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14. Space Machine with Kawabata Makoto: "Planet of Somnolence" (13:00), from Acid Mothers Temple Family Compilation: "Do Whatever You Want, Don't Do Whatever You Don't Want!!" (Earworm UK 2002).
Fuck it. You want atmosphere? Let's go all the way out, deep into the woozy bellybutton of the universe, into the heart of the kozmick whirlpool, as fwapping textures envelop us and the sound effects of Aphex Twin's "Analog Bubblebath I" are stretched out until they resemble the gaping purple sky rather than the endless beautiful sea. Well, something like that: I just played this for the first time about five minutes ago, and aside from being a perverse motherfucker, thought this somehow fit. Funny how the course of weeks (about eight since I started this thing) turns my best-laid plans into pure vapor. To think this was gonna be a celebration of speed and chatter. Hah!
--13 September 2002
13. Bruce Springsteen: “I’m on Fire” (2:38), from Born in the USA (Columbia 1984).
Another dream song, with a mood (plucked guitar, synth wheezing like a B-3) to match. “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/And a freight train running through the middle of my head”--two of the best lines he, or anybody else, ever wrote.
--26 August 2002
12. The Streets: “Weak Become Heroes” (5:33), from Original Pirate Material (Locked On/Vice 2002).
He could be looking for people, too. He finds them, whether he’s looking or not, a tapestry of them, vivid both for the brilliant circumstances of the encounter (we’re all here to take drugs and/or dance to loud, mad-sounding music! what fun!) and the E he’s dropped; as the piano loops around like a dull-finished memory, a ghost in the mirror, he traces the encounters, leaping back and forth between everpresent-now and mystic beats of memory. (Shades of Dylan circa Blood on the Tracks, playing with perspective and time; shades of lotsa rappers--Biggie, Eminem, Ice-T--playing omniscient narrator, participants and bystanders all within the space of a few lines.) He is lost and he is found. In other words, “Night Moves,” written by/for rave kids, and the best single I’ve heard all year.
--16 August 2002
11. Tricky: “Aftermath” (4:45), from A Ruff Guide (Island 2002; originally released 1994).
“Learning to cope with
cowardice,” sez Jess, and that
just about nails it.
This version is the
short weird one on the 12-inch
and the new best-of.
--16 August 2002
10. Francis Bebey: “Binta Madiallo” (3:34), from Mbuki Mvuki (Original Music 1992; originally released 1984).
Comes out of and vanishes into thin air, leaving behind a thick, lovely vapor trail. Imagine a less doubt-wracked “Just Wanna See His Face” (right, right, from Cameroun) if it were hummed and la-la’d, or maybe if it were faintly Islamic-flavored instead of gospel-rooted. Bebey was/is a folklorist as well as one-man studio musician, so I’m sure this connects to lots of stuff I’m not aware of; sorry for my ignorance on the matter. The disc I got it from---burned off my roommate; thanks, Jason---is a sadly out-of-print best-of compilation from John Storm Roberts’s sadly now-defunct Original Music label, who exposed African music---meaning African pop, not field recordings et al---to a lot of curious listeners. It set Robert Christgau, who reviewed the 1973 compilation Africa Dances five years after it came out, on the Afropop path, a journey that has influenced a lot of other folks as well---some of whom aren’t even critics!
--12 August 2002
9. William DeVaughn: "Be Thankful for What You Got" (3:28), from Music Inspired by Baadasssss Cinema: The Sounds of Blaxploitation (TVT/IFC 2002; originally released 1974).
Good advice. Amazing floor tom when the vocal kicks in--underlines/underscores both the laid-back groove/message and the suppleness of the vocal. Odd structure--verses pile up and then the chorus at the end (presaged earlier, but not really a chorus chorus, you know? more a refrain, not a hook), but like Elvis Costello's "Beyond Belief" and John Lennon's "God" it keeps you the whole way, and it may be better than both. One of those songs that seems to live in the air but that I don't really know what it is until someone stops and points it out to me (in this case, Chuck Eddy at a house party a couple months ago--Chuck, incidentally and if you hadn't already guessed, is one hell of a living room DJ), and I feel stupid for not having figured it out before. Best non-Curtis Mayfield Curtis Mayfield song, non-Jamaican division. Have played this nonstop all afternoon, when the disc arrived in the mail. Means everything in the world to me right at this moment.
--10 August 2002
8. The Rapture: “House of Jealous Lovers” (5:14), from 12-inch (DFA 2002).
There’s more than one way to make a perfect record, and this is one of them, modeled on the 12-inch aesthetics that came to fore in the early ’80s (approximate first appearance: Larry Levan’s reconstruction of Instant Funk’s “I’ve Got My Mind Made Up”): keep the groove going, keep the listener’s interest, but keep moving shit around. In this case, it means establish the groove before you get to the song. (Compare certain African styles, or early Talking Heads, e.g. “Found a Job,” which get the song out of the way and then just keeps the music going forever.)
Killer bass-drums-handclap base; it opens as if in the middle of a dub mix of itself (not the one Morgan Geist provides on the remix, either). A cowbell enters soon enough, and as Levan’s “Mind Made Up” taught us, once you have a big fat thick groove, each additional instrument exists for the purpose of loosening another body part; that b-line/kick combo gets our feet moving, but now our neck’s gangling along, too. The guitar is both a statement of purpose (the bridge from disco back to rock, though the beat’s so tense it’s obvious where these guys are coming from anyway) and an afterthought--phasing up as if backward but within three strums, suddenly the center as well--sort of like not only the Gang of Four or Public Image Ltd. (whom the Rapture are frequently compared to, and rightly), but the Stone Roses and Happy Mondays as well; the early ’80s weren’t the only fertile time for rock-disco, you know.
Then the groove changes, preparing us for the re-entrance of the song-proper, and as much as I love that first minute, it’s the next 15 seconds or so that I love the most. They’re still in that zone, but it’s no longer simply machinic the way the swooshes of the intro indicate; we’re in full-on live-band mode, with the squelching noises of fingers sliding off strings adding to the overall feel (this returns around the third minute, right after the guitar solo, only with the shock-treatment call-and-response “1-2-3-4-5-6-7-8”). If anything, the song-proper that slides into place is the worst part of the record; it’s when they concentrate on locking in together on the groove of their lives that they rewrite their destiny. I hope (still haven’t heard “Olio”).
--8 August 2002
7. Neko Case: “Look for Me (I’ll Be Around)” (3:21), from Blacklisted (Bloodshot 2002).
The dark underside of “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” “creepy and Christmassy” as Case put it, from the voice of a woman who won’t take no for an answer. Or as Case put it while introducing the song at a recent performance at Joe’s Pub: “It's basically about stalking people, but it was written back in the old days, when I guess stalking wasn't so bad. She wasn't stalking to kill you--she was stalking to love you." The approximate effect--particularly with Case wearing a black pinstriped suit, in an intimate club setting--was Twin Peaks revisited.
--7 August 2002
6. Crowded House: “Don’t Dream It’s Over” (3:56), from Like, Omigod! The ’80s Pop Culture Box (Totally) (Rhino 2002; originally released 1987).
From Josh’s ten challenges/exercises for music writers: “8. Pick a piece of music you find it extremely difficult to write about, more difficult than most other pieces of music. Don't write about it, but instead, write about why you think it's difficult to write about. Perhaps comparing to why it's easy to write about some records will help.”
What timing. I find “Don’t Dream It’s Over” hard to write about because it has such personal resonances for me, and a lot of those resonances are fairly maudlin. Either that, or I don’t think I’ve quite sorted out how I feel about them yet: being in junior high; my mom going out with guys who were nice but ineffectual (like, you know, most people in their early 20s are---mom had me very young) and hardly ready to deal with any kids on any level, much less the 12-year-old son of someone they were dating; the darkness of our apartment at the time, which I took for normal (I tend to remember having magenta curtains in the living room at the time, so the sunlight against them cast a brownish light on the place) but looking back is pretty depressing. I also specifically remember talking to a guidance counselor around the time this song was a hit, about one particular guy my mom was seeing. “I love him,” I told the counselor, and I remember him flinching, because I was flinging the word around like Kool-Whip at a food fight; you don’t love people you barely know. The word didn’t have a lot of baggage to me at the time, and in fact did not for a long time; I’m a lot more careful with it now, of course, but while I’m embarrassed about having said that about this particular person (kind of a dork, well-meaning but not that bright), I think all that I meant was that I wanted my mom to be happy, and he seemed to make her.
On that level, the us-against-the-world wetness of “Don’t Dream It’s Over” took on heroic dimensions, and because of that I’ve never been able to hear it any other way. I don’t mean circumstantially---obviously I’ve moved on---but in terms of its size, its emotional heft, it’s always had a kind of musical comfort food effect on me. (The bridge, in particular, when the organ rises up and plays those plaintive chords, followed by the guitar restating the theme-as-solo, seems to carry me back home somehow.) Luna is that way a little bit as well: I’ve played Penthouse more than nearly any album I own, but getting at what I liked about them without vaguing out, something I actually did in print, when I previewed a Luna concert for the Chicago Reader in 1999.
The difference is that there isn’t as much of an emotional pull for me with Luna as there is with this one song (it’s the only Crowded House song I really like, actually, but maybe I’m just being stubborn), so I’ve given more thought to Luna because there’s not a lot of baggage to hide behind---I’ve been forced to think about and figure out what it is I like about them. Whereas no one’s asking me to write about Crowded House; the reason I’m doing it now is because, for me, there is no other song in the world that can follow the OMD track, and not just because they happen to be on the same disc in the same box set.
Let me put it this way: OMD enact a very melodramatic way of thinking that I definitely had when I was younger (and maybe to some degree still do now; right now I’m really angry at someone I’ve known for a few years, and despite all the sturm-und-drang I’ve gone through in my head about it I still haven’t had the nerve to confront him directly). “Don’t Dream It’s Over,” on the other hand, is far more complicated, both personally, in terms of its associations, and within the song itself, in terms of the singer trying to keep a line open with someone even if it is noncontinuous. OMD sing, “Our only sin/We meet again someday,” but that’s not a sin---it’s how life works, and if you do meet again someday I hope you find decent things to say to one another. “Dream” is bombastic in an ’80s white-Brit-soul way, and for the more pop-oriented readers I’ve picked up through ILM it might seem very trad-boring. But its doggedness in sticking with meat-and-potatoes pop-rock basics is another part of its appeal as well; it’s a pub sing-along that you sing to yourself, designed to make you feel better. And sometimes, that’s all you could possibly want out of music.
--6 August 2002
5. Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark: "If You Leave" (4:26), from Like, Omigod! The '80s Pop Culture Box (Totally) (Rhino 2002; originally released 1986).
Dear Elizabeth
I just want to say that I'm really sorry for taking everything so badly back when we were going out. It's just that, well, you were my first girlfriend, I'd just finished high school, and I took everything personally at the time. So I apologize for that, and for being so fucking melodramatic all the time. Oh, wait--that was actually what you liked about me, wasn't it? Never mind, then.
Take care,
Michaelangelo
--3 August 2002
4. Derrick Laro and Trinity: "Don't Stop 'Till You Get Enough" (7:29), from Hustle! Reggae Disco: Kingston, London, New York (Soul Jazz 2002; originally released c. 1981).
It's been so long since I looked at the Off the Wall lyric sheet that I'd forgotten exactly which words Michael Jackson was actually singing a bunch of times--"I'm melting like hot candle wax," for instance. (MJ sounds like he's singing " I'm melting like haikanga, now," which sounds like some kind of Asian ritual ceremony, or haiku's long-winded cousin, or something.) So it's nice to have a reminder of just how goofy MJ's words were even before he began melting down in public like hot candle wax. Obviously, this version isn't as good as his--there aren't many pieces of music that are. But it's a pretty great study in contrasts; the rhythm track is pretty great slick post-Marley pre-digital stuff, Laro's singing is good falsetto that's equal parts transported and at-sea, and I love how the sqwaking guitar solo sounds completely out of place (cf. Simon Reynolds' recent comments about Playgroup) even though it copies the one on Jackson's record practically note for note.
--2 August 2002
3. Zaiko Langa Langa: “Zaiko Wa Wa” (8:33), from African Cavalcade (RetroAfric 1996; originally released 1976).
Shuffle to shuffle, only with a hell of a lot mellower an undercurrent--which isn’t to say there’s less tension here, just that the overall mood is more languid. The way the bass dips and swoops like a diver arcing under the water’s surface is remarkable, but it’s those obsessed-over hi-hats and the blurred-chatter guitars that hook you in and sink you deep; it’s one of the most instantaneous grooves I’ve ever encountered, just plug in and sweep along with it; rather than building slowly, this groove feels both modest and in-your-face at the same time. It’s a great trick, and already memorable enough, before they stick in that damn hook: “[what sounds like ‘Ah yeah, yea-ah-ah’] WA-WA-WA,” ad infinitum, and every line of the verse ends “wa-wa-wa” too, meaning you can’t get the damn thing out of your head no matter how hard you try. And basically, you don’t want to. Well, I don’t, anyway.
--25 July 2002
2. James Brown: “I’ve Got Money” (2:29), from Star Time (Polydor 1991; originally released 1962).
Ricocheting grapeshot snares fade out, so we gotta fade in with the same in reverse, right? Plus intensity--can’t stint on intensity. Actually, Peter Shapiro once opined, in The Wire back in ’98, that this two and a half minute pre-funk R&B charger may be the single most intense piece of the Brownian canon, and he may be right. It’s certainly got some of JB’s most throat-tearing shouts, not to mention the chase-scene horn turnarounds, almost Hitchcockian. But let’s be frank about this. It’s the snares. Clayton Filyau, take a bow; ditto whoever tuned the skins.
--23 July 2002
1. Krome & Time: "The Slammer" (6:11), from Speed Limit 140 BPM Plus 3 (Moonshine 1993).
A while back, Gareth from ILM named the House Crew's "Euphoria (Nino's Dream)" as his favorite single of all time, and I realized that he's probably right--or if that isn't, then something else of that time and/or place is. I've always loved early British hardcore, the proto-jungle of '92-3, but ten years on it's starting to sound, no joke, like the greatest pop subgenre I've ever heard: mad, passionate, funny, energetic, feelingful in ways I don't encounter enough, especially now.
While I'm hardly a golden-age type of person, it's hard to hear the many good records I'm encountering right now as having enough to say/do for me; this far into the year nearly every album I could conceivably put into my top ten seems like a hedge, something that belongs in the middle of a top 30 or so, and it's depressing. Then again, I'm not listening as much as I could be--thanks, Food Network; thanks, lazy room-cleaning self--but no one I know who listens more is saying much better.
So it is that at the moment, aside from writing assignments, most of my ear-time has been taken up with various African styles and with UK hardcore. "The Slammer" is probably the most carnivalesque of the genre, insofar as the keyboards go. There's lots and lots of different synth and piano-sounds, each playing a different, very simple riff; at times it's like each one is trying to top the other in catchiness. It's incredibly joyous, but that joy is reined in a bit by the fact that the structure is so, not rigid, but tight nevertheless. It's incredibly well-structured, and for that reason seems to me to be sort of a perfect way into the genre as a whole (i.e. wanna learn this stuff from scratch? start with this song), and--hey!--the new chapter in this here Project.
--17 July 2002
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