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.
Audiophiles can bicker all
day about whether vinyl sounds "warmer" than CDs, or whether MP3s are inferior
to both because of "loss," but I confess that most of those discussions go over
my head. I can tell the difference between good sound and crappy sound, but my
ears aren't trained enough to pick up the difference between good sound and great sound. My biggest complaint about CDs is that a lot
of the discs I bought in the '90s sound tinny and punchless, and my biggest
complaint about MP3s is that when I convert those old CDs and dump them on my
iPod, they sound distractingly soft compared to most of what's on there (even
with "sound check" turned on). But then I've heard skilled sound engineers
complain about the '00s trend toward boosting the levels on everything, so what
the hell do I know?
For me, most everything I
miss about vinyl is purely experiential, not sonic. Last year I dug out my old
stereo system, hooked it up in my front room, and started relaxing with the
family after dinner by putting on some of my dad's old records—some
bluegrass, some piano jazz, a whole lot of Hawaiian slack-key
guitar—while my kids played games. It was like spending a summer night at
my grandparents' house, only with me in the granddad role (minus the ubiquitous
highball). And I found that more than the music, I enjoyed pulling the records
out of their cardboard jackets and paper sleeves, giving them a cursory swipe
with my shirt, and hearing the loud thunk and quiet crackle when I lowered the
tone arm. I started thinking back about all the things I missed about the media
formats I rarely use anymore. For example:
-Cueing up a song. It may not have been a user-friendly method, but
there was something satisfying about trying to place the needle precisely on,
say, the third song on side one of a record—especially if the songs
didn't have a lot of space between them, and the cue-groove was small. If I was
making a mix-tape, I'd go the extra step of waiting until the song started and
then putting my hand on the record and manually winding it back before taking
my finger off the recorder's pause button, so I could minimize dead space.
(That way I could also check the incoming audio levels.) If I was recording
tape-to-tape, I'd do something similar, ejecting the source tape right after
the song started and manually rewinding it a few turns with my index finger. I
can still recall how the tiny tape-spokes felt against my fingertip.
-Stacking double LPs. My dad used to put about six records on the living
room stereo before he went to bed at night, and would let the machine play one
after another until he fell asleep. I usually only stacked records if they were
doubles, and if they were thoughtfully arranged by the record company so that
Side One and Side Four were on one disc, and Side Two and Side Three on the
other. For that matter, I kind of miss the idea of "sides." Some of my favorite
bands used to think about their albums in terms of two 20-minute sets, and
would try to arrange them so that each side was practically an album to itself.
It wasn't until they came out on CD that I even know which was supposed to be
the first side of R.E.M.'s Reckoning
or Fables Of The Reconstruction.
(Or was that Reconstruction Of The Fables?)
–Messages scratched in the
lead-out. This was more of a thing
that college-rock and post-hardcore bands did, though some of the big-timers
too were known to etch a little cryptic message into the vinyl, right next to
the label.
-The 8-track fade. My family never had an 8-track player, but I bought
one at a garage sale when I was in high school and hooked it up in our
basement, where I'd listen to the handful of 8-tracks I could
find—including Rickie Lee Jones' first album, a personal
favorite—while playing pool or riding my skateboard in tight circles around
the table. That's how I became familiar with songs that start fading early at
the end of a program, only to fade back up on the next program, after that hard
"ka-chunk" so familiar to 8-track owners.
-That new cassette smell. I can't remember which tape I noticed this on, but
shortly after the introduction of clear cassette shells, it was hard not to be
somewhat overwhelmed by the fruity aroma that wafted up after peeling off the
plastic and opening the case. I want to say the first tape with that smell was
Prince's Around The World In A Day,
but that's probably wishful thinking. I do recall though that Madonna's Like
A Prayer smelled like patchouli
instead of strawberries. Or maybe I just imagined that too.
Of course there are plenty of
aspects of old media that I don't
miss, too. Such as:
-Skips. When I listen to "The E Street Shuffle" on CD or MP3,
I still expect it to skip abruptly from horns to guitar, just the way it did on
my vinyl copy throughout my youth.
-Filler. I've probably listened to more crappy songs buried in
the middle of a record than I'd care to recall. (On the other hand, being
forced by technology to slog my way through the entirety of something like The
Who's Face Dances also led me to
appreciate some of my favorite artists' weakest material.) But at least vinyl
LPs and cassettes were relatively short, and crafted with some care and
understanding of the formats' inherent limitations. Pretty soon after the
introduction of the CD, artists went filler-crazy, padding out 40 minutes of
good material with an extra 30 minutes or so of sludge and goof-offs. If
nothing else, the emergence of song-by-song downloading seems to be serving as
a filler-killer.
-Multimedia features.
Staying in the CD realm, remember 10 years ago when you'd pop a new CD into
your computer and suddenly you'd lose control of your machine for a few minutes
while the disc's embedded CD-Rom features sprang to life? Did anybody ever
actually enjoy those special features?
-Hidden tracks. It was cute at first to get to the end of a CD,
notice that the last track kept going after the final note of the final song,
and then wait a few minutes until another song showed up. Ha ha! Surprise! In
the MP3 era though, hidden tracks serve mainly to make two songs virtually
unusable. Either you go through the painstaking process of cutting and duping
in order to reclaim full use of the music you paid for, or you just suffer with
a 15-minute track on your iPod that contains 8 minutes of dead space in the
middle.
All of which raises a
question: What is it about downloading and listening to music on MP3 players
that we'll feel nostalgic about when the next technological advance comes along? And what will be
glad to see go away? More to the point: Can you even imagine what's next? Most entertainment technology serves a
specific need, but aside from some cosmetic improvements to the current tech, I
can't even think of what we need
anymore. Have we reached the limit? Are we looking at a future where storage and
size issues improve, but the devices stay the same?
*****************
Pieces Of The Puzzle
Pet Shop Boys
Years Of Operation 1984-present
Fits Between Cole Porter and ABC
Personal Correspondence When "West End Girls" started getting airplay in the
states in 1986, the song sounded like a premature throwback to a technopop era
that had been, if not superseded, at least absorbed into the musical culture at
large. (Once Trevor Horn added clanking metallic synth stings to Yes
songs—and thus hit the Billboard Top 10—certain genre distinctions began to dissolve.) Pet Shop
Boys' subsequent success has hinged on their ability to plug electronica into
showstopping theatrically and dry social satire, creating a hybrid with
multiple strands of crossover appeal. I've always been more into PSB's singles
than their full albums, though I make an exception for the hybrid release Introspective, a quasi-anthology that combines extended versions of
soon-to-be singles with reworked takes of past Pet Shop Boys songs. Though only
six songs long, Introspective
offers a full Pet Shop Boys experience, from semi-heartfelt covers of kitschy
old pop songs ("Always On My Mind," "It's Alright") to purposefully
contradictory portraits of the lives of urbane sophisticates ("Left To My Own
Devices," "I Want A Dog"). I wish Pet Shop Boys had come along a coupe of years
earlier, when technopop was still a commercially viable genre. I think their
influence might've shaped dance music and electronica in some compelling ways—if
only by bringing a touch of Broadway to swirling disco.
Enduring presence? My main problem with Pet Shop Boys is that while I
find brief visits to their irony-rich world to be exciting and invigorating,
it's a place too artificial for extended stays. But then, that artificiality is
partly what the band is all about. My favorite Pet Shop Boys song, "Left To My
Own Devices," attaches a double-meaning to the word "left," adding political
will to one aesthete's to-do list. It's a fairly unsparing vision, yet also
catchy, ebullient and fun. The listener can enjoy the song and feel chastened
by it, all at once.
Pete Townshend
Years Of Operation 1972-present (solo)
Fits Between Eric Clapton and Paul Weller
Personal Correspondence My Who obsession will get a full airing towards the
end of this year, but since Townshend's solo work is in some ways wildly
different from his Who work, it deserves its own entry. Besides, the "Pieces Of
The Puzzle" section is meant to house artists who strongly impacted the
development of my musical taste—both positively and
negatively—which means I can't leave out the solo Townshend, lest I
ignore the hours I spent playing Empty Glass, All The Best Cowboys Have Chinese Eyes, Scoop
and even White City over and over
in the '80s, usually while reading old Rolling Stone interviews with Townshend. I'd get inordinately
excited as he babbled incessantly about his grandiose vision for a unifying
rock sound that would fuse his studies of the guru Meher Baba with the democratizing
possibilities of synthesizers (all wrapped in highly personal stories of an
aesthete growing up on the edges of the British working class). This fevered
self-examination didn't manifest much in Townsend's Who songs, aside from the
stark "I just vomited on myself" confessionals of Who By Numbers and Who Are You; but on his solo albums, Townshend made more ambitious swings at
crafting a sort of straight-from-the-subconscious insta-pop, infused with
elaborate sci-fi/fantasy metaphors and the plain talk of an exasperated
everyman. Most of those solo albums are weighed down with self-indulgent
filler, but they also contain more than a few of Townshend's best, most
personal, and most endearingly quirky songs, carried by the unifying sound of
his country-jazz-rock fusion guitar. The acknowledged classic is Empty Glass—sporting the popular "Let My Love Open The
Door" and the how-come-we-didn't-realize-Townshend-was-gay-much-earlier?* anthem
"Rough Boys," as well as beautiful-but-brittle self-examinations like "I Am An
Animal"—but I've always had a soft spot for the frequently silly but just
as frequently inspired All The Best Cowboys. Maybe that's because I got it for $1.99 from the
back pages of the Columbia Record & Tape Club catalog, or maybe it's
because what's always been attractive about Townshend is his wounded,
warts-and-all persona, which makes his most embarrassing songs the ones that
are ultimately the most meaningful, putting his rock masterpieces in their full
context.
Enduring presence? When Townshend came up right after Pet Shop Boys
during my weekend note-taking, my wife said, "Hey, it's Gay Week at Popless!"
Over the past decade, Townshend may have been in the news more for coming out
of the closet and being forced (by the discovery of child pornography on his
computer) to reveal the sexual abuse in his past, but for me, I've been
thinking a lot about Roger Daltrey's staunch, stand-up defense of his lifelong
musical partner during all those incidents. Daltrey and Townshend are bound
together despite their persistent personal differences, and I find it
incredibly moving how they've continued to work together and support each
other. That's probably because Daltrey realizes how lucky he's been—even
given his own formidable talents as a vocalist—to have hooked up with one
of rock's true visionaries. If anyone doubts Townshend's eccentric genius, I'd
recommend picking up Scoop, a
collection of Who and solo demos that hangs together well as an album in and of
itself, and shows Townshend at his most relaxed, kicking around ideas that he'd
later shape into songs that still devastate.
*Update: There is apparently some dispute over whether Townshend is actually gay, or whether his "I know what it feels like to be a woman; I am a woman" quotes from 10 years ago were taken out of context. And here I thought I'd finally found the key to unlock the sensuous melancholy of Empty Glass.
[pagebreak]
Phoenix
Years Of Operation 1999-present
Fits Between Spoon and Starbuck
Personal Correspondence I heard Phoenix for the first time on the Lost
In Translation soundtrack, and was knocked flat by their Pro Tools
cool—all cut-and-paste synthesizers and choppy rhythms. The Paris quartet
streak their sound with breathy warmth, provided mainly by Thomas Mars's foregrounded
lead vocals and a lattice of analog instrumentation that draws on
second-generation soul-jazz. At times they channel Stevie Wonder and Steely Dan
by way of Michael McDonald, with a purposeful anonymity that has Mars
expressing his feelings the way he's been taught to by pop songs. Phoenix's
first two studio albums—2000's United
and 2004's Alphabetical—were
dotted with quick bursts of giddy, danceable music, but a lot of the songs
sounded dryly conceptual, and Phoenix didn't come across as fully engaged until
the rocked-up live album Thirty Days Ago. The band then stayed in flat-out mode for It's Never Been
Like That, for which guitarists Laurent
Brancowitz and Christian Mazzalai stagger rockabilly jangle, New Order
tautness, and even the acoustic chug of George Michael's "Faith," creating a
well-cushioned space for Mars to grapple with the ways nostalgia and lust
cohere into the same frustration. Albums with this kind of thematic and
stylistic unity can be hard to access, but It's Never Been Like That amplifies the undertones of yearning and escapism
that have always been part of Phoenix's music. It has the necessary edge of
real art, but it's approachable right down to breezy songs like "One Time Too
Many, with their deep echo and thin lines.
Enduring presence? I think I mostly love It's Never Been Like That because it's nice to see a band balance theory and
pleasure while coming out more strongly in favor of the latter. Can they top a
record that's one of my favorites of the '00s so far? A new album is reportedly
due later this year, though it hasn't been scheduled yet.
Pink Floyd
Years Of Operation 1964-85 (in essence)
Fits Between The Moody Blues and King Crimson
Personal Correspondence It's impossible to overstate how monolithic The
Wall was when it was released in
1979. Coming from a band already responsible for one of the most popular rock
albums of all time (The Dark Side Of The Moon), The Wall
felt like the definitive statement from the band and maybe even from the genre,
converting the baby boom generation's anxieties over war, drugs, madness,
egomania and family ties into 90 minutes of bombast and blues. The album came
out when I was 9, and despite its adult themes, it was fairly ubiquitous among
my peers. I finally got my own copy when I was in high school, and I remember
snapping at a friend once for calling me while I was in the middle of listening
to "Comfortably Numb"—a ritual I considered practically religious. To be
honest though, The Wall now is
pretty far from my favorite Pink Floyd album. (I've only got about a half-dozen
songs from it on my Pink Floyd playlist, and one of them is really a B-side
from the same era.) I have a lot more affection for The Final Cut, where Roger Waters carries his World War II
obsession to its logical end, and I think the monolithic Dark Side and Wish You Were Here are both pretty unimpeachable. I've also been getting
into some of the pre-Dark Side
records in recent years—especially Meddle. And I like the Syd Barrett stuff too, though I came
to it backwards, starting with Barrett's solo albums (fodder for another
Popless entry later on, surely), then moving back to the early Floyd. As fine
as all the above is, though, my favorite Pink Floyd album is now—and
always will be—Animals.
Listening to "Dogs" one night when I was 17, I realized why I liked Pink Floyd
more than any other prog-associated band (outside of maybe Yes): It's because
for all of Waters' thematic ambition and lyrical pretension, Pink Floyd was
first and foremost a good band,
capable of performing 17-minute songs with real flow, that didn't sound like
disjointed, overthought rock symphonies. David Gilmour's guitar solos weren't
explosive displays of virtuosity; they were atmospheric, bluesy, and
progressive in the best possible sense of the word. These boys could play, and to me, Animals is the album in which they give themselves the most
room to do just that.
Enduring presence? In acknowledgement of last week's comment-section
battle over which Floyd era is the best, I've got a song each from the Barrett
bunch and the Waters run. (Nothing from the Gilmour-fronted era, which is fine
in its way, but is a little too generic for me.) Funny enough, if you play
these songs back-to-back; there's not an enormous amount of difference, aside
from the passage of time and the changing state of the art.
Pixies
Years Of Operation 1986-1993
Fits Between Dick Dale and The Velvet Underground
Personal Correspondence So many bands—Nirvana most prominently—have
appropriated the Pixies' style and attitude that I don't know if a neophyte
today could listen to Surfer Rosa
for the first time and get the same kick out of it that I did back in 1988. I'm
kicking around a Popless mini-essay about the rare signs of originality and aliveness that emerged from the cultural darkness of the '80s,
and Surfer Rosa was definitely one
of those signposts: an indication that there were still artists out there
trying to create something smart, insinuating, and even a little dangerous, to
stand alongside the great works in both their own medium and others'. It was
exciting to see the band rise to their own challenge with Doolittle, a stab at chart success that didn't sound like a
compromise at all, since for every "Here Comes Your Man," Black Francis cooked
up a "Debaser" (a song about Un Chien Andalou!) or "Tame." The band didn't exactly suffer a
precipitous fall from the stunning one-two-three of Come On Pilgrim, Surfer Rosa and Doolittle—I
thought Bossanova was a slight
dip, but it's still a good record, and I've always thought that Trompe Le
Monde is really underrated, even
though it's essentially the first Frank Black solo album—but the blaze of
creativity that marked their first four years of existence dimmed into
something more workmanlike, and the surreal perversity of Black Francis' lyrics
became more conventionally weird and even adolescent. One minute, he's singing
about how he wants his lover to cut her hands, wipe them on her clothes, and
send them along by mail; the next, he's ga-ga for UFOs. The muse can lead folks
down some erratic paths at times.
Enduring presence? I worry a little that the Pixies reunion tours have
dulled the band's mystique. I saw the band live twice during their first run,
and neither were what I'd call great shows. I liked them best the first time,
on the Doolittle tour, when they
were still playing their songs in alphabetical order and seemed to have a sense
of playfulness about them, even as they remained immobile on stage. On the Trompe
Le Monde tour, the set was too short
and the performance too flat; and in the footage I've seen of their recent
shows, they don't seem much more dynamic. So they're not the best live act in
the world. But the songs! Oh man, the songs….
The Pogues
Years Of Operation 1982-96
Fits Between The Chieftains and Dropkick Murphys
Personal Correspondence I didn't get a whole lot out of my first summer
romance, outside of a stack of too-painful-to-read-again love letters and a
tape that had They Might Be Giants' debut album on one side and The Pogues' Rum,
Sodomy & The Lash on the other. I
had to return the tape—though not, sadly, the letters—but I quickly
bought the band's Red Roses For Me,
which was the only one of their records I could find at the time. It's probably
their most "trad" album, and though it's got a lot of terrific songs, it was
clear to me right away that The Pogues lost a lot of their uniqueness the more
they hewed to conventional Celtic music and pub shouters. Though there were a
lot of talented musicians and songwriters in The Pogues, the band's mad genius
was Shane McGowan, the snaggle-toothed drunk who'd somehow internalized what
made ancient folk music so stirring and found ways to recreate it in a modern
context. But McGowan was unreliable—a friend of mind saw the band live
back in the late '80s and said it was one of the worst concerts he'd ever
attended—and after he left The Pogues, they lost the wild, raging element
that made them one of the best bands in the world for about a five-year
stretch. I understand the McGowan has been touring with his old bandmates again
off and on. But I doubt we'll be getting another Rum, Sodomy & The Lash anytime soon.
Enduring presence? I think If I Should
Fall From Grace With God, Peace
And Love and Hell's Ditch are all superb albums, but Rum, Sodomy & The
Lash is like a rock 'n' roll
version of James Joyce's Dubliners.
(It even has 12 stories, and saves its epic for the end.) In between rowdy old
traditional numbers like "Jesse James" and "The Gentleman Soldier," McGowan
offers his own songs about homelessness, drunkenness and degradation, creating
a vision of the universe in which people are born to be "spat on and shat on,
raped and abused." Rum, Sodomy & The Lash is about as bleak a take on humanity as I can
imagine. And you can dance a little jig to it, too.
The Police
Years Of Operation 1977-86
Fits Between The Pretenders and Men At Work
Personal Correspondence Because of Sting's persistent pomposity, The Police's
reputation as one of the most exciting bands of the New Wave era has dimmed
somewhat, but I'm still a huge fan of the first four Police albums,
which—like Tom Petty's early records, and The Cars'—sound only
lightly conformed to the sounds and trends of their time. Yes, they dabbed in
reggae like every other British band of the late '70s, and yes they had stylish
post-punk album covers. But otherwise, The Police looked and sounded exactly
like The Police—for better and worse. So long as Sting's social
conscience and literary pretensions were a small element in the band's whole
polyrhythmic pop-rock mélange, they were tolerable—even quaint. When
self-importance became the whole show on the blockbuster Synchronicity, they lost the fleetness that made albums like Regatta
De Blanc so easy to enjoy. I once
made a list of some of the worst rock lyrics of all time, and there's scarcely
a song from Synchronicity that
doesn't make the list. I mean, "You consider me the young apprentice / Caught
between the Scylla and Charybdis?" Or "Hey mighty brontosaurus / Don't you have
a lesson for us?" How did Stewart Copeland keep from flinging his sticks at
Sting's head during rehearsals?
Enduring presence? My personal Police playlist contains nothing from Synchronicity—an album I honestly can't abide anymore, as
much as I loved it at age 13—but it probably contains more of Ghost In
The Machine than most reasonable
people would include. Maybe it's because Ghost was one of my initial "10 albums for a penny"
Columbia Record & Tape Club orders, and thus got a lot of play during my
formative music-listening years, but there's something about the sound of that record—so muted, driven by rattling
percussion and springy synthesizers—that makes me feel like it's
pitch-black and stone-still outside, no matter what time of day it is.
[pagebreak]
Stray Tracks
From the fringes of the collection, a few songs
to share….
Pete Yorn, "Life On A Chain"
I'd never heard Yorn until I
taught a class on criticism a few years back and asked my students to bring in
some of their favorite music, to defend in front of their peers. One bright
young lad—and I mean that quite literally…he was accepted into Harvard
Law a couple of years later—played "Life On A Chain," and though from
what I'd read about Yorn, I expected him to be yet another wan
singer-songwriter, those preconceived notions were immediately dispelled. "Life
On A Chain" sounds more like Pearl Jam covering The Cure, and the way it starts
with crackle and adds instrumentation is like a mini-history of the development
of popular music. I immediately bought Music For The Morning After, and…well, I was let down by it, to be honest. I
didn't hear anything else on it as immediate and vibrant as "Life On A Chain,"
and I found the two albums that followed to be a little muddled as well. This
week though, revisiting my Yorn collection, I fully expected to cut most of it,
and instead I found myself enjoying all three albums more than I ever have
before—especially 2006's Nightcrawler, which shows Yorn experimenting with different sounds
and styles far more fruitfully. He still hasn't recorded another "Life On A
Chain" in my opinion, but after this week, I find I'm interested in Yorn again.
Peter Bjorn & John, "Paris 2004"
I assume no one needs to hear that song again anytime soon, so
here's a reminder that PB&J;'s breakthrough album Writer's Block is rife with other indie-pop charmers. As likeable as
quasi-retro folk-rock can be, it's essentially a sound for connoisseurs who get
off on the evocation of once-fashionable musical moods. Writer's Block, though, rolls by like it's on its way from the past
to the future, trailing a cloud of bongos and whistles. Peter Bjorn And John
carve out a unique sonic space, simultaneously cavernous and intimate, and they
don't overdecorate. There's not much to this song besides a simple sentiment, a
hummable melody, and some snappy sonic window-dressing—but if you think
about it, that's all pop music ever is.
Peter Case, "Horse & Crow"
The Plimsouls, "A Million Miles Away"
The heyday of The Plimsouls
came about a two or three years before I started listening to college radio, so
I didn't hear the band's should've-been-a-hit "A Million Miles Away"—an
'80s teenflick staple—until well after I'd become a Peter Case fan. I
heard Case's song "Satellite Beach" on college radio and subsequently recorded
his eponymous solo debut from a friend; and even though the electronic drums
and trippy guitars of "Satellite Beach" are pretty far removed from the rest of
that record, it was smartly stuck towards the end of side two, which kept me
captive on my first listen, and allowed me to hear the obvious quality of the
other songs. Much like Marshall Crenshaw, I feel like Case has struggled to
match the excellence of his debut, though unlike with Crenshaw, a lot of my problems with Case's
subsequent albums have to do with how hard he's often tried to present himself
in a number of neo-traditionalist guises, many of which work against his
obvious gifts as a power-pop tunesmith. Even a rootsy number like "Horse &
Crow" off Peter Case has a certain
hooky jangle that puts it more in line with the car-stereo-ready shimmer of "A
Million Miles Away" than the bleak troubadour songs Case has so often recorded
since. I like Case a lot—and wish Rhino or somebody would put together a
full Case box set, including material from The Plimsouls and The
Nerves—but I feel like too much of the time, he's in denial about where
his strengths lie.
Peter Gabriel, "San Jacinto"
There was a time—maybe
around the release of So—when
I would've counted Gabriel as among the artists I most respected and enjoyed,
and while my respect hasn't dimmed much over the years, I find my actual
enjoyment of Gabriel's music to be in a permanent state of flux. Sometimes I
spin Security or So or Gabriel's third self-titled third album, and hear
a song like "San Jacinto"—with its spooky abstractions of worldbeat and
simple, powerful scene-setting—and I feel like I'm 16 again, when the
scope, ambition and patient escalation of emotion of Gabriel's best songs left
me feeling awed and even enlightened. And then other times I hear something
like "The Rhythm Of The Heat" or "Biko"—songs that blew me away as a
teen—and suddenly they sound overbearing, presumptuous, and very much of
their time. (And I can't even approach the big pop anthems "Sledgehammer" or
"Big Time" at all.) Either I've become disenchanted with Gabriel or I need to
undergo a program of re-education next year.
Peter McCann, "Do You Want To Make Love"
Peter Sarstedt, "Where Do
You Go To (My Lovely)"
The Phantom, "Love Me"
In preparation for "sex week"
in Popless, here are three kinds of musical come-ons. The first arrives from
the endearingly blunt '70s, when phrases like "make it with you" and "when
we're doin' it" and "afternoon delight" were littered across Top 40
hits—when "Hey baby, let's screw!" was a perfectly legitimate thing to
say in a million-selling pop single. In some ways I prefer Peter McCann's
"sensuous male" persona to that of Peter Starstedt, a late '60s swingin' London
sophisticate who sings about a jaded jet-setter with the kind of deep
understanding that seems to imply that if she needed someone to share her big,
lonely bed, well, he'd be the only one who knows her well enough to get the job
done (so to speak). Ultimately though, I think I'll stick with The Phantom, who
comes from the R&B;/rockabilly tradition of fucked-up dudes emitting carnal
howls into the night, and seeing who answers. I'm betting The Phantom got more
tail in his time than McCann and Starstedt combined.
Peter Murphy, "Cuts You Up"
I had a tough time
reconciling the smooth pop version of Peter Murphy with the deep-voiced goth
who led Bauhaus to cult glory, but it's hard to deny the wonders of this song,
which translates Murphy's post-Bowie charisma for early '90s college radio,
processing gloom into pop.
Pharcyde, "Runnin'"
Following up on what I wrote
about P.M. Dawn last week, I want to say in my defense that the late '80s and
early '90s were a tricky time for people trying to keep up with hip-hop—especially
if, like me, they were trying to keep up with a half-dozen other genres at the
same time. While gangsta rap was in its nascent stages, new acts more on the
"alternative" side of hip-hop keep popping up as the genre's great hippie hope,
only to fade quickly. It was hard to sort out who were the long-term players,
and who just had a sound that was appealing strictly in contrast to the more
hardcore folks. I'd argue that Pharcyde were pretty legit, in that they didn't
seem to be interested in playing to or against any type, but instead just
recorded songs that appealed to their own idiosyncratic tastes and
personalities. But then, much the same could be said about Basehead or Digibale
Planets—two acts I haven't listened to in over a decade.
Phil Ochs, "I Ain't
Marching Anymore (Electric Folk Rock Version)"
I'm saving Pete Seeger until
I get to The Weavers, but I couldn't pass by another member of protest folk's
holy trinity (the third being Bob Dylan). I like Ochs, but I've never understood
the die-hards who feel that Dylan essentially stole Ochs' shtick and
popularized it, thereby assuming a mantle that rightfully should've been Ochs'.
The genius of Dylan has always been his mercurial personality, and ability to
adapt to (and even shape) his times. The genius of Ochs is that he preferred to
document the world as he saw it rather than try to hit the charts. Dylan once
famously said to Ochs, "You're not a folksinger; you're a journalist." But
surely the musical landscape is wide enough to accommodate both? (That said, I
think I like this rare electric version of one of Ochs' most well-known songs;
it makes me wonder what Ochs would've sounded like if he had tried to be Dylan.)
Philip Glass, "Floe"
For a good long stretch when
I was in high school, my afternoon routine—after being dropped off at
home by the bus, because I was too lame to have a car—was to grab a Coke
and a sleeve of saltines, watch JEM & The Holograms and Gidget
on the local UHF station, then retire to my room for the hour before my parents
got home and put on Glassworks,
which I'd listen to while studying. Inevitably, somewhere around the middle of
"Floe," I'd abandon all pretense of doing my homework and I'd just stare
blankly at the ceiling, trying to see if I could adjust my eyes properly to
make the shadows cast by the spackle look like tiny holes. And then I'd fall
asleep until Mom called me for dinner. This kept up until I got a copy of
Dinosaur Jr.'s You're Living All Over Me, which became my go-to afternoon zone-out music. The similarities
between the two records are few, aside from the way both create clutter and
then abruptly clear it away. But while I know that Glass has a somewhat limited
and far too imitable style, it's hard not to be carried away when those
chirping instruments start fluttering and swirling in ever-more-discernable
patterns. One moment they look like bumps; the next like divots.
Pizzicato Five, "It's A Beautiful Day"
As with many ignorant American music-lovers, Pizzicato
Five represented my first real exposure to J-Pop, aside from the odd Shonen
Knife track. I think for a lot of us, our initial reaction to P5 was that they
were "fun," in a silly way, but close listening and prolonged exposure revealed
that the band was pretty far from a joke. I especially dug 1997's Happy End
Of The World, the first P5 album to be
released in its entirety in the U.S. The earlier Matador releases were
compilations focusing on P5's kitschy, hyper-pop appeal, but Happy
End Of The World found them picking away at
the strands of their intricate sonic tapestry and presenting the resultant wad
of loose strings. While "It's a Beautiful Day" is a typical P5 song—a
gaggle of cheerleaders stomps the intro, leading to the goosed-up Nipponese
equivalent of a Nancy Sinatra toe-tapper—other tracks like "My Baby
Portable Player Sound" and "Collision and Improvisation" blend vocal excerpts
with stop-start rhythms and what could pass for the backing track to a
Saturday-morning cartoon show. It's tempting to hold Pizzicato Five as an
example of Western culture's degrading influence on the East, but that's far
too pat. They're commenting on the commercial sounds they borrow as much as
they're reveling in how cool it all sounds.
[pagebreak]
PJ Harvey, "Sheela-Na-Gig"
PJ Harvey falls into the
category of critically adored artists who've always left me comparatively cold.
I liked a lot of her early work, when the songs had a more raucous punky edge,
but right around the time of the acclaimed To Send You My Love—a record I found drone-y and dull—I began
to realize that Harvey was obviously talented and persuasive, but just not for
me. The only recent PJ Harvey album I've liked is Stories From The City,
Stories From The Sea, though I
listened to that again this week and was surprised to find it kind of flat too.
I can understand what Harvey does as an artist on an abstract level, but unless
she's rocking full-bore—as on this song—I can't connect to it.
Placebo, "36 Degrees"
I heard this song
on the radio, and since I was unable to place its sound precisely, I picked up
Placebo's debut album and tried to figure the band out by writing a review. I
opined, "There's a speed at which rock
'n' roll music is no longer toe-tapping, or even head-banging. It just rushes,
and the only feasible physical response is a kind of manic quiver. Placebo's
sound—halfway between Fugazi and Smashing Pumpkins, with a little Rush
mixed in—comes alive on songs like '36 Degrees,' which highlights singer/guitarist
Brian Molko's high, quavering start-stop vocals, as well as his stunray guitar.
Placebo's music is remarkably direct, with unstudied progressions and enigmatic
yet strangely personal lyrics. The second half of their debut album overstays
its welcome, even before the attention-sapping 14-minute instrumental that
closes the proceedings. But in these days of flux, even half an album of good
guitar-based rock is better than nothing. We fans of the guitar are fast
becoming cultists, clinging to whatever obscure band can satisfy our desire
before that band inevitably cashes in on electronica. So here's to Placebo, for
working however briefly in a medium that, with a little practice and a little
faith, they could master." As you can see, the concerns of rock critics were a
little different a decade ago. As for Placebo, the
proggier elements of their sound diminished over time, but the arena-filling
ambition and the decadent posturing of Molko remained. They became a pretty big
deal in the UK too, though here in the states, they generally only appealed to
die-hards like me, who appreciated the polished pop-rock singles spit out by
Placebo's gleaming ennui machine.
Poi Dog Pondering, "Pulling Touch"
This Austin hippie-dippy act
came along between Camper Van Beethoven and the rise of the jam bands, and
while Poi Dog Pondering had a little success on the jam band circuit later on,
their sensibility was never fully attuned to the noodle-dancers. They had more
in common with Jonathan Richman than Blues Traveler, and bandleader Frank
Orrall's wide-eyed, uplifting approach rang maybe a bit too twee—then,
and especially now. I first heard the band when they opened for Robyn Hitchcock
at a UGA-sponsored gig in Athens, and I was so excited by their performance
that I bought their two existing EPs on vinyl the next day, not realizing that
they were both going to be combined on a single CD a year later. Poi Dog
Pondering must've played Athens a half-dozen times over the next two years, and
I think I saw every show, learning the songs that would soon pop up on their
official major-label debut Wishing Like A Mountain And Thinking Like The Sea. But by the time I left college, I'd started to find
the whole up-with-people aspect of PDP kind of naïve and even a little
embarrassing, and I never followed the band into their subsequent experiments
with dance music and the like. I was surprised this week to find that with a
little distance, I could enjoy the songs from those first two EPs and debut LP
again, even as I winced at Orral's lyrics about cutesy love stuff and one-world
activism. Ultimately though, this is music for college kids, and like a lot of
awkward phases, Poi Dog Pondering should probably stay in college.
The Pointer Sisters, "Automatic"
I'm fascinated by The Pointer
Sisters, an ostensible R&B; act that hit the charts over and over in the
late '70s and early '80s with songs that didn't strictly conform to their
genre. They covered Bruce Springsteen's "Fire," had a massive hit with the semi-country
ballad "Slow Hand," and were practically a techno-pop act by the time they
recorded "I'm So Excited," "Jump (For My Love)" and "Automatic." The Pointers
were like background singers that became best-selling frontwomen because they'd
learned how to conform to whatever was expected of them. They produced
well-built, professional-sounding pop hits. And did you know that before they
recorded their first album, they provided the vocals for this?:
Polvo, "Enemy Insects"
Around the time Polvo wrapped their too-short
career, there was a lot of buzz about "post-rock," which prompted me to write a
whole column about what the genre might mean, incorporating reviews of about a
half-dozen records. Here's the Polvo-related excerpt: "Polvo's Shapes, their most recent foray into oddly-tuned guitars,
near-metallic riffs, and vacant vocalizing, finds the Chapel Hill, N.C.,
group's formula getting a little stale. To disguise their familiar tread, they
experiment with different instrumentation, bringing oddly tuned acoustic
guitars into the mix, though what makes Polvo still worth listening to, despite
their approaching conceptual bankruptcy, is that they remain committed to making
their music dive and swoop in ways that few bands this side of Built to Spill
and Yes have dared. They were playing with sonic textures when John McEntire
was still keeping 4/4 time." No one talks much about Polvo—or
post-rock—anymore, but they were a good little indie band that made some
mindbending music on a shoestring budget. And Shapes sounds a lot better now than I gave it credit for
then, though all things being equal, the EP Celebrate The New Dark
Age is the record to start with—not
just for Polvo, but maybe even for the genre they helped pioneer.
*****************
Regrettably unremarked
upon: Pete Seeger, Peter Frampton,
Peter & Gordon, Peter Wolf, Peter Paul & Mary, Petra Haden, Phil Collins, Phish,
Pinback, Pinetop Seven, Pino Donaggio, The Pipettes and The Platters
Also listened to: Persephone's Bees, Pete Huttlinger, Pete Miser, Peter
And The Wolf, Peter C. Johnson, Peter Cook & Dudley
Moore, Peter Garland, Peter Himmelman, Peter Holsapple, Peter,
JeffriesPeter Lewis, Peter McCann, Peter Searcy,
Peter Starstedt, Peter Walker, Petey Pablo, The, Phantom Planet, Pheromone, Phil Boroff, Philip
Phantom Family Halo
Aaberg, Philip E. Karnats, The Phoenix Foundation, Phonograph, Phosphorescent, Photek, Phreek,
Phyllis Boyens, Piece Of Peace, Pieta Brown, The Pietasters, Pilot, Pilot Round
The Sun, Pilot To Gunner, Pinebender, Pink Fairies, Pink
Nasty, Pink Razors, Pinkeye D'gekko,
Pinmonkey, Pip Skid, The Pips, Pitchblende, Pitty Sing,
Pivitplex, The Places, Plainsong, The Planet The, Plastic
Bertrand, The Plastic Constellations, Plat, Platinum Pied
Pipers, Player, Playgroup, Pleasant, The Plugz, PMD and Po' Girl
*****************
Next week: From The
Polyphonic Spree to Queen, plus a few words on sex