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.
Maybe it's
because I was young and clueless myself at the time, but when I was growing up
in the '80s, the decade seemed somehow… softer than what had gone before. I'd
heard all about the libertine, activist atmosphere of the '60s and '70s, and
when I looked around at the decade I was stuck in—the decade of AIDS and "Just
Say No"—I felt like I'd been cheated. As the '80s progressed, popular
music grew increasingly synthesized and frivolous, movies aimed more and more
for spectacle and low comedy, and few seemed interested in delving too deeply
into politics. Consider the difference between Saturday Night Live in the '70s and '80s. When the show
started, it was the hippest thing on TV, alternating druggie surrealism with
wise-ass satire, operating under the presumption that its audience knew and
cared about what was going on in the world. But watch any given installment of Weekend
Update in the
mid-'80s and the height of subversion is Tim Kazurinsky saying "orgasm."
Still,
there were signs
of life that flashed intermittently throughout the decade. The corner video
store stocked films by David Lynch, Jim Jarmusch, Spike Lee and the Coen
brothers. The local comic book shop occasionally had a copy of Weirdo or Love & Rockets stashed on a dusty, inaccessible
shelf. And while the musical heroes of the '60s and '70s—even the early
punk legends—were making records ever-more indebted to the lead-footed
sound popularized by producers Trevor Horn and Arthur Baker, we received
periodic dispatches from Minneapolis, Los Angeles, San Francisco and elsewhere,
from bands trying to carve out their own niche, away from the bombast and
bluster. Among those bands was R.E.M., serving as a reassuring constant and a
bellwether of change.
I first
heard R.E.M. in the summer of 1984, while spending a couple of days with
relatives in Maryland. During the evenings, my uncle took my stepfather and me
to Orioles games and harness racing, but during the days, my cousin drove me to
Georgetown to eat pizza and browse record stores. Then we'd head back to his
house to watch videos, read rock magazines and listen to music. He put Murmur on at one point, and about a minute
into the record, when Michael Stipe sang "straight off the boat" in that high,
nasal whine, I was hooked. Nothing in the classic rock or new wave I'd been
listening to sounded quite like this strange mix of tight, punchy rhythms,
jangly guitar, vocal mumble, and melodies that built ever upward.
Coincidentally,
when I got back to Nashville, I caught a repeat of Late Night With David
Letterman that
featured R.E.M. performing "Radio Free Europe" and "So. Central Rain (I'm
Sorry)." This was back in the days when Stipe was painfully shy, so he
retreated to the wings while Letterman came out to chat with Mike Mills and
Peter Buck between songs—which only added to the band's curious blend of
otherworldly mystique and "just plain folks." (Aside: Speaking of signs of life
in the '80s, the Letterman show was definitely among them, though because
Letterman's smirky take on TV conventions featured more glib goofing-off than
toothy satire, in some ways he contributed to the "nothing matters" vibe that
made the decade so frustrating at times; Bret Easton Ellis wrote back then that
"the voice of my generation is the voice of David Letterman," and he didn't
intend it as a compliment.)
I wasn't
old enough to get a job the summer I discovered R.E.M., and my allowance wasn't
big enough for me to afford the price of an album, but I had to get my hands on an R.E.M.
record, and since none of my friends were fans (yet) and the band wasn't being
played on the radio stations I listened to (yet), I fell back on my emergency
plan: My grandfather's coin collection, which I'd come into possession of after
he died. It wasn't a big collection—just a starter kit, really—but
in straight currency terms, it contained about fifteen bucks in coins. (I don't
want to think about what they were actually worth.) I rode my bike down to
Wal-Mart and bought the only R.E.M. album they had in stock, which was the
recently released Reckoning. While pedaling home, a sudden summer storm blew in, and I
had to hustle to take refuge in the first shelter I could find: the doorway of
a church. I was convinced I had angered The Almighty by spending the coin
collection. But then the storm passed, I headed home, I played Reckoning, and I forgot all about my immortal
soul. Reckoning
was totally worth it.
In the
years to come I would read a lot about R.E.M., and by following the bands they
cited in interviews—and through my own deeper explorations into rock
history—I got a clearer sense of where they were coming from. What was
refreshing about R.E.M. in the '80s was their self-awareness. They openly
acknowledged their debts to The Byrds, Pylon, The Velvet Underground, The
Everly Brothers, Patti Smith, The Soft Boys and The Feelies; and Buck in
particular always seemed to have a sense of the band's strengths and
weaknesses. Early on, he boasted that R.E.M. could never be U2 or The
Clash—"They're a newspaper, we're not," he once said in an
interview—but as R.E.M. drew a wider audience and developed the sonic
oomph to play bigger rooms, politics did begin to creep into their songs, along
with a certain measure of wit and personality that was absent back on the
beguilingly aloof Murmur. I remember the first time Nashville's album-rock station played an
R.E.M. song, and I remember how their popularity gradually seeped down from the
college level to the high school level, and soon to the Billboard charts. No one I knew accused
R.E.M, of "selling out" (probably because the band wasn't really part of the
punk scene, which obsessed over such things). Instead, the band's success felt
like a validation.
Of course I
didn't know any of that was imminent during the summer I heard Murmur and bought Reckoning. I had no idea what was coming on
the day before 9th grade, when I borrowed a laundry marker from my
mom and carefully inked "R.E.M." in tall thin letters on the front of an old
blue T-shirt. I just knew that I'd found something new that I loved, and that I
wanted to share. For me, allying myself to R.E.M.—or any of the dozens of
alt-rock bands I'd devote myself to over the next several years—wasn't
about trying to set myself apart from my peers. I wanted them to like R.E.M. too. They had their
Van Halen and Journey Ts. I thought of myself as a walking advertisement for
something better.
One
afternoon, about a year later, I was spending a weekend with my dad in Sewanee,
Tennessee, where he was attending seminary at The University Of The South. I
took a walk through the quiet campus on a temperate fall day, and perched
myself on a big rock under a tall tree that was quickly losing the last of its
leaves. A light breeze carrying the sound from an open window in one of the
dorms, where some students were listening to Reckoning, so I sat a while and listened
along with them, about 30 feet below and a hundred yards away. I imagined
myself at college in a few years, away from the get-along throng, making my own
choices, studying what I wanted, preparing to usher in the '90s and what I
hoped would be a decade of changes both personal and cultural. And one thought
crossed my mind:
I like it
here.
*****************
Pieces
Of The Puzzle
R.E.M.
Years Of
Operation
1980-present
Fits
Between The Feelies
and The Soft Boys
Personal
Correspondence I'm
always eager to read anything my colleague Steve Hyden writes, because I like
the way he challenges conventional wisdom without burning bridges just for the
sake of it. But Steve's post about
R.E.M. last year struck me as wrong-headed on a couple of counts.
First off, I don't agree that when it comes to R.E.M. albums "if you own one,
you own them all." If anything, I think each album takes a decidedly different
approach to the core principles of jangle and obfuscation that the band
introduced back on their first single. Sometimes R.E.M. comes out raging, as on Monster.
Sometimes they play it softer, or experiment with electronics, or hire a
big-name rock producer, or record a whole album at sound check. Each record
sounds wholly unique. (Not that they're all masterpieces. R.E.M. certainly has
a fair share of duds, though in some ways that's a function of their longevity
and productivity, which I find far more inherently commendable than Steve does.
But that's a subject for another essay.) I've seen R.E.M. in concert four
times—once on the Fables Of The Reconstruction tour, once for Life's Rich
Pageant, and twice
for Green—and
each show was
different too, from the rough-hewn Vanderbilt University gig they did for Fables to the massive, coke-fueled arena
tour for Green.
I also disagree with Steve's contention that no one would punch up R.E.M. on
their favorite jukebox when drunk at a bar at 2 a.m. Maybe it's a generational
thing, but I know a lot of my friends from college still consider themselves
R.E.M. fans, and we'd definitely bellow along to "Can't Get There From Here" or
"These Days" or "Disturbance At The Heron House" if we were knocking back a few
in the wee hours. (Of course, we all went to school in Athens. Also, we
probably wouldn't be drinking at 2 a.m., because we're very, very old.) I've
also heard it said by some—not by Steve—that R.E.M. doesn't matter
because their influence hasn't endured much beyond the first half of the '90s.
But that's a dicey argument to make too. Ten years ago, you could've said that
Gang Of Four didn't matter much, because so few bands aped their style. Then,
suddenly, seemingly every new band was all about Gang Of Four. I'm confident that
R.E.M.'s best albums—and there are a lot of them, albeit none since
1996—will endure, and the decade of hit-and-miss work they've recently
generated won't count against them, any more than Voodoo Lounge diminishes the achievement of Exile
On Main St.
Enduring
presence? The two
songs above—the same song, recorded a decade apart—gives two looks
at R.E.M., showing a clear evolution of sound. Given a choice, I'll take the
former, but more out of nostalgia than aesthetic superiority. And now, having
written plenty about R.E.M., I'll spare you the story of how I once spilled a
drink on Michael Stipe. Maybe some other day.
[pagebreak]
Radiohead
Years Of
Operation 1991-present
Fits
Between Oasis and
Pink Floyd
Personal
Correspondence I've
had a rocky relationship with Radiohead, largely due to my own cussedness. I bought Pablo Honey
shortly after it was released in 1993, prompted by great reviews and the
not-bad single "Creep." But I found the album as a whole too detached and
subdued, mirroring an irritating trend toward affectlessness in British rock.
When The Bends came out in 1995, I got
a promo copy, played it once, then got rid of it, convinced that Radiohead's
time had passed. But I kept hearing the radio "hits" from the record—"Fake
Plastic Trees" and "High and Dry"—and they began to grow on me, such that
when OK Computer appeared in 1997 to a
tidal wave of critical praise, I picked it up, determined to love Radiohead if
it killed me. Well, it didn't take. The draggy pace, vaporous melodies, and
strained vocals of Thom Yorke all left me cold, and the "alienation through
technology" theme that was supposed to be so brilliant struck me as too oblique
to connect. I much preferred the direct spiritual inquiry and soul-stirring
guitar solos of Built to Spill's Perfect From Now On that year, and I again filed Radiohead away in my "close
but not quite" file. If I'm being honest though, I think a lot of my
Radiohead-resistance was due to a feeling that I'd missed something by not
being on board from the start; and since I felt left out, I decided that I
didn't want to be a Radiohead fan,
because they really weren't so great. Ah, but then came Kid A. A few days after I heard that record the first time, I
was left grappling—somewhat uneasily—with the notion that Radiohead
had made an album that I really, honestly liked. So I wrote the following: "Kid
A is definitely a more experimental-minded
rock record, given that the first electric guitar doesn't appear until deep
into the third track, and given that many of the songs seem deliberately
designed to unsettle—especially the opening number, 'Everything In It's
Right Place,' which undercuts the standard Radiohead numb-mantra style with a
decidedly creepy choir of electronically speeded-up and manipulated voices. As
is often the case with the edgier extremes of rock music, the corrosion only
serves to make the traces of beauty more priceless. The chopped-up vibes and
strings on the title track are oddly moving, the vigorous 'Idioteque' evokes
the pleasure and horror of the future more profoundly than anything on OK
Computer, and the rich sorrow behind 'How
to Disappear Completely' and the U2-ish "Optimistic" shows what virtue comes
from Thom Yorke making an attempt to emote. When the album strikes a chord, the
damn thing resonates. That said, there's a naggingly unfinished feel to Kid
A. It's only 10 songs long (11 if you
count the unlisted instrumental snippet buried at the end), and a couple of
those are the sort of throwaway mood pieces that usually pop up in a longer
work. It's as if the band has chosen to respond to the massive expectations for
this record by shortchanging their audience and themselves. Afraid to make
another grand statement, they fritter around in the lab, stripping down pop
music to minimalist forms and rebuilding it as a Frankenstein monster of
techno, jazz, and rock, just to see if it'll terrorize the countryside or
capture the imagination. It does more of the latter than the former, but only
because it's not quite terrific enough."
Enduring
presence? I've
since revised my opinion of Kid A upward, and I've gone back and fallen in love with The
Bends too, though
I'm still hot-and-cold on OK Computer and neutral to Pablo Honey, and I wasn't as wowed by Amnesiac or Hail To The Thief. But if you pressed me to name one
Radiohead album that rules them all, I'd have to go with In Rainbows, which synthesizes their arena-rock
side and their experimental side magnificently, and is the only record of
theirs that I think works from the first note to the last. I'm now a Radiohead
fan. I'm on the team.
Ramones
Years Of
Operation 1974-96
Fits Between The Shangri-Las and The New York
Dolls
Personal
Correspondence Earlier this year,
while listening to a "Best Of Sire Records" compilation, I started thinking
about the sound of the Ramones.
As seminal as they were—and as important to the development of punk rock
as a genre and an ideal—the Ramones' classic early albums are also very
easy to listen to, and easy to like. For such a groundbreaking band, with such
an air of "danger" (at least in the early going), the Ramones never really tried
to put listeners off. They liked their songs simple and singable. And on those
first couple of albums they buried the fuzzy, grating guitars in the mix, and
put the vocals way up front, so no one could miss the catchy parts. I watched a
collection of Ramones concert footage and TV appearances recently, and the
incarnation of the band that played CBGB's in 1974—when Joey Ramone
gyrated more than he bounced—was so much rawer than the still-tight but
more family-friendly version that emerged towards the end of the Ramones' run.
It's an odd thing to witness an ear-splitting Ramones performance at Max's
Kansas City in 1976 one minute, and then see them clowning around with Sha Na
Na on a syndicated variety show the next. But then that's what made the band so
lovable, that they were willing to amplify the parts of their musical
personality that made them iconic, in order to give potential fans something to
latch onto. Consciously or not, the Ramones were pop art of the most sublime
kind.
Enduring
presence? On the other hand, in
their oddball cuddliness, the Ramones became a kind of theme-park version of
punk, and in a way that was doubly sad, since they could've been—and should've been—Top 40 perennials. Instead they spent
decades on the global touring circuit, charitably providing millions of punkers
and ex-punkers the chance to say, "I once saw the Ramones…"
Rancid
Years Of
Operation
1991-present
Fits
Between The Clash
and All
Personal
Correspondence A
couple of weeks ago (man, this project has been moving fast lately), I wrote in
reference to Operation Ivy that I missed their whole wave of punk as it was
happening, primarily because it wasn't on my radar screen. My friends weren't
listening to it; my local college radio station wasn't playing it; the national
music magazines weren't writing about it; and they weren't touring anywhere
near where I lived. So I didn't catch up with Tim Armstrong until Rancid, and
didn't catch up with Rancid until …And Out Come The Wolves started pulling down Clash
comparisons from major rock critics. Personally, I think stacking Rancid up
against The Clash is unfair to both, despite the obvious influence. The Clash
was a band of its time, who in six years and five albums expanded the nascent
vocabulary of punk rock to encompass reggae, dub, rockabilly, Tin Pan Alley,
soul shouting, and, most importantly, politicized anger. Rancid is a tightly
wound band of rock history buffs who produce a credible copy of The Clash's core
sound, which they combine with winning melodies and with lyrics about their
friends and their hangouts, mixed with just a little politics. That's not
intended as a slam; rock has a great tradition of street vignettes dating back
at least to Lou Reed. And Rancid does know how to make a joyful noise. On Wolves and Life Won't Wait—their two best
albums—Rancid assayed their usual blend of raw stompers and danceable
ska, which, at 60 minutes of music each, can be a bit much. Still, when the
sound comes together on tracks like the soaring "Leicester Square," complaints
about Rancid's "authenticity" seem petty. Yes, the band's stabs at
rabble-rousing sometimes sound shallow and cartoonish, and yes, they wear their
influences on their sleeves rather than revealing them in inspired new
configurations. But unlike the other gimmicky ska-punkers that emerged around
the same time, Rancid put the accent on high-energy rave-ups, not pale
imitations. They were, for a short time, one of the most entertaining bands
around.
Enduring
presence? Some
people want to
dislike Rancid far more than they deserve, in part because a lot of their best
songs sound derivative, and in part because they sold well. Perhaps stung by
the criticism from their tribe, Rancid retreated to straight-up, hookless
hardcore on their eponymous 2000 LP, then returned to softening their hard
edges with touches of ska, gospel and rockabilly on 2003's Indestructible. But their work as Rancid over the
past decade (which excludes their often engaging side projects) mostly lacks
the charge of inspired discovery that accompanied the band's '90s records.
Though Armstrong's songwriting has always drawn comparisons to Joe Strummer,
his voice is more like The Pogues' Shane MacGowan, and as with MacGowan,
Armstrong's raspy slur has become increasingly indistinct. And so have Rancid's
songs. There's a new album due later this year though, so we'll see; maybe
they're due for a turnaround.
Red House Painters
Years Of
Operation 1989-2001
Fits
Between American
Music Club and Neil Young
Personal
Correspondence
Sometimes when I reflect on my first year of adulthood after graduating
college—in those halcyon days when the Braves were winning, gas was
cheap, my favorite bands were on the radio, and I could spend a whole Friday
theater-hopping at the local multiplex before going out for wings and beer with
my friends—I miss the blissful nothingness. Then I recall that in between all
the drinking and baseball and movies, I was also working three jobs, writing
for peanuts for whomever would publish me, and also spending a lot of time
driving around in the rain, listening to Red House Painters, and wishing I had
a girlfriend. Granted, those long wallows—themselves the kind of
self-indulgence that only a 22-year-old living in a comfortable country can
afford, no matter how broke he is—were part of my overall time-wasting.
And submerging myself in Mark Kozelek's epic mope-outs was a way of
romanticizing my existence more than it merited. I still love those early RHP
records, which were largely about being a lost soul tripping through the end of
youth, and when I spin something like "Down Colorful Hill" or "Katy Song," I
fall back into the mood I used to savor more than I'd like to admit. But I'm
also glad that on albums like the sprawling, magnificent Songs For A Blue
Guitar and Old
Ramon, Kozelek
found that he could use both his instruments—his voice and his
guitar—to do more than just moan with regret. He started mixing in more
color, adding notes of hope and joy, and he started looking beyond himself to
tackle topics drawn from history, sports and other people's lives. He grew up,
basically.
Enduring
presence? It's
immensely gratifying to me that Kozelek hasn't disappeared from the scene,
which seemed like a distinct possibility in the mid-'90s, when Red House
Painters records weren't selling and sometimes even went unreleased. Kozelek
rebounded with the sublime Sun Kil Moon, and has become an even bigger part of
the modern alt-rock scene than the man who "discovered" him, Mark Eitzel. It
felt very lonely being an RHP fan a decade ago; not so now.
Reigning
Sound
Years Of
Operation
2001-present
Fits
Between The Detroit
Cobras and The Hives
Personal
Correspondence I've
been writing about Greg Cartwright projects off and on throughout Popless, but
Reigning Sound is the band that I think will represent his major recorded
legacy—if anyone ever pays him proper attention. I wrote up the
brilliant, beautiful Time Bomb High School for our Permanent Records column, praising it for
the way "Cartwright's stinging country-soul ballads
gain authority beyond their Paul Westerberg-ian sense of sorrow and pithiness …
They demonstrate the command of an artist who knows exactly what he's doing,
who can sing 'you're the thing that's caught my eye' with the specific
proportion of sincerity and sleaze, and can apply rippling piano, quavery organ
and cooing background vocals without the least bit of irony or rip-off." But in
some ways, Cartwright's masterpiece may be the record that followed, Too
Much Guitar, a far less accessible but
largely more impactful set of songs. Reviewing that, I wrote: "There's
no pose to Reigning Sound's neo-garage racket—no Johnny-Come-Lately-ism.
Bandleader Greg Cartwright has been in the retro scene since the early '90s,
when the only people listening to fuzzy, reverb-drenched primitivism were genre
cultists. Starting with Oblivians, then The Compulsive Gamblers, then Reigning
Sound, Cartwright has stripped blues, country, gospel, R&B; and rock to its
drunken-sing-along roots, but with an appealingly natural shape that only an
actual Memphis denizen could trace. Too Much Guitar returns to the ear-splitting noise
of Cartwright's Oblivians days, defying easy access. Cartwright obscures
anxious, Stones-styled rockers behind painfully trebly guitar, and delivers
catchy tunes that can sound like The Rascals as heard on a scratchy old 45, or
like The Beatles reborn as desperate, dirt-poor psychobilly rockers. Even the
relatively hushed ballads degenerate into a fuzzy mess when they're not
maintaining an echo-y, Animals-like spookiness. Beneath the shrill distortion
though, the songs on Too Much Guitar are every bit as smart and snappy as those on Time Bomb
High School, packed
with propulsive rhythms, unforced melodies and bright arrangements. They
contains entire little worlds, submerged in scrape and static. Because of its
harsh overtones, Too Much Guitar doesn't work well in small doses. It takes the full 36
minutes for the album's fractured, chaotic sensibility to really play out and
develop a meaning. Too Much Guitar is neo-garage re-imagined as an extended, uncivilized howl
of frustration and carnal gratification."
Enduring
presence? Look,
just buy Reigning Sound records, okay? And Cartwright, go make another one as
soon as you can. Force people to care about one of the most unjustly unsung
bands of the '00s.
[pagebreak]
The Replacements
Years Of
Operation 1979-1991
Fits
Between Big Star and
Brownsville Station
Personal
Correspondence I
had read a little about The Replacements before my first exposure to them, but
I can't imagine a more appropriate introduction than seeing them on Saturday
Night Live, on a
1986 episode that featured Harry Dean Stanton as the host and a lengthy
stand-up routine by Sam Kinison. I knew the band had a reputation for being
bratty drunks, and they lived up (or down) to it that night, stumbling their
way through two electrifying performances: a roaring "Bastards Of Young" and a
surprisingly sweet "Kiss Me On The Bus." For some reason, I taped the show, and
I'm glad I did, because I don't think it's ever been repeated in any of the SNL syndication packages—at least
not in its original form. I must've watched that tape about 20 times over the
years, chuckling at the way the band swaps clothes between the two songs
(perhaps under network order, since Bob Stinson's outfit during "Bastards Of
Young" consisted of a singlet with a neckline cut down to his pubes) and
marveling at the way Stinson hits the right note at the climactic moment of "Kiss
Me On The Bus," and gets a little smile of satisfaction on his face. I've also
seen The Replacements in concert twice—both post-Stinson—but
neither was as stirring as that SNL appearance, though both sets were solid. I arrived late the
second time I saw The Replacements, and reportedly missed Paul Westerberg
diving into the audience to take a sock at a heckler during the first song. I
also missed their much-remarked-upon Nashville outdoor amphitheater show,
opening for Tom Petty, during which they came out wearing dresses and began
their set with a sloppy cover of "Breakdown." But even though I never really
caught the band live at their most legendary, they left their mark via the
records, which I pretty well wore out. I could just as easily have dedicated
this week's opening essay to The Replacements as to R.E.M., since the 'Mats
dominated my high school music-listening as much as any other band. (Every 16 year
old should be gifted with a copy of Let It Be; it'll help their world make much
more sense.) At one point, Rolling Stone called The Replacements "The Last Best Band Of The
'80s," giving them their belated due, but I don't really think of them as tied to
the decade the way I think of R.E.M. The Replacements seemed locked away in
their own place, somewhat out time—half-passed-out and irritable.
Enduring
presence? I have a
theory about rock bands that I may explore in another essay someday, though The
Replacements are really the band the theory hinges on. The theory has to do
with the peculiar chemistry that makes a great band, and how much of that
chemistry involves the most talented member being forced to work around the
weaknesses of the least talented. In The Replacements' case, Paul Westerberg often used the
impossible Bob Stinson as a scapegoat, letting Bob's liabilities give him an
excuse to be a fuck-up himself, and to write songs simple and direct enough
that Bob could play them. After Bob got booted, The Replacements' music became
cleaner and fussier, as Westerberg made his last big push at genuine rock
stardom. I'm not as down on those later albums as some; even though All
Shook Down is
practically a Westerberg solo album, to my ears it's better than any of his actual solo albums, and full of catchy,
clever songs. Still, it says something that when I went to Amazon to download a
track from Tim
(because my copy has disappeared), the "people who bought this also bought"
list at the bottom of the page included The Clash's London Calling, Big Star's Radio City, the Pixies' Surfer Rosa and My Bloody Valentine's Loveless. In other words: "If you're
interested in this album, you'll probably also be interested in some of the
best rock albums of all time. Right this way, sir. Always happy to welcome a
man of taste."
Richard Hell
Years Of
Operation
1976-present (solo)
Fits
Between Iggy Pop
and The Strokes
Personal
Correspondence
Whenever I hit a new vein of rock/pop/soul history, I tend to stick with it a
while, mining it as fully as I can. (It's the same impulse that leads me to buy
the complete discographies of bands I've just discovered.) In my senior year of
high school and freshman year of college, I was infatuated with "pre-punk,"
inspired by reading up on New York in the mid-'70s, and by the reissue of some
of the era's classics, like Richard Hell & The Voidoids' Blank
Generation. I'd
have a tough time picking between Blank Generation Patti Smith's Horses and Television's Marquee Moon as that era's quintessential album,
but Blank Generation may be the one that's the most transitional, moving away from the
romantic bohemian gestures of his peers (and former bandmates) and towards
something ruder. The Voidoids could make a beautiful noise, but their chief
asset was Hell's hilariously contradictory personality: part poet, part brat,
part peacock, part loser. Hell may have created a lightly fictionalized, larger-than-life
version of himself, but his character wasn't one-dimensional. He was as funny
and pathetic as he was venal and swaggering. He was a fun guy to get to know.
Enduring
presence? The weird
thing about being a Richard Hell fan back in 1988 (or a fan of Television or
Patti Smith for that matter) was that I had almost no one to share him with.
The musicians of the era (aside from Minutemen, R.E.M. and Sonic Youth) rarely
referenced the pre-punk crowd, and most of my friends didn't venture much beyond
than The Sex Pistols and Suicidal Tendencies in their journey through punk's
back catalogue. The bands and fans that rose to prominence in the '90s seemed
better-versed in such things, though I still wonder whether people treat Blank
Generation with its
proper respect. It's a canonical rock record in my book—one of the best
of its decade.
Richard Thompson
Years Of
Operation
1972-present (solo)
Fits
Between Bob Dylan
and Bob Mould
Personal
Correspondence
Thompson was sort of a sign of life in the '80s, in the sense that he and his
soon-to-be-ex-wife Linda started the decade with one of its best albums, Shoot
Out The Lights.
(That record's presence on Rolling Stone's "Best Of The '80s" list is what first got me into
Thompson… that and my brother putting "When The Spell Is Broken" on a mixtape I
listened to quite a bit in high school.) To some extent though, Thompson has
always been one of those singular performers who's too been eager to go with
any given era's sonic flow, even if it means putting himself in the hands of
producers who like to show off. Maybe that's because Thompson knows that no
matter how much sonic clutter or cavernous atmosphere some board-jockey forces
on him, his core strengths will survive: memorable songs, a honeyed voice, and
crystalline guitar picking. Thompson has written and recorded some of the best
songs of the rock era—deep, multi-faceted confessionals that draw on the
storytelling tradition of ancient folklore—but like a top-flight jazz man,
he gives his work a different spin each time he picks up his instrument, which
means the original recordings are often more a blueprint than a finished
product. His songs tend not to be overly complex, but on stage, he improvises
around their basic themes, finding new interpretations that express his mood at
the moment. And those moods shift too—sometimes he's a miserable bastard,
sometimes he's hilariously funny.
Enduring
presence? I don't
know if my dad ever paid much attention to Thompson, but in a lot of ways he's
my dad's kind of artist: virtuosic, traditionalist, and improvisatory. (Just
like Chet Atkins.) But maybe Thompson would've been too grim for my dad. The "Shoot
Out The Lights" heard here, for example, is staggering, with Thompson
strangling his guitar for several tense minutes before returning to the
descending power chords that reverberate throughout the song like a death
knell.
*****************
Stray
Tracks
From the fringes
of the collection, a few songs to share….
Radio Birdman, "Aloha Steve & Danno"
A lot of
the fun of listening to college radio in the '80s had to do with the strong
possibility that one of the jocks would rip out a punk chestnut like this
Aussie salute to Hawaii 5-0. Songs like "Aloha Steve & Danno" made the whole punk
and alternative scenes seem so much more plugged-in and entertaining than
anything on mainstream radio at the time. I've still got homemade tapes filled
with hard-to-find and forgotten songs I duped off college radio when I was in
high school. "Aloha Steve & Danno"—and Radio Birdman as a
whole—is too well-known to qualify as "hard to find" or "forgotten," but
it's in that same spirit of quirky, catchy songs that build a little fire on a
remote stretch of beach and let it burn hot and bright.
Rage Against The Machine, "Testify"
I was never
a big enough fan of Rage to call their relatively short initial run one of the
great lost opportunities of The Alt-Rock Age, but certainly they had the
musical skill and the smarts to accomplish more than they did. Too often, Zack
de la Rocha leaned so hard on his political sloganeering that the band came off
(to me at least) as one-note and humorless. And while Rage's slack was picked
up to a great degree by guitarist Tom Morello and his explosive, creative
riffing, the band as a whole often seemed (to me at least) to be a little
haphazard about turning all these slogans and riffs into, y'know, songs. When they did, though… well, as "Testify" will
testify, Rage could be incredibly exciting.
Railroad Jerk, "The Ballad Of Railroad Jerk"
These
indie-rockers never quite made it into the '90s pantheon, but for a brief
moment in time—after the rollicking records One Track Mind and The Third Rail came out in '95 and
'96—Railroad Jerk seemed like heroes in the making, whipping up a sound
that set aside the meaningless clank of their earlier work for something
halfway between vintage Rolling Stones and a carnival barker. This
self-mythologizing anthem offers a fair representation of what the band could
do when they really got rolling. It's also amusingly tongue-in-cheek. How's
this for a bad-ass boast: "My friends all have credit cards / But I have been
denied."
Rainer Maria, "Hell And High Water"
This
Wisconsin-born, Brooklyn-bound indie-rock band excelled at draping songs in
atmospheric echo while maintaining an unsteady, urgent beat—all providing
a stage for lead singer Caithlin De Marrais' earnest, fully engaged voice.
Rainer Maria had a fair run, but their sound was in some ways about 10 years
out of date; they might've been more at home touring with the likes of Eleventh
Dream Day in the late '80s than trying to compete with the neo-new-wavers of
the early '00s. Still, they left behind a healthy stack of engaging songs, like
this moody burner, in which De Marrais always seems to be just ahead of or just
behind the pace. Hers is a healing sound, full of apologies and confessions,
designed to tell sensitive misfits everywhere that someone knows how they feel.
Ram Jam, "Black Betty"
Did you
know that the mastermind behind this late-'70s boogie blowout—based
loosely on an unfinished Leadbelly song—was also the guy behind The Lemon
Pipers, the band that hit the charts in 1968 with the bubblegum psych-pop smash
"Green Tambourine?" If there's a connection between the songs, it's that
they're both stripped-down to the point of being shallow, and they
both—quite simply—kick ass. How much of our pop history is made up
of songs like this, cranked out by faceless pros who take a short, fast ride,
then fade into the horizon?
[pagebreak]
Randy
Newman, "Rednecks"
Because of
Greil Marcus' Mystery Train—which I read for the first time at age 15, before I
was really ready to grapple with a lot of the musicians Marcus wrote
about—I've always felt that I should like Randy Newman more than I do. I
think Newman's run of albums in the '70s is uniformly brilliant, but I find
several aspects of them bothersome, like Newman's snide, superior tone, and the
way his infatuation with ragtime and old-fashioned saloon songs makes so much
of his work sound similar. On the upside, the songs on Newman's two best
albums, Sail Away
and Good Old Boys,
are blessedly concise, diminishing the effect of repetition. And I can't help
but marvel at the devilish construction of a song like "Rednecks," which asks
listeners to get into the head of a racist while simultaneously mocking the
character's small-mindedness.
Randy VanWarmer, "Just When I Needed You Most"
I loved
this song when I was 8 years old, and I'm not sure I could tell you why.
Someone with a more analytical bent might note that my parents split up the
year before VanWarmer hit the charts, but the divorce wasn't really a traumatic
experience for me, so I don't think that's it. My theory? I've always been kind
of a wimp. (Fun facts about VanWarmer: After this one-hit wonder, he moved to
Nashville and became a successful contributor to acts like Alabama and The Oak
Ridge Boys. Also, according to Wikipedia—though this lacks a citation—he
had his ashes scattered in outer space.)
The Rapture, "Heaven"
The
parade of angular, abstractly funky postpunk bands coming out of New York in
the early '00s quickly shifted from exciting to suspicious, and while the cycle
of rock revolutions is such that an intense back-to-basics period usually
clears away the clutter and enables the music to head in new directions, that
never really happened with this bunch. Still, the era popped out some good
records, like The Rapture's Echoes, with its pastiche-like approach to early '80s
Anglophilia. With a few exceptions, the album maintains a steady pattern of
disco thump, guitar slash and call-and-response choruses, expressing a faith in
straight lines and inexorability. It's where the pattern breaks that Echoes is strongest—like
in the slow drum-roll and dissonant sax break of "Heaven," which aids the
band's shifting, conceptual take on how the hip sounds of two decades ago
described a world of frenzied decadence and self-pity.
The
Raveonettes, "Remember"
Danish
gutter-punks The Raveonettes garnered notice right away for their debut EP Whip
It On,
which featured eight tracks, each under three minutes, each written in B-flat
minor, and each an uncanny synthesis of The Cramps' spookiness, Sonic Youth's
disaffection, and The Jesus & Mary Chain's marrow-scraped beach party
music. The knock against them ever since has been that they've shown only
minimal progression, though when listening to The Raveonettes' discography
again this week, I noted a lot more growth from record to record—and not
just because they've learned how to change keys. I have a feeling that when the
band's run is done, they're going to have a killer compilation to show for
their efforts. Suggested album-opener: "Remember," with its "Be My Baby"
backbeat and its simple, stirring staircase guitar riff.
Ray Charles, "One Mint Julep/Busted"
As with Walk
The Line—and
just about every other biopic ever made about a musician—Ray dwelled overmuch on Ray Charles'
drug addiction and womanizing and shortchanged the things he did which would
make us care
that he was an addict and a cad. If you relied on Ray exclusively for your understanding
of Charles, you'd have no idea how he managed to create such an enduring body
of work, or just how eclectic his output was, ranging from gritty roadhouse
rockers to slick big band music to re-imagined country-and-western. Put through
his special filter, it all came out as Ray Charles music: casually accomplished
and attractively brassy.
Red Hot Chili Peppers, "Good Time Boys"
"We want
Chilly Willy! We want Chilly Willy!" (Obligatory music-related comment: I was a
Chili Peppers fan right after Mother's Milk came out, but that was about it for
me and RHCP. I thought the early records were too thin and the later ones too
bloated, but I found Mother's Milk just muscular enough and loose enough to be as fun as the
band's reputation. Or maybe I was just persuaded by the opening track, which paid
homage to two of my faves: Fishbone and fIREHOSE.)
Refused, "Liberation Frequency"
This
defunct Swedish hardcore act saved their best for last, disbanding after
delivering their most cohesive LP, The Shape Of Punk To Come. I'm not well-versed enough in
hardcore to distinguish what sets that album apart from so many other punk
contenders, but I enjoy the turn-on-a-dime tempo shifts and arty textures,
which in combination holds the constant promise of something breathtaking.
Regina Spektor, "Ode To Divorce"
Usually I
have little use for pixie-ish piano-playing chanteuses (aside from the one who
had their heydays in the '70s), but I was so thoroughly charmed by Spektor's
big crossover album Soviet Kitsch that she immediately became one of my favorite artists of
the '00s. I was pleased to hear that the Russian-born, classically trained
musician's fourth album Begin To Hope showed her continuing to grow, reaching beyond the
conventional troubadour clichés for a set of songs that sounded radio-ready yet
subversively puckish, though now that I've spent time with both albums again, I
think I prefer the lower-key Kitsch. I think what I respond to in Spektor's music is the
effortless combination of art and pop, old world and new world, as well as the
way she seems to be singing things she earnestly believes.
The
Remains, "Don't Look Back"
This Boston
band was pegged by some in the mid-'60s as an American answer to The Beatles,
though they had more in common with The Rolling Stones, The Animals and The
Zombies. Ultimately, a song like "Don't Look Back" speaks to what sets The
Remains apart, and what kept them from ever becoming huge: The elastic song
structure, wide-open arrangement and oddball gospel interlude makes The Remains
sound unlike any other kind of music being made at the time.
Rex Harrison, "I've Grown Accustomed To Her
Face"
I've loved My
Fair Lady since
seeing a regional theater performance of the show when I was 14. I saw the
movie for the first time when I went on an Audrey Hepburn kick shortly after
graduating college, then I saw it again on the big-screen, newly restored,
during the Virginia Film Festival, exactly one year after I started dating the
woman who'd become my wife. For all its regressive gender politics and
underlined emotions, I'm reduced to rubble by My Fair Lady's ending nearly every time. The way
the final song weaves in nearly all of the show's other musical themes is
impressive just from a compositional perspective, and the way Henry Higgins
finally confesses (to himself at least) that he likes having Eliza around is
profoundly moving, especially when accompanied by the final swell of strings. I
do so love The Big Finish.
Rhett Miller, "Help Me, Suzanne"
Rhett Miller's
2002 solo album The Instigator was sharper, wittier, catchier and rockier than the work
he'd been doing around that time with his band Old 97's, but I worried when he
followed it up with yet another hit-and-miss Old 97's effort; and the first
couple of spins through his overly fussy second solo album The Believer didn't really quiet my fears that
Miller is, at best, streaky. Given time though, The Believer blooms. Producer George Drakoulias'
Beatle-esque approach—adding strings, piano and guitar effects—robs
some songs of their immediacy, but Drakoulias' fillips can't muffle the
timeless hooks and seamless wordplay of something like "Help Me, Suzanne." More
importantly, the starry sparkle serves a purpose, connecting a set of songs
about how the petty concerns of lovers still matter, even when the world's in
turmoil. Miller seems to have retreated to Old 97's for the time being, but I'm
hoping he hasn't abandoned his solo self for good, because I think he gives
himself a little more space to explore when he's on his own. I'd like to hear
what else he can come up with.
Rhymefest, "Devil's Pie"
I'm not as
gung-ho for Rhymefest as my Chicago compadres—who have a little hometown
pride mixed in with their fandom—but I think about half of Blue Collar is spot-on, and I have a hard time
resisting any hip-hop song that samples The Strokes, even though I realize that
to some extent this song is sampling The Strokes because that makes it more immediately
appealing to a pasty white hipster type like me. (It's a savvy marketing movie,
really.) I ask the same question of Rhymefest that I asked about Rhett Miller
though: What's next?
Richard Buckner, "Goner w/Souvenir"
Alt-country
stalwart Richard Buckner has been spinning his wheels some since mastering the
art of low growl and brusque rock on his first three albums—a cycle that
peaked with 1998's Since, the source of this song. Buckner tends to force every song into the
same tumbling cadence, but close listening reveals some nice variations on his
usual theme, and as always, it's striking the way he weaves his voice through
the hanging chords.
Richard Davies, "Why Not Bomb The Movies?"
After
splitting with Eric Matthews and breaking up the short-lived, somewhat
ill-conceived (but wonderful) Cardinal, Richard Davies released a trio of
catchy, off-beat solo albums. This songs is from the first one, and it's
typical of Davies' free-roaming style, in which he sets off in one direction,
gets distracted, then fumbles to remember why he entered this room in the first
place. Davies hasn't released anything since 2000—though Cardinal briefly
reunited a couple of years ago—so I ask Davies the same question I asked
of Rhett Miller and Rhymefest: What's next?
Richard Pryor, "Niggas"
When I was a kid, I wasn't allowed to see Richard Pryor's
movies in theaters; I caught most of them when they ran on TV, expurgated. So
it was a complete revelation to me when during my freshman year of college, the
student union screened Richard Pryor: Live In Concert, quite simply one of the funniest
movies ever made, one of the greatest one-man performances ever recorded, and
one of the rare cultural artifacts worthy of its exalted reputation. As Pryor
freely cycled through frank, hilarious commentary on race, death, parenting,
sex, boxing and monkeys—adopting about a dozen different personae, and
disarming the audience with his quick wit and unflinching honesty—I felt
like I'd wandered into someplace I wasn't supposed to be, hearing things I
wasn't supposed to hear. It was liberating, tantamount to hearing Public
Enemy's It Takes A Nation Of Millions for the first time. As my
colleague Nathan has astutely pointed out, Richard Pryor wasn't
always put to his best use by the show business industry, especially in the
'80s. But hand him a microphone and set him loose in front of an audience—no
matter the size—and he'd paint a picture of black life in a white America
that was more complicated, human and true than a hundred well-meaning Hollywood
"race dramas."
*****************
Regrettably
unremarked upon:
R.L. Burnside, Rachel Portman, The Raconteurs, Radar Bros., Radney Foster,
Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Ralph Stanley, Randy Travis, Ray Davies, Ray Stevens,
Rebecca Gates, REO Speedwagon, The Residents, Richard Ashcroft and Richard Fariña
Also listened to: Ra Ra Riot, The Race, Rachid, The Radiants,
TahaRadical Face, Radio 4, Radio
Citizen, The Radio Dept., Radioinactive, Rafter, Raging Slab, Rah Bras, The Rain
Parade, Rainbow Band, Raising The Fawn, Ralph Myers, Ralph Soul Jackson, RAM, Ramblin' Jack Elliott,
Ramsey Kearney, Ramsey Lewis, Rance Allen Group, Randall Bramblett, Randy
Crawford, Randy Watson Experience, Randy Weeks, Randy,
WinburnRanking, The Rare Breed, Rasputina, Ratatat, The Ratchets, Raul Midon, The Raw Herbs, Ray Anthony, Ray Barretto,
The Ray Camacho Band, Ray Coniff, Ray Obiedo, Razorcuts, Razorlight, Razzle, Readymade, Real Life, The, Reckless Kelly,
RebirthRed & Gold, The Red
Fox Chasers, Red Rockers, The Red Stick Ramblers, Rednex, Reef, Reel Big Fish, Regina,
HexaphoneThe Reindeer Section, The Relatives, The Rembrandts, Renaldo Domino, Renato Braz, Rene &
Angela, The Rentals, The Reputations, Res, Resource, retin.IT, Retisonic, Reverend,
GlasseyeReverend Horton Heat, The,
RevillosRevis, The Revolving Paint,
DreamThe Rewinds, Rex, Rex, The Rezillos, rhinoceros, Rhythm, Rhythm Heritage, Rich
Hobart
Creamy Paint, Rich Kids, Rich Schroder, Richard Hawley, Richard Lloyd, Richard
Reagh and Richard Shindell
*****************
Next week: From Rickie
Lee Jones to Ryan Adams, plus a few words on appropriation and adulteration