Wednesday, May 22, 2002 -- 03:35 p.m.

A Quarter-Century of Pop Music continues unabated (if a day late- though technically it is still "once a week").

QCPM: 1978 - All These Hidden Innuendoes
OK, so my attempt at trying to capture the feeling of 1977's music in words was a start, I guess. In retrospect it seems a bit rushed and too heavy on history-over-feeling, but it's still a mighty fine collection of songs if I do say so myself cough ahem. Anyhow, on to the next year, which is possibly even better. (Then again, I could say that for all the years. At least until '86 when things get kind of sketchy, but that will have to wait.)

Radio Birdman, "Aloha Steve & Danno": This is a song all about being a transplanted Detroiter watching a TV show about Hawaii while living in Australia. As any song devoted to Hawaii 5-0 should, it incorporates the Ventures' theme song in a guitar solo, repeating it a couple times in boisterous fashion before sending it on a third go-through and this time Dick Dale style with that played-by-an-eggbeater style picking. Not quite as good as Dick, of course, but it gets a passing grade and manages to be the tasty frosting on an already nifty little bit of guitar playing. Rob Younger is the singer here and he has this interesting wail going- it's hard for me to describe but he sounds kind of like Joey Ramone grafted onto Mick Jones and you really can't go wrong with that combination in my book, especially when he's singing about KGB agents and shouting "Book 'em Danno, murder one!" over and over at the end of the song. You can tell they're sort of going for a Ramones-esque pop-culture camp/'60s surf-pop/garage-punk thing, and they almost succeed, but what they do instead is something better, coming across like what you'd expect an Sydney band with a guitarist from Stoogeland paying tribute to Cali/Maui rock to sound like. Bonus points for the opening: an electronic-sounding approximation of what the surf washing up on the beach sounds like.
The Saints, "Know Your Product": So this whole punk rock thing is going along fine and has reached as far as Australia (see previous) and there's this one band that at this point is saying "Yes, this is fine an' all and it sold us some albums an' got us some press... but you know wot this needs? A horn section." So I simplified things a bit, but it's there: this idea that the concept of this new under-gone-overground means not only breaking the constraints of the pre-existing mainstream approach to music but reinventing what you can do with the new stuff. The great thing is the horns only serve to underscore the sneer and snarl of this song, sneaking in during the chorus to give those guitars something to shadowbox with. This isn't just an X-Ray Spex sax solo, this is seriously a full-on blast of brass like "Sea Cruise" gone berserk. With a sound like that this song could be about damn near anything and still rule all, but it's cool that it's a typical yet fun bit of advertising deconstruction. Chris Bailey sounds like the world's coolest Muppet when he sings, and all his lines sync perfectly with the guitars and the horns so the lyrics are just as catchy as the music. It's infectious, it's great, and there's no way in hell this will be used for a Gap ad.
The Dictators, "Faster and Louder": There weren't a lot of NYC punk bands that adhered to the buzzsaw goofiness formula of the Ramones, but the Dictators were a hell of an exception. I suppose "adhered to" is probably the wrong term to use, actually, since the Dictators actually showed up a year or so previous to everyone's favorite Bowery boys. The obvious difference, at least here with this particular song, is the fact that there is a nearly minute-long instrumental break that contains two guitar solos connected by a brief bit of cowbell that sound more in keeping with the mainstream rawknrohll of the previous five years (Slade, maybe) than anything recognizably Road to Ruin-ous. The lyrics sort of take the piss out of themselves: they can drive and screw and scream faster and louder, but eventually they also resort to walking the dog and mowing the lawn faster and louder before going into paroxysms of James Brown paraphrasing ("Hot Pants!"). I should also mention that if legend is correct, this song contains possibly the sneakiest cameo appearance in the history of music. Listen very closely to the "1-2-3-4" count-in. Sound familiar? No? Well, supposedly that's Bruce Springsteen. Craziness.
Suicide Commandos, "Mosquito Crucifixion": This may just be Minnesota bias talking, but I think the rock music that came out of the Twin Cities in the 1980s- the Replacements, Husker Du, early Soul Asylum, et al.- did almost as much to define the "alternative" sound of the '90s as Seattle did. The Suicide Commandos are usually credited with laying the groundwork for those bands, but even if they hadn't, man oh man could they rule it. The Commandos formed in the mid '70s and were one of those bands that defined their stripped-down proto-punk sound a year before they even heard the Ramones' first record. They released their debut album Make A Record in early '78 on Mercury's Blank Records imprint (the only other record to ever be released under that name: Pere Ubu's The Modern Dance), saw it tank and broke up in November- too soon to fulfill all their potential, but too late to stop youngsters like Paul Westerberg and Bob Mould from becoming inspired. As far as this song goes, it's probably what you might expect from a Minnesota punk rock band: violent anger and hatred towards the omnipresent bloodsucking "Minnesota State Bird". Opening line: "You're gonna die 'cause you are so dumb!" It only gets better from there. Listen for the guitar solo, which sounds like what Bob Stinson would attempt to play on many a 'Mats record years later.
Pere Ubu, "Non-Alignment Pact": First time I played this I was worried that my apartment neighbors might overhear it and think it was their fire alarm. It's almost like an endurance test, thirty-plus seconds of ear-searing feedback that dares you to stare in its cacophonic abyss. The sheer noise of this song almost drives me away from it, but oddly enough it's something else that's equally odd-sounding that brings me back to it: David Thomas' singing. I'm not a good enough writer to describe how his voice sounds; I can only approximate: froggy, warbly, high-pitched, mumbly, squeaky, maybe halfway between Aaron Neville and the puma from those Bugs Bunny cartoons. The sounds that come out of Thomas' throat are simultaneously comic and disturbing, as are the lyrics- love=war and if it's important that the world doesn't get set ablaze perhaps you better sign right here and we'll agree to leave each other alone for the greater good of humanity. I've seen this song described several places as Chuck Berry-esque and I suppose it is fitting, given both the simple/great riffs and the lyrics' recitations of female names that sound straight out of the early days of rock- Peggy, Carrie Ann, Betty Jean, Barbara Ann. Add the apocalyptic overtones and this could be seen as a tribute of sorts to the rock and roll romance and nuclear anxieties of the Eisenhower-Kennedy years.
Joy Division, "Warsaw": This is a brilliant song that completely confounds me. Why do the numbers "3-5-0-1-2-5" repeatedly show up (I originally thought was Alex's prisoner number in A Clockwork Orange, but no)? What about "3-1-G"? "To kill the three lies for one"? I'm assuming this was supposed to be the band's self-named signature song at one point (they were originally called Warsaw after Bowie's Eno-produced Low instrumental track "Warszawa"), and it's critically overlooked in favor of their more forward-sounding, synthesizer-laden tracks on Unknown Pleasures. Of course, this song runs hazardously close to violating my "no two songs by the same band" rule (Joy Division - Ian Curtis = New Order and damn straight I'm getting "Blue Monday" all up in 1983's area), but this song is so unlike either band's most well-known output that it just skirts under the whole thing. Every note from Bernard Albrecht/Sumner's guitar sounds like an exclamation point; Stephen Morris' drumming sounds unnatural and detached and perfect; Ian Curtis plays it bleak and affects a desperate voice miles away from the smooth murmur of "Love Will Tear Us Apart". It's almost hard to believe it's the same band- save the lyrics. "I could see all the cold facts/I could see through your eyes/All this don't make no contact/no matter how hard I try."
Public Image, Ltd., "Public Image Ltd.": I can only imagine what a weird experience it'd be to get hired practically off the street for a sensationalistic antagonistic promotional stunt turned hugely popular, reviled and influential punk rock act, only to have the whole thing self-destruct within less than two years. Where in the hell do you go after the Sex Pistols? If you're Johnny Rotten, apparently you revert back to your birth name, tell Malcolm McLaren to piss off and record an album that sounds less like a pseudo-followup to Never Mind the Bollocks.... and more like the adventurous boundary-smashing ilk of Wire and Magazine. PIL's debut album is sorta like the punk rock answer to Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear in its catharsis, with this track probably the most accessible of them- a defiant final up-yours to everyone who wanted to encase Lydon in amber as punk's enfant terrible: "I'm not the same as when I began/I will not be treated as property". Guitarist Keith Levene gets kicked out of the Clash in '76 and winds up two years later on this, hammering out something halfway between riffs and hypnosis; Jah Wobble's renowned bass playing pushes itself to the forefront whenever possible and churns the song into an anthemic rumble, Lydon's voice evolves from lip-curlingly snotty to frustrated, bitter and maybe a bit vulnerable. Whether this was the band Lydon always wanted to front or something that came to mind as the Sex Pistols' shelf life began to expire, it's the perfect vehicle for a voice that can do much more than just taunt.
Magazine, "Shot From Both Sides"
Buzzcocks, "What Do I Get?": Howard Devoto quitting the Buzzcocks is probably one of the best career moves ever made in pop music. Hear me out: with Devoto gone, Pete Shelley would take over lead vocalist duties and give us tons upon tons upon tons of great, great songs. Devoto, meanwhile, could go off and do his own thing with Magazine, who some credit with unofficially laying down the foundations for post-punk. Both of these songs were released within about a month of each other; "Shot By Both Sides" in January '78 and "What Do I Get?" in February. The former begins with an immediate blast of guitar, bass and drums; the latter lets a bit of guitar fuzz seep out of the ether for a second or two before the rest of the song asserts itself. The Magazine song is antagonistic and seethes with a groundswell of artistic angularity; the Buzzcocks tune bounces around supercharged with vibrant pop energy. Devoto snarls about being caught up in a crowd with no qualms or morals, being interrogated and picked apart by people he wants to avoid at all costs; Shelley laments the opposite, wistfully hoping for human contact and love and something "that's nice". Howard's shining moment comes when his growl falls into a hypnotized "ow...ow...ow...ow...ow..." in the middle of the word "crowd" before the last chorus; Pete etches his place in the pantheon of great moments in pop music when he ends his own version of catharsis with "I don't- get you-ooooooh". Both bands proved that punk rock was smarter, more deeply emotional and in tune with what made great music than its initial detractors assumed just a year before. Both bands would also self-destruct in Spring 1981.
Cheap Trick, "Surrender" (live at Budokan): Yeah, okay, the album was released in '79, but this was recorded in early '78 so it counts, nyeah. Anyhow, I've been talking a lot lately about my parents' music and it's funny how much I like all these songs that were released when my folks were my age, but there's also that weird inverse- like how my classic-rocker dad told me once that he had become fascinated by Nirvana due to how Kurt Cobain seemed, to him, like a sort of Buddha onstage; like when my mom called me downstairs to watch this music video show on our local PBS affiliate because she was absolutely transfixed by the clip for King Biscuit Time's "I Walk The Earth"; like when my stepdad saw Cypress Hill on Saturday Night Live circa '93 and got a huge kick out of the hook from "Insane in the Brain". The big punchline to "Surrender", Maybe the Greatest Pop Song Ever, is our young protagonist who just can't get his folks to understand him, then stumbling across 'em making out on the couch to KISS records. His KISS records. Now my own folks have gotten on my case for gratituous swearing in my writing, but I can't help it: holy shit, that's got to be traumatic as hell. Especially after said parents spend the first two-thirds of the song warning their kid about the trials and travails of filthy dirty evil sex (on first listen I thought "Indonesian junk" was smack, but now I'm wondering if it's an STD). "Mommy's all right/daddy's all right/they just seem little weird" is probably understating things a bit, considering. As far as the music itself goes: imagine everything that's great about Big Star and multiply that by seven. It's all all right.
The Cars, "Bye Bye Love": A punk-esque yet not quite fully-fledged "punk rock" East Coast five-piece band with an out-of-nowhere debut, a large cult following, noticeable media hype (and anti-hype) and a sonic combination of post-punk hooks and catchy rock riffs: sounds familiar, right? Well, I'm not talking about everybody's most favorite/most despised NYC rocknroll poster boys of 2001 (you know who I mean). I'm talking about the Ric Ocasek whirlybird of power-pop goodness sent from Boston to give unto all of America this thing called 'New Wave'. Purists scoffed: "This... this is punk rock without all the danger and with lots of gloss and studio frippery and weirdo electronic noises!" But there were enough people who weren't afflicted with such debilitating cases of broomuparseitis to make the Cars' eponymous '78 self-titled debut a huge platinum smash hit record. No wonder, 'cause it was crammed to the gills with classic songs; consider the ones that didn't make the cut for this comp: "Just What I Needed", "Good Times Roll", "My Best Friend's Girl" and "You're All I've Got Tonight". That's a lot of hits. "Bye Bye Love" is the one that sticks with me, though, and I think it probably owes to personal experiences. At age four I'd ride along on errands with my mom- who was huge into this album in the early '80s- and I'd be completely transfixed by the absolutely searing, sparkling outer-space surrealism of Greg Hawkes' keyboard solo. I didn't know who Bryan Ferry was or why Ric Ocasek sounded like him; I didn't know what the lyrics meant ("all these hidden innuendoes/just waiting to arrive"? C'mon, I was just starting to understand Shel Silverstein); I had no idea what this album meant in the whole scheme of things music-wise. All I knew was that it sounded like the future.
Elvis Costello and the Attractions, "Pump It Up": The picture of Elvis on the cover of This Year's Model sort of weirds me out. It seems vaguely sinister in a way, those large glasses of his not quite drawing attention away from those dark rings under his eyes, that camera positioned as if you're about to be caught on film with all your flaws exposed to be picked apart by one of the most creatively bitter songwriters of the '70s. "Pump It Up" is one of the least acerbic songs on the whole record, which is sort of like saying "From Russia With Love" is one of the least action-packed James Bond movies. Probably the only thing that actually tempers the vitriol is the jaunty go-go pop bounce of it all, with Steve Nieve providing the cheerfully taunting Vox Continental organ riffs as the sonic punchline. As for the meaning of the lyrics, well. Ahm. Apparently (and I don't want to get too much into this) Elvis himself said that this song was about what guys usually wind up doing when we're frustrated about women saying "that's that/I don't wanna chitterchat" and therefore forcing us to go "down in the pleasure center" by other means. The fact that a song about wanking comes across as smart, bitter, cutting and perfectly frustrated in the... er, hands of Costello proves his place amongst the greats.
The Rolling Stones, "Miss You": Mick does disco; world ends. Or not. This is actually the last great Rolling Stones song (you heard me; "Start Me Up" is trash), and for good reason: for once, it's Mick who's on the needy side of a relationship. He's hanging out by himself feeling like crap, sitting by the telephone and waiting in vain, and he's so messed up that when his friends call with promises of the sorts of alcoholic beverages and enthusiastic young women he once indulged in, he's disappointed that it isn't his lover finally calling to say hello. So he goes out late at night and starts wandering through Central Park singing to himself and getting all sorts of funny looks and people think he's "craaaaaaaaaaaaa-zaeeey", until finally he's all "to hell with this, I won't miss you", only he still does. The Stones made the temporary transition into disco much more smoothly than their forays into Kool & the Doppleganger funk ("(Doo Doo Doo Doo Doo) Heartbreaker") or Duranish synth-pop ("Undercover of the Night"), and that instantly recognizable hook manifests itself everywhere- through an electric piano, a harmonica, Jagger's own voice. They'd never get this good again.
Japan, "Adolescent Sex" (re-recording): Japan is one of those bands that started out little-known in the United States or their native England but was fairly big Guess Where. This might be one of the earliest bits of punk-disco-funk crossover (perfected later by Gang of Four and Liquid Liquid), and despite the general critical consensus that this early material is watered-down Roxy Music and Japan's best work didn't surface until Quiet Life a year later, there's a lot going for this song. Between the chunky bassline, the high-gloss Clockwork Orange synths and the decadent guitar snarls it's almost startling to hear David Sylvian's voice instead of, say, Donna Summer's. But when the initial shock is over it sounds not unlike a less self-conscious David Bowie trying his hand at a hedonistic dance-pop song replete with "Whatever gets you through the night just keep on dancin'" chorus and refrains heavy on the phrase "get up". The best part, where David scowls "just get off the streets!" for the first time and lets a deep, echoing avalanche of psychedelic guitar noise wash over, is enough to reveal this song as a lost classic.
Foxy, "Get Off": It's the Bensonhurst Dating Game! This is one of those supposed "throwaway" one-hit wonder disco singles that manages genius through stupidity, since sometimes all you need to concoct a great dance single (and #1 R&B chart hit) is a rubbery slap-bass, a robotic clap-along drumbeat and some insane "WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP WOOP"s sprinkled liberally throughout. There's a really weird Frampton-esque wah-wah-talk-box-spazbot guitar solo about two-thirds of the way through and it only makes things dumber, weirder and greater. I'd talk about the lyrics, but they're mostly '70s-style paeans to boning so there's really not much to discuss. If I try talking about this song any further I'll just wind up making it sound even more bizarre, so yeah. Next please.
Parliament, "The Motor-Booty Affair": I've heard accusations of prog-dom thrown Clinton-wards, and I guess they have some merit. Funkadelic leaned towards the psychedelic on a regular basis and had the tendency to crank out ten-minute songs. Parliament, while we're at it, had huge stage shows involving elaborate props and gigantic artificial spaceships. On the other hand, Emerson Lake and Palmer never wrote songs about The Booty, so there you go. There's a remarkable complexity to the way the song's put together; it sounds like there's about four different basslines going on at once, six different keyboards, nine different singers- and while the P-Funk Musician Entourage is a ridiculously huge one, it's more a matter of complex interplay and tighter-than-Falwell's-ass-end musicianship than mere too-many-cooks excess. There actually is a parallel- at least to my ears, right or wrong- with Frank Zappa. (Not a bad thing, might I mention.) There's the cool, smirky "hey buddy" cartoon-style voices relaying surrealist satire in a gimmicky setting (under the sea, in this case- "There goes Moby Dick! Yes, he's running after Octopussy..."), only with an amazing bass groove instead of FZ's classically-warped geetar. And if there's one thing that I never, ever ever ever ever get sick of, it's a P-Funk bassline. I'm surprised it took as long as the late '80s for hip-hop to start going crazy over them.
Kraftwerk, "Das Modell": Speaking of bands with a say in how the next two decades would wind up sounding. People like to crack wise about the Germans' tendency to be cold and robotic and rigid and generally the opposite of whimsical, but there's some pretty goofy bizness goin' on in this song. This is the German-language version, but even though I can't really understand the words there's a noticeable kind of wink-wink undertone to the whole proceedings. Of course, it helps to read the English lyrics: "She's posing for consumer products now and then" is probably one of the most deadpan funny lines I've heard in a love song, and the way Ralf Hutter's usually deadpan voice gives way to a gruff, caricaturized "KORREKT!" at one point is both startling and comic. Of course the really cool thing about Kraftwerk is they probably knew they were working with technology that would eventually wind up obsolete and dated-sounding, so they made damn well sure to actually use these '70s electronic geegaws to create some memorable melodic pop that translates easily into a more traditional format; try tracking down Tremolo Beer Gut's cover, where they seamlessly transmogrify it into vintage-style surf rock.
The Who, "Who Are You": It's pretty safe to say that by 1978 The Who were really starting to falter. (Listen to "905" if you don't believe me.) But I had to include something by them, and this is both the obvious and the best choice- you've got Roger Daltrey yelling his head off, you've got Townshend laying down just enough guitar sound to remind you that it's fookin' Pete Townshend, you've got huge teeming walls of synthetic epic keyboard syntho-stuff jousting for supremacy with a majestic piano, you've got Keith Moon being Keith Moon. The best bit comes around the 2:22 mark where all the noise is stripped away for a little ultra-quiet noodling until the whole cacophony comes crashing down again and Daltrey screams "WHOOOOOOOOOOO ARE YOUUUUUUUU" like it was 1971. The lyrics are stupid at points ("I spit out like a sewer hole/and still receive your kiss"? Oh, yuk), but dig the story behind them: Pete gets a long-delayed million-dollar royalty check, goes to a bar, goes batshit, starts fights, tears up the check, spots Steve Jones and Paul Cook of the Sex Pistols hanging out at the bar, yells at them, tells them that the Who were breaking up, freaks out when Paul protests "but we like the Who!", storms out in a spaz panic and blacks out, eventually waking up "in a Soho doorway/a policeman knew my name..." I was never really impressed by rock star excess, but considering the somewhat pitiful nature of the whole incident it does seem pretty fascinating in a car-wreck kind of way.
Bruce Springsteen, "Prove It All Night"
Patti Smith Group, "Because The Night": It's almost strange how these two musicians' paths crossed. Springsteen was a superstar, on the covers of Time and Newsweek simultaneously back in '75, while Smith was making waves on a more subterranean level with her debut Horses. Considering what would soon become the great divide between "corporate" rock and punk, the fact that Bruce would write a song, give it to Patti (who allegedly once remarked that "We used to eat guys like him for breakfast"), and bestow upon her a much-deserved Top 40 Hit seems kind of odd- though not all that strange if you forego the whole nonsense about magazine covers and chart hits and indie cred and compare the way both these musicians went about writing music. Both Springsteen and Smith seemed to believe in an idealized version of rock and roll, something free of escapist pretense that could be used to tell stories about real people: children drowning in confusion, pain and loss; guys who race cars as catharsis for being stuck in a place where too many people give up hope. The similarity between these two songs is more than just the person who wrote them; it's the underlying emotion that each singer gives to the lyrics: the intensity of love, the need to flee the bonds of a hinted-at repression ("There's so much that you want/you deserve much more than this"; "They can't hurt you now"), the grounding in Brill Building and Motown rhythms. These songs almost seem like companion pieces to each other, as if "Because the Night" is the woman addressed in "Prove It All Night" responding with promises of how she'll recpricate that love.

Next installment: 1979. It's a big end-of-the-decade party and YOU are invited. Gary Numan and ELO eat finger sandwiches and discuss synthesizer maintenance, Van Halen and Donna Summer argue over the punch bowl concerning who's got the better guitar solo, the Clash talk Americana with Rickie Lee Jones, The Damned have a brief run-in with Pink Floyd's Nick Mason and rib him about that whole "Wall" thing, and the Fatback Band just hangs out by the bar content to give King Tim III a hearty pat on the back for becoming the first MC to rap on a hit single. Just watch out for Darby Crash, passed out on the couch.

-Nate