the best albums of the
year, and since I'd never heard of The Ike Reilly Assassination, I did some
quick research and heard names like Bruce Springsteen, Marah and Ted Leo being
tossed around. So I took a flyer. Because it was such a busy time of year,
music-wise, and because I wasn't going to be reviewing it, I only played Staggering
Evening a couple of
times, and though I thought it was good, it struck me as exciting on the
surface but maybe not all that deep. Revisiting the album this week, I think I
hear more going on: a kind of youthful anger given credence by the sound of a
bunch of simpatico musicians making a racket. I've got plans to dig back into the
Reilly catalog some next year. (One knock against this particular song: The
verses sound a bit too much like Billy Idol's "White Wedding." Otherwise, it
rocks.)
Incredible
Bongo Band, "Bongolia"
Back in 1972,
music-industry suit Michael Viner threw together Incredible Bongo Band to
record a couple of songs for the soundtrack of The Thing With Two Heads, and when those went over well, he reconvened the
band for two collections of instrumental covers. So let me ask you a question:
How do you feel about bongos? Are you, like, rabidly pro-bongo? Do you like
your bongos surrounded by twangy surf guitar and proto-disco horns? Do you want
the kind of bongo breaks that can be easily appropriated by hip-hop a decade or
so later? If so, have I got a band for you!
The Incredible Moses Leroy, "1983"
San Diego
studio rat Ron Foutenberry (a.k.a. The Incredible Moses Leroy) steals from so
many sources so deftly that one would be forgiven for thinking that he is that
rarely spotted bird, the "original." The Incredible Moses Leroy's second LP Electric
Pocket Radio sounds
like Beck at times, like Elliot Smith at others, like My Bloody Valentine every
now and then, and most often like trash-pop excavators Stereo Total, Pizzicato
Five, Cornershop, and Cornelius. What it doesn't sound like is a unique and
thrilling combination of all the above. On a song-by-song basis, Foutenberry
works cheerful and adroit variations on the music of his predecessors, but
there's no meaningful attempt to synthesize those influences. It's well-done
though. I defy anyone not to get a rush of good feeling when listening to "1983,"
a brisk guitar-and-synth number that's a lovely homage to New Order, with
expressionistic lyrics about a good time gone by. I'll take it over Bowling For
Soup anyway.
The
Intruders, "Cowboys To Girls"
I first
heard this song via a cover version by The Hacienda Brothers, and was so taken
with the melody and lyrics that I bought an Intruders anthology. It was a good
purchase as it turned out, even if no song quite tops "Cowboys To Girls," a
sweet reflection on the onset of puberty. This track would fit nicely next to
the above "1983" on any mix CD dedicated to songs about nostalgia.
The
Isles, "Major Arcana"
I'd be curious to
know what fans of The Smiths make of this stunning approximation of
Manchester's finest, which gets the sound and vibe just right—all the way
down to the deceptively poppy arrangement and the windswept, mystical air. (Not
to mention whimsically Morrissey-esque lyrics like, "The breeze cannot decide /
to be fresh / to be cold.") The rest of The Isles' debut album is more or less
a bust, but this song is a keeper.
Jack
Elliot & Allyn Ferguson, "Barney Miller"/"Charlie's Angels"
Who
would've guessed that the same composing team would be responsible for two of
the greatest TV theme songs of the '70s? These openers are so different, and
yet they're alike in the way they set a precise mood. "Barney Miller" is all
greasy urban hustle, while "Charlie's Angels" is pure fantasy, all luxe and
swirly. Both of these themes warped my music appreciation in fundamental ways,
making me more inclined to like songs that sound like the overture to watching
television.
Jack S.
Margolis, "Listening To Music"
Elektra
recording artist Margolis—author of the satirical A Child's Garden Of
Grass—here
explains what kind of music sounds good when you're stoned, and what doesn't.
Too bad this came up alphabetically this week, rather than next week when I'm
going to write about the influence of drug use on music creation and appreciation.
Anyway, enjoy it as a teaser, and a bit of hippie humor.
The
Jacksons, "Shake Your Body (Down To The Ground)"
As good as
Michael Jackson's solo career has been at times—especially in the early
going—I'm not sure any of it was worth Jackson's sad decline. Sometimes I
like to imagine an alternate universe where Jackson stays with his brothers as
just a cog in a funk-pop machine, cranking out invigorating dancefloor-ready
cuts like this one, and never quite becoming a superstar.
James McMurtry,
"Choctaw Bingo"
I'm often
put off by McMurtry's gruff social commentary, but this underclass epic is this
one hell of a song, packed with so much detail—and so much of it
accurate—that it seems pointless to complain about any condescending tone
in McMurtry's vision of White Trash America. Why isn't this is a roots-rock
standard already? Who can cover it and make it a blockbuster hit?
Jamie T,
"Brand New Bass Guitar"
I'd
forgotten all about this UK NBT until he came around this week, and all the
hype came rushing back. The fact that I'd only saved three songs off Panic
Prevention
indicates to me that I must not have been that wild about the album when I
heard it last year. (I know I didn't review it, anyway.) But those three
songs—and especially this one—sound every bit as puckish and catchy
as Jamie T. had been hyped to be. Now I'm interested to hear what he does next,
and I'm wondering if I was too dismissive to Panic Prevention.
Jan Hammer, "Crockett's Theme"
I wasn't
the kind of teenager who hung out with older kids who had cars—at least
not until my junior and senior years of high school—so most of my Friday
nights in the mid-'80s were spent going to Hickory Hollow Mall with my parents,
where we'd have dinner at the food court (Chik-Fil-A nuggets and waffle fries
for me), I'd buy something cheap at Camelot Records with my allowance, and then
we'd all head home, where my folks would go to bed and I'd stay up watching Miami
Vice and Friday
Night Videos on the
local NBC affiliate. I was developing my understanding of cool—and of
women—from a safe distance. Like The Intruders sing, it's all about that
transition from cowboys to girls.
Regrettably
unremarked upon:
Imperial Teen, Incredible String Band, The Ink Spots, Inquisition, Iris Dement,
The Isley Brothers, J Church, J.J. Cale, Jack Jones, Jack Nitzsche, Jackie
Mittoo, Jad Fair, James Gang, James Kochalka Superstar and James Taylor
Also
listened to: The
Iguanas, iLiKETRAiNS Ill Lit, Illinois, Imagination, Imaginary,
Baseball LeagueImmaculate Machine, Imogen Heap, The Impossible Shapes, Inara George, Indeep, India.Arie, Indian Ocean, The Indicators, Inell Young, The Infamous Stringdusters, Information,
SocietyThe Inklings, Innaway, Inner Life, The
Innocence Mission, The Intelligence, Ira Marlowe, Ira Stein,
Irma Thomas, Irving, Isao Tomita, Islands, IV Thieves, The Ivy League, J Dilla,
J-Live, J. Boogie, J. Mascis & The Fog, J.B. Lenoir, J.D. Crowe & The
New South, J.J. Barnes, J.P. Nestor, J.R. Bailey, J*Davey, J'Nae, Jack & The, Jack Drag, Jack Ingram,
ModsJack Johnson, Jack
Logan, Jack Stack A Track, Jack's Mannequin, Jackie Brenston
with His Delta Cats, Jackie Greene, Jackmormons, Jackpot, Jackson United, Jacob Fred Jazz
Odyssey, Jake Brennan & The Confidence Men, Jake La, Jake Wade & The Soul Searchers, Jakob Dylan, Jakob
Botz
Olausson, James Apollo, James Combs, James Figurine, James Hunter, James P.
Johnson, James Talley, James Yorkston & The Athletes, Jamie Cullum, Jamie Kindleyside and Jamiroquai
Next week: From Jane's
Addiction to, John Coltrane plus a few words on drugs