Compact music commentary about artifacts new and old: I enthuse, I don't accuse, but I do refuse–to review anything lukewarm or colder!
Author: philovereem
Music monomaniac, retired English teacher, resident of Columbia, Missouri, former correspondent for ANOREXIC TEENAGE SEX GODS, READY TO SNAP, HITLIST, SUGARBUZZ, THE WAYBACK MACHINE, ROCK THERAPY, and THE FIRST CHURCH OF HOLY ROCK AND ROLL, co-lead singer of the non-legendary Wayne Coomers and the Original Sins of Fayetteville, Arkansas.
I never wanted a tattoo. Not before they began to seem obligatory; not after “tattoo removal” became a thing. When I was young, they were still seen as a mark of likely dark experience, something I was fascinated with but a desire I didn’t necessarily want to advertise. Joni Mitchell sang it best, writing about (her) songs but nailing tats in an expert simile: “You know I’ve been to sea before.” Also, I was (and still am) so little inclined to aggressive engagement I didn’t think I could back up a tattoo. You know?
Later, in the midst of the tattoo boom–there was one of those, right?–two things stayed the ink. The first was (and is) my allergy to bandwagons. When everyone’s doing it, I tend to not wanna, even when the crowd is right, as they sometimes are. But, second and most important, though what tattoos represented seemed to have changed (heck, choirboys and cheerleaders were getting them–even teachers!), I could not imagine any word, phrase or image I’d want to be permanently marked with. I knew if I chose to take the plunge, I would suffer an unbearable dignity to have it removed, so I wouldn’t. I also knew that whatever spoke from my shoulder, or ankle, or forearm (my chest? hilarious!), it would have to really be purely me. And “I” is just not pure.
HOWEVER, one night speculating with my wife, I hit upon the answer. I wasn’t then nor am I now any closer to revealing how far out to sea I’ve been, but, were I forced, here’s what I’d do. First, I’d write these lyrics down on a piece of paper:
Last night as I lay dreaming
My way across the sea
James Mangan brought me comfort
With laudnum and poitin
He flew me back to Dublin
In 1819
To a public execution
Being held on Stephen’s Green
The young man on the platform
Held his head up and he did sing
Then he whispered hard into my ear
As he handed me this ring
“If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me!
This snake cannot be captured
This snake cannot be tied
This snake cannot be tortured, or
Hung or crucified
It came down through the ages
It belongs to you and me
So pass it on and pass it on
‘Till all mankind is free
If you miss me on the harbour
For the boat, it leaves at three
Take this snake with eyes of garnet
My mother gave to me.
Next, I’d shop around for the smartest best tattoo artist in town, slap down those lines on her counter, talk her through my justifications and specifications, and say, simply: “I want an image of that specific snake right on the ol’ atrophied bicep here. Feel free to succinctly augment it with a symbolic image or two. Take a couple of weeks to let it marinate, then call me when you’re ready to operate.”
I’m not Irish. But that image, representing those words (not that the uninformed would instantly associate them with the image–Nicole’s the only one I’d need to know), reminding me of that voice and that impulse–well, I’d be happy to see it distorted across saggy skin, if I am lucky enough to be old enough to have it. I think at this point I could even back that tattoo up.
Oh, by the way, Happy St. Patrick’s Day! If you don’t know Mr. Shane MacGowan’s classic tune that’ll never die, raise a glass, and click:
Short-shrift Division (what I actually listened to yesterday, since Shane’s for today):
Popped an old favorite into the truck CD player yesterday. Had to oust a great Horace Tapscott disc, but that’s the way it goes. Ensconced in The Lab, I meditated upon the third consecutive great album of The Clash’s short life, and some amusing memories flowed to the fore…
London Calling was the first Clash album I bought, or even knew about. Small-town corner of southwest Missouri, no wonder. As I’m sure many did, I bought it because of the cover, without hesitation. Also, a two-record set for $7.99???
I often skipped lunch to hoard money to spend at Ken’s Records, two blocks down from the old high school in Carthage. Ken looked like Bela Lugosi cast as a mortuary director, but he always smiled when I came in, plus…he stocked some punk rock. Or maybe that was his young sidekick, John Norris. Ken watched the store like a hawk–I believe there was a bell on the door–and he made me very nervous, though I’d never have dreamed of shoplifting. One time I came in and he beckoned me into the mysterious back room of the store, where he handed me a small leather case. “This was stolen,” he said, “and the police have not been able to locate the owner. They brought it to me, and I’d like you to have it.” I opened it to discover 10 eight-track tapes, among them a couple of Queens (Jazz was one of them) and that big Head East album. I was bowled over by his kindness and listened to them constantly until I bought London Calling.
My copy did not have lyrics. This was a significant fact, as Joe seemed to my ear not to be ranting in English (and sometimes he wasn’t–plus, his and Mick’s were the first Spanish words to reach my ears). I strained, I leaned forward, I turned it up, but–other than the easy ones–I couldn’t understand the words, and they damn sure seemed to matter. “Satta Massagana / For Jimmy Dread”? And what was that about fucking nuns? But being sung like they mattered hooked me. It’s why I’ll always be loyal to Joe, one of the greatest non-singers in rock and roll history.
Later, in college, I discovered that my friend Mark’s copy had lyrics printed on the inner sleeves. In Joe’s cool handwriting! Talk about poring over a text–that was probably when I learned to close-read. “L-O-V-E and H-A-T-E tattooed / Across the knuckles on his hands / The hands that knocked his kids around / ‘Cos they don’t understand how / ‘Death or Glory!’ / Becomes / Just another story!” DAMN. That was on par with Dylan, and I was a raving Dylanophile. Some 15 years later, I would shoplift for the first and only time. I had just been screwed over in trade value by a clerk at a local used record store, and I got mine back by sneaking out the lyric booklet from their copy of the stupid The Story of The Clash box . That booklet was worth a ten-spot by itself.
In the winter of ’79-’80, when I (first) bought London Calling, I’d taken my first real job, loading and unloading trucks in the evening for a business called Interstate Free Delivery. I worked side by side with a classmate, John Babb, upon whom I forced the album at high volume when it was my turn to give him a ride home. As I am sure you know, great albums sometimes require a few repetitions to make their mark, and soon, John was a fan as well, though he couldn’t suss the lyrics any better than I. “These guys are weird, but they rock,” I remember him enthusing one night out of the blue. And Zep and Rush were his meat ‘n’ taters. Until I went to college, he was the only other person I knew who liked them. John was also the first person I knew in my graduating class who passed, and when he did, London Calling and his open mind was what I thought of.
The Clash were the essential glue that bonded me to my two best friends in college, and best friends we remain. We entered an air guitar contest at White Dog Records in Fayetteville, Arkansas–as The Clash. I got to be Joe–still one of the pleasures of my life. This was before I’d ever seen him in action or heard him speak, but I Method-acted from the evidence of London Calling: he was furious, funny, mad, intense but loose–and I figured he had to always slick up his hair. After preparing for the “performance” by road-tripping to Pine Bluff to see Jerry Lee Lewis and Johnny Paycheck (we never took no shit from no one–we weren’t fools) and staying up all night “practicing” (with nickels for picks and tennis rackets for guits), we lurched into the store, glowering out of a morning beer buzz. Inside, I was nervous but jubilant, determined to vindicate the band for the masses; outside, I was pissed off to the highest degree of pissed-tivity. We “played” “I Fought the Law,” the Bobby Fuller cover from their debut, but my energy came from London Calling‘s album cover, and its mood. Drained afterwards, we were disappointed to have finished behind The Beach Boys and AC/DC, but hey–the finish was true to the song. With my consolation $10 gift certificate, I bought Fenton Robinson’s Somebody Loan Me a Dime.
My first real critical argument about an album was over London Calling. I was checking out at a Springfield, Missouri, record store called, rather inaccurately, Liberty Sound, and was chatting with the clerk, a guy I knew from the Joplin clubs. We were talking about Slash Records (which took the store eons to stock), and I mentioned how much I loved The Blasters’ first album (then, however, much less than I do at present!). Dude equated them with The Stray Cats (SMFH!!!), then connected The Blasters’ “fake rockabilly” (motherfucker, that’s r & b! and it ain’t fake) to The Clash’s “sell-out” via London Calling and “Brand New Cadillac.” I just lost it. “Man, they’re learning to play, and they’re learning to play more, because they’re learning more about music! And, and, AND? No band’s learned that much THAT fast!” Period. See. You. Later. To this day, when I notice a band growing, I think of that conversation. Sometimes I have to check myself when I find myself wishing a favorite band would stay in its lane. Think of the styles represented, and done justice (and not just musically) on London Calling: rockabilly, reggae, ska, NOLA r & b, straight (and great) rock and roll, punk (of course), skiffle-y pop, Diddley-bop (twice) (in a row), soaring “I Can See for Miles”-styled anthemic hard rock. And I’m leaving things out. Sell-outs? As Ginsberg, I think, said about Dylan, they sold out to (a kind of) God. How else to explain the bittersweet melody of “Spanish Bombs,” lashed to lines like “Spanish bombs / Shatter the hotels / My senorita’s rose was nipped in the bud!”? (Now that line I understood when I was eighteen.)
Speaking of all that, all that led me to even more of that. London Calling made me feel I better get to know Stagger Lee and Billy, Montgomery Clift, The Harder They Come, The Night of the Hunter, Vince Taylor, The Assyrians, and–dammit, son!–why don’t you own a Bo Diddley record yet? I just this moment realized it, but they taught me omnivorousness (secret o’ life, right there).
One way I measure my love for an album is how many times I’ve bought it. London Calling? Five. Twice on LP (the second time, for the lyrics), once on eight-track (for the old Dodge Dart!), twice on CD (the second time for a really sharp remastering). I’ll probably buy it again.
As should you. Especially if you haven’t yet done it once.
A final offering from London Calling: “The fury of the hour / Anger can be power / You know that you can use it! / In these days of evil presidenté / Lately one or two / Have fully paid their dues….”
You can’t listen to everything. That’s one of the great struggles of my life. When people say, “There’s no really good music these days,” you know they don’t get out much–there’s actually never been more great music available than there is now, nor have there been so many ways to get at it. The difficulty is not just finding it all in a torrent, but making time to listen to it. It’s. Just. Not. Possible.
All of this is just to express my sheepishness in having just gotten to Mary Gauthier and The Songwriting with Soldiers Project‘s Rifles and Rosary Beads, easily one of the most emotionally powerful new albums that lie at your fingertips. If trying to reckon with the cost of our adventures in Afghanistan and Iraq is one of your regular intellectual and spiritual practices, you need to advance directly to this record, which will contribute meaningfully to that reckoning. The Songwriting with Soldiers Project joins established songwriters like Gauthier with combat veterans and their families, and gives them the space and opportunity to collaborate on songs that communicate the latter’s experiences. I have nothing to say to further commend this resultant album that comes within thousands of miles of these lyrics from “Stronger Together”:
They say no man’s left behind but that ain’t true They hate it that they need us but they do They lose their fingers lose their limbs We try to love them together again They say no man’s left behind but that ain’t true
They’re hurt in paces that the eye can’t see I miss the man my husband used to be The military breaks their hearts We’re there when they fall apart They’re hurt in paces that the eye can’t see
Stronger together, Sisters forever
EOD* wives don’t sit by the phone No news is good news back at home Their mission ready at their best We take care of all the rest EOD wives don’t sit by the phone
*Explosive Ordnance Disposal specialist
If that and the above-embedded video don’t work, try this:
Note that line “They genuflect on Sundays / And yet, they’d send us back.”
I am not the biggest fan of folk music (that is not really what this is), but I am also not a big fan of these wars, and the devil’s bargain our soldiers have been thrust into. If I hadn’t been actively firming myself up, I’d have wept at some point in each song instead of during three.
Essential listening. This is not to be swept into the cyberbin of time with the other music we couldn’t reach.
Short-shrift Division:
The long shadow of Rifles and Rosary Beads nearly wiped out my other listening during the day, but I cannot get enough of Johannesburg’s Yugen Blakrok. Her album Return of the Astro-Goth, from 2013, has got me in its grip, and apparently she’s got another in the chute. Dig this video from that album:
Also, I take it you knew she’s on Mr. Lamar’s Black Panther companion, batting third on this track and hitting a triple?
“You’re dead to me”: quite the opposite, young lady!
Once again, no narrative with which to surround these immersions–but I predict, based on the quality of these first-time listens, that narratives may be forthcoming.
South African rapper Yugen Blakrok is one of the few really interesting things about the Kendrick Lamar-curated Black Panther companion. I took a deeper dive into her 2013 debut, and one of the best things I can say about it is her mind-spray and fluid, fluent flow is gonna require I take an even deeper dive. She’s definitely got a seat in the Afro-Futurist spaceship; her rapping sounds to me like incantations; and she’s got a knack for joining abstractions with physical being–check this chunk from “Secrets of the Path,” one of many highlights:
What kinda ism is this?
We’re like light thru a prism before the schism is killed
In the prison of sleep…I keep rhyming through bars, lucid dreaming
Heard that love’s brighter from the outside, believe it
This morning when life woke up, I dove back down into slumber
Cuz in-between realities, there’s glitches when I stutter
Sleep-talking formula with in-breath
Exhale solutions, scientist in me is inbred
My language traps the tongue – caught in diction mazes lost for days – in hazy blazes
While fiery words transcend these mortal planes
My verbal play’s like smoke signals, home of the braves
And wild style thoughts can spray when the clouds spell riverclay
Psycho-analyst type in-between-the-lines reader
Deciphering codes beneath the eyelids as a dreamer
Diving deeper into abstract, non-conformity
My realest self’s created thru celestial artistry
Musically, Return of the Astro-Goth is just fine, though a bit of a static ground. This woman’s going to be much, much bigger, I think.
Saxophonist Evan Parker, almost 74, drummer Paul Lytton, freshly 71, and bassist Barry Guy, about to turn 71 himself, have long been friends, and for almost four decades a performing trio—the cream of British jazz improvisation. One thing I’ve noticed about the very best free performances is that it’s virtually impossible to determine the age of the performers. That idea is in play here: the reflexes, imagination, and ears of these men, surely aided by–yes–the profound familiarity of years, could be those of iconoclastic twenty-somethings looking took cut some old farts’ heads. ‘Cept these are the old farts, who long ago discovered a secret of life. As Parker says in the notes: “”Collective free improvisation is the utopian state arrived at in that other ‘little life,’ as the late John Stevens called the mental space of music making that happens when musicians of a like mind (birds of a feather) play freely together.” Like-minded. Yeah.
As I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts, I’m subscribing to Joyful Noise Recordings’ “White Label Series,” in which established independent artists choose and curate overlooked albums from the very recent past for monthly vinyl release. March’s entry is one I’ve eagerly awaited; in fact, my motivation to subscribe to the project was largely due to sui generis rap MC Serengeti‘s involvement. I’ve long been a fan of the shape-shifting story-teller from Chicago, though much of his work is so gnomic, muted, depressive, and minimalistic that it not only demands sound-canceling headphone attention but can also, even then, defy parsing. The reason I mention that is Foreign & Domestic’s 2007 release, Your Mountain vs. My Iceberg, Serengeti’s “White Label” choice, shares those qualities. Is there such a subgenre as electro-twee? My first listen here tempts me to coin it. But I will be going back in when time permits.
Short-shrift Division:
Fans of Norman Whitfield, early Seventies protest-soul, and the Palmieri Brothers who haven’t heard this record need to change that fact. A landmark of post-assassination American pop that’s gotten too little attention–hell, I didn’t hear about it until a few years ago, and this stuff’s my meat and taters. With Eddie on piano and “theoretical arrangements,” Charlie on fascinating organ, luminaries like Pretty Purdie, Cornell Dupree, and Bruce Fowler in the musical mix, and the unsung Jimmy Norman on vocals. A taste:
A very straightforward but exciting day of listening. I was a bit overwhelmed with tutoring chores and catching up on reading, but I made time for some amazing work by the individuals pictured above: pianist Bud Powell (left), saxophonist Sonny Stitt (center), and trumpeter Kenny Dorham (trumpet).
When the average music fan with a broad but general taste thinks about unit that personify the style known as be-bop, she must first think of Charlie Parker’s units with first Dizzy Gillespie and then Miles Davis on trumpet, usually driven to their legendary heights by Max Roach on drums. And those groups produced unquestionably masterful, exciting music that you can live your whole life with and never grow tired of. But another unit, recording during the same general time period, recorded stunning and thrilling tunes of their own that, while it may not match Bird’s group’s work for emotional intensity, will stop you short with their skill and invention.
I’m talking about the Be-Bop Boys, led by Powell, Stitt, and Dorham, virtuosos and composers all, occasionally augmented by two other young greats, Fats Navarro on trumpet and Kenny Clarke on drums. Here, Powell is poised to become, with his friend Thelonious Monk, the most influential pianist of his generation; Stitt is contending furiously for Parker’s alto mantle (experts differ on who was first to the attack they share, though the mercurial nature of the latter’s playing make them easy to distinguish–to my ear at least); Dorham, perhaps more in the shade than his compatriots, plays with a control that belies his years.
Of special note are the original versions of tunes that would later become established Powell classics (“Bebop in Pastel”–> “Bouncing with Bud”; “Fool’s Fancy”–> “Wail”), as well as another that is probably this unit’s claim to lasting fame in the jazz book: “Webb City.”
But here–don’t trust me. Partake and judge for yourself with this Be-Bop Boys playlist, which includes the three tracks above and more:
I am not exactly a scoop-finder–things normally seem to trickle down to me. Once they do, I am fairly good at recognizing something interesting, but it might be months after the artifact’s emergence.
Hot Tip #1: However, on International Women’s Day, I did actually find something fresh that few seem to know about, based on social media’s evidence. Few readers would disagree with me that it’s easier to find international outlets for American garage-punk-styled music than it is to find domestic ones. As someone fairly passionate about that style, though, I have to dig through several layers of boiler-plate to get to something legitimately hot–to the extent, recently, that I’ve kinda given up. However, Madrid, Spain’s FOLC Records released the above compilation GIRLS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN!!! AND RIGHTS on Thursday, and–sucker that I am–I was intrigued enough by the album cover, the all-caps, the exclamation points, and the untranslated Spanish blurb to take a plunge without doing any research.
I’m damned glad I did! This lively and concise 14-song compilation made both Nicole and I sit up and take notice as we headed into mid-Missouri snow on the way back from a parental visit. The songs are neither all in Spanish (few are) nor all performed by women, but the commitment, enthusiasm, catchiness, and sheer energy that run like current throughout did honor to the release date and the title cause. The neat thing is, it’s also a little survey of styles: yep, there’s garage rock (Flamingo Tours’ surly cover of Roscoe Gordon’s “Just a Little Bit”) and garage punk (Las Calebras’ “Shake It”), but also straight-up old school r&b (Lord Rochester’s “Crawdad”), pre-war vocal group nods (Dr. Maha’s Miracle Tonic’s “She Stole My Bike But I Love Her”–imagine The Mills Brothers singing the line “Her perfect body / Fading Away”!), and a dab of hardcore-ish punk (Lupers’ “Me he vuelto a caer,” clocking in at 1:10). It’s a very enjoyable trip–and you can name your price!
Hot Tip #2! I’ve long been a fan of Oakland’s indefatigable activist MC Boots Riley and his group The Coup. I do have to admit, however, that after reading his screenplay Sorry to Both Youa bit over a year ago, I was slightly underwhelmed. From Boots, I expected world-shaking, and the material seemed a light punch to the world’s shoulder. I am fully aware of the cruel tricks a trailer can play on you, but the above preview for the finished film convinces me to take a flyer when it comes my way. Why? Well, one, if ever a time was ripe for a Boots Riley production, it’s now, and the trailer convinces me he may have put very substantial meat on the screenplay’s bones. If you’re not all that familiar with Boots, he has proven he can tell a story. To wit:
Cold Tip #3, for cassette-seeking hipsters: go look for this item, which collects some ravin’ early tracks from the sadly-departed Pope of Memphis Music, Jim Dickinson. You can hear him doing his best Jerry Lee on the 88s, roarin’ through souped-up jug band music, closin’ down Sun Records’ golden line of singles with “Cadillac Man,” rubbing shoulders with The Cramps, and world-boogieing with Mud Boy and the Neutrons. Definitely worth the hunt, and you’ll have to.
Cold Tip #4, for those working on meditation: I have been striving to learn to meditate effectively with music as a focus. The above item worked great for me this weekend, mainly because I was focused on just experiencing things becoming as opposed to anticipating what would happen in the next moment. The music collected herein also eluded my attempts at analysis, because I don’t have the background to analyze it if I wanted to. Most important, the minorities making the music need all the spiritual support they can get, even if my mid-Missouri meditation will not help them not be oppressed. At least I’m conscious.
Nicole, my parents and I took a trip down Highways 37 and 62 to Bentonville, Arkansas, where one of our very favorite museums lies tucked into a lovely wood: Crystal Bridges. I’ll let you click that link to read the story behind it, but suffice it to say it’s a perfect home for an impressive collection of American art, and it’s free. Yesterday, we explored a Frank Lloyd Wright Usorian home (I’d live in it; my parents and wife would not) and absorbed the bounty of Soul of America: Art in the Era of Black Power, which runs until April 23rd, if you’re interested. My favorite artists in the collection? Narrative quilt maker Faith Ringgold and collagist Romane Bearden. But those two names are just scratching the surface of those whose work are represented. The special program, which costs $10 (a steal, considering), even has a booklet one can hold onto; it provides patrons three expertly-selected music playlists that mirror the artists’ concerns.
Because we were preoccupied with art, NCAA basketball, a game of Five Crowns, and each other’s company, Music wasn’t much on the menu. But on the way back from Bentonville–when intermittent service allowed it–we enjoyed the greatest hits of Louis Jordan, Brinkley, Arkansas’ best-known citizen and bedrock innovator in rock and roll. When you listen to Jordan, you get a lot: rockin’ rhythm, a mischievous and observant lyrical eye, sly singing, sharp alto sax playing, and a seemingly bottomless well of classic tunes. And though black power aficionados might possibly view Louis is an Uncle Tom variant, I and many other folks would argue that he was one of the first performers to play songs that reflected black life, and pulled white listeners in. Plus, anyone sworn by such a range of luminaries as Sonny Rollins, Chuck Berry, and Ray Charles must be taken seriously in cultural conversations. Here’s our favorite single-disc Jordan collection, and a great place to start:
Jimi Hendrix: Both Sides of the Sky–Despite a blazing “Hear My Train a-Comin'” and an interesting “Cherokee Mist,” this is flat-out barrel-scraping. Stephen Stills, anyone? I didn’t think so.
Hamad Kalkaba and the Golden Sounds–I can’t get enough of these rough and ready tracks from mid-Seventies Cameroon. Aside from the rhythmic propulsion, which one might expect…oh the horns ‘n’ guitars! And I love Analog Africa’s album cover.
Etta Jones: Lonely and Blue–Have you met Miss Jones? If you love Dinah Washington (and why shouldn’t you), you must make her acquaintance. She lacks Dinah’s power, humor, and intensity, but like Washington she can sing the blues. Also, Etta’s edges are mellower, which can make this particular album addictive.
Gang Starr: Daily Operation–I always found Guru and Premier’s enterprise underrated (at least here in the Midwest), and here in 2018 I find it has aged very, very well. A uniquely perpetual flow (delivered with equally unique warmth) atop expert beats and jazz-tinged samples and instrumentation.
The Kinks: Face to Face–Hey, if you just know the hits, Something Else, and Village Green, you might be missing their most underrated album. Quirky, funny, rowdy, thieving, eccentric, gender-ambiguous (in a moment), very English: all the things they were, entertainingly performed, in one place. Ok, maybe no power chording. Thank you, Kenny Wright, for enthusing about it all those years ago.
You’re sitting in a restaurant having lunch, staring into space, trying to organize your mundane day. The restaurant has a satellite radio subscription, and oldies–comfortable, rockin’ oldies–are blasting out into the space. The other diners are working on their taxes, fiddling with phones and laptops, complaining about their days so far, asking a server why mustard’s on their hamburger when they clearly didn’t ask for it. The cooks pick up the tension and nervously, clandestinely, dart glances at that table. There’s a silence as a song (Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Pride and Joy”?) ends. That silence dovetails with the coincidental sudden pause in patron chatter.
Then, a lurching, threatening, familiar guitar figure, and:
And:
What if you knew her And found her dead on the ground? How can you run when you know?
Tin soldiers and Nixon coming, We’re finally on our own.
The anguish that rolls out across the melody behind those first three lines would have seemed impossible for us to tune out. The anguish–and the awful familiarity–shot through the words would have seemed to command our attention. The truth of that fifth line? A confirmation we could surely recognize.
From the first note, I’d been sitting bolt-upright. In Macbeth, a knocking at the palace gate and an ensuing comic hellscape imagined by a commoner snaps us out of murder-induced shock. In this tableau, the horror should have snapped us out of a routine-induced trance. I looked around, into every nook and cranny of that restaurant, and nothing had changed. So I resumed eating.
But those lines echoes all day, and all night, and this morning, and assuredly, horribly, tomorrow.
On the brighter side, in honor of International Women’s Day, I put together the following YouTube playlist. Enjoy, if you’re curious, but beware a couple of full albums I mischievously dropped in, and be vigilant for an appearance by Diamanda Galas.
Short-shrift Division:
The Clash: Sandinista!–I can still remember, as a college freshman at the University of Arkansas, and already-avid Clashaholic, snapping this triple-LP up the day it showed up at White Dog Records some 37 years ago. I, um, liked it, but–Clash fans will understand. On impulse, I slapped it on, and–as it has been doing to me for the past two decades–it rendered up new favorites I hemmed and hawed through as a young man. I wasn’t ready. Thankfully, not only do we never step in the same river twice, but we also should stop stepping into the river, period. Tracks I repeat-played yesterday: “Something About England,”“Somebody Got Murdered,”“Crooked Beat.”
The Kinks: The Kinks’ Greatest Hits, Face to Face, disc one of The Kinks Kronikles–Mick Jones’ fragile, plaintive singing on “Something About England” flipped my Kinks switch, and based on past experience I will be in their England for the entire coming weekend.
Since I began integrating pop music discussions and writing assignments into the freshman comp class I teach at Stephens College, a private women’s liberal arts school here in Columbia, I have tried to convince working music critics to visit the classroom, dollop out their wisdom, and talk about their philosophy, process, struggles, victories, and obsessions. Wednesday, Hyperallergic and SPIN reviewer Lucas Fagen valiantly Skyped into class (it was 6 a.m. his time) and, after some annoying technical delays, engaged us in a very interesting and wide-ranging discussion.
Only seven of my already small class of 11 appeared (it’s midterm week), of those who did, only two had read any of the selected Fagen essays I’d assigned–and only one of those read all the essays I’d assigned. In addition, I was flustered from the tech delays and slightly off-balance when Lucas wasn’t sure what I wanted him to tell them about his life. I switched quickly into moderator mode, and posed the first couple of questions while prompting the class to think of some of their own (we’d spent 20 class minutes last week brainstorming a long list of those, which were apparently bound away in the ether). They owe me a record review rough draft Tuesday, and the whole point of Lucas’ visit was for him to share tips.
Fortunately, by the time Lucas had clicked away back to Portland, we’d discussed preparation, record review non-negotiables, writer’s block, negative reviews, ideal writing environments, audience relations, striving to suggest (rather than state) judgments, the relevance of private lives, a bad Randy Newman record (I’d wanted to discuss Lucas’ Lil’ Uzi Vert review, but my students’ abstention from homework rendered that direction null and void), cultural context, other young writers we should read, and the impossibility of objectivity (on the part of the reviewer, but also where songwriters are concerned). I judged that be evidence of fair success, and students affirmed to me they had gained some confidence in their upcoming task. I really wish, though, that one of them hadn’t asked if Lucas were single.
Once question I was hoping some student would ask was, “Hey, what reviews are you currently working on?” As time was winding down, I wedged it in myself, and Lucas responded quickly, in a burst of enthusiasm: “I’m reviewing Jonghyun’s new album! The title isn’t great–Poet / Artist–but it’s my album of the year so far for 2018.” I expected to see uncontrollable twitching overcome the class, as K-Pop has been a frequent topic of very animated student discussion since 2015, but apparently this lot is immune to its charms.
As had I been; students having subjected me to several K-Pop videos in past classes, the genre seemed a frenetic blur of hyper-ramped, blindingly colorful, rap-n-r&b-influenced tween-tunes…ummm, do you remember that scene in High Anxiety?
That has been K-Pop’s effect on me. However, Mr. Fagen’s impassioned defense of the artist’s and the record’s merits, plus my ever-creeping suspicion that I have become a calcified old fart, forced me to promise him I would listen to the album carefully once I could cloister myself properly. I must admit, too, that the artist’s suicide late last year, apparently simultaneous with his having reached a creative pinnacle, saddened and intrigued me.
If you’d like to take some time, you can simulate listening to the album with me:
Now. If this is where K-Pop might be going, I’ll hitch a ride there. I found the young man’s singing marvelously flexible; he shifts effortlessly in and out of a wide range of moods: jubilant (“Shinin'”), desperate (“Only One You Need”), chilled-out (“#Hashtag,” tinged with Steely Dan cool), seductive (“Take the Dive”), and desolated (“Before Our Spring,” the deeply poignant closer). Admittedly, I’m guessing at some of these since I hear in English only, but it’s further proof of the young man’s skill that his singing’s consistently affecting beyond vocabulary’s reach. Also commendable is that the young man doesn’t over-sing. He’s in full control, floating, dropping in and out, modulating, easefully riding the album’s varied tempos and rhythms.
Poet / Artist‘s musical settings, pop/r&b-flavored, are clean, percolating, and unobtrusive, staying out of Jonghyun’s way and providing him just the right walls off of which to bounce. I’m a bit of a gestaltist–as much as I love classic singles, I’m rather helplessly an album guy, a listener after a vaster artistic whole–and, by those lights, Poet / Artist is stellar. Only what I hear as a holding-pattern filler cut (“Rewind”) would keep it from my own early-2018 Top Three; it’s certainly a Top Five for me now. At 27–not again! have they started up yet?–Jonghyun left us far too soon, but nonetheless I’m eager to explore his back catalogue, and maybe hunt down some translations (YouTube seems a good resource).
Now…if each of my seven students who were present had at least one similar breakthrough moment as a result of Mr. Fagen’s talk, I’ll forgive them that unprofessional proposition (after all, what if the parties’ genders had been reversed?).
Living To Listen 