Eric's Odds n Ends

Odds and Ends:
As I indicated in my halfhearted top ten list, I was much more into older music this year. That’s always the case, but was especially so when my collection grew so much. Eg, I went from having four Prince albums to having every single one from his debut up through Emancipation, rarely for more than $3 a disc.

Best Reissues:

Great year for reissues and there a bunch I still haven’t even gotten.

1) Replacements Reissues: Because I already had their midperiod peak albums, the real revelation was their early stuff. I had always figured it was just tuneless hardcore, but their debut, Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash, is fantastic. Young and snotty, sure, but it’s full of great shambling rock songs with insane energy, crazy solos (Bob Stinson really shines) and great melodies. The Uncle Tupelo connection is strong on this one.

2) Nick Lowe – Jesus of Cool.
I heard this record when I was a freshman in college but stupidly didn’t burn it then and spent the next few years searching in vain for a used copy (it was out of print in the US). They finally gave it the lavish reissue treatment this year. Nick Lowe was the in-house producer at Stiff, the British DIY punk label, and he produced the first several Elvis Costello albums. His debut album bears some resemblance to EC’s stuff (Nick Lowe also wrote “What’s So Funny ‘Bout Peace Love and Understanding”), but it’s really a kaleidoscopic exploration of all the pop styles from that time, from Bowie to McCartney to the Jackson 5 and the Bay City Rollers (sometimes switching within the same song). That means it comes off as a little bit derivative, but that’s the whole point, and his lyrics are biting and clever (“Marie Provost” is the story of an actress who died alone in her apartment and contains the line, “She was a winner, but became a doggie’s dinner”). Highly recommended.


3) Dennis Wilson – Pacific Ocean Blue.
A “lost Beach Boys classic,” this reissue could not have been done better. This album, easily superior to anything the rest of the band was releasing at the time (not saying much), it is also up there with anything the band released in the 70s (which is definitely saying something). It vacillates between orchestral grandeur and stomping boogie-funk (but it’s better than that sounds). You want uncompressed dynamics? This thing goes from heartbreaking, barely audible whisper to an orchestra fueled roar in a heartbeat. His voice is totally wrecked but that very much adds to the sort of world-weary, wasted feel of the thing. This had been out of print completely for decades (it was on CD for about five minutes in the 80s). The remastering is spectacular and really captures the aforementioned dynamics. And it’s loaded with bonus tracks, including a second disc with the work-in-progress follow up, Bambu, which just as strong as the Pacific Ocean Blue stuff.

This one is "River Song":


Artist I Couldn’t Stop Listening to This Year:

The Artist Formerly Known As The Artist Formerly Known As Prince

This merits a separate post or few, but basically starting when I downloaded the Dream Factory stuff that I posted about at the beginning of the year I went through several periods lasting weeks, if not months, at a time, when I listened to nothing but Prince. The most pleasant surprises were the really strong stuff right after his peak (which was Sign O the Times), especially Lovesexy, but also the Batman Soundtrack and the Prince songs on Graffiti Bridge (which has tracks by other artists too), and his first two albums which are usually written off by critics but are really just as good as Dirty Mind, his breakthrough.


Biggest Revelation:

Public Enemy – Fear of a Black Planet
I don’t write much on hip hop publicly because though I respect plenty of hip hop, I have absolutely no authority on the subject, and I don’t tend to listen to it much—I don’t really listen to music for lyrics and I tend to value harmony and melody over rhythm. But the beauty of stoop sales is that I can pick up stuff that I ought to check out but might not spend money on. I got this for like thirty cents and it blew me away—really one of the first hip hop albums I truly got into. The production was the key—the sampling is so creative. The best example is the chorus to “Welcome to the Terrordome,” which has about eight near-unrecognizable samples that somehow combine to make a series of hooks. It also helped that I was listening to this at the peak of primary season during the Jeremiah Wright controversy, so the lyrics were actually particularly resonant.


Best Group I Discovered Through This Blog:

E.L.O.

Dr. K randomly posted that track from Out of the Blue way back and that motivated me to get their four peak-era albums, all of which are wonderful.


Paul Simon Album You Should Listen to Instead of Vampire Weekend:

No, not Graceland—Hearts & Bones, the album right before. Falling chronologically in between his sort of lame soft-jazz in the late 70s and his Graceland resurgence, it has an almost new wave sound (but in a good way), with a lot of the clean guitar lines that he took to the next level with the African musicians on Graceland. And the songs are beautiful-- check "Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War" and the title track.


Album That Was Much Better Than I Would Have Expected, or, at the least, Much Better Than My Brother Said It Was, Even if I Don’t Listen to It Much Because At the End of The Day, I’m Just Not Into 90s-Sounding Hard Rock, Well-Produced or Not:

Buckcherry – Black Butterfly

See, the thing is, Stephen King might like it, but—

Nah, just kidding, it’s GUNS N’ FUCKING ROSES!

Nerd Alert Follow-Up

I started writing this in the comment section for Eric's post, but it got too long...

Look, a couple things to consider in comparing eras. Number one is that rock music was so much more mainstream in the 60s than it was today. "Stairway to Heaven" was the most requested song in history at that point. (maybe still) "Bohemian Rhapsody" was a #1 single for weeks. "Hype vs. Reality" debates concerned Bob Dylan and Donovan, both of whom are respected today. (One more than the other of course.)

When you talk about the most hyped bands of today, you have to remember that most of the country is paying attention to hip hop more than they are to rock. So maybe it would be more appropriate to talk about someone like Snoop Dogg, who had this earth-shaking debut and then got progressively worse to the point where he's now just an ironic cannabis icon.

And among the rock bands that really get the hype, I'd say nearly all of them won't live up to their billing over time. The White Stripes? Give me a break. What has that band done that Led Zeppelin or [insert bluesy punk band here] didn't do far better 30-40 years ago?

The problem with bands like the White Stripes and the Strokes is this: Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones were ripping off old black delta bluesmen who the vast majority of people had never heard before-- therefore, these bands' contribution to mainstream culture was a breakthrough to those with limited cultural palettes.

Contrast that to the White Stripes and the Strokes, who are ripping off not obscure bluesmen, but rather Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones themselves-- acts that everyone has heard and who were doing the same thing, only better, decades earlier! All these 60's/70's rip-off bands will be judged irrelevant by history because they're adding nothing new to the musical canon.

But now consider bands that really are bringing something new to the mainstream. Radiohead comes to mind for their use of electronic music and their weaving back in forth between distorted rock and hypnotic lulls. Also, Paul Simon continues to push musical boundaries to this day. (Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints were great canonical contributions, but also check out Surprise, his most recent album.)

Same thing goes for David Byrne. Other acts (i.e. Arcade Fire) might be repackaging his Talking Heads material, but not him! His solo releases continue to span in all sorts of directions. And in the spirit of both Byrne and Simon (I can't believe I'm about to say this), if Vampire Weekend were to build on their culturally off-beat debut, they, too could prove to be an important band over time. (Lots to prove obviously, but their debut is promising.)

Praising Nirvana is about as bold as buying your coffee at Starbucks, but they achieved the same thing that I'm talking about with these other bands. They took the melodic, often scream-y pseudo-punk played by their idols (Pixies, Raincoats, Wipers, etc.) and introduced it to the mainstream radio market, most of whom hadn't heard this kind of music before.

And to clarify my overall point, everyone I've mentioned has something else in common besides unearthing obscure musical genres. They were all great songwriters/performers. Kurt Cobain was a better songwriter than Black Francis, Kim Deal, etc. Jimmy Page stole his licks from Robert Johnson, but he played them in a more electrifying fashion. Paul Simon writes catchier choruses than Ladysmith Black Mambazo. David Byrne doesn't just do one genre like his influences; he does 15. So these people rose to the top for a reason.

Contrast that to the nostalgia acts that dominate rock radio (and often Pitchfork as well), and note the difference. Those bands are watered-down versions of an older, better product. Nirvana, etc. stood the test of time because they outdid their influences. That is the difference.

Further Thoughts on Paul Simon

As I think about it, I actually do have some more thoughts on Paul Simon and Graceland, as I sit here finishing up some work (being a lawyer rules!) before I go out and the album plays in the background.

There's something that amuses me about our generation's recent re-appraisal/appreciation for Graceland (Vampire Weekend, obv, but also other bands now not being embarassed to namecheck the album, including, if I recall, Travis Morrison from Dismemberment Plan in an interview a couple years ago, et al). For people who are our age (that is mid-late twenties/early thirties), Graceland came out when we were at the perfect age to sort of passively and subconsciously absorb music that was being played by our parents (1986). Though everyone goes through a period where the music they want to listen to is the exact opposite of what their parents listen to, I have a feeling that many of us retain an affection for stuff we listened to as kids before we really had the opportunity to form our own taste. Although I can now listen to Graceland and appreciate the fluidity of the playing, the seamless integration of genres, and the effortless-seeming hooks, etc, when I was a kid I just loved the horn riff from "You Can Call Me Al."

I feel the same way about lots of things-- movies I loved as a kid will always make me happier than any movie I saw later and think is objectively "better" (Back to the Future-4-Life). And with other types of music-- as a kid, I was exposed through a variety of means to a handful of musicals, the cast albums to which are still some of my favorite music ever. While I generally have a soft spot for watching (and sometimes performing) musical theater, I'll never enjoy the ones I see now as much as the ones I saw/committed to memory back then. So, while I love Pirates of Penzance because I watched the Kevin Kline/Linda Ronstadt*/Angela Lansbury movie version literally hundreds of times, I've never seen HMS Pinafore and I can't imagine I'd like it that much. And for that matter, while I appreciate other Paul Simon albums (and actually grew up in a similar way with the Simon & Garfunkel albums, though at a slightly older age), I don't get nearly as much joy from them as I get from Graceland.

I wonder if there are any other pieces of culture (musical in particular) that were as ubiquitous and widely acclaimed as Graceland was at the time that can/will be re-appraised by our generation because we basically have an almost Pavlovian response to it.



*Incidentally that was another gateway into Graceland for me-- I already knew Linda Ronstadt as "Mabel" so I was really psyched to hear her duetting on "Under African Skies."