Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Other Music 2008 Pt 1
WFMU may get around to blogging my year end list, which I submit mainly to remind other staffers that my taste in art music remains conservative but of course impeccable, & I read a lot of crime novels. Here's some other music.
Last summer in the supermarket, "Don't Get Me Wrong" froze me under a ceiling speaker. I hadn't heard the song in a long time & the experience was like hearing it anew through an old dashboard mono car speaker. I wrote, "What a great love song, nothing phony or slick about it, it's all magic & uncertainty. & there's a real funky bass guitarist who's not playing like a robot." I borrowed The Pretenders Singles CD & marveled at its wonderfulness, even "I Got You, Babe" with UB40. I'm one of the rare people between the ages of 40 & 60 who never bought any Pretenders records or CDs (I had the Learning to Crawl record left by a girlfriend) . Chrissie & the Pretenders were always a radio act for me, ear candy I heard when I heard 'em. "Don't Get Me Wrong" became my summer song in 2008, 22 years after it was a big hit. I had barely noticed it in 1986. Hearing Chrissie sing about taking a chances & maybe falling in love was better than no summer romance at all.
After Danny Federici & Madam Marie Castello passed, I borrowed & revisited Springsteen's The River. Although I'm not a Springsteen devotee, I was a fan of this album, a veritable jukebox of songs & a catalogue of every style that had influenced him. Remember, also, that in 1980 Bruce was a very important rocker, a critic's fav, & successful live act, but it was unclear how his long term career would unfold. He hadn't had a hit single & he wasn't a superduperstar. This album contained "Hungry Heart, a singalong single constructed out of nostalgic parts (with a marvelous Federici organ break) that hardly pointed toward Nebraska or Born In the USA. The River didn't change Bruce's rep as a musical traditionalist, but it made clear he wasn't a reactionary. I heard a guy taking a serious personal inventory & sharing the results. At this point in his career he could have decided to be Tom Petty. The River is where Bruce pivoted after the grand (& I think unsatisfactory) concept of Darkness At the Edge of Town. He delayed the release of the followup album for an entire year & made it a double. Said Springsteen: "I finally got to the place where I realized life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you've got to live with them." He had to accept the variety of music he was creating, & put it in separate packages if that was necessary. Maybe he learned it from Neil Young. He also needed to recreate in his records more of the energy of his live act. Certainly, there are many more accidental masterpieces in rock than calculated ones. Whatever lyrical themes others may find in it, The River is the music itself. The only live Springsteen/ E Street show I saw was in support of this record. Why I respect rather than love Springsteen may be that the whole is rarely what I hope for from the sum of the parts. Or it may be very old envy.
Pell Mell: Interstate (1995)
Instrumental album by a (mostly) guitar band comprised of record producers, by then living in different cities, whose earlier releases I'd admired, initially struck me as bland, with a couple of standouts. I wasn't listening closely.
Mermen: The Amazing California Health and Happiness Road Show (2000)
Instrumental guitar "surf" (word used loosely) band album seemed sprawling, overambitious, & a failed "concept" in 2000. I finally got the joke, maybe. It still doesn't hang together all that well, & a 14 minute psych/drone piece closing the CD, though great on its own terms, pulls the album off balance, if one insists upon balance. It's an ace collection of individual cuts. Love the band. The top two downloads for the Mermen are "Little Stinky Kitty"from Amazing & an earlier number "Ocean Beach." Two reasons I love them. They're still out there playing on the coast but I guess most of their new music circulates as live show bootlegs. One of the few groups I might haul myself out to see at a club.
Songs in RealAudio:
Don't Get Me Wrong
Nothing Lies Still Long Pell Mell
Vegetable Kingdom Pell Mell
Little Stinky Kitty
Ocean Beach
Drive All Night Springsteen
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be." Thomas Jefferson
Last summer in the supermarket, "Don't Get Me Wrong" froze me under a ceiling speaker. I hadn't heard the song in a long time & the experience was like hearing it anew through an old dashboard mono car speaker. I wrote, "What a great love song, nothing phony or slick about it, it's all magic & uncertainty. & there's a real funky bass guitarist who's not playing like a robot." I borrowed The Pretenders Singles CD & marveled at its wonderfulness, even "I Got You, Babe" with UB40. I'm one of the rare people between the ages of 40 & 60 who never bought any Pretenders records or CDs (I had the Learning to Crawl record left by a girlfriend) . Chrissie & the Pretenders were always a radio act for me, ear candy I heard when I heard 'em. "Don't Get Me Wrong" became my summer song in 2008, 22 years after it was a big hit. I had barely noticed it in 1986. Hearing Chrissie sing about taking a chances & maybe falling in love was better than no summer romance at all.
After Danny Federici & Madam Marie Castello passed, I borrowed & revisited Springsteen's The River. Although I'm not a Springsteen devotee, I was a fan of this album, a veritable jukebox of songs & a catalogue of every style that had influenced him. Remember, also, that in 1980 Bruce was a very important rocker, a critic's fav, & successful live act, but it was unclear how his long term career would unfold. He hadn't had a hit single & he wasn't a superduperstar. This album contained "Hungry Heart, a singalong single constructed out of nostalgic parts (with a marvelous Federici organ break) that hardly pointed toward Nebraska or Born In the USA. The River didn't change Bruce's rep as a musical traditionalist, but it made clear he wasn't a reactionary. I heard a guy taking a serious personal inventory & sharing the results. At this point in his career he could have decided to be Tom Petty. The River is where Bruce pivoted after the grand (& I think unsatisfactory) concept of Darkness At the Edge of Town. He delayed the release of the followup album for an entire year & made it a double. Said Springsteen: "I finally got to the place where I realized life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you've got to live with them." He had to accept the variety of music he was creating, & put it in separate packages if that was necessary. Maybe he learned it from Neil Young. He also needed to recreate in his records more of the energy of his live act. Certainly, there are many more accidental masterpieces in rock than calculated ones. Whatever lyrical themes others may find in it, The River is the music itself. The only live Springsteen/ E Street show I saw was in support of this record. Why I respect rather than love Springsteen may be that the whole is rarely what I hope for from the sum of the parts. Or it may be very old envy.
Pell Mell: Interstate (1995)
Instrumental album by a (mostly) guitar band comprised of record producers, by then living in different cities, whose earlier releases I'd admired, initially struck me as bland, with a couple of standouts. I wasn't listening closely.
Mermen: The Amazing California Health and Happiness Road Show (2000)
Instrumental guitar "surf" (word used loosely) band album seemed sprawling, overambitious, & a failed "concept" in 2000. I finally got the joke, maybe. It still doesn't hang together all that well, & a 14 minute psych/drone piece closing the CD, though great on its own terms, pulls the album off balance, if one insists upon balance. It's an ace collection of individual cuts. Love the band. The top two downloads for the Mermen are "Little Stinky Kitty"from Amazing & an earlier number "Ocean Beach." Two reasons I love them. They're still out there playing on the coast but I guess most of their new music circulates as live show bootlegs. One of the few groups I might haul myself out to see at a club.
Songs in RealAudio:
Don't Get Me Wrong
Nothing Lies Still Long Pell Mell
Vegetable Kingdom Pell Mell
Little Stinky Kitty
Ocean Beach
Drive All Night Springsteen
Labels: music
