Buried Treasure: Hi-Fidelity House – Imprint 3

[Today: Surprise, surprise...]

Once upon a time it would have been impossible for me to imagine that free CDs would be anything but a positive development, but that moment arrived sometime around 2003. If you graphed it out in a series of pie charts, with one color representing space and the other inventory, it was clear that by late ’03 music was the whole pie. All available space had been squeezed out of my music area, which was teetering on the brink of looking like a Tower Records after the ’89 Loma Prieta earthquake. So when I ordered a used copy of a disc in the Hi-Fidelity Dub series of electronica/reggae mixes, I was less than thrilled to find out that I’d be getting a free disc as a “thank you” from the seller. Great, another piece of landfill, I thought, but then that freebie turned out to be Hi-Fidelity House: Imprint 3, and HFH:I3 turned out to be one of my favorite electronica albums.

[By my count there are four ways to discover new music. In rough order of importance, they are: 1) Recommendations by friends and acquaintances - if you ask people what they're listening to, and actually listen to the responses, you'll hear a lot of interesting stuff that might otherwise have slipped by; 2) Music magazines, critics and blogs - there is currently a vast and growing number of critical resources that are more specialized and passionate than traditional media could have ever hoped to be; 3) Pop culture - movies, television shows, commercials, and even restaurants and grocery stores have become cagier about using good music. Muzak is a thing of the past; and 4) The serendipitous freak accident - such as the album you buy for fifty cents at a garage sale because you liked the cover, or the giveaway electronica album that turns out to be better than the disc you paid money for...]

Hi-Fidelity House: Imprint 3 is a 2001 compilation from the Guidance Recordings label, which is based out of Chicago. Their brand of electronica is known as “deep-house” [honestly, the number of splinters within electronica is just mind-boggling], but the motto on the back of the album – “Music is our spiritual guide through life” – sounds more like ecstasy-fueled, new age posturing. Regardless, the music is a cooled-out blend of smooth electronica from unusual suspects like Homebase, Dubtribe Sound System and Venus Attack Project. I’m pretty sure that every person who likes electronica has a pet compilation like this that they hold dear to their heart. I’m also pretty sure that sometimes you find the music, and sometimes the music finds you…

Listen: Constant Love [Homebase]

Listen: Riviera Paradise [Venus Attack Project]

Listen: What You Feel In Your Heart [Dubtribe Sound System]

Listen: Days Like These [Kevin Yost]

Listen: Elemntis [Solaris Heights]

Masterpiece: The K&D Sessions

[Today: The big easy...]

It goes by many different titles: in the zone, on fire, feeling it, being on (or on point), riding the wave, rolling, and living in the moment, to name just a few. But in the case of Kruder Dorfmeister, the most appropriate phrase for the phenomenon might be ‘in the groove’. One can find oneself in the groove doing almost anything. Suddenly everything comes easy. The basketball hoop looks as big as a dumpster. The dreaded work presentation is a simple conversation. Chores become pleasurable. Everything flows to and around you. Lips taste like sugar and love seats offer a warm embrace. If this sounds chemically enhanced, it’s with good reason. Endorphins rush to the brain, explain scientists – blueprinting the neurological chain behind a moment of ecstasy without coming anywhere near explaining its fleeting nature. Because one minute you’re in the groove and the next minute you’re tripping over your own shoelaces or dribbling the ball off your own foot.

Austrian re-mix specialists Peter Kruder and Richard Dorfmeister have created the soundtrack for those moments when the endorphins are flowing and you’re scoring with every shot. Their style of electronica is called downtempo or chill-out music, and their 1998 album The K&D Sessions compiles some of their best mixes and re-mixes for artists such as Depeche Mode, David Holmes, Rocker’s Hi Fi, and Roni Size. In spite of literally zero marketing support, the album quietly sold more than half a million copies worldwide. It has been called the Hotel California of the 90s, in that it was an album everybody had at home and used to come down from those chemically enhanced nights on the town. These mixes are certainly built for the job – lush, smooth, energetic, soulful. The K&D Sessions is the sound of many parts coming into harmonious sync. It’s the sound of getting in the groove…

Listen: Bug Powder Dust

Listen: 1st of Tha Month

Listen: Heroes (Kruder’s Long Loose Bossa)

Listen: Sofa Rockers

Video Break: Home

Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros >> Home. This one’s for the NFL…

Magic Moment: Gregory Isaacs at Reggae Sunsplash

Sad news regarding the recent passing of the great reggae crooner Gregory Isaacs. Here he is at Reggae Sunsplash in 1983 at the Bob Marley Center in Montego Bay, Jamaica, leading the crowd through a rousing version of his smash hit ‘Night Nurse’…

Doubleshot Tuesday: Black Sabbath/Fleet Foxes

[Today: Pieter Bruegel the Elder...]

The cover of Fleet Foxes’ self-titled 2008 debut, and the cover of Black Sabbath’s 1977 Greatest Hits were created by the same artist – a Netherlandish Renaissance painter named Pieter Bruegel the Elder. Bruegel was active between the years 1551 and 1569 (when he passed away) and was known for his landscapes and peasant scenes. The Fleet Foxes cover is a 1559 painting called Netherlandish Proverbs that features a chaotic village scene with a monkey on a throne, a man carrying a steaming vat of liquid, an ass hanging out of an outhouse, a man shooting arrow over a roof covered in pies, a saint blessing a sinner, and numerous other humorous and industrious vignettes. This art fits pretty well with Fleet Foxes sound – a heady mix of Gregorian chant and freak folk that contains a lot of depth and color.

The Black Sabbath cover is a 1562 Bruegel painting called The Triumph Of Death, and it also perfectly matches the music it was chosen to represent. Here we see coffins and carts full of skulls, gruesome battlefield scenes with rabid dogs gnawing on the dead, and angry skeletons grinding the living into dust. The color palette is the blacks and browns of death and decay, as opposed to the verdant greens and reds of Netherlandish Proverbs. Sabbath’s music was all about the heart of darkness – the agents of death, rampant paranoia, blood running through the gutters, etc. It’s a great tribute to Bruegel that his work could be used to sum up the angelic, white-light of folk, as well as the satanic black death of rock…

Listen: War Pigs [Black Sabbath]

Listen: White Winter Hymnal [Fleet Foxes]

Listen: Sabbath Bloody Sabbath [Black Sabbath]

Listen: Blue Ridge Mountains [Fleet Foxes]

Buried Treasure: Entertainment!

[Today: Gang Of Four get political...]

As the 70s came to a close, punk rock had already fragmented into the post-punk era. This was signified by a three-way division within the genre that saw groups either heading toward mainstream pop (Talking Heads, The Clash, The Police), going harder, faster and/or louder (Black Flag, Misfits, and even the Ramones) or stripping down to an arty sound that was equal parts funk, dub reggae, and political manifesto (The Pop Group, Wire, and PiL). The latter segment was perhaps the oddest mutation of the genre, but it has proven to be an evergreen branch of the punk tree. And one of the most influential bands on that branch is a four-piece group from Leeds called Gang Of Four.

Founded in 1977, Gang Of Four was named for a group of communist party leaders who held power in China near the end of Mao’s Cultural Revolution. So it’s no surprise that nearly everything about their music has to do with politics. Jon King’s lyrics touch on political and economic theory, while Andy Gill’s guitar punches out a stuttering, Morse code anti-rhythm that heightens the urgency and mystery of the band’s sound. Dave Allen’s bass is out front and provides funky counterpoint to Gill’s jabbing guitar lines.

For Gang Of Four, love was the most political act of all, and their songs reduce it to (at best) a sterile contract of convenience between willing parties, or (at worst) a viral weapon of terror that should be avoided at all costs. On Entertainment! every human action is viewed as an act of geo-political self-preservation. The cowboy shaking hands with the Indian on the cover sets the tone. “The cowboy smiles,” reads part of the caption, “he is glad the Indian is fooled. Now he can exploit him.” The cowboy is the lover is the politician is the everyman. And the beat goes on…

Listen: Contract

Listen: At Home He’s A Tourist

Listen: Damaged Goods

Masterpiece: Ghost In The Machine

[Today: The Police get primitive...]

With the release of their fourth album in October of 1981, The Police broke slightly from the New Wave power trio formula they’d perfected on their first three albums, and provided hints of the creative differences that would eventually pull the group apart. Ghost In The Machine included synthesizers and horns, a decision that was pushed by lead singer Gordon ‘Sting’ Sumner, but less than warmly embraced by guitarist Andy Summers and drummer Stewart Copeland. Summers: “I have to say I was getting disappointed with the musical direction around the time of Ghost in the Machine. With the horns and synth coming in, the fantastic raw-trio feel – all the really creative and dynamic stuff – was being lost. We were ending up backing a singer doing his pop songs.”

In spite of Summers’ disappointment, Ghost In The Machine doesn’t feel radically different from earlier Police albums. ‘Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic’ and ‘One World (Not Three)’ are certainly pop-oriented, but like the rest of the group’s catalogue, they include bits of reggae and punk, and lots of graduate level philosophy and psychology. The album’s title is taken from an Arthur Koestler book of the same name, and the phrase reflects the primitive that still lives inside our modern consciousness. Our physiological connection to Cro-Magnon man is the ghost echoing inside the machine of our brains. As such, this album touches on a host of primitive emotions, including anger (‘Demolition Man’ and ‘Rehumanize Yourself’), love (‘Every Little Thing…’), sex (‘Hungry For You’), stress (‘Omegaman’ and ‘Too Much Information’), exhaustion (‘Invisible Sun’ and ‘Darkness’), and religious awe (‘Spirits In The Material World’ and ‘Secret Journey’).

This was among the handful of records in my parents’ collection, and it’s an album I’ve listened to hundreds of times without growing tired of. Some fans may have been put off by the additions to the group’s sound, but in my estimation, the layers involved here make this something close to a headphone masterpiece. Ghost In The Machine is polished without being over-produced, sophisticated without being too smart for its own good, and philosophical without being overwrought. The Police only released excellent albums, but none better than this…

Listen: Spirits In The Material World

Listen: Invisible Sun

Listen: Secret Journey

Video Break: Original Sin

INXS >> Original Sin. This one’s for the good old 80s…

Stuck In My Head: Girlfriend In A Coma

On Wednesday, October 7th, 1992 I had absolutely nothing to do and no place to go. I was just out of college, living in Portland, and poor as a church mouse. Early that afternoon, my friend Mikel called to see if I wanted to join him for the Morrissey concert at the Arlene Schnitzer Concert Hall that evening. Mikel is a well-known DJ in the Portland area, so he gets free tickets to all kinds of shows. On this occasion, his wife wasn’t interested in joining him, so he called me to see if I was. Now, I’m no Smiths fan, and I didn’t really even know who Morrissey was at that time, but since my options were watching the paint dry or going out for a show, I chose the latter. It’s a decision I’m glad I made, but not for the reasons you might expect.

Because we had radio comp tickets, we had great seats – second row dead center, right on the aisle. We arrived just after the opener was done, so in the time between acts, Mike filled me in on Morrissey and The Smiths, singing a little piece of ‘Girlfriend In A Coma’ but admitting that he too was something less than a huge fan. Mike also informed me that Morrissey was celibate, which is certainly the first time I’d been exposed to that word. I was twisting my head around the concept of a rock star who would voluntarily NOT have sex, when the curtain lifted and the show began.

Morrissey was dressed in a sparkling, gold lamé shirt, and went about his business in what seemed to me to be a pretty affected manner. After a couple of songs, he said to the crowd “Why are you all so far away? Why don’t you come down and see me?” And that’s when the stampede began. Mike and I were suddenly enveloped by a swarm of mascara clad teenagers who wanted our seats and weren’t taking no for an answer. We were forced to stand on our chairs and fend off hordes of mostly female fans, who easily matched the intensity of the most severe punk mosh pit.

Then Morrissey took off his shirt and tossed it into the crowd, which responded as if Elvis Presley had been reborn and was playing the Schnitzer. Girls fought tooth-and-nail over that shirt, ripping it into tiny little shreds that were claimed by only the most eager of those involved in the group tug-of-war. For my money, Morrissey is somebody who ought to keep his clothes on, but the sheer spectacle of what was going on around us was simply mesmerizing. I’ve since learned to appreciate The Smiths, but nothing I’ve heard on any of their albums comes close to matching the emo tornado that came blowing through Portland in October of 1992…

Listen: Girlfriend In A Coma

Doubleshot Tuesday: Velvet Underground & Nico/Workingman’s Dead

[Today: The Warlocks...]

It absolutely slays me that one of the most nihilistic, bondage and drag queen-oriented bands of the rock era, and one of the most peace-loving, LSD-gobbling band of hippies once had a common name. Before they were the Velvet Underground and the Grateful Dead, both groups were known as The Warlocks. Both bands were led by charismatic guitarists who had personalities as far apart as New York and San Francisco. The Velvet’s Lou Reed was a surly, ill-tempered, androgynous poet who blasted off flinty guitar lines wrapped in barbed wire rolls of feedback and screech. The Dead’s Jerry Garcia was a lovable, furry teddy bear who took millions of blissed-out fans on a psychedelic joyride through the strings of his guitar. Garcia: “Constantly choosing the lesser of two evils is still choosing evil.” Reed: “Some even claim that I’m a terror, a dictator and they’re right.” VU made songs about junkies and whores and hard drugs, while the Dead concerned themselves with nature and love and hippie philosophies. VU were a cult band who never really played outside New York, and failed to catch on with a larger audience. It was only after their demise that critics and fans began to appreciate what they captured on their albums. The Dead were a cult band who eventually built a massive following through relentless touring and word-of-mouth. Even true fans regard most of their studio albums as disappointing efforts that don’t really capture the band’s magic. Both bands are in the rock and roll hall of fame, and both had their work wrapped in the art of gifted graphic designers like Rick Griffin and Andy Warhol. But otherwise, it’s hard to think of two bands of Warlocks who are less alike…

Listen: Heroin

Listen: Uncle John’s Band

Listen: I’m Waiting For The Man

Listen: New Speedway Boogie