BRIAN LIBBY

Edward Dmytryk's "Crossfire"

Last night I finished watching this very thought-provoking noir with an interesting combination of social message and traditional pot-boiler: 1947's Crossfire.

The story, set in Washington, DC just after the end of World War II concerns the murder of a Jewish man by a hate-filled American soldier and the ensuing investigation. But the film is really about transitioning from the violence of wartime to the justice and peaceful society of back home. The subtext actually makes an otherwise rote drama into something exceptionally resonant and powerful, aided especially by the acting. The great Robert Ryan earned his only Oscar nomination here as the bigoted killer, and it was his first movie role. Robert Mitchum and a young Gloria Graehme are also standouts in their supporting roles.

I believe it was Jean-Luc Godard who called Crossfire the best American film noir. I think that's a huge overstatement. The same director, European expatriate Edward Dmytryk, made a far greater film - a masterpiece even - with the noir Murder, My Sweet. And the Mitchum-starring Out of the Past also easily trumps this picture.

Yet Crossfire snuck up on me as something very compelling in an unexpected way: like a mediocre work of architecture and construction that wound up looking gorgeous.

Lonnie Johnson's "Four Hands Are Better Than Two"

 

Listening to the radio a few weeks ago, I heard for the first time the pioneering 1920s African-American jazz/blues guitarist Lonnie Johnson. I was stunned by the virtuosity and style. It seemed to me like an odd but incredible fusion of Robert Johnson (raw and bluesish) guitar playing with Django Reinhart (jazzy and swinging). And as it happens, Lonnie Johnson was a big influence on Reinhart, and also played with jazz titans like Duke Ellington and Louis Armstrong. Now I feel silly to have not known him.

In listening to his music in the days since that initial radio introduction, I've become particularly transfixed by the song "Four Hands Are Better Than Two" because of its combination of Johnson's guitar with an accompanying piano that has, because of the way that it was recorded, a strange, almost ethereal presence - almost like the piano player is playing loud and hard, but doing so in the next room from where Johnson's guitar solo is front and center. That said, it's only fitting that this virtuoso of a guitarist is the focus of the song, which zooms along with a rapid but nimble tempo that for me is at once frenetic and, more indefinably, even gentle like a lullaby.

Numero Group is numero uno

It’s hard to think of a single instance—other than my current fascination with Numero Group—when I’ve become a big fan of a record label but not by way of any particular artist.

I may be a huge Beatles devotee, for example, or even a Duran Duran fan, but that doesn’t necessarily make me a Capitol Records enthusiast (the label both bands recorded for) or even aware of the label in any identifiable stylistic or historic way.

In the early 1990s, when I was taking a year off from school and living with friends in a band (who recorded for renowned punk label Dischord, home to and owned by the seminal band Fugazi), their influence made me a fan of not only Dischord but certain indie-rock or punk labels like Matador (home to Liz Phair) and Rykodisk (Morphine, Sugar). Had I gone to college here in the Northwest instead of being on the east coast (school in New York, my year off in DC), I might also have become a fan of labels like Seattle and Olympia-based Sub Pop and K Records.

Numero Group is something different. It specializes in reissues and collections of lesser-known soul and R&B artists of the past. In that way, though, it’s not unlike a label I loved as a kid: K-Tel Records, which produced several collections of pop hits in the 1970s and 80s. K-Tel’s name came from advertising on TV frequently, tangentially related to the “only $19.95!” genre.

I still have two K-Tel albums, by the way. One, Neon Nights, features dance and new-wave hits from the early 80s, from familiar songs like Rick James’ “Super Freak” and The Human League’s “Don’t You Want Me” to now forgotten fare by artists and groups like Skyye, Atlantic Starr and Junior. My other K-Tel album is 25 Rock Revival Greats, featuring early rock songs from the 1950s and early ’60s like “Johnny B. Goode,” “Chantilly Lace,” and “Wipe Out”. It was one of the first albums I listened to regularly on my own as a child that wasn’t children’s fare like my Sesame Street and Mr. Rogers records, or Marlo Thomas & Friends' Free To Be You and Be, and one of the first two or three albums I acquired independently of my parents. It had been given to me by a neighbor friend, Joe, out of a pile his older brother had left behind after moving out of the house.

1950s rock of this vintage, picked up from listening to 25 Rock Revival Greats, also represents some of the first music that my dad and I connected on. He loved hearing oldies like “Black Slacks” and “Rockin’ Robin”. In fact, my dad wound up taking me to what would be my first concert: Chuck Berry at Civic Auditorium in Portland. Until then, my tastes had been shaped more by my mom’s love of The Beatles, Stevie Wonder and Elton John.

Numero Group is less crassly commercial than K-Tel, oriented to the past rather than mostly the present. It’s also a much deeper ongoing delve into a treasure-trove of lesser known music, particularly R&B and soul from the 1960s and 70s, be it from a host of different American cities and regions as well as imported sounds from the Caribbean and even Israel (a funk gospel album).

The funny thing is, while I certainly always have enjoyed the occasional Motown song, I was never a huge fan of the label or its trademark sound. A lot of the Motown glory years—the mid-1960s, were a little before the time period of a few years later that I like best, musically speaking, when R&B was ready to give way to funk.

That difference could be distinguished by the work Motown artists like Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder did in each period. I adore Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On from the early 1970s, but don’t feel strongly about earlier hits like “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” More importantly, I’m resistant to hit golden-oldie songs that have permeated popular culture enough to be played constantly over the years in movies, TV shows and commercials. Part of what I love about songs from Twinight’s Lunar Rotation and some of the other Numero Uno soul collections is that it’s music I haven’t already heard played to death.

The first Numero album I bought on the label was the soundtrack (never before released) of a 1974 blaxploitation movie called Brotherman that was never actually made. The producer commissioned the soundtrack from an unfortunately titled but talented Chicago act called The Final Solution. Their style is similar to Curtis Mayfield, whose Superfly soundtrack is arguably the gold standard of blaxploitation movie-inspired albums. Its songs are about drug dealers and pimps, but the sound is bright and uplifting, the guitar-bass-drums combination firmly at root yet enlivened with a wide array of horns and strings. (I previously blogged about Brotherman separately a few months ago.)

Yet Numero Group is really about its collections of old soul music by a varity of artists. As they write on the label's website, "The mission was simple: to dig deep into the recesses of our record collections with the goal of finding the dustiest gems begging to be released from their exile on geek street. No longer would $500 singles sit in a temperature-controlled room dying for a chance to be played. No more would the artists, writers, and entrepreneurs who made these records happen go unknown and unappreciated."

My favorite collection so far is called Eccentric Soul: Twinight’s Lunar Rotation. All the music was culled from a Chicago label, first called Twilight and then later Twinight. The label was a kind of side project for a couple of music-industry insiders who specialized in signing artists to bigger major national labels but reserved their own brand for an assortment of singers and groups in the Chicago area, some of whom were on the cusp of breaking through with radio hits and some who were little more than dreamers saving up their money to satisfy the dream of recording a song or two in a professional studio.

One group in particular, The Notations, seem wondrous. Imagine the warm, heartfelt tones of Marvin Gaye and the early '70s sub-era of the Motown sound, with just a touch of the harmonizing earlier Motown groups predating like The Temptations that can be heard in songs like "A New Day" and "I'm Still Here". 

In all the Twinight’s Lunar Rotation songs I enjoy the warm, bright tones: brass sections of saxes and trumpets with jangly guitar and the occasional organ. The lyrics are often quite melancholy, yet underscored with an unrepentant sense of optimism. This is non-cynical music mostly coming out of an African-American culture of the 1960s and 70s with plenty of reason to be. And decades after the civil rights and antiwar movements from whence these songs came, the subjects (mostly love and relationships) and sounds are transcendent.

There are too many different artists and songs to talk about individually, but I have to at least mention the great band and artist names on Twinight’s Lunar Rotation, such as Renaldo Domino, Harrison & The Majestic Kind, Velma Perkins, and Nate Evans.

Another Numer Group collection I’ve played countless times over the past few months is called Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay (pictured at right). Besides the music being produced in large American cities like Chicago, Philadelphia or Miami, Numero Group has shown there to be a rich patchwork quilt of international locales that produced very listenable soul music scenes of their own. I would have expected Bahamas music to have been much more exclusively reggae-like, but Grand Bahama Goombay is closer to straight-up rock or R&B with small flourishes of calypso and other Latin American sounds.

My favorite artist on this collection is definitely Cyril Ferguson, who also goes by the stage name Dry Bread. In fact, of his two songs on the album, each is under one of the monikers. This actually seems oddly fitting given how different they are lyrically, or at least thematically. “Gonna Build a Nation,” which leads off Grand Bahama Goombay, is inspiring ‘60s rhetoric about brothers and sisters joining hand in hand to create a new, less violent, more egalitarian society. “Words to My Song,” is a witty track composed on the spot during a recording session when some impromptu jamming on guitar and drums with fellow musicians called for some lyrics on the spot. It presents the author as fed up because someone has stolen the words to his recording. He writes, “The next time I write a song/there ain’t gonna be no words/let the music go on.”

One other song from Grand Bahama Goombay is really worth mentioning: a cover of Dave Brubeck’s classic “Take Five,” by Ozzie Hall. It’s one of my favorite jazz covers, because Hall manages to maintain the sense of precision that exists in the original work but to give it a warmer, more…soulful feel than even Brubeck’s version ever had.

Two other collections I've either bought or received recently (my birthday a couple weeks ago) are Eccentric Soul: The Bick Mack Label (Big Mack was a Detroit-based Motown competitor); Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up, featuring music from Belize; and Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label (pictured in the marching band shot above), music from south Florida. Of these, I know Deep City the best. As often happens with these albums, the first song seems to be one of the best: "Am I A Good Man" by Them Two, a soul-searching soul song if there ever was one.

Another favorite track on Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label, "I Am Controlled By Your Love" by Helene Smith, typifies a type of song I've heard numerous times on these collections. In it, Smith sings of how no matter what hardships may threaten her relationship, and regardless of what mistakes or transgressions her lover commits, she is happily and unrepentantly at the mercy of her affection. Her love is undying no matter what. It gets to a level of absurdity, but the purity of the lyrics' passion is palpable and very memorable. The same could be said for "Yes, My Goodness Yes" by Velma Perkins (pictured at left) on Eccentric Soul: Twinight's Lunar Rotation.In that song, Perkins reaches a kind of estatic level of romance that is totally unpractical but again, impressive in its intensity. These women really, really love their fellas.

Not every song or artist on these Numero Uno albums is great, of course. And even after hundreds of listening hours, I’ve only scratched the surface of the label’s catalog. Yet in that time, Numero Group has done nothing less than to reshape my sense and impression of American music during the years leading up to and immediately after the time I was born, which also happened to be some of the most socially tumultuous and artistically fruitful.

Listening to Brotherman

I love browsing at Jackpot Records in Portland’s Hawthorne district. It doesn’t have the biggest inventory, but the collection is well chosen and there are plenty of listening stations to try music. That’s where I happened upon Brotherman, the 1975 soundtrack for a movie that was never made. (The accompanying image was commissioned by the record company when the album was released for the first time in 2008.)

As one promotional blurb put it, the character of Brotherman “was a pusher that became a preacher. A gangster pimp serving soup from the trunk of his Coup Deville. A mutant cross between Robin Hood and Friar Tuck. Everyman, our man on the street, Brotherman.” Prior to the script being finished, the producers commissioned an original soundtrack to be performed by The Final Solution, a fledgling vocal group from Chicago’s west side.

The Final Solution is an unfortunate name, the one also given to Hitler’s extermination plans during World War II. But, as with Joy Division, another band whose name recalls the Nazis, the music transcends whatever you call it. Whereas Joy Division’s music was morose, though, the Brotherman soundtrack is joyous. I’ve listened to the entire album something like 25 or 30 times in the few weeks since purchasing it on a whim at Jackpot, and I have to restrain myself from listening even more – and this from a guy who usually never wants to listen to the same song more than once per day.

Lots of blaxploitation movies had better soundtracks than scripts. Other than authentic films of the ‘60s and ‘70s made by black filmmakers like Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song, most of the big classics like Superfly, Cleopatra Jones, The Mack and Shaft were the productions of white Hollywood producers and filmmakers – hence the “exploitation” part of the blaxploitation term. They were stronger on the style and charisma of their stars, actors like Pam Grier and Fred Williamson, and got more out of their driving funk soundtracks, than on artful filmmaking.

I wasn’t listening to much funk or R&B when it was originally made in the early ‘70s. I was only born in 1972. But my mom had an abiding affection for Stevie Wonder, and in our house records like Talking Book or Songs in the Key of Life played more often than anything but The Beatles. Even if I never grew to love Stevie’s music from later in his career (the ‘80s and beyond), those 70s albums, particularly Innervisions and Music of My Life, have acted as a point of entry into a lot more Nixon and Ford-era R&B and funk. At some point I fell in love with Marvin Gaye’s What’s Goin’ On, Shuggie Otis’ Inspiration Information, The Best of The Meters, and Funkadelic’s One Nation Under A Groove. I’m certainly no expert on 70s funk, soul or R&B, but I’ve realized it’s a passion. This music, along with disco, is a direct antecedent to hip-hop. As a result, these are also some of the last years that the majority of African-American musicians were focused on making some form of singing verse-chorus-verse songs with instrumental backup. Believe me, the arrival of hip-hop and the Pandora’s box of sampling that accompanied the genre’s arrival have been wonderful. Where would I be without my copy of Tribe Called Quest’s The Low End Theory? Or De La Soul, Sugarhill Records, Erik B & Rakim, Tricky, Public Enemy and the Beastie Boys? (Okay, I'm dating myself.) But soon after the 1970s, soul began a slow descent away from its place in the spotlight or, in other cases, assimilated into saccharine top-40 pop music. I can’t think of much music outside of hip-hop that has simultaneously this much grit and swing, hopeful verve and real-world resonance.

To my ear, Curtis Mayfield’s Superfly is the gold standard of blaxploitation soundtracks, and Brotherman seems to fit in that tradition. There is a driving beat with jangly guitars, banjos (!), and curvy, swinging drums. A few years ago a musician friend described wanting to sample this certain style in a dance music loop. The word “curvy” was key in his description: the idea of a drummer of that era of rock, pop or R&B/funk favoring what would today be characterized as too many drum-fills and having a subtly fluctuating tempo—the difference between a human and a synthetically produced beat. If you like what Thelonious Monk does in his brilliant jazz tunes, for example, playfully tiptoeing in and out of the tempo on piano, this kind of drumming gives off a similar feeling. It’s by no means exclusive to funk, for drummers like Keith Moon of The Who or Mitch Mitchell of the Jimi Hendrix experience typify the curvy, nearly out-of-control drumming style. But I appreciate it the most listening to Brotherman.

One online review described the Brotherman soundtrack as “modestly constructed, featuring none of the indulgences common in blaxploitation soundtracks. There are no orchestrations, horn sections, or sprawling arrangements, and only [the title song] "Brotherman" itself contains obvious blaxploitation signifiers, opening with ‘Runnin' game was his thing,’ while ‘Where There's a Will’ acts as the requisite self-motivation track. Most of the remainder deals in affairs of the heart. Everything is conveyed with sweet group harmonies and gently churning arrangements where a pleasantly flicking rhythm guitar is a near constant.

According to the Urban Dictionary, the term “brotherman” is “a word used to describe an extremely ‘down to earth’ individual. Brotherman can be used simultaneously with the first name of a person in an effort to show they share a strong mutual bond. A group of cool people can be deemed brothers as they share a strong brotherly bond. Brotherman, are you and Brother Dabin going over to PQ's house to hang with the brothers from KBC?"

Perhaps it’s crass of me, but even though I love the music for the music itself, I can’t help but facetiously wonder if Barack Obama is on some level the Brotherman hero of the song. The Final Solution came from Chicago and are part of that city’s burgeoning funk and soul scene of the 1970s, when Obama would have first settled there. And considering the astonishing sight of watching him actually become our 44th president certainly has elevated Obama to superhero status in my book – even more so given the implosion of newly sworn in Portland mayor Sam Adams’ implosion in a sex scandal. Brotherman Obama—and I mean that term as a compliment in the highest order, not a trite racial epithet, of course—is definitely the guy to save the day: a man of great intellect and oratory skill who is still in touch with the streets; his first job after graduating Columbia was a community organizer in the tough streets of Chicago. I guess I can’t help but imagine this political godsend’s rise with just a little bit of extra curvy drumming in the background and a pulsating bass propelling the action.

Most of all, the Brotherman soundtrack feels joyous to me. Maybe it’s the gospel influence of the vocal harmonies populating nearly all of the songs. Maybe it’s just the cumulative effect of this up-tempo sound with an expressive Mowtown-esque array of instruments. But somehow a record that most people would approach tongue-in-cheek (a blaxploitation soundtrack-fun! And one never made—weird!) is to me a set of songs that sink deep inside, like the heat from a warm bath. Inevitably a lot of my affection for this period of music is based on it coming from those first years of life when one’s brain is such a sponge. But you wait and wait for albums that you love like this, that you start at the beginning as soon as the last song ends, that you can listen to in a dark room, lying on the floor with full attention devoted, or that can become wallpaper while you’re, say for example, writing a blog post. For all I know, people reading this who listen to Brotherman wouldn’t find it anything special. But for me, this dealer-turned-preacher distributing soup from his Coup de Ville is, at least until I inevitably move onto another album, a kind of long-lost sibling.

Seeing Mel Brown

When I was in my early college years, aged about 19 or 20 in early 1990s New York, every once in a while I used to love visiting some of the legendary jazz clubs in Greenwhich Village near NYU, where I was going to school and living in a dorm on 10th and Broadway. A couple of times I went with friends to see Branford Marsalis at the Village Vanguard, where practically all of the greats have played from Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane to Charlie Parker and Miles Davis. When a friend visited from Oregon, we went to Sweet Basil, another great Village club, and saw the minor-legend of a trumpet player, Art Farmer. (My jazz guide lists one of his albums in their top 25 of all-time.) I also once turned down the chance to get a table at the Blue Note club to see Dizzy Gillespie the reservation cost $35 - plus a two-drink minimum ant tip! It haunts me to this day.

It was with those experiences in mind that I recently visited Jimmy Mak's jazz club in Portland to see Mel Brown and his trio play. Brown plays at Jimmy Mak's three nights a week, and has so for many years. He is a legend of the surprisingly accomplished and vibrant Portland jazz scene that he's been a part of for over forty years. And earlier in his career, he was a drummer for several Motown Records acts, as described on the Jazz at Newport website:

...later down the road it would be Redd Fox who, after hearing Mel’s drumming, made a call to Martha Reeves.  Weeks later Mel would find himself at Whiskey a Go-Go in Los Angeles playing for Martha and the Vandellas. This you could say was his entree into the Motown family. Eventually, Brown was the staff drummer for Motown Music Corporation, working with the Temptations and Supremes. For ten years Mel Brown was the drummer for an impressive list of celebrities including Diana Ross, Suzanne Somers, Hal Linden, Connie Francis, Pat Boone, Smoky Robinson, Stevie Wonder..... the list of musicians Mel has worked with is unbelievable!

What finally prompted me to go see Mel Brown play was an assignment for the small regional senior newspaper that I take a handful of portraits for each month. It's my only regular photography gig; the rest is writing. But it's a fun little diversion each month. In the case of the Mel Brown assignment, it was more than a diversion. I'd meant to go see one of his different ensembles (he also has a quartet and a septet) long before now. It shouldn't have taken me a paying gig to go see Brown or another group play jazz. I was reminded of that as soon as the set started. However, having the chance to photograph the Mel Brown Trio playing live in a semi-official capacity was an extra treat; I was very aware of the long tradition of great jazz photography by Robert Gottlieb and many others. (Paul and Rosie also once gave me a terrific book of jazz photos.) Not that I consider my picture-snapping of jazz or anything else to be at that level, of couse. I just don't cut people's heads off like my mom.

I had actually come to the club the night before, when Brown was scheduled to play but wound up canceling, due to last-minute tax problems (it was April 14) according to the gentleman taking admission at the front door. When Brown took the stage the following night to the applause of a nearly full audience of jazz fans and Greek food patrons, he told about receiving a call at 10PM the night before tax day that there was some kind of problem with his taxes. He didn't elaborate, but I imagined some relative, maybe a nephew or a son in law, telling him he forgot to do Mel's taxes like he'd promised several months earlier. Talking on a hand-held microphone to the audience from behind his drum set before the music began, Brown said, "You might notice me taking a few extra drum solos tonight." How funny to think of all the tortuous emotions jazz greats have wrestled with over the years with drugs, race, etc. And this guy is fuming because he didn't go to H&R Block.

I can't say there was anything extraordinary about Mel's playing versus other jazz drummers I've heard. I'm also no expert. But in the brief time I spent talking to him before the set, he was warm and friendly. He wound up dedicating the set to a former student who came up to visit while I was supposed to be taking Mel's portrait - none of those shots came out; the closest thing is the funny he look he's making in one of the photos above.

I also enjoyed hearing Mel's trio immensely. As someone who doesn't go out to hear live music very much at all (and when I do it's usually classical), I was reminded of the unmistakable difference you hear in real instruments. Mel's trio had a little bit of amplification to augment things, I believe, but the drums, piano and bass all could be heard plain as day without them. I enjoyed the soft touch that Mel had with the drums, with a fluid but subtly very sharp sense of timing and beat. It's no wonder Mel's apparently known particularly for his brushwork, which requires more of a feathery touch.

As I was walking out of the club the night before, I ran into saxophonist Warren Rand, with whom I used to work in the kitchen at Nick's Italian Cafe in McMinnvile, for several months in late-1995, early 1996 right after I graduated from college. Warren used to play at Nick's a lot; he lived in McMinnville back then and commuted up to Portland for gigs. I remember him always improving with his saxophone late at night after closing if somebody else took a turn at the piano alongside Warren. He also made a wonderful album of songs composed by Tad Dameron. I also remember Warren loaning me his VHS copy of Roger and Me, but I guess that's less to the point. Which is that I feel bad thinking of all the year's I've spent living in Portland and never going to see Warren or Mel Brown play. I'm more of a home stereo and i-Pod person by nature. But I'm going to make a point of going back to Mak's. If I don't, Dizzy Gillespie will come after me in my dreams.

The Abbey Road Side Two medley

Back when I was running competitively in grade school and junior high, I used to take pride in finishing my races (usually the mile or the 800) with a strong finishing sprint. In sixth grade, I remember Cameron Ousley had about a 50-yard lead and I beat him on the last stride.

I thought of that finishing sprint this evening even though I'm in no shape to sprint. In fact, I'd just lain down after a heavy dinner of meat pie and felt practically comatose. But as I reclined on the bed, barely able to keep my eyes open, I put on my i-Pod and began listening to the second half of The Beatles' Abbey Road. Long before my food coma should have ended, I was suddenly drumming my hands on the polyester sheets, wiggling my feet, and singing along softly to myself.

Every time I hear the two medleys--first of "Sun King", "Mean Mr. Mustard", "Polythene Pam", and "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window", then with a brief pause "Golden Slumbers", "Carry That Weight" and "The End"--I wonder about how the idea of it came together. Why choose to play only a portion of each song and then fold it into another? On The Beatles Anthology 3 you can hear demo versions of these songs in their entirety, but it never brought the satisfaction I expected. I missed having the medley, even though for years before hearing the Anthology I longed for the songs to be separated.

I now think the medley is a perfect finale for the end of the last Beatles record. Let It Be is often called their last album because it was the final one released, but I always think of Abbey Road being the real swan song because it was the last one they recorded. So as the songs from the medley bunch up together, I think of it as a finishing sprint. Even though they're about to break up, there's an urgency there: let's jam in as many songs as we can for those last few minutes of the last record. It even ends, appropriately enough, with "The End" (excluding the few-seconds-long "Her Majesty" that follows, of course). I particularly love to hear them just jamming at this point, not going quietly at all. There's even a Ringo drum solo.

When the Beatles broke up in 1970, it was the dawn of the age of long, indulgent, several-minute-long rock songs, a la Pink Floyd and Led Zeppelin. And yet the Beatles closed out the '60s, as well as their own career, with a bunch of short fast rock songs more like the '50s. On the other hand, though, you could argue that this succession of short songs that fold into one another without pause like this is a suite, an idea dating to 17th century France that was popularized by Bach and Handel.

As it turns out, I recently read the answer behind the creation of the suite, whichc was arranged by McCartney and producer George Martin. It seems obvious in retrospect: the suite, some 16 minutes in length, was conceived as a way to utilize a lot of Lennon/McCartney songs that had been left over from the White Album and Let It Be sessions, many of which were incomplete; thus, in many cases, one song seguing into another.

Often I have resisted researching the stories and decisions behind Beatles records. I'm afraid of anything threatening the wonderful spell these songs continually cast over me as I listen to them hundreds of times over the course of my life. Luckily I play it over and over, "The End" never really must be one.

My righteous anthem: "By the Time I Get to Arizona"

One of the fun things about having an i-Pod and listening to it all the time is getting acquainted with old songs from one's collection never listened to much, or re-acquainted with songs of past affection.

I've always respected and admired the seminal hip-hoppers Public Enemy, from Chuck D's sermon-like rapping to Flavor Flav's comical punctuations. Obviously a song like "Fight the Power", used to such great effect in Spike Lee's great 1989 movie Do The Right Thing, is a classic. Public Enemy also has what may be my favorite album title from any artist: It Takes A Nation of Millions To Hold Us Back, a brilliant reverse-view of the oppression-ridden African American experience.

When the song "By The Time I Get To Arizona" came about, I received it with a bit of a chuckle. This was the early 90s, and the states of New Hampshire and Arizona were slow to enact Martin Luther King's birthday as a national holiday. People forget this now, but there was a bit of a practicality issue at play in whether to add another holiday to the American worker's array of days off, or to subtract a different holiday's apportioned time off such as Columbus Day or Presidents' Day.

Understandably, though, Public Enemy and many other African American leaders saw these two states abstaining from an MLK holiday as a racist act. As Sista Soulja (remember her?) says in the intro to the song, they seemed to find "...psychological discomfort in paying tribute to a black man who tried to teach white people the meaning of civilization."

What I love about the song, though, isn't its attention to the politics of national holidays, or even race itself. I find myself continually pumped up and energized by the more transcendent sense of righteous anger. We all have stuff that gets us angry now and then. We feel wronged, or that some person or entity close to us has. We feel powerless, frustrated, and want to act out. "By The Time I Get To Arizona" has a very strong, cathartic aspect that I can apply to any of my own feelings and motivations.

I also have a somewhat more specific, Arizona-related connection to the song, but it's nothing as noble in inspiration as race relations or Dr. King. I'm thinking of the football game a few months ago when Oregon's most successful season in its 113-year history--one with a Heisman Trophy and a national championship seemingly within reach--was ruined on the field in Tuscon at the University of Arizona. Nobody on the UA team caused Dennis Dixon's knee injury that evening, but it's far from the first time that turf has caused a major injury to an Oregon quarterback. Two years ago, NFL-bound Oregon quarterback Kellen Clemens broke his leg there, and Oregon (despite winning their last three games without him) was more or less aced out of a prestigious January bowl game because of it. A decade earlier, Ducks quarterback Bill Musgrave had an akle sprain in practice on the field that cost the team the game.

By the time I get to Arizona? I'm installing artificial turf. But only at night, because you'd have to be insane to go outside when it's 120 degrees.

Then again, it was just yesterday that my parents departed for a vacation in--where else?--Arizona. Apparently they and others seem to think walking onto the surface of the sun is pleasurable to a little light rain.

Of course, my listening to the song so regularly should also be a reminder that righteous anger is a dangerous emotion. When people are too righteous, they stop listening to reason. I think of the Winston Churchill quote we have on a fridge magnet in the kitchen: "A fanatic is one who can't change his mind and won't change the subject." Unless it involves a sports team called the Ducks or Blazers, I don't want to be a fanatic or to be self-righteous.

But then again, it's always fun to blow off a little steam. And while I may be mellow on the outside most of the time, it'd take nation of millions to hold back my emotions.

Albums and songs

A few days ago The Oregonian ran a story about what songs different noteworthy Portlanders listened to on their i-Pods. Two of them were friends, John Jay of Wieden + Kennedy and developer Randy Rapaport. And a third, writer Diana Abbu-Jabber, is a longtime colleague who I remember chatting with at many a movie screening when we were reviewing, her for The Oregonian and me for Willamette Week.

There was also a list from governor Ted Kulongoski, who favors Rolling Stones songs, and new Blazer Channing Frye, whose choices included Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me". (Hopefully his jump shot is a lot better than that song.)

I knew my friend Randy would choose at least one Flaming Lips song - the man is devoted to that band like jihadists are to the Koran. He actually went with two, "A Spoonful Weighs A Ton" and "Chewin' the Apple of Yer Eye" - the only person besides the governor to pick two songs by one artist.

It was also especially a treat reading about one of John's Choices, "The Breaks" by Kurtis Blow:

"I am just starting my career in fashion marketing at Bloomingdale's. New York is completely alive from the party music of hip-hop in the Bronx to the emerging art scene and new wave music. I am sitting in the studio of Antonio Lopez, the greatest fashion illustrator of our time, while 'The Breaks' fills the studio. Antonio introduces me to break dancers he has discovered and sent to Paris to perform."

The i-Pod is as relevant in my life as it seems to be in so many other people's. I'm listening to it as I write this (Elvis Costello's Imperial Bedroom is playing currently), and the ear buds are in for much of my day while I work, when I go for a walk, and when I drive.

There are of course lots of individual songs that I love, by artists ranging from Chuck Berry to Wham! to Sonny Rollins to Bananarama. But if you look at my top 25 list on i-Tunes, most all of them come from those albums that I listen to more or less start to finish.

Yesterday, imagining a kind of alternative list to those in the Oregonian feature, I sat down with my laptop in front of my CD collection, which numbers about 500. There are also Valarie's discs I pick and choose from, which are about the same in number. Out of those 1000 or so CDs, I made a list of the albums that I either listen to regularly and/or am reasonably likely to want to listen to in their entirety at some point in the not to distant future. Although any time I look at the list I wind up removing a record or two and/or adding some as well, my current list consists of 85 albums.

The first noticeable thing about the list is that there are more than twice as many Beatles albums as those by anyone else. I chose seven: Rubber Soul, Revolver, Sgt. Pepper's, the 'White Album', Abbey Road, and Let It Be. I really should have also added Help! and A Hard Day's Night, both of which I've listened to in their entirety scores of times. The #1 song on my i-Tunes list, "It's All Too Much", is from Yellow Submarine, which I don't really ever listen to all the way because there's a lot of scoring from the movie in the second half.

The next closest multi-album artist, of which there are three, has three albums: The Clash (Combat Rock, London Calling, Sandinista!), Elvis Costello & The Attractions (Armed Forces, Imperial Bedroom, Get Happy!), and jazz virtuoso Roland Kirk (The Inflated Tear, Volunteered Slavery, Domino). I could easily have added at least one to the Costello list (This Year's Model) if not three or four more. Same goes for Roland Kirk (Rip, Rig & Panic).

There are 15 artists with two albums on my list, and once again, many could have had more. For XTC, the English new wave band I fell in love with in college, I chose two seminal early albums, Black Sea and English Settlement. But I also often listen to Drums and Wires and several others.

The Police were also tough. I added Synchronicity and Outlandos D'Amour as start-to-finish listens, but on another day I might add Regatta de Blanc instead. With Nirvana I chose Nevermind and Unplugged In New York, only reluctantly leaving In Utero off the list. Fugazi also placed two, the later-career Red Medicine and In On the Kill Taker. All their albums are excellent, though. I could say the same about Thelonious Monk, whose albums Straight, No Chaser and Brilliant Corners I still listen to frequently.

Other artists seemed to more clearly have enough with two: A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory is a bona fide masterpiece, and Beats, Rhymes & Life is superb. But I'd argue their other records don't hit that same mark. I also liked American Music Club best after they moved into a richer, more complex sound with Mercury and San Francisco (made with the terrific producers Mitchell Froom and Joe Chicarelli) from the sort of industrial folk they'd been doing earlier - although there are some gems in that period, too, like California and Everclear.

There's probably no album I've listened to more in the last few months than The Shins' Wincing The Night Away, and their previous effort, Chutes Too Narrow, is great too. I imagine someday I'll get more into their first record, but it's not a start-to-finish, regular-rotation album for me right now.

But there are also plenty of cases where I chose one album by an artist, but I love that album a lot. Mingus Ah Um by Charles Mingus absolutely blows me away every time I hear it. If I had to pick the single greatest jazz record I've ever heard, this might be it. Yet Mingus tends to re-record many versions of the same songs, though, so I never feel quite as compelled to listen to, say, Blues and Roots or the excellent Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus all the way through.

Although I have absolutely zero-point-zero-zero (0.00) interest in Elton John's contemporary work, or even stuff he made in the last twenty-five or thirty years, when I was growing up my mom often played his first volume of greatest hits. Part of me wants to call it a guilty pleasure, but I never tire of songs like "Bennie and the Jets" and "Daniel". I also confess to loving Sir Elton's personal style in those days, before he was a fat old guy belting out songs for Disney soundtracks.

As I've been writing this post, after the Costello album somehow I started playing the Top 25 playlist upon looking for the spelling of one of the songs. In a couple of cases, the songs have stopped me from what I'm writing to either bob my head or just space out. Just a few seconds ago "Last Living Souls" from Gorillaz' Demon Days did that.

Years ago I remember watching a documentary on Damon Albarn. He was recording a string section and kept getting frustrated and surly with the classical players, because he was having a hard time getting to play in a different way, with more bounce like dance music called for and less of the strict sharpness that classical playing requires. In the show, Albarn looked like a pompous jerk in his Mickey Mouse sweatshirt and holier than thou rock star attitude. But I must admit: the strings on "Last Living Souls" have an exquisite circular sense of the looping beat that I've never heard from classical musicians before.

As much as I like lists and stats like the ones i-Tunes provides, or that I make myself with the laptop in front of my increasingly dusty CD shelves, I know they're never completely accurate. For example, there are only two classical albums on my start-to-finish list, a recording of Bach's Brandenburg Concertos by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment and one of Shostakovitch's Piano Quartet & Trio by The Borodin Trio. But I know I listen to a lot more classical than I used to. I guess it's still hard to make it through entire albums, though. And classical is much better to me live. On CD I feel like I'm always turning the volume up and down - it never sounds quite right.

The beauty of these stats, though, is that they're always fluid and subject only to my own whims and tastes.

Never Too Much

During my freshman year of college I had roommate named Dean who was a musician. He used to practice guitar in the walk-in closet late at night, playing intricat scales at breakneck speed like a second coming of Yngwie Malmsteen. Dean also brought his turntable and stacks of records, about which he was very passionate. He and I could be talking about John Coltrane, Sonic Youth, the Gregorian Chant or the Butthole Surfers, and in his Long Island accent he'd ask, "Ever listen to this record? Best - record - evuh!" A few seconds later a different album would come up: '"Ever listen to this one? Da best - evuh!"

I thought of Dean recently because I've developed a similar passion for one song.

I've been a Beatles fan all my life. My mom had a collection of about ten or twelve of their albums, including all the essentials such as Sgt Pepper's, The White Album, Let It Be, Abbey Road, Revolver, Help!, A Hard Day's Night, Magical Mystery Tour and Rubber Soul. She also had several older albums like Beatles '65 and Meet the Beatles. Their music was played in our house at dinner, evenings by the fireplace, and in the car on trips.

However, one album I never had access to growing up was Yellow Submarine. We had the song, of course, as it appeared originally on Revolver. But not the soundtrack album that accompanied the annimated "Yellow Submarine" movie. That's probably because there were only about four new songs on it. The rest consisted of previously released tracks such as "All You Need Is Love" and a couple of instrumental pieces from the score.

Recently, though, I've been checking out from the library Beatles albums neither my mom nor I had ever aquired. One song from Yellow Submarine has been a particular revelation: "It's All Too Much", a sprawling six-minute epic written and sung by George Harrison.

Right now, this song is "Da best evuh" in my book.

The song feels modern because its beat resembles a hip-hop loop. As usual with the Beatles, there is a dense instrumental layer-cake of sound in the background. For the first several minutes, the song is anchored by Harrison's lyrics, which are very spiritual lovey-dovey, but also at least for me very compelling, particularly in the context of the piece:

Set me on a silver sun, for I know that I'm free
Show me that I'm everywhere, and get me home for tea

What I love most about the song, though, is how it becomes this endless jam at the end, with Paul McCartney joining Harrison to repeat a continual mantra, 'Too much....Too much....Too much.' I'm not usually inspired to clap along with songs. When people do it at a concert or some other gathering, I always feel goofy joining in. But this song makes me want to clap along, or join in on some sort of periperal percussion instrument--a triangle, cowbell, maybe even the cliched tambourine--to keep time along with the band.

After only about 10 days, "It's All Too Much" is already about to crack my iTunes Top 25 songs list. Watch out J.S. Bach and Joe Strummer, here comes George! After all, I've got 35 years of listening time to make up. Then again, though, maybe George would warn me not to binge too voraciously:

It's all too much for me to take
The love that's shining all around here
All the world's a birthday cake,
So take a piece but not too much

I just wish I'd taken that advice last night, when I made a box cake and proceed to sample about four pieces after dinner. Maybe from now on when I start to overeat there should be an alarm going off in my head - only instead of a recurring beep, it could just be Harrison's sitar.

No Longer Wincing after Wincing

Over the last decade I’ve become less and less interested in new rock or alternative music – at least to the degree that I rarely anticipate new albums coming out. There was a time in college when I thought of Tuesday as being the day of the week when new records were released. Now it’s just the day after Monday.

However, this Tuesday brought the release of two new albums by people who have made my favorite music of recent years: The Shins and Damon Albarn. I’ve listened to The Shins’ Chutes Too Narrow and Gorillaz’ Demon Days scores of times, and continue to marvel. I also love Albarn's collaborative Mali Music album. And this Tuesday, I benefited from Valarie’s traipsing off to snatch both albums up: The Shins Wincing the Night Away and Albarn’s partnership with bassist Paul Simonon of The Clash, The Good, The Bad & The Queen.

This week has also been a stressful one. In particular, I was upset about how something I’d written had made its subject angry, even though the writing was very favorable and admiring. It happens sometimes, and so long as there isn’t any nastiness, I’m contrite or at least understanding and diplomatic about it. But this time there was nastiness. And I reacted to it by going for long walks, reciting an embarrassing amount of teeth-gritted lines by Emperor Palpatine (“Are you threatening me, Jedi?”) and Darth Vader ("I Find your lack of faith disturbing") while listening to my i-Pod.

The delicate beauty of The Shins and their ambitious new album was a perfect antidote for the anger.

The Shins craft wondrously simple but contemplative, personal pop songs. Too often in others’ hands this kind of music makes me cringe. I think this music is deceptively hard to do well if you’re name isn’t McCartney or Lennon. But singer/songwriter James Mercer and company are up to that challenge, with compellingly vivid, picaresque lyrics that also remain elusive enough to keep me coming back.

Wincing The Night Away gives Mercer’s songs a more layered array of textures and sounds. The album shows a newfound fascination with keyboards, and there are countless other peripheral instruments such as banjo that come and go to weave a more complex tapestry than either of The Shins’ previous efforts. This is a transformation that many rock bands go through if they become successful, from stripped down to elaborate. For some, it ruins the effect. But if a band can achieve that greater sonic sophistication while staying true to the songs themselves as foundation, there can be nothing better. I’m thinking Beatles again here. I mean, what would you rather listen to: A Hard Day’s Night or Abbey Road? I know some people actually choose the former, but for me it’d definitely be the latter.

I’ve read a few reviews of Wincing The Night Away, which takes its name from the insomnia Mercer experienced while making the album. Although overwhelmingly favorable overall, the reviews seem somewhat divided on how well the Shins have achieved that balancing act of simplicity and sophistication. I think they’ve done a great job. I’ve only had the record for three days, but in that time I’ve listened to it at least 10 times. I’ve continually broken a personal rule of not listening to the same album twice in one day—I’m on thirds with this one.

This is my favorite moment in the process of familiarizing one’s self with what seems to be a developing favorite album: the in-between stage. Right now I’m increasingly familiar with the songs and their sequence, but I still have a lot left to discover. It’s like walking in a pool: you’re not just floating aimlessly, and you’re in control. But the reduced gravity still makes the simple act of movement a surprising treat.

I also feel a couple special connections to this album. It was produced by Joe Chicarelli, who produced one of my two or three favorite albums from the ‘90s: San Francisco by American Music Club. There are several moments on Wincing that remind me of San Francisco, particularly the incorporation of outdoor sounds (birds chirping), a sort of industrial feedback-twinged acoustic guitar, the cheeky by resonant ‘70s-esque keyboards, and the pairing of anxiety and gloom with brightness and gloss. People don’t talk about album producers all that much, but in some cases these guys are my heroes almost as much as the artists. When I was in college, a musician friend and I used to be obsessed with Mitchell Froom, Hugh Padgham, Tchad Blake, Steve Albini, Brad Wood, Nick Lowe and several other producers.

My other Shins connection of course comes from their residing in Portland. A filmmaker friend of mine, Matt McCormick, used to be friends with them back in Albuquerque before they all moved up here. (He directed one of their videos, "The Past and Pending", which is superb.) I’ve never met any of them, but I had the good fortune last year to go to the recording/filmmaking of Burn To Shine, a DVD featuring performances by a host of Portland bans: The Shins, The Decemberists, Sleater-Kinney, Quasi, Lifesavas, The Thermals, The Gossip. It was fun watching the various band members hang out all day and let their guard down as we stood in a garage grazing over sandwich fixings, chips and cookies. The Shins came in an unassuming white Subaru. Sleater-Kinney came in a sweet new Volvo.

I’m further behind when it comes to familiarizing myself with The Good, The Bad & The Queen, but I got excited the first time I heard it. Damon Albarn started out in the ‘90s Britpop band Blur, which I was never a fan of, and then under the Gorillaz moniker made two records partnering with great hip-hop producers, first Dan the Automator for the group's eponymous debut and then, for Demon Days, with Danger Mouse. (Who also mashed The Beatles’ White Album and Jay-Z’s Black Album into—what else?—The Grey Album to brilliant effect.) The Good, The Bad is not a Gorillaz album, but it’s Albarn and Danger Mouse again, and that’s a great combination. (DM is another case of the producer being a collaborative partner.) Actually, though, that wasn’t what got me excited when I first heard the album: it was the influence of Simonon. Even though Albarn remains the principal author of this music, I could hear a twinge of The Clash, and, as Martha Stewart used to say, “It’s a good thing.” It also makes me appreciate more than ever Paul Simonon’s contribution to the band, which is easy to underestimate given the presence of Joe Strummer and Mick Jones.

There is an embarrassment of riches lately, because I haven’t even gotten to the new Decemberists album yet. (Coincidentally, my first purchased piece of artwork is a drawing by lead singer/songwriter Colin Meloy’s girlfriend, Carson Ellis.) They too were at the Burn To Shine filming. Can’t remember their vehicle make, but I do distinctly remember their accordionist wearing a dress made out of Star Wars bed sheets.

Take a Bad Song and Make It Better: Paul McCartney's Redemption

When Paul McCartney's latest solo album, Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, came out last year, it immediately garnered some of the best reviews the former Beatle has received in decades. But I was still skeptical. I thought of a moment from The Simpsons when Lisa says to Homer about his latest broken promise, "I'd like to believe you this time. Really I would."

At the same time, something McCartney said in a Q magazine interview around the time of the record's release stuck with me. Usually, he explained, his philosophy upon heading into the studio was something along the lines of, "I hope I make a good record." But this time, for various reasons, his attitude was more aggressive: "No, I'm going to make a good record."

[Funnily enough, I heard almost the exact same statement a few weeks while interviewing the Oregon Ducks' quartback for their 1994 Rose Bowl season, Danny O'Neil. Before that season, his senior year, O'Neil had gone 0-16 as a starter in games his team trailed at halftime. But suddenly in 994, the team had three dramatic come-from behind victories on its way to the Pac-10 championship and the penultimate college football bowl game. O'Neil told me the difference between Oregon's offense in his previous years, and the team that went to the Rose Bowl was that same passive versus active line of thought. He said the Duck offense went from hoping they'd make plays to saying, "We're going to go out and make the play, and it's up to the defense to try and stop us."]

But back to Paul McCartney.

During my childhood, The Beatles dominated my musical world. My mom had been a huge fan since their Ed Sullivan performance, and I remember many a family dinner with a Fab Four record playing on the turntable as the soundtrack. I also remember my mom playing Beatles records as she'd sit in the living room cross-stitching while my dad and I watched sports on TV. I got so into The Beatles myself that as a child I remember carrying around my Radio Shack tape recorder - that long flat kind - around with Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band playing. It was a crappy recording I’d made with the tape recorder’s built in microphone, but I didn’t care.

In or out of The Beatles, I’ve always been particularly a Paul McCartney fan and defender. I never agreed with those who argue for John Lennon being the biggest resident genius in the band and McCartney only making what he self mockingly called “silly love songs”. McCartney owed a debt to Cole Porter as much as Elvis, which makes for a different kind of music than Lennon’s more straightforward rock leanings. But the list of McCartney treasures is too ridiculously long to even begin listing. (Although personal favorites include “Here, There and Everywhere”, “Fixing A Hole” “The Long and Winding Road”, “Martha My Dear”, and “The Fool on the Hill“.)

Still, I never found myself passionate or even that impressed with most of Paul McCartney’s solo albums. Sure, there are a lot of great individual McCartney songs made with Wings and in the ensuing years. But most of his albums I’d be almost outright embarrassed to have in my collection. “Say Say Say” and “Ebony and Ivory” haven’t aged too well.

But finally with Chaos and Creation in the Backyard I feel there’s a truly superb Paul McCartney album from start to finish. The opening track, “Fine Line” is the kind of sing along gem he used to turn out. Many other songs are fueled by melancholy and anger - precursors to the bitter divorce McCartney’s now experiencing with Heather Mills. “Riding to Vanity Fair”, for example, is a caustic take on his partner seeking fame when all he asked for was friendship.

What I also love about Chaos and Creation is that McCartney plays virtually all the instruments, something he did early in his solo career but hasn’t returned to much since he’s developed a loyal longtime touring band over the years. There’s an intimacy and simplicity that comes from his playing, and a unity of purpose. That also comes from producer Nigel Goodrich, with whom McCartney works with for the first time on this album but who has produced some classic Radiohead and Beck albums.

I still don’t know if I expect McCartney’s next album, whenever it appears in a couple years or so, to meet the level of this one. But I feel such a sense of thankfulness to have something that I didn’t even know was possible: a superb work from a musician far past his salad days. A musician in particular who can match the works of his youth is exceptionally rare, and the record bins are stocked with indulgent failures. Yet Chaos and Creation isn’t just good for an ex-Beatle approaching retirement age. It’s just good.

Strangeways and Nevermind

I usually don’t like to listen to the same album in one day. It’s a funny little rule I follow. Even if I’m particularly into a record and listen to it every day, I still like to let the listening experience sink in for a night. Otherwise it’s like over-eating at a great meal. (Which, ironically, I do at almost every dinnertime.)

But this Labor Day Weekend I wound up listening to the same album twice in one day on two different occasions. I realize this isn’t earth-shattering, stop-the-presses kind of news for anyone else, but for me it’s a noteworthy aberration.

The two albums are The Smiths’ Strangeways, Here we Come and Nirvana’s Nevermind.

First we played the Nirvana record on my i-Pod during about a 30-mile stretch of Highway 12 in Washington, heading west from Centralia where we’d exited off Interstate 5. This was on Friday, late in the 90-plus-degree afternoon.

If you haven’t guessed already, the occasion for playing Nevermind was that we were headed toward Aberdeen, Kurt Cobain’s hometown, on the way to Lake Quinault near Olympic National Park for our friends Becca and Eric's wedding. Neither Valarie nor I had been to Aberdeen before, and even though it sounds corny and obvious to play Nirvana at such a time, we had a sincere desire to think about the place where Cobain grew up with his music as the soundtrack.

The only problem was, we got a little too hasty about putting the record on. We were on the last song, “Something In The Way” (not including the unlisted song that plays after 13-ish minutes of silence), as we entered town. I could tell, though, that Valarie wanted to start the album again, as she knew I hate listening to the same record or song twice in a row. But luckily I was willing to temporarily suspend the rule, because it made for a moving, contemplated experience. She made a squeal when I gave the go-ahead for a replay

Aberdeen is a fishing and logging town, and traditionally has been pretty blue-collar and somewhat depressed. The first thing we found, however, was a thriving mini-mall of chain stores and a Taco Bell across the street. Like so many cities and towns, Aberdeen seems to have recovered with an influx of new development and retail options, but to an extent seems to have sold a bit of its soul in the process. Gritty old Aberdeen must have depressed Kurt Cobain, or at least added to the challenge of inheriting the DNA of a suicide and depression-prone family. But I think he’d have found just as much to be depressed about in the ubiquity and unsightliness inherent to sea-of-asphalt strip malls and Everywhere, USA chain stores that have invaded Aberdeen.

Nevermind sounded as fucking insanely brilliant as ever on both listens. Valarie cites “Territorial Pissing” as her favorite song, while I’m most partial to “On a Plain” and “Drain You”. But I think there’s not anything close to a bad song on that album. At the time Nirvana was popular, a few of my friends argued for the superiority of Nirvana’s debut album on the indie label Sub-Pop, Bleach. But I never took to it. Bleach seemed to draw more from metal, whereas Nevermind seemed, while wholly original, also more punk influenced, like a polished version of Sonic Youth. No, Nevermind is definitely the masterpiece here, I think, even if that’s a more obvious choice. I could say so much more about Cobain’s suicide and my feelings about it, but I hesitate to open that Pandora’s Box. (Short answer: compassion, not condemnation).

Incidentally, upon entering Aberdeen we knew to look for the town's entry sign that reads "Come As You Are". I'd thought this was a tribute to Cobain, but it turns out the sign predates the Nirvana song of the same name. Apparently the song's title was a nod to the town's sign. "Come As You Are" was also the first Nirvana song I really became a big fan of. I hadn't fallen for "Smells Like Teen Spirit" when it was released as a single, although I've since come to appreciate its cataclysmic power. But I wound up liking all the other songs that were released at the time anyway.

On to the other record: As a high school student in a small town during the mid-to-late 1980s, I didn’t even know who The Smiths were. Unless you count the time when a couple girls in my French class wrote the band’s name on the chalkboard. But that doesn't really constitute knowing a band.

By happenstance, I heard the band’s last album, Strangeways, Here We Come, a few years later in 1990 while in college at NYU. It was playing on the PA system in a darkened screening room at the Angelica Film Center on Houston Street in New York. I was waiting for a midnight screening of David Lynch’s Wild At Heart. This was freshman year, and I remember my narcoleptic roommate James was with me. James had been a Smiths fan and encouraged me to get the album when I expressed interest. My more prevalant memory of James, however, is of him sitting in the closet in the middle of the night, night after night, crying into the telephone to his girlfriend while I tried to sleep. He was homesick and only lasted one semester. But I have him to thank for my buying Strangeways.

Obviously I was struck by Morrissey’s unique crooner-esque voice, dressed in the guitar-pop instrumentation of Johnny Mar and company. Although I didn’t realize it at the time, this was the last Smiths album, recorded three years earlier in 1987. It has a less traditional array of instruments (xylophone, synthesizer) than the band’s more jangly, guitar-oriented previous albums, such as The Queen Is Dead, Louder Than Bombs and Meat Is Murder. Strangeways is a bit glossier and majestic, which I think suits Morrissey’s morose lyrics.

It’s funny how sometimes one owns an album for years, liking it alright but listening to it rather seldomly, and then one day one suddenly wants to hear it all the time. According to my i-Tunes stats, I’ve listened to Strangeways something like eight times in the last two weeks. I've probably only listened to it about ten times in the sixteen years I've owned the record. (It's actually a CD, of course, but I've never taken to using that term.)

We first listened to the album in the car, driving home from our weekend in Lake Quinault. Aberdeen was the setting for this one too, at least at the beginning. I remember re-starting the first song, “A Rush and a Push and the Land Is Ours” after pulling out of a Chevron station near the Wishkah River, which was in progress when I decided to pull over. Valarie and I briefly imagined similarities and the degrees of separation between Morrissey and Cobain. (They both were pretty depressed and they both became pals with Michael Stipe.)

I listened to the album again later that afternoon, while surfing the Internet at home. At first I was just going to listen to “Death of a Disco Dancer”, which is my favorite song on the album along with the aforementioned “Rush and a Push”. But then I kept listening to the end and backed around at the beginning to hear the ones at the beginning before “Disco Dancer”.

The cover photo of Strangeways is of James Dean in the movie East of Eden. (Dean was a hero of Morrissey’s.) The album isn’t generally considered The Smiths’ best—that honor generally seems to go to The Queen Is Dead or their eponymous first album. But I read on one online music site that both Morrissey and Marr consider Strangeways their favorite. At least they can agree on something.

Meanwhile, for the last few weeks Marr has reportedly been here in Portland producing a Modest Mouse album. It’s almost 20 years since the band broke up, and aside from a few appearances with The The and Electronic, Marr hasn’t recorded much since. Still, I can’t help but imagine him strumming his guitar and looking out at the same horizon.

Critical Condition

Recently I was listening to Bjork’s album Vespertine, and it reminded me of how I’d reviewed the album for Willamette Week when it came out five years ago, just after the September 11 terrorist attacks. I gave the album a good review, but I also didn’t really get to know Vespertine anywhere near as much as one ought to if rendering an opinion that’s going to be printed in 100,000 copies of a newspaper.

I wish I could tell you this is the exception to the rule with arts criticism, but it’s not. The system just isn’t structured for someone to be able to really ponder and, more importantly, get to know any work thoroughly.

Only in the last year or two, for example, have I come to really get a feel for Vespertine. But there’s very little media interest in people writing about albums that came out five weeks ago—hell, maybe even five days.

It’s funny how on one hand I’ve always felt proud and privileged to be in a position to write arts criticism over the last several years: movies, architecture, music, visual arts. Yet at the same time, in writing those reviews over the years, I’ve grown more doubtful about most criticism that’s out there.

Besides, I’ve always felt my editors were looking for good writing more than any particular verdict one way or the other. As long as you can support your argument clearly and succinctly as a piece of persuasive rhetoric, you’ve essentially done your job. But even though any opinion is just that—there is no fixed answer as to the quality of a piece of art or lack thereof—I’ve always felt a desire to keep gaining a deeper feel for certain works.

There’s not enough hours in the day to read, watch or listen to all the works being generated, of course, yet so many works over the years I’ve only come to fully appreciate after experiencing them many times and having plenty of additional time in between to walk away from the works and view them fresh again down the road. I remember seeing The Limey at the KOIN Center Cinemas when it came out a few years ago, and I liked it pretty well on a surface level as a kind of lone-wolf revenge orgy. But only after Valarie and I watched it several times on DVD did I come to truly appreciate the incredibly rich nuances of the movie’s editing.

Being a good critic, I guess, requires a twin set of skills. You’ve got to be perceptive about the work itself, but you’ve also got to be able to do so very quickly.

All the time I was growing up and into adulthood, whenever I went to a movie with someone I disliked it when he or she would start talking about whether the movie was good or not as soon as we walked out of the theater. It’s a natural thing to do, of course, but I always wanted to digest it a little bit before deciding. As a movie reviewer, I remember having kind of grow a new muscle in my brain for rendering a verdict a lot more quickly than I had ever been used to. But it’s still hard. I’ve had to come to terms with the fact that any kind of review done for a weekly or daily publication is going to be rendered hastily. The old cliché calls journalism the first draft of history. I guess I liked to think of the criticism side of media to be something more enduring, but in the end it’s very transitory.

Actually it’s another form of writing, weblogs, that has taught me a good lesson about reviewing: that it’s not an end, but a beginning. That success can be measured not simply by whether the writing’s good, or if one succeeds in getting the verdict right, but in how successful it is at getting a conversation. Even then, however, it’s not an open-and-shut case, because some of the best conversation starters are the one’s most guilty of hyperbole and extremism. I don’t want that either.

It’s funny: I’ve actually made myself more confused about the role of criticism as I’ve written this. In searching for some kind of final words or theoretical connecting thread, the only thing I can come up with is just to continue the pursuit.

Borrowed Music

Recently I had some time to kill downtown and decided to check out a few CDs from the library: Shubert piano sonatas, Dvorak string quartets, Shostakovich's 15th symphony, and a collection of Thailand ceremonial and court music. (I can also vouch for there still being plenty of Linda Rondstadt albums available on the library shelves, but not one single CD of traditional Japanese music.) After all these years, I still find it amazing that I can just walk out with this stuff, free of charge, and all they ask is that I bring it back in a few weeks. Like Jerry Seinfeld once said, it's a government version of the pathetic friend. I love it.

Anyway, though, my point was supposed to be that both the Shubert and Dvorjak albums are terrific. I'm not very good at articulating what I like about classical music. I don't know anything about arpeggios or major-seventh chords or an allegro versus a scherzo.

But I can tell you the Shubert feels alternately delicate, deep, mournful and optimistic. According to a book I have called Classical Music: A Rough Guide, Shubert was kind of old-school when he was composing back in the early 19th century, preferring tuneful melodies to the more ambiguous music popular in that time. Andras Schiff is the pianist on this recording, and I don't know anything about him, but being a solo piano recording, it's basically all him. I don't know very much about pianists, other than a big name like Andre Watts or people I've seen like Vladimir Feltsman, Anne Marie McDermott, and Yakov Kasman (the guy who suddenly was tapped to fly across country to step in at the last minute and save a Rachmaninov performance here).

I was listening to the Dvorak last night on my i-Pod while editing video shot from the plane during my flight to Los Angeles a couple weeks ago, and the Poco andante and Finale from the String Quintet in G Major (op. 77) really made the footage - a succession of time lapse footage of the plane wing with clouds going by - come alive. Does anyone out there know someone who could play some of it for me? I'd love to use part of the piece as soundtrack to the film. The music was stirring, with the violins and cellos often playing at a frenetic pace. But it also has moments of quiet tenderness. Dvorak, again according to the Rough Guide, successfully married folk music traditions with symphonic music. So there's a whimsy here that balances the more anthem-like classical aspects.

These albums also represent to me a new era for my music collection in which I don't keep a physical copy, like one has in the past with a either a CD or vinyl record album. As much as I love my i-Pod, it's going to take a long time for me to get used to the idea that much of my music collection exists only as digital files. Maybe that's fine, in a way, because the music itself should matter more than its packaging. But that also eliminates the heretofore established art form of album covers. And more importantly to me, as someone who avidly collects and hordes physical things that I love, I won't have the comforting effect of knowing that a piece of music that I love is literally within grasp. As I write this, though, I also get a sense of how soon this conceptual difficulty with change is what dates me. I'll have to stop making fun of my mom for not knowing how to use an ATM.

My Inner Casey Kasem

When I was a kid I listened virtually every week to the American Top 40 radio countdown of Billboard magazine-ranked singles. It was broadcast here in Oregon on the long-gone Salem station KSKD, “Cascade 105”.

Without any sense of irony (this was elementary-school age we’re talking about), I loved host Casey Casem and his smooth, yet almost Muppet-like voice. Years later I can do a pretty decent imitation of him saying something like, “This song jumps up five notches to number seven,” with “five notches” in a higher-pitched voice and “number seven” more of a bass-like low pitch. 

I remember the sense of drama I felt as Casey neared the top of the list, listening on a clock radio in my bedroom, or a Walkman as I walked the dog. I instantly date myself by the bands and songs that come to mind. Is “Man Eater” by Hall & Oates #1 again? Certainly they’re here to stay. Whereas Madonna, author of “Borderline” and “Lucky Star”, is clearly a flash in the pan. And when, after a succession of top 10 hits, will Duran Duran finally score a #1 single? I can’t remember if it was “The Reflex” or “A View to a Kill” that finally did it. And I want to know who’s falling for a cheesy anthem like Foreigner’s “I Want To Know What Love Is” enough to take it to the top of the chart.

For the next couple decades or more, until I got my i-Pod, I didn’t really think of music in terms of individual songs. I clung to the notion of an album as the artform. But an i-Pod and, more specifically, i-Tunes software, make me think of songs again. I gravitate to the list of my Top 25 songs played. Sometimes I even find it affecting my listening habits. I can create my own singles chart. I am my own Casey Kasem. (Thankfully Jean Kasem and her pony-tail sprouting from the top of her scalp are nowhere to be found.)

As it happens, though, my top 25 is a little bit out of whack. The statistics for some songs are artificially high because the software incorporates times that Valarie has listened to them on her i-Pod. For example, the #1 song on my list has been one of the tracks from Mali Music, the album Damon Albarn (of Blur and Gorillaz fame) made with several Mali musicians (hence the title). Called “Spoons”, it’s a great song, and a great album, but I’ve listened to it about three times on my i-Pod, and Valarie the other 20.

Several movements from Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos are more literally at the top of my i-Tunes chart. I listen to them regularly as motivation, particularly on weekday mornings when I’m trying to shake off fatigue. I think of the Concertos as going hand-in-hand with the espresso I drink. What’s also curious about this is that Valarie and I have long had a friendly disagreement about how it’s best to listen to music. She likes to program certain music for certain activities, like up-tempo rock and pop for washing the dishes or soft classical for reading. I often prefer to make the music itself the activity, just lying on the couch and listening. But with Bach, I must say that the pace and complexity switch my mind into a higher gear, and that’s helpful for activity.

A handful of Beatles songs unsurprisingly occupy the upper portion of my list as well. In the past I’d always eschewed the collection of #1 Beatles hits called simply 1, because I don’t like greatest hits albums – there’s no flow, no sense of the album as its own entity. But I downloaded a few songs from Valarie’s copy, and I must say I’ve been hitting “Lady Madonna”, “Paperback Writer”, “Day Tripper” and “The Ballad of John & Yoko” pretty hard.

I’ve also listened several times to certain Beatles album tracks that never became big singles. From Let It Be I love the George Harrison song “I Me Mine” and Lennon/McCartney's "Across the Universe". From the “White Album” (I use quotes instead of italics because it’s not the literal album name), I love “Cry Baby Cry”, “Savoy Truffle” and “Sexy Sadie”.

For many years, Rubber Soul ranked among my favorite and most-listened-to Beatles records, but about five years ago my CD got a scratch on the second song, “Norwegian Wood”. I found I just couldn’t listen to the album at all with that song missing, and I never got around to buying a new copy. (I was paralyzed—how can I buy a whole new album but the case and all but one song work great?) But now I’ve finally downloaded “Norwegian Wood” and uploaded the rest of Rubber Soul, making the album come alive again on my i-Pod. People shower lots of praise on Revolver because it marked a transition between The Beatles’ early career of relatively simple pop songs and their later, more psychedelic period. But I think you could say the same about Rubber Soul. (Incidentally, I remember when I was growing up, it was always Sgt. Pepper that was considered the band’s greatest masterpiece, but it’s for some reason been overtaken since then by Revolver.)

Two David Bowie songs are also ranked high: “Oh! You Pretty Things” and “Life on Mars”, both from the classic album Hunky Dory. Interestingly, my favorite Bowie recordings have usually been his later albums from the 1970s, particularly the “Berlin Trilogy” of Low, Heroes, and Lodger that he made with Brian Eno, as well as Station to Station. But hearing “Life on Mars” in Wes Anderson’s The Life Aquatic accounted for the film’s most transcendent moment, and now it’s become a favorite.

A guilty-pleasure pop/R&B song from the early 80s is also in frequent rotation: “Let It Whip” by The Dazz Band. I fell in love with that song as a child when I bought the Neon Nights compilation album from K-Tel Records.

The first track from Bjork’s Vespertine, “Hidden Place” also gets played a lot. Valarie bought us that album in New York just a couple weeks before September 11, and the spiritual quality of the songs hit us right away. But Vespertine ultimately didn’t get listened to very much over the ensuing years, because it lacked the peppy, danceable quality of her previous records. But a couple months ago while in Brooklyn I had the good fortune to meet harpist Zena Parkins, who plays on Vespertine, and that inspired me to listen to the album again. And it’s actually quite exquisite—but nothing beats that first song for me.

Although it’s cooled off lately, for quite some time I was listening to the second half of The Clash’s Combat Rock almost incessantly. In particular, I love “Ghetto Defendant”, which includes spoken word by Allen Ginsberg alternating with Joe Strummer’s singing. Sometimes Ginsberg and his recitations seems out of place in the song or even outright silly, but I fall for them anyway: “Starved in metropolis/hooked on cosmopolis”.

When I was a kid, my dad got me into 1950s music like Chuck Berry (my first concert) and Jerry Lee Lewis. I was also greatly influenced by a compilation album my childhood friend Joe Czekalski gave me called 25 Rock Revival Greats. So I’ve downloaded some digital versions of the singles I loved from that old vinyl copy: “Black Slacks” by The Sparkletones, and “Just Because” by Lloyd Price.

Finally, I’ll wrap up with some other random songs I’ve listened to a lot, with the albums in parenthesis:

Joy Division, “Atrocity Exhibition” (Closer)
Paul McCartney, “Fine Line” (Chaos & Creation in the Backyard)
Duran Duran, “My Own Way” (Rio)
The Evens, “Mount Pleasant Isn’t” (The Evens)
The Beta Band, “Squares” (Hot Shots II)
Colleen, “Ritournelle” (Everyone Alive Wants Answers)
The Decemberists, “The Engine Driver” (Picaresque)
The Police, “Tea In the Sahara” (Synchronicity)
Tom Waits, “Alice” (Alice)
Ben Webster, “Tenderly” (King of the Tenors)
The Chills, “Tied Up In Chain” (Submarine Bells)
Count Basie, “April In Paris” (April in Paris)
Galaxie 500, “Listen, The Snow Is Falling” (This Is Our Music)
Gene Ammons, “Pagan Love Song” (Bad! Bossa Nova)
Jimi Hendrix, “Rainy Day, Dream Away” (Electric Ladyland)
John Lennon, “I Found Out” (Plastic Ono Band)
Prince, “Dirty Mind” (Dirty Mind)
Tricky, “Black Steel” (Maxinquaye)
Morphine, “I’m Free Now” (Cure For Pain)

My first i-Pod (a.k.a. "Bri-Pod")

A week ago Sunday, thanks to the generous Valarie, I got my first i-Pod. As just about anyone would say, it’s so nice to be able to listen to music anywhere, and to filter out unwanted noises at the grocery store, the doctor’s office waiting room, and so on.

More than actually listening to the i-Pod, though, my time has been spent frantically uploading music. In seven days I’ve uploaded 1,146 songs. But I’m old fashioned. I don’t think in terms of individual songs, but in terms of albums. I’ve uploaded 98 albums in that time.

The albums I’ve uploaded represent roughly about 20% of my CD collection. As such, it’s been interesting as I scroll through my i-Tunes software to see what decisions I’ve made, what music and artists make the cut and which ones don’t. Although I’ve tried to upload music based strictly on what I want (or likely will want) to hear—especially since I’m taking a weeklong trip in a couple days—without trying to I’ve essentially passed judgment on the value of my own music collection.

Looking at which artists I’ve uploaded multiple albums by, The Beatles are way out in front with seven albums: Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour, Sgt. Pepper’s, The Beatles (the White Album), Abbey Road, Let It Be, and about 15 songs from Anthology 3. (I'm particularly partial to "Not Guilty" and "Old Brown Shoe".) I’d most certainly have also uploaded Rubber Soul if there weren’t a skip on “Norwegian Wood”, and if there was more time before my trip I’d surely also load Help!, A Hard Day’s Night and a few others.

The most albums I’ve uploaded by any other artist is three—less than half of the amount of Beatles albums on the i-Pod.

There are three by XTC: English Settlement, Drums & Wires, and Black Sea, all of which are early records from the late 1970s while they were still playing short, streamlined punk-pop in the vein of early Police and The Clash. Later XTC quit touring and have recorded several increasingly ambitious studio albums, which are great—but I still like the old tossed-off recordings the best.

Speaking of The Clash, I also have three albums of theirs: Combat Rock, Sandinista! and Give ‘Em Enough Rope. You may notice that I haven’t uploaded London Calling, which is more or less their most acclaimed album. (Rolling Stone named it the best album of the 1980s.) But while I certainly agree it’s a fabulous record, my favorite is unquestionably Sandinista!, a sprawling double album from later in the band’s career that more generously incorporates the variety of sounds that London Calling was just beginning to. Sandinista! is The White Album to London Calling’s Revolver. I also love Combat Rock, which I first heard in grade school courtesy of my friend Paul. Interestingly, the first side of Combat Rock (I still think in terms of sides, a holdover from vinyl album days) has The Clash’s two biggest singles, “Rock the Kasbah” and “Should I Stay or Should I Go?”, but I usually skip both songs because I’ve simply heard them too many times. (Don't get me started on the tyranny of hit singles.) I prefer the second side, especially the song “Ghetto Defendant”, a collaboration with poet Allen Ginsberg.

With classical music, a growing passion of mine, I found myself changing the artist designations that automatically load into i-Tunes with the CD. Instead of listing the orchestra and/or conductor, I’ve changed the artist’s name to that of the composer. It’s mostly just for convenience sake, because I think of the music in terms of the composer much more so than who plays the music.

Which brings me to three recordings of Bach on the i-Pod: The Brandenburg Concertos, The Art of the Fugue, and a collection of other short pieces.

The only other artist I have three recordings by is my friend Chad’s band Beauty Pill: The Unsustainable Lifestyle, You Are Right To Afraid, and The Cigarette Girl From the Future. The latter two are actually EPs. It’s not merely out of loyalty that I’ve uploaded these recordings, though. I really love them.

After that, there are 11 different artists I have two albums by: Air, A Tribe Called Quest, Dmitri Shostakovich, Elvis Costello & The Attractions, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Stevie Wonder, David Bowie, Radiohead, The Police, Roland Kirk, Tricky, and The Pharcyde. But I could also include Damon Albarn, whom I have two non-Blur albums by under different artist headings: Mali Music, a collaboration he did with several musicians from that country, and Demon Days, the second Gorillaz album.

Besides what this list says, there’s also what it doesn’t say, or what it says that might be misleading. The Beatles, The Clash and XTC are a pretty accurate representation of the rock/pop I listen to the most. But I’ve long thought of Shostakovich as my favorite composer, even though I have more Bach uploaded.

There are also a few artist whom I own a lot of albums by, yet are not represented on the i-Pod at all. I have ten Miles Davis recordings, for example. Kind of Blue is perhaps the greatest jazz album of all-time, and one I've listened to a lot over the years. But I've heard it so many times it's as if there's an i-Pod in my mind that means I don't need to play the actual record. I could easily have uploaded other Miles albums, such as Birth of the Cool or In a Silent Way, to name to personal favorites. But for some reason I've become less and less attracted to trumpet versus other instruments certain other bandleaders play like piano, saxophone, or even bass. The funny thing is trumpet is the only instrument I've ever learned to play (in junior high band).

I also own many albums by REM and U2, and none of them were included in the first 98 albums I uploaded.

I listened to tons of REM in college and the ensuing years, and while I don't deny many of their albums being terrific, especially Murmur, Reckoning, Document and Automatic for the People, they're just not a band that interests me anymore. I really think they should have broken up when drummer Bill Berry left the band about six or seven years ago. Not enough bands know when to leave the spotlight.

U2's Achtung Baby is definitely one of my favorite records, and I'm kind of surprised it's not on the i-Pod. I also still like Zooropa. But both those albums I listen to with Valarie somewhat often, so I probably hear them enough that way. And of course U2 is another band that's still around after 20+ years. At a certain point I just can't sustain interest with album after album.

I also notice that overall jazz seems under-represented because there aren’t any artists I have more than two albums by. I have two Roland Kirk albums, and could easily have uploaded a couple more. Same goes for the Modern Jazz Quartet—I just love vibraphone. But Charles Mingus is a favorite, as are Bill Evans and Keith Jarrett, and I have only one album by each of them. That will surely change in the weeks ahead.

But I guess that’s the fun of the uploading process. It’s not scientific, but it’s an intriguing snapshot into my own listening habits, how they’ve changed and how they haven’t over the years. And of course this is a work in progress. I’ve still got over 23GB of storage left.

Roland Kirk's Volunteered Slavery

Volunteer Slavery is not traditionally my favorite album by jazz musician Rahsaan Roland Kirk. Although recorded in his prime, with the album including both studio tracks and a raucous performance at the 1968 Newport Jazz Festival, there has always been an over-the-edge quality to the music that has, for all Kirk’s astonishing musicianship and passionate playing, lacked a crucial sense of control. The music always seems to be teetering just barely beyond some indefinable, unmarked line.

Known primarily as a tenor saxophonist, Roland Kirk (as he was known in the earlier portion of his career), also often plays flute, as well as a multitude of toy-like instruments peppered through his songs, such as the stritch and the monzello. He also frequently plays two saxophones at once (with one reed branching out to the two horns) and has the rare gift for what’s known as circular breathing, in which one can breathe in and out while simultaneously continuing to play the instrument (the soloing possibilities are endless). On one of Volunteered Slavery’s live tracks, he even plays nose flute.

But lately, since I’ve been listening to the album often, it is the very chaos of Volunteered Slavery that I've been drawn to. Kirk and his band may sound raucous, but it comes with a contagious exhuberance. Throughout his career, Kirk has been described as a player with the talent of a virtuoso but the reckless abandon in his playing of a street musician. Although there’s an element of almost Barnum-like showmanship to Roland Kirk’s persona—the guy wears a top hat, after all—he has the chops, the knowledge and the sheer soulfulness to back it up.

(Apropos of nothing, Roland Kirk was blind. Oh, and he died of a stroke in 1977.)

Volunteered Slavery crosses another line that I’m less sure about, but ultimately I end up going for it too. Coming in the mid-to-late Sixties, the album is open and liberal about integrating jazz with rock and pop. Roland Kirk covers both Stevie Wonder’s “Mon Cherie Amour” and Burt Bacharach’s “Say A Little Prayer”. The idea of it sounds alarm bells in my mind, for this era of jazz was one teetering on the edge of the fusion era, something that created a lot of bad records. But I like both Wonder and Bacharach (I grew up listening to my mom’s copy of Talking Book), and I think you could argue that Roland Kirk’s covering these songs is no different from John Coltrane covering “My Favorite Things”. Besides, Roland Kirk was always one to incorporate a variety of genres, both in and out of jazz (he moved effortlessly between avant garde, bop and other sub-genres).

Ultimately it’s another Rahsaan Roland Kirk album, The Inflated Tear, that still earns my vote as his most refined and exquisite album. (Thanks be to Neil for introducing me to it back in London in 1995.) It came slightly earlier in his career, and he was yet to become quite so unbridled. As a result, there is a precision to the playing that you don’t necessarily hear on Volunteered Slavery. But the latter record, perhaps of the strong gospel influence that wasn’t so prevalent with its precessor, has this pulsating rhythm that I think is its true secret. I’ve never, ever been one to clap along, but if I ever did, it would be to Volunteered Slavery.

Don't Worry: I've Got Your Bach

For the last few weeks I’ve been listening to Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos almost nonstop. And when I'm not literally playing the six pieces on a CD player or iPod, they're playing in my head - on repeat.

Although before this Bach binge I certainly appreciated the legendary Baroque composer's place in history at the top of the classical class with Mozart and Beethooven, I had never considered myself a particularly rabid fan per se. I’m still a relative novice when it comes to classical recordings, but so far I have gravitated mostly to Shostakovic, with Beethoven, Debussy, Johan Strauss, Richard Strauss, Brahms, and Steve Reich following behind.

And it’s not as if I’d never heard Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos before. In a way, you wind up hearing at least snippets of them all your life, on movie soundtracks or even sampled in hip-hop (the first Handsome Boy Modeling School album comes to mind). But I think this societal/musical ubiquity is precisely why I had never, until recently, just sat down and listened to the Brandenburg Concertos from start to finish. (That and the fact that I’ve previously listened to mostly rock and jazz.)

And suddenly I understand certain other composers' influences  more clearly, and not just the old classical guys. I’ve become a huge fan of the scores for Wes Anderson's last three films, for example, which are composed by Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo fame. Only recently did it hit me how much that signature harpsichord-laden Wes Anderson sound is a kind of reworked Brandenburg. Freedom of Choice indeed. (Or, "Crack that baton!")

None of this, by the way, is to imply I know a lot about classical music. I unequivocally don’t. But I think that’s part of the allure: The supply of interesting, compelling music seems limitless.

Anyway, what first amazed me about the Concertos, which were written on commission for the Margrave of Brandenburg in 1721 and forgotten for several years afterward (Bach never even got paid), is an extraordinary precision and velocity of notes being played. I describe the sound as (and I'm not sure this makes any sense) mathematical. They say certain classical music can improve IQ, temporarily in adults (about 10-15 minutes) and permanently in children if repeated enough. Listening to the Brandenburg Concertos, I get a very palpable data zigzagging through my synapses.

And yet that mathematic sound, as I call it, is so inherently delicate. In this intimate chamber-music setting, the individual instruments are allowed to shine: violins, cellos, harpsichord.

A week ago our neighbors across the street threw their latest in a series of loud parties highlighted by a live rock band jamming in the living room. The sound was almost impossible to escape, but finally I disappeared into the basement with Valarie’s i-Pod. Drowning out the racket with Bach, of all things, gave me my greatest satisfaction of the evening.

Elvis Costello and Early-Career Alchemy

I still remember the song that made me an Elvis Costello fan. It was 1991, and I was a sophomore at NYU. My friend Chad was really into the song “Beyond Belief” from the 1982 album Imperial Bedroom, especially its lyrics:

History repeats the old conceits
The glib replies, the same defeats
Keep your finger on important issues
With crocodile tears and a pocketful of tissues
I’m just the oily slick
On the wind-up world of the nervous tick
In a very fashionable hovel

During this initial phase of his career, Costello and his backing band/collaborators, The Attractions, toured and recorded albums at an astonishing pace. Imperial Bedroom was their sixth studio album in as many years. And while Costello has done excellent work throughout his career, this is unquestionably his most fruitful period. Along with Imperial Bedroom early albums like This Year’s Model, Armed Forces, and Get Happy are my favorites out of all the 17 Costello albums I own.

Many of these classic early albums were recorded during short breaks in Elvis & The Attractions’ touring schedule. And they’re arguably better than later albums for which Elvis had a much greater luxury of time to work on them. This is of course a common occurrence. How many bands can we all name whose best albums were recorded on the fly?

In the past I’d thought there was something about the finite amount of time that focused the artist and produced the quality album. But after reading Graeme Thompson’s book Complicated Shadows: The Life and Music of Elvis Costello, I was reminded of the relationship between touring and recording. Being on the road all those nights allowed Elvis and the band to continually play the new songs and tinker with them until they were truly great. The regiment of playing virtually every night for months on end amounted to one long rehearsal.

And yet even that doesn’t tell the whole story. Elvis has continued to tour extensively and record prolifically. And while there are some very excellent albums to his later career (Brutal Youth and Mighty Like a Rose are my favorites), nothing matches his early work. What is that alchemy that musicians so often have ahold of early in their careers but can’t quite maintain? For every artist like Paul Simon who goes on to record classic albums in middle age, there are countless others whose attempts fail.

Reading Thompson’s biography has inspired me to listen extensively to Elvis Costello and the Attractions’ early catalogue from 1977-82. And these records just never get old. Costello is often associated with punk, and there are certainly elements of the aggression and sublime musical simplicity of that era in his early records. But Costello was never really a punk; his influences were far too diverse. Rather, with the help of The Attractions, punk made his good songs great, giving them newfound focus, economy and fury.

What’s also fascinating about early Costello especially is that he played lead guitar, yet this is undeniably the instrument you hear the least of. Instead, Pete Thomas on drums and Bruce Thomas on bass lead the way with a pulsating rhythm, which Steve Nieve’s keyboard then dances through while Elvis sings. I think that’s something that really sets apart Elvis Costello from punk bands like The Clash and The Sex Pistols. Costello’s sound may not be as ferocious, but it’s brighter and more articulate. It cultivates spite instead of plain old anger.

Chances are Costello will never equal the mastery of his early days, but even a three-star recording by the man originally known as Declan Patrick MacManus will always be worth a listen to my ears. And the fleeting nature of almost any artist's pinnacle is all the more fascinating because it doesn't last.

Performance Piece

This week Valarie and I are going to our third classical music concert in less than a month. Chamber Music Northwest is in the midst of a Brahms festival that we're keen on. And last month we caught Oregon Symphony performances of Dvorak and, my personal favorite, Shostakovich. I've fallen in love with the natural sound of the instruments you can only get in person. It just seems to envelop you from all sides, and yet it doesn't overpower the ear either.

Unfortunately, even though I've bought a fair amount of classical albums over the past couple years, all of them have been disappointing sonically. The CD and stereo system just can't seem to replicate the real performance. And listing to classical music on record I also seem to spend the whole time turning the volume up and down depending on what's happening in the piece, because some parts I can barely hear and others are too loud. It's frustrating to only get that sublime experience of a classical performance a few times a year.

Ironically, I've always felt the exact opposite with rock music. Although there's something to be said for the theatrics of seeing a band play, I've never liked live rock as well as albums. Give me a pair of headphones anyday, where I can hear the guitar, bass and drums in equal harmony, focusing on the tiny details of a good production. But I also just don't like the logistics of rock performances--even if that makes me sound like an old fogey. Shows never start any earlier than 9:00, you usually have to sit through at least one opening band, and you're actually not sitting at all but standing for hours. It's not to say there haven't been some rock shows that blew me away. I remember seeing Fugazi in about 1993 with my friend Paul and the electricity would have made the folks at Bonneville Dam blush.

Still, it makes me wonder if much will have changed about music performance over the next generation or two. Pianist Glenn Gould famously (and wrongly) predicted that the ubiquity of stereo recordings would soon render classical performance obsolete. I'd never make the same prediction about rock, because it's so ingrained as a sub-culture--and that's great. But next time you're at CBGB or the Whiskey-A-Go-Go, don't expect to see me there.

Yin & Yang: Concert Hall and Living Room

On Saturday night I experienced two seemingly opposite ends of the music spectrum, although each was enjoyable in its own way. First, Valarie and I went to see the Oregon Symphony perform Shostakovich’s 5th Symphony. Shostakovich is my favorite classical composer, and the 5th is so robust and powerful that instead of politely clapping and perhaps exclaiming, “Bravo”, I felt more like pumping my fists and shouting, “Yeeeaaahhhhh!!!,” as if I were at a football game.

Then, after we enjoyed a quick bite at Clarklewis and I dropped Valarie off at home, I went over to friends Ady and Eric’s for a karaoke party. As I walked in, Ady and her sister were already belting out some 1980s chart topper. Before long, I talked myself into performing Wham’s “Everything She Wants”. Whenever I sing karaoke, I seem to harbor these delusions of grandeur that are quickly shot down to earth when the words finally come out of my mouth. And sure enough, I now cringe thinking of how I’d change octaves mid-song, searching in vain to find a good voice. But I know with karaoke it’s all part of the fun, and as another friend reminded me that night, the people who sing the worst are oddly the most successful.

One other interesting tidbit about the evening was that I wasn’t the only person going from the high culture of the symphony to the joyous ineptitude of karaoke. One of the players from the symphony was actually an attendee at the party. It reminds me of this documentary I watched last week for a review I was writing of the Northwest Film Center’s Reel Music series. It was a documentary called Music From the Inside Out, and it featured members of the Philadelphia Orchestra talking about what music meant to them intellectually, emotionally, socially, etc. The camera would often follow individual members as they engaged in different types of playing outside their work: jamming with traditional Latin music groups, listening to hip hop on headphones, watching a street musician play the accordion while on tour in some foreign city.

I guess what I’m saying is that, as with so many other types of art and culture, I enjoy the mix. Just as I sometimes go from a multi-course dinner of foie gras, twenty-three-green salad and braised duck one night to a double-quarter-pounder and fries another, it’s fun to go from Shostakovich rendered by gifted musicians to “99 Luftballoons” interpreted by a non-musician. I’d be lying if I said the symphony wasn’t infinitely better in a pure musical sense, but the karaoke was a lot of fun too. If only I could just get a little practice in with George Michael’s opus before my next moment on the living room stage.

Smile and American Solace

For the last few days I have been listening nonstop to Smile, the “lost” Beach Boys masterpiece finally released all these years later. Brian Wilson had begun it after completing the masterful Pet Sounds in 1966, the release of which the Beatles have said inspired them to make Sgt. Peppers. But he never finished Smile due to increasing mental and drug problems from which he’s only begun to emerge from in the last few years. Music press lately has been all over this story, with its themes of redemption and tortured genius. And the album deserves the attention its backstory has brought.

Even though by today he’s largely mastered his demons, Brian Wilson seems like he’s still missing a few cards in the deck. So there was reason to be skeptical about whether he could cull the assorted master tapes and finally finish this record at a level of quality even remotely approximating that of his original vision. After all, Smile was no mere rock record. It was so ambitious in incorporating a Gershwin-esque blend of classical and jazz that originally many surrounding the Beach Boys (the label, Wilson’s abusive father, perhaps even bandmates themselves) never wanted it released.

At first listen, Smile sounded disjointed. The traditional verse-chorus-verse structure of rock is followed a lot of the time, but the instrumentation and tempo change abruptly as songs go back and forth between sections. Ultimately, though, this was precisely what I came to like about the record. Wilson also does ingenious things to ensure that the album is a unified whole. A melody from one song often re-emerges briefly in another song, for example.

Then there are the lyrics, written by Van Dyke Parks nearly thirty years ago and touched up—both then and now with Wilson’s input—as the complete Smile was finally recorded over this past year (following a successful series of live performances of the album). Although sometimes they can get pretty corny, with talk of “eggs and grits” or their starry-eyed romanticism, I felt moved by the hopeful attitude. This album has something big to say, but it's smart enough to not spell things out. Perhaps the resulting transcendent quality is why Smile seems to resonate so much these days.

I say this because it’s four days before the presidential election. Kerry vs. Bush could really go either way, and the majority of us are passionately pulling for one or the other amid these politically polarized times. Bush voters seem to think he is the Abraham Lincoln for the war on terrorism (I’m laughing as I write this, of course), while us Kerry voters (not to mention pretty much the entire rest of the globe) see Bush as perhaps the most dangerous president we've ever had. My fear stems most of all from Bush Doctrine, which basically says we can invade any country we accuse of harboring terrorists, which became justification for Iraq predicated on faulty evidence of WMDs. That tells me fighting terrorism is under Bush's watch a chance to sucker punch Middle Eastern countries and secure access to their oil fields. Along the way, Bush seems to have almost deliberately fanned the flames of American hatred, especially frustrating to consider when you remember the outpouring of worldwide support after 9/11. But I'm getting off-point.

As happens with Oregon Ducks football--you know, that other life and death concern--I often get nervous enough come crunch time that I have to just tune it out. I stop watching it on TV, and I may even shy away from the paper. In these days before the eletion, what a nice antidote Smile has been. I find its inherent optimism especially attractive considering that this is both a 1967 record and a 2004 record, an odd collaboration between 24-year-old Brian Wilson and 63-year-old Brian Wilson. Smile was begun on the eve of his decades-long mental battles and completed on the other side. Anticipating events like the election, I always feel torn between hoping for the best and fearing the worst. Smile speaks to both sides at once.

American Music Club

When I was in college about ten years ago, American Music Club was pretty much my favorite band in the world. Not long after the release of their 1994 album San Francisco, though, the band broke up. In the ensuing years, I’d come to enjoy songwriter/lead singer Mark Eitzel’s solo career, but some of his albums were better than others. (The Chet Baker-esque 60 Watt Silver Lining: bravo; the Peter Buck-produced West: a real disappointment.) Eitzel is as poetic and heart-rending a songwriter as I’ve ever come across. And he was ideally accompanied by AMC’s blend of gritty and velvety sound textures, courtesy of Vudi’s guitar, Bruce Kaplan’s pedal steel, Tim Mooney’s drums, and Dan Pearson’s bass. American Music Club (their name was inspired by three words they believed never should be part of a band’s moniker) really created a sound that was greater than the sum of its parts. I guess you today you’d call it alt-country, but AMC transcended definition.

When I heard the band had re-assembled this year, it felt too late. I’d moved on. Not only were Eitzel and company ten years older—never a good sign for a rock band—but the melancholy lyrics also weren’t something I identified with quite so strongly as I had in my twenties. Still, when I heard yesterday morning that AMC was playing here in Portland later that night, I didn’t hesitate to head for Berbati’s to check them out. And it’s a good thing, because AMC played a great show.

The band began with three old favorites: "Johnny Mathis's Shoes" from the album Mercury, an absolute masterpiece produced by the great Mitchell Froom; "Why Won't You Stay" from Everclear, the 1991 album that, after much critical praise, put the band on the map; and "If I Had a Hammer", also from Mercury. Later they played "Western Sky" from the venerable early album California to conclude the first of two encores. Standing there blissfully in a rock club for the first time in seemingly years, I was taken back to the days when I used to memorize Eitzel’s lyrics.

One of my favorite passages from Mercury, for example, goes: “Well I’ve been praying a lot lately/It’s because I no longer have a TV/Just a fluorescent hangover to light the way/Between the things you say and the things I see.” On the AIDS benefit compilation album No Alternative, Eitzel begins the song “All Your Jeans Were Too Tight” by singing simply and with his unmistakable wit, “Everything I say/Sounds clumsy and dumb/But tryin’ to make you feel better/Is like tryin’ to trick St. Peter”. I could go on and on.

By now American Music Club may never fully rekindle the sublime sounds created together in the early 1990s. And Eitzel in particular has had a rough time over the years, with alcoholism, romantic heartache, and the irony of being called a genius but being more marginalized each year. But I hope he and the rest of the band will always take pride in having produced something exceptionally satisfying and gorgeous and haunting and gripping. They don’t have to trick St. Peter to make me feel good.

Put the Needle on the Record

Yesterday, to escape a hot afternoon in the mid-80s, I went into the basement for awhile and listened to records on my parents' old turntable, which I have set up down there. The featured album was 25 Rock Revival Greats, a collection of 50s hits I got in grade school when a neighborhood friend, Joe Czekalski, stole it from his dad and passed on to me. Two thoughts came to mind: One was the reminder that nostalgia is never comprehensive. That record was pressed in the 1970s, and its collection is in some ways different than what would comprise a collection of 50s hits assembled today. For example, the only artist to have two different songs on the album was Lloyd Price, who is all but forgotten today. His song "Just Because" has always been one of my favorites. The other thought was how much I enjoy the ritual of playing an LP: setting it on the turntable, lifting the needle and setting it on the spinning vinyl, even hearing the cracks and pops of the aging album. Of course some of these steps would grow old if I had to employ them every day, but there's definitely a nostalgia that exists for old technologies. I also love filming with my Super-8 movie camera, and I love my uncle Allan's reel-to-reel tape recorder. It's not to say any of these older generation technologies are superior, but I would hate to see them disappear, for there are nuances associated with recording and playing audio and video on these machines that are lost on today's devices. Like Lloyd Price's simple mix of piano, stand-up bass and horns, I'd hate to see these old friends go away just because they're not popular anymore.

Lines For Bass and Geography

I was flipping TV channels last night and caught just a few minutes from a documentary about Sting in which a couple of people analyzed what made The Police's distinct sound. One person talked about how, while Andy Summers and Stewart Copeland played expressionistically with shimmering guitar and lots of brushwork on cymbals, Sting played raegae and jazz rhythms on bass. (Of course Sting was not the only person to do this.)

It reminds me of a larger feeling I have about integrating other genres and other countries' music traditions into rock. Too often I think it's done very heavy-handedly. Whether it's sitar, gamelan percussion, classical harpiscord, or steel drums, I think often when these instruments come in they are a distraction, because the person playing those instruments is playing in the style or genre with which that instrument is associated, even though they're ultimately playing in a rock song. I prefer the idea that one play either with foreign style to rock with a rock instrument (guitar, bass or drums), or you play with a traditional rock style using a non-rock instrument.

Ironically, despite citing Sting during his days in The Police as example of the right way to blend rock with other influences, his later solo career is in my mind a lesson in how not to do it. There are songs of his where any number of international influences suddenly burst in, be it Arabic or African or Caribbean. I like the idea of trying that, but the music has to add up to more than a sum of its parts, and the parts need not be so visible.

Silver and Bronze Oldies

There's an "oldies" station, as they call it, here in Portland called KISN that I sometimes listen to with about one-fourth joy and three-fourths frustration. Growing up, there was a lot of Fifties and Sixties rock played by my parents. Though I've largely moved on to other music passions, I still have a curiosity and interest in that period. But I'm so sick of hearing the same old hit songs over and over again. When I listen to a song like "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" or "Good Vibrations", it's as if I don't even really hear them. I'm not quite willing to cite the old cliche that familiarity breeds contempt, but there's a kind of numbness their overplaying does to me.

Why can't there be a radio station that plays great early rock that is fresher, and more of a discovery. There are individual community and public radio programs, of course, like KBOO's "Rockaholics Anonymous" in Portland. But I wish there was a station willing to diverge entirely from the rigid industry formula of playing hits in heavy rotation.

When I buy an album by an artist or band with an already long-established hit song, that song is usually of the least interest to me. Of course there are noted exceptions, because sometimes a hit song represents that artist's best work. I'm talking more about songs that may have been singles in their day, yet for one reason or another didn't find their way into the latter-day wave of pop culture nostalgia.

That, incidentally, is something that has always interested me: Why do some songs remain in the forefront while others don't? It's not a matter of quality in my mind. The answer, I think, is more elusive.

Lennon/McCartney

Today I dusted off The Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour for the first time in awhile. Going back and forth between John Lennon and Paul McCartney's songs--the segue from "Strawberry Fields" to "Penny Lane", for example--it really makes me wonder what these guys thought of each other at this point in their careers. McCartney is often unapologetically romantic, owing more to Cole Porter than Elvis, while Lennon is usually more mysterious and gritty. (As I say this, though, it's with hesitation, because I get so sick of them being stereotyped this way.) I know they are listed as co-writers of both their tracks, but clearly each guy was bringing very different songs for the other to see. So did McCartney and Lennon have to mask their skepticism about each other's songs and just try to make them better? Or was each guy really a fan of the other's style?

Beauty Pill

I swear I’m not just saying this because it’s a band led by a good friend: I’ve been listening nonstop to The Unsustainable Lifestyle, the new album by the Washington, DC band Beauty Pill.

Chad Clark, the friend of mine who wrote or co-wrote all the songs and produced the record, was previously in a highly acclaimed pseudo punk outfit called Smart Went Crazy, and that legacy has been a blessing and a curse for Beauty Pill. As often happens as somebody gets older, Beauty Pill isn’t quite so bursting with ferocity. It’s a more literate, textured record. One online magazine that named Smart Went Crazy’s Con Art one of the best albums of the 1990s has given The Unsustainable Lifestyle a mediocre review. But to me that reviewer must have only listened to the new record once, because Beauty Pill is in its way every bit as good as Smart Went Crazy, but their talents reveal themselves over time, whereas Chad’s old band grabbed you right away.

This is an issue I’ve often thought about with movies, because some take time to sink in, and their greatness only becomes truly apparent after repeated viewings. Same goes for The Unsustainable Lifestyle.

Beauty Pill displays a variety of influences: Fugazi, The Beatles, Stereolab, The Clash. Chad has always had very catholic tastes, which was very influenial me in the days we shared various apartments and old houses in DC. In one drive we might listen to Thelonious Monk, David Sylvian, the Beastie Boys, Shostakovich and so on. That’s what I hear on Beauty Pill records. The Unsustainable Lifestyle begins with “Goodnight for Real”, which bears a strong resemblance to Steve Reich’s Music For 18 Musicians. Other portions of the record show the strong Fugazi influence, while the album’s best song, “Won’t You Be Mine”, is a brilliant homage to Tin Pan Alley.

The lyrics, which Chad has co-written with drummer Ryan Nelson, ex bassist Abram Goodrich (a music partner he’s had since high school) and others, are on the cynical side, but are exceptionally literate and hilarious and moving. Like Elvis Costello, Chad can dance around social issues without spelling things out for you in the way that, say, Sting might on a song like “History Will Teach Us Nothing”. The Unsustainable Lifestyle is actually a very politically charged album, but not in the embarrassingly frank way so many post-9/11 albums are. He’s also picked up a talent from Mark Eitzel: the heartrending nonsequitor. On “Such Large Portions!”, for example, a biting national indictment, he writes: “Pet the bomb sniffing dog/He’s friendly though he’s on the job”.

Because Beauty Pill is signed to Dischord Records, a label that proudly refrains from marketing its bands (hmm…), The Unsustainable Lifestyle is destined to sell few copies. So it’s up to people like me to spread the word. If you have the $10 for this record (now that is one great thing about Dischord—good prices!) and time to give it a few listens, you’ll see what’s been playing in my car, at home and in my head incessantly.

Shoo, Mann

Last night Valarie and I attended an Oregon Symphony performance with British conductor Paul Mann as part of the “Front Row Center” series, which combines music with lecture, dramatic readings, etc. to tell stories about the making of classical music. The music of the evening was by Robert Schumann and Johannes Brahms, two of my favorite composers. And the story of their both loving the same woman, Cara Schumann (Robert’s wife), was pretty interesting. But ultimately the performance was kind of ruined for us by so much talking. In between pieces performed there would always be a good 5-10 minutes of discussion by the conductor, Mann, and he even stopped the orchestra in the middle of a couple pieces to make another point about what we were hearing. Mann was especially giddy about a couple hidden allusions to Clara in their music. It was kind of like having Beatles songs interrupted by someone who wants to talk about the Paul-is-dead publicity stunt. It really made me realize that I go to the symphony to lose myself in the music. I find that more than any other live music, it’s classical that, to varying degrees (depending on how much I like the composer or the individual piece), really pulls me in to a degree that I filter out virtually all else—except when someone’s cell phone is ringing, of course (as happened twice). Too bad it didn't happen last night, because these composers kick some serious 19th Century classical ass.

Bob Dylan

I've never appreciated Bob Dylan like I probably should. Never owned any of his records and generally wasn't interested. But lately I've been giving him another try. As a child my mom listened to the Beatles and my dad listened to Dylan, and at a young age Dylan's whiny voice really grated on my nerves, while the Beatles are obviously accessible to pretty much anyone at any age. So I chose my side. This time around, the results are more mixed. I burned a copy of Blonde On Blonde from a friend and there are aspects of it that I really like -- the mix of blues with folk and a wide palette of orchestration. The lyrics can of course be great, too. And while Dylan's voice is still challenging to me, I can see that he has a remarkable knack with phrasing. "Just Like A Woman" and "Leopard Skin Pillbox Hat" are admittedly the work of a genius. But Dylan's frequent use of harmonica really wears on me. Obviously there's a long tradition of it in this kind of music, but something about it in Dylan's music just feels abrasive to me. Overall I'd say I've gained more appreciation for him, especially since I have a much more crystallized sense of how he's influenced some of my other favorite musicians (Elvis Costello especially). But the jury's still out on whether I'll take this experiment much further.

"Neon Nights"

In 1982 at age 10 I bought a record album on the K-Tel label (they specialized in pop hit compilations and, as their name indicated, advertised on television) called Neon Nights, featuring "rock's danceable side". Twenty-two years later, the album has resurfaced as a guilty pleasure. By far my favorite song is "Let It Whip" by The Dazz Band, a mostly forgotten R&B act. ("There's somethin' divine in you...WOO HOO!") But there are a couple of more recognizable songs, such as "Don't You Want Me" by The Human League, "Super Freak" by Rick James and "Controversy" by Prince. More interesting, though, are the forgotten artists and songs: "Call Me" by Skyy, "Murphy's Law" by Cheri, and "You Got the Power" by War. It makes me realize that when listening to old pop music, be it from the 80s or 60s or whatever, we almost always listen exclusively to the big hits whose familiarity dulls their impact. I get sick of hearing the same old songs on the radio. I think it's much more fascinating to hear antiquated songs that I don't know so well. I'm willing to sacrifice quality for that sense of surprise. The songs by lesser-remembered artists on Neon Nights aren't great, but they make a nice time capsule that isn't burdened by being so worn out.