Masterpiece: Who’s Next

[Today: The Who ditch the opera and rock out...]

The songs that eventually became Who’s Next were actually pieces of a conceptual album/theatrical production/motion picture that Pete Townshend was calling Lifehouse. Ultimately the narrative strings holding Lifehouse together proved to be too frail for Townshend’s multi-media ambitions, and he and the group handed the songs over to producer Glyn Johns to see if he could turn them into an album.

Johns did, and how – Who’s Next would go on to sell 3,000,000 copies in the 70′s alone. Album opener ‘Baba O’Reilly’ – with its flighty synthesizers and “Teenage Wasteland” refrain – is one of the most recognizable tunes of the rock era, even if it didn’t chart in the States. Album closer ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ is a perennial protest song that will ring true as long as governments stand. In between those highlights sit no minor songs, no filler, nothing less than arena-sized rock & roll. ‘Bargain’ and ‘Love Ain’t For Keeping’ are two of the group’s very best tunes, and ‘The Song Is Over’ is a surprisingly tender turn from a band who fancied themselves a bunch of hooligans.

During a February 1971 interview with Keith Altham, Townshend admitted to the crisis of confidence he was having with the Lifehouse material. “I’ve thought of having it released under a pseudonym but that’s no answer – not because I couldn’t bear it if it was a flop because I’m sure it would be, but because it is very personal material.” What he didn’t realize was that the conceptual baggage of the rock opera model had only served as a barrier to The Who’s music, and free from the puppet strings of Lifehouse, the intensely personal nature of Who’s Next made it their baddest and best album.

Listen: Love Ain’t for Keeping

Listen: Won’t Get Fooled Again

Listen: Bargain

Buried Treasure: Thunder Express

[Today: Motor City is still burning...]

MC5 is a band whose music has been completely overshadowed by its myths. From their involvement with the White Panther party to their refusal to edit the phrase “Kick out the jams motherfuckers!” on their debut album, they led with their politics and charted a loud, uncompromising, and ideological route to oblivion. Since their demise, they’ve acquired status as punk rock godfathers and become metaphorically linked to a state that has been decaying for decades from its auto industry out. By design, it’s nearly impossible to hear their music without any preconceived notions about what they stand for.

During a 1972 interview with Nick Kent, guitarist Wayne Kramer waxed philosophical about the group’s dedication to its sound, even in the face of commercial failure. “When you’re putting over an alien vibration on a high energy level you’ve got to be tough to that kind of backlash,” he said. “But it’s the only way for us, we can’t do anything else and it’s too late to stop now. We’re totally committed to our thing – it’s a highly emotional thing and in that respect it’s always a calculated risk.”

Thunder Express captures the group live in the studio in March of 1972, just months before they went kaput. The recording retains the primal fury of the Motor City Five’s live act, but the studio environment does wonders for their sound. Over seven tracks – including a blistering 10-minute version of ‘Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa’ – MC5 exhibit the kind of driving musicianship that one wouldn’t normally associate with them. Under these conditions, it’s easy to filter out the politics and spot the influence of Motown, Chuck Berry, and John Coltrane upon their music.

The album was recorded during a one-day session at Chateau d’Herouville, an 18th century castle that was converted into a recording studio in 1969. It would later host sessions for Pink Floyd’s Obscured By Clouds, Iggy Pop’s The Idiot, and David Bowie’s Low, as well as two of the Bee Gee’s songs for the Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack. It was an unlikely location for Kramer, Rob Tyner, Fred “Sonic” Smith, Steve Moorhouse, and Denis Thompson to make one of their last stands, but Thunder Express is the sound of a band going out in a hail of brutal riffs, raw and uncompromising to the bitter end…

Listen: Motor City Is Burning

Listen: Rama Lama Fa Fa Fa

[Very special thanks to Jeff Marshall for passing this album my way...]

On The Fence: Chronicles

Rush is a band that just never grabbed me. I have friends who love them dearly and speak in hushed tones about their album 2112, but that enthusiasm didn’t rub off on me. I like a few of their songs, but most of their catalogue is stuck in neutral for me. So rather than parsing just one of their albums, I figured I’d cut to the chase and open up a discussion about their 1990 greatest hits compilation Chronicles. They’ve always struck me as a love ‘em-or-hate ‘em kind of band, so I’m extremely interested to hear what my readers think…

THUMBS UP: The P hates Rush with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, which has had the perverse effect of making me actually enjoy their music more than I used to. If I dialed her up right now and told her that I was snorting crystal meth with a bunch of hookers and we were listening to Rush, the first thing she’d lay into me for would be the musical selection. I’m not amused by all of Rush’s music, but certain tunes (I’m looking at you ‘Tom Sawyer’) have an undeniable, time-capsule appeal that has clearly been enhanced by a glaring wife. They also have the good fortune of being one of the bands of choice for various old friends, so their music takes me back to good times and good people, and that’s never a bad thing.

THUMBS DOWN: Geddy Lee’s vocal stylings. If I had to pinpoint one reason why I can’t really take this group seriously, that’s it. There’s some quality to his voice that makes me picture him singing in a pointy wizard hat – maybe it’s the overwrought lyrics that come off like crappy science fiction. Their music also has a virtuoso, aren’t-we-impressive sheen that borders on wonkery – this is a band that never, ever takes the straightest musical point between A and B. But whatever it is, I can’t shake the sense that this stuff is the musical equivalent of Dungeons & Dragons – escapist fantasy claptrap that was cool in the 80′s and retains an intense nostalgia for an audience of a certain age. And like Sci-Fi and D&D, Rush is generally something you’re either really into, or not into at all.

[Love 'em or hate 'em? What's your take on Rush?]

Songs For A Tree

As a certified tree-hugging, environmentalist hippie, I’m always sad to see a brand new tree stump. So I was quadruply disappointed during last night’s stroll with The P when we discovered four fresh stumps in our sprawling local rose garden. The biggest of the four sits on a hill overlooking the garden, and the tree it represented was big enough to produce a void that now reveals the entire side of a not-too-pretty apartment complex. The rabble-rousing commie third-grader in me had to count the tree rings to see approximately how old this tree was, so I climbed up on the massive stump, blew away the fresh sawdust, and counted, and counted, and counted… to 121. Which means that this tree was planted around 1888, when Grover Cleveland was president of the United States and George Eastman was patenting the name Kodak.

Here are ten songs dedicated to trees – or one song for every dozen years our old friend sat on that hill in the rose garden and watched the world go by…

Listen: One Tree Hill [U2]

Listen: Tree Green [John & Beverly Martyn]

Listen: Trees [Wayne & Wanda - The Muppet Show]

Listen: Stumptown [Nickel Creek]

Listen: The Family Tree [Steve Goodman]

Listen: Tie A Yellow Ribbon Round the Old Oak Tree [Tony Orlando & Dawn]

Listen: Garden Of Four Trees [The Explosions]

Listen: A Forest [The Cure]

Listen: Cut Down That Old Pine Tree [Cootie Stark]

Listen: Trees [Snooks Eaglin]

Doubleshot Tuesday: Damaged/Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables

[Today: Pissed off in California...]

Here’s the latest, courtesy of SFGate:

“In a 6-1 decision, the California Supreme Court today validated a constitutional amendment, passed by voters in November, banning same-sex marriage.”

Here’s the local mood, courtesy of a couple of California punk bands:

Listen: Rise Above [Black Flag]

Listen: California Über Alles [Dead Kennedys]

Weekend Playlist

Long weekend, short playlist…

Lee Perry And Friends | Give Me Power

Lee Perry | The Upsetter Box Set

Tosca | No Hassle

Balkan Beat Box | Balkan Beat Box

Blue Mitchell | Blue’s Moods

Bon Iver | For Emma, Forever Ago

XTC | Drums And Wires

Sharon Jones And The Dap-Kings | Naturally

The Temptations | Anthology

The Meters | Rejuvenation

Calexico | The Black Light

Stereo MC’s | Connected

Fela Anikulapo Kuti & The Africa 70 | Up Side Down
[Album cover not pictured]

Dire Straits | Dire Straits

J.J. Cale | #8

Talking Heads | Fear Of Music

The Cure | Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me

Melvin Jackson | Funky Skull

Tim Buckley | Greetings From L.A.

Wynton Marsalis | Baroque Music For Trumpets

George Brigman | Jungle Rot

Led Zeppelin | Physical Graffiti

The Kleptones | A Night At The Hip Hopera

Rushmore | Soundtrack

The Beatles | Rubber Soul

Ike Turner | A Black Man’s Soul

Steely Dan | Can’t Buy A Thrill

Clarence Carter | Testifyin’

Buried Treasure: Demonstration

[Today: PJ Harvey laid bare...]

PJ Harvey’s 1992 debut Dry was a startling artistic statement and one of the few albums of the early 90′s that answered the clarion call of Nirvana’s Nevermind with an equally tough-minded, no-bullshit batch of songs. Harvey’s smudged ruby reds pressed fisheye against the cover of the album certainly telegraphs the in-your-face nature of this music, but even that could hardly have prepared listeners for what lurked within. Like Patti Smith before her, Harvey sidestepped discussions about her gender by ignoring stereotypes and making an album every bit as bruising as those of her male counterparts. Dry deals with feminine issues, but serves them up with the anger and distortion of the most ferocious punk band.

Demonstration is a song-by-song demo of Dry that was released along with the album as a very limited-edition double-LP. It features only Harvey and her guitar, with some simple multi-tracking of her voice and instrument, and nothing else. Dry was a bare bones album featuring her three-piece band, but Demonstration is sparse like a Nick Drake record, and surprisingly softer and more rounded than the studio version that it led to. On Dry, Harvey hid her voice within a storm of guitars and noise, but here there’s nowhere to hide, so she often sings with more feeling and energy.

Dry is one of the best records of the 90′s, and yet it’s debatable whether the best version of the album was released. Certain tracks – like ‘Dress’ and ‘Plants And Rags’ – undoubtedly benefitted from some studio polish, but others – like the plaintive ‘Oh My Lover’ and the defiant ‘Happy And Bleeding’ – sound just right in their unvarnished state. The emotional core of Harvey’s songs are so stark and elemental that they are easily and compellingly conveyed in their barest forms. At the very least, Demonstration is a fascinating blueprint of a brilliant album.

Listen: Oh My Lover [Demo]

Listen: Oh My Lover [Dry version]

Listen: Sheela-Na-Gig [Demo]

Listen: Sheela-Na-Gig [Dry version]

Listen: Happy And Bleeding [Demo]

Listen: Happy And Bleeding [Dry version]

Masterpiece: Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me

[Today: The Cure set some moods...]

I didn’t like The Cure one bit when I was in high school. Their music seemed like the soundtrack for all those overly-dramatic, woe-is-me poseurs who clustered just across school lines to smoke cloves and pout about life. But in 1987, two things happened that changed my outlook on this group: 1) I graduated from high school, and 2) they released Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me. By spring term of my freshman year of college, I was toting around a cassette copy of the album in my Walkman™ and singing a completely different tune.

This is the album where The Cure synthesized all the best parts of their sound, and took that sound into several new directions at once. Kiss Me contains two of their best-loved songs – ‘Just Like Heaven’ and ‘Why Can’t I Be You?’ but the record is a start-to-finish marvel that signaled they had reached musical maturity. Robert Smith could still spit his lyrics like a petulant child (“I hate these people staring/Make them go away from me”) but the music here often provides an upbeat counterpoint to his gloom and doom. Kiss Me also contains several winding instrumentals that meander and weave like songs for an elegant opium den, while stitching together the violent mood swings at the heart of the album. But above all else, what distinguishes Kiss Me is that it’s a great guitar album, with a complex, layered sound that matches the emotional depth of the lyrics.

During my freshman year of college I took a class called The History Of Film, and during spring term the professor showed Salvador Dali’s absurd/surreal movie Un Chien Andalou (“An Andalusian Dog”). The film is basically a string of beautiful nonsense, repetitive film loops, and disturbing imagery, such as a man towing a dead moose on a rope and a woman slicing a man’s eyeball with a straight razor. Because it’s a silent film, I chose to watch it with Kiss Me playing on the Walkman™, and the album provided a first-rate soundtrack for Dali’s lunacy. The next day the prof told us that he had been showing the film for 25 years and we were the first class that hadn’t walked out early en masse. He was convinced it was because our brains had been trained by MTV to deal with Dali’s quick-cut nonsense. A nice theory, but I know that I stuck that film out – and actually enjoyed it – because I had The Cure in my ears.

Listen: Icing Sugar

Listen: If Only Tonight We Could Sleep

Listen: The Kiss

Stuck In My Head: I Ain’t Dead Yet

“They don’t make ‘em like that anymore.” My dad used to shake his head a little wistfully and drop that pearl of wisdom whenever he saw a Chevy from the 50′s or a statuesque blond with cone-shaped boobs. And that’s exactly the reaction I had with this song. From the mock-funeral dirge intro to the swinging, Animal House party vibe to the studied indifference of the lyrics, ‘I Ain’t Dead Yet’ is a throwback to a time when songs were three minutes long – period – and mini-skirts were dangerous.

This song comes courtesy of my man Devil Dick over at The Devil’s Music. Dick is a tireless crate digger, and his site is filled with gems like this, just sitting there for the taking. In his original post of this song, Dick claimed that there was nothing on the web about The What-Knots, and he wasn’t lying. There isn’t one single google result for this band, which seems strange given the microscopic attention paid to 60′s garage bands with much less going for them than this.

But the lack of hype matters little, because like ’57 Chevys and statuesque blondes, catchy songs like this just don’t go out of style. Thankfully there are crate diggers like Dick to pull lost tunes like this up from the depths, and bring them back to life…

Listen: I Ain’t Dead Yet

Black Celebration – The Cover Art

While my latest mix is subtitled 20 Songs For My Funeral, it’s important to point out that I’m not actually dying – no incurable diseases or degenerative conditions to report here. My cliché handbook tells me that nothing is guaranteed, and that I should cherish every moment, but instead I prefer to look ahead to the bitter end, and provide myself a musical insurance policy against well-meaning (but misguided) friends and family who might think I need to be sent off to the loving strains of ‘Wind Beneath My Wings’.

Here then is my last musical will and testament…

Here’s the front cover:

Here’s the front gatefold:

Here’s the inside gatefold:

["Dying is a wild night and a new road." - Emily Dickinson

Here’s the inside back:

Here’s the back:

And here’s the playlist:
Slaid Cleaves_This Morning I Am Born Again
Mark Alan_Raindogs
Moby Grape_8:05
Fleet Foxes_Tiger Mountain Peasant Song
Chris Cornell_Seasons
John Martyn_Over The Hill
The Artist Formerly Known As Van Morrison_Into The Mystic
The Rolling Stones_Winter
Josh Ritter_Lawrence, KS
The Byrds_Goin’ Back
Steely Dan_Babylon Sisters
Lee Perry & The Upsetters_Soul Man
The Jimi Hendrix Experience_Burning Of The Midnight Lamp
Alabama 3_Woke Up This Morning
Bob Dylan_Trying To Get To Heaven
Jeff Buckley_Mama You Been On My Mind
Jackson C. Frank_Blues Run The Game
Led Zeppelin_Bron-Yr-Aur
Nick Drake_Time Has Told Me
John C. Reilly_Have You Heard The News (Dewey Cox Died)