Sign O' the Times

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK TWELVE

2010-11-21T03:49:00.004-06:00

Week 12: Rock and Roll is Here to Stay

“Thirteen”

Big Star

Album: Number 1 Record

Ardent Records

1972 

“They sing ‘I'm in love. What's that song?

I'm in love with that song.’”

– “Alex Chilton” by The Replacements

Martin Scorsese’s masterful documentary, “No Direction Home,” chronicling Bob Dylan’s ascent from his early Minnesota roots to his electric rebirth in the late 60s, gives fans of Dylan a rare glimpse into the music that Dylan was influenced by. Combined with Dylan’s own personal memoir of the time, “Chronicles: Volume One” shows the musical cartography of how Dylan’s sound was born.

It’s comforting to hear a musician talk about his or her idols. It takes them down to the listener's level, reminding us that they, too, were once and are avid fans of music. Discovering the musical influences of truly inspired musicians is one of the many joys of carefully listening to music. Art imitates art. Some musicians seem reluctant to trumpet their idols, others come right out and say it. It’s one thing to be turned on to a band or artist by a friend, it’s entirely more satisfying for a song to accomplish this feat.

When I first discovered The Replacements, through a completely fulfilling survey of its trifecta of masterpieces–Let It Be, Tim, and Please to Meet Me–one song caught my attention for its unapologetic hailing of one of lead singer Paul Westerberg’s musical heroes, Big Star lead singer Alex Chilton.

Please to Meet Me’s second track, simply titled “Alex Chilton,” explodes into action with crisp snare drum notes and barroom guitar riffs. What follows is more than a simple ode or homage to Chilton, it’s a sermon of praise for an artist that before hearing this song I was completely unaware of.

Well, this is not entirely true.

During one verse of “Alex Chilton” Westerberg describes Chilton as an, “invisible man who can sing in a visible voice,” a fitting and painfully truthful description of one of rock and roll’s most unsung voices.

Big Star was ironically never a big band. It released only three major records in its 1970s heyday, none of which made much of a splash. It managed to maintain a cult-driven legacy since then, elevated recently by Chilton’s untimely death last March.

The band’s song “In the Street” found a second life when power pop band Cheap Trick covered it and it was eventually was used for the opening credits of Fox’s television sitcom “That 70’s Show.” Beyond that, it’s safe to say that most people don’t know Big Star.

Thanks to Paul Westerberg I can happily add Big Star to my growing list of the essential pioneers of rock and roll.

It’s fitting that Westerberg, a gifted lyricist with a penchant for writing songs that bring to mind the joys of youth, was drawn to Big Star at a young age. Alex Chilton and band also excel at writing great rock and roll for rock and roll’s sake. It crafts classic love songs that never tread on being overly sentimental but rather feel nostalgic of the times when the word love and the grasp of how big life is, in general, was thought to be understood but not always fully.

Take Number 1 Record, It opens with “Feel,” a rip-roaring plea to a girlfriend who is toying with its character’s emotions. On “The India Song” Chilton fantasizes about escaping the mundane for love, luxury and endless gin and tonics in a mystically portrayed India. “Give Me Another Chance” plays out out like an apology, or rather a plea to be forgiven and taken back for actions that may or may not be unforgivable. Chilton and band mate Chris Bell write innocent love ballads that hearken back to the days of drive-in-movie dates, school dances and the pursuit of meaningful but often naive love.

Number 1 Record’s “Thirteen” is widely considered one of Chilton’s best songs by fans and for good reason. The song has been gorgeously covered by the likes of Elliott Smith and Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy, singers who, like Chilton, reserve chillingly soft-toned vocals for the song.

The aforementioned innocence of youth is at the forefront on “Thirteen.” The song brings to mind the nervousness of having a crush and the downright fear that comes when it’s time to ask for a date (subtly emphasized with the music’s gradual increase in tempo throughout the song’s duration and Chilton’s slightly reluctant delivery of its last verse).

Won't you let me walk you home from school?

Won't you let me meet you at the pool?

Maybe Friday I can

Get tickets for the dance

And I'll take you.

Won't you tell your dad, "Get off my back"?

Tell him what we said about "Paint it, Black".

Rock 'n Roll is here to stay

Come inside where it's okay

And I'll shake you.

Won't you tell me what you're thinking of?

Would you be an outlaw for my love?

If it's so, well, let me know

If it's "no," well, I can go

I won't make you.

Lyrics aside (and make no mistake, these are some of the best lyrics ever written–simple, to the point and utterly unforgettable), “Thirteen” is a lasting effort thanks to Chilton’s beautiful vocal performance and his gentle acoustic guitar picking.

It name-checks The Rolling Stones’ “Paint it Black” not so much as an homage to a specific idol but rather as homage to rock and roll’s early days when the music presented teenagers an escape. A song like “Paint it Black” must have brought a level of fear to parents or people who hadn’t yet jumped on the rock and roll bandwagon. For those who enjoyed its dark undertones it was something new and unique to rebel to.

“Thirteen’s” most impressive feat is that it has the ability to make the listener yearn for these days, back to a time that was much simpler.

On The Replacements’ “Alex Chilton,” Westerberg sings:

I never travel far, without a little Big Star

Big Star’s music can be enjoyed anytime, anywhere. It’s perfectly crafted rock and roll. You can fall in love with its songs like you fall in love with sentimental cuts from The Beatles’ canon or say Simon and Garfunkel. Since I was fortunate enough to discover it I regularly return to its records. “Thirteen” is a song that makes you pause and remember; to recollect the past.

Film Review: Let Me In

2010-10-16T23:31:00.000-05:00

Film Review:
Let Me In--R
Directed by Matt Reeves
Starring: Kodi Smit-McPhee, Chloe Moretz,
Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas
115 Minutes, Feature Film
Hammer Films

The American film remake sub-genre is, generally speaking, a film industry cop out. Take an inspired (or uninspired) original source–films generally carrying the word “classic” in their notoriety–and present a new and updated version to an audience that studios predict will pay money to see a film they have already seen. While exceptions can be found, most remakes fail to best their source material, the horror genre being the best example.

In the past decade we have seen remakes of more than a dozen universally lauded classics in the horror and thriller genre. Most appeared to be nothing more than opportunities to cash in on a film’s preexisting reputations; seldom did these films shed new light on the classic story. To this end a remake of the 2008 Swedish vampire/coming of age film, “Let the Right One End” seemed pointless and actually offensive to a perfectly fine film that just happens to have subtitles.

Matt Reeves “Let Me In” is a surprisingly rare breed of remakes. Its source material is indeed from foreign soil, which, too, is another sub-genre within the remake sub-genre of horror. Following in the footsteps of such successes as the wave of Japanese ghost story remakes like “The Ring” or “Dark Water,” “Let Me In” hopes to attract a new audience, one not expected to have sat through the subtitles of the original, to this refreshingly unique take on vampire lore.

It’s also a rare breed of remakes in that scene for scene “Let Me In” is almost a direct retelling of its predecessor. Its flow is uniform as are many of the original’s memorable shots. Like its source material, “Let Me In” is set in a cold, empty place (here, Los Alamos, New Mexico, filling in for the desolate suburb of Stockholm). It’s an understandably bleak environment for what on the surface is a terribly bleak story, one that has climaxes that are both triumphant and despairing.

Owen (“The Road’s” Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a young, lonely and bored boy. He spends his days fleeing from bullies; avoiding his overly preachy, wine-o mother; spying on neighbors through his apartment’s very own “rear window;” and indulging in the one thing that seems to bring him comfort, his Now & Later fruit chews.

When a young and mysterious girl named Abby (Chloe Moretz) arrives one frigid night observed walking barefoot through the snowy courtyard, Owen’s world suddenly becomes all the more interesting.

The friendship that forms is the essence of what makes this story (the original was based off a best-selling Swedish vampire novel) so unprecedented in vampire iconography. This isn’t the 90201-themed love triangle of the “Twilight” series, nor does it attempt to be a clever comment on society a la HBO’s breakout hit series, “True Blood.”

“Let Me In” is a love story like “Harold and Maude” is a love story. It is a coming of age story in the same austere way Cormac McCarthy’s apocalyptic novel, “The Road” is. More to the point, it doesn’t glamorize the vampire lifestyle, but rather shows it as a cruel infliction on everyone involved, both physically and mentally.

While some alterations are made from “Let the Right One In” (a strange scene from the original involving a pack of wild cats is smartly removed this time around) the filmmakers respectfully mirror the original, swapping for a Reagan era small town U.S.A setting and throwing a larger budget to the production (a particularly effective shot from the back of a car as it slides out of control stands out).

Director Matt Reeves drops snippets of Reagan’s famous, “Evil Empire” speech early on in the film, a speech in which the former President acknowledges evil's existence in the world. This is not merely a way to present the setting. Whether or not the characters believe or know there is definite evil in the world is beside the point; they don't understand it. In "Let Me In" things aren't as black and white as good and evil.

Religion is hinted at throughout the film, primarily with the word evil being tossed around. Owen’s mother is hardly seen or heard from in this film because she is not entirely there for her son. She is struggling with her own beliefs and her weakness for the bottle. She sees and believes in the evils of the world but yet doesn’t care enough to protect her own son who ultimately turns to violent acts to solve his own confrontations with the evil that hears about but doesn’t quite understand.

We see early on where his character is headed in terms of his budding kinship to Abby who, as she puts it so eloquently, has been twelve years old for a very long time. To say much more would spoil the film’s intrigue. To tread lightly, this is a film that leaves the viewer wondering about the decisions made by its characters after the credits roll.

“Let Me In” features a stellar cast including the great character actors Elias Koteas (“The Thin Red Line”) as a curious, soft spoken policeman, and Richard Jenkins (HBO’s “Six Feet Under”) as Abby’s mysterious father-like caretaker. Here both men play somber and serious men who don’t quite understand what is happening around them, but are drawn into the fold nevertheless. In one scene Jenkin’s protector character pleads with Abby not to see Owen again. It’s a simple exchange of words that manages to tell so much about his past with her and his understanding that after he’s gone she will still be.

“Let the Right One In” is a masterful little horror film that should be seen by all fans of the genre. On its own, “Let Me In” stands up surprisingly well but ultimately feels like an easy way around trying one’s hand at a foreign language film. It’s a far more insightful film than anything else you might see this Halloween season and hopefully will pique the curiosity of its viewers enough to seek out the original.

Put your hands on the wheel, let the golden age begin

2010-09-11T03:53:00.006-05:00

Apart from “The Simpsons”, I never thought much about television growing up. I was raised in a household that didn’t believe in cable and that also didn’t believe that a functioning roof antenna was a necessity. Therefore, the TV I knew as a child–beamed into my family’s 80s era Trinitron’s bunny ear antenna–was limited to statically impaired versions of PBS, FOX, Chicago’s old UPN Power 50, NBC, ABC, WGN, and on a good day CBS, depending on wind and humidity.

PBS was forced on me by my mother as being the only channel worth watching it being the Brussels sprouts of television for a boy in grade school. FOX provided “The Simpsons,” the only show my father allowed my sister and me to enjoy every Thursday night much to my mother’s dismay, but also unleashed a plethora of mind-numbing pre-reality TV reality shows with snuff as the central themes. Titles like “When Animals Attack 3,” “World's Deadliest Swarms,” “When Stunts Go Bad,” “Cheating Death: Catastrophes Caught on Tape,” and “World's Scariest Police Shootouts” provided more than enough reason to censor our intake of television other than PBS.

UPN was the network for trash TV–re-runs of the A-Team, syndicated Montel Williams, silly Saturday morning cartoons, WWF Wrestling absurdities, etc. NBC’s “Seinfeld” was a show I didn’t truly appreciate till after it began syndication post-its heavily scorned swan song finale.

My parents did, however, bring us up on a multitude of different films, schooling us on all genres and snippets of film history. My father’s early seminars on horror films began with the early Universal monster movies–Frankenstein, The Mummy, Creature from the Black Lagoon–and ended somewhere between Freddy Krueger and The Re-animator, a film that although full of dark humor, shouldn’t be shown to a boy in middle school.

We were screened foreign classics, contemporary blockbusters and sleepy indies. It got to the point that our TV was merely a vehicle for the handful of VHS cassettes we would rent every weekend. The content of its broadcasting failed to garner any interest for most of my adolescence.

Today the timely phrase being passed around the “water cooler” and the blogosphere is that we are living in a new “Golden Age” of television.

A.O. Scott of the New York Times recently ventured outside of his role as chief film critic to comment on the rising quality of serialized television being made today and how film as a medium is losing its creative edge. His article entitled, “Are Films Bad, or Is TV Just Better?”, while primarily focusing on the film industries' struggles at the box office, does eventually get to the heart of this belief. It raises an interesting question about televisions role in the motion picture arts: is television the better medium for storytelling in this new environment?

Ask anyone interested in this topic and most will tell you that this wave of quality television programming–shows that broke away from the conventions of the previous television mindset and took risks that film could never accomplish–began with HBO’s landmark series, “The Sopranos.”

On a good Sunday night it was true that “The Sopranos” aired episodes that provided more intrigue as well as good old fashioned entertainment than most films being released at the time.

Here was an original series that revolved around a vile human being who we as viewers couldn’t help but love and relate to. The notion of making the anti-hero the hero was a big step for modern television, though in reality it didn’t solely start with David Chase’s Jersey mob opus.

HBO’s prison drama, “Oz” premiered a year before we watched Tony Soprano enter his shrink’s office for the first time on television. That show only found a niche audience but managed to remain on the air for a six-season run. It is this series that truly revolutionized what I see as television’s new wave.

Like “The Sopranos,” “Oz” trumpeted the rise of the anti-hero. The inmates at the Oswald State Correctional Facility came from the dregs of society¬–murderers, drug dealers, rapists, neo-Nazi hate-mongers, and so on. Still the series managed the feat of making the characters intriguing, no matter how horrible their actions might be. It also took an otherwise boring and fairly routine setting (the inside of a prison ward where not much goes on) and created a world as intricate as anything you might read in the halls of epic literature.

What it did well was parade the average nobody and still draw in the audience. It is this idea that is the root of this so-called golden age.

Sure someone like Tony Soprano is a larger than life kind of character but at his core he’s just another guy trying to make a buck in America. The show draws us in close enough to relate to his everyday pains but also shows us the monstrous side creating a very complicated relationship between the viewer and the protagonist. But let’s move beyond “The Sopranos” to the other major shows in the past decade where this Golden Age has been blossoming.

Take HBO’s post-“OZ/Sopranos” lineup: there’s “Six Feet Under,” which, generally speaking, took a suburban family of undertakers and made their lives captivating; “The Wire” used a dying American city as its protagonist, focusing on its social institutions for intrigue and creating memorable characters out of crack addicts, narcotics officers, drug kingpins, school teachers, beat reporters and stevedores, the forgotten side of society; “Treme” chronicles the lives of everyday working Jazz musicians in post-Katrina New Orleans; and even “Curb Your Enthusiasm,” based on the improvisations of real people put in fictionalized settings, furthered the notion that nothing can be everything.

Today two of television’s most talked about and riveting series, AMC’s “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad,” follow this now tried and true formula: take otherwise ordinary individuals and uncover the intrigue.

“Mad Men” is flashy with its period piece costumes and historical winks and nods, but at its core it’s still a television show about advertising executives and copywriters working in a Manhattan office, which on paper doesn’t scream successful television.

“Breaking Bad” follows the downward spiral of an average high school chemistry teacher in a seemingly average part of the country (the series somehow takes an otherwise forgettable Albuquerque, New Mexico and makes its setting fascinating) entering a world of crime.

What’s most striking about both of these series, which came from a network known for syndicated classic films rather than quality television series, is that ten years ago they probably would never have found a home on the air.

For the longest time, original television series were limited to a set content standard that revolved around the idea that singular episodes tell a story from beginning to end. A “Law and Order” cop catches a case, goes through the motions to solve it, and eventually closes said case. A sitcom follows a group of characters living in the surreal version of reality it is trying to emulate, aiming to grab a certain amount of laughs between each commercial break. The best word to describe television throughout most of its existence is routine.

Sure there were exceptions to the trap of routine along the way but most were short-lived moments of greatness or shows that started strong but slowly depreciated over time.

“Twin Peaks” was incredibly original for its time and managed to draw viewers into the otherwise boring setting of a sleepy Pacific Northwest town, but its spike in popularity and mysterious nature ultimately led to its premature demise thanks to a network pressure to appease the masses and the premature departure of David Lynch during the series' second final season.

Chris Carter’s “The X-Files” was rooted in cyclical routine but had layered storylines and character arcs that were perfect for garnering a cult following. Though it suffered from possibly too much layering of conspiracy theory related webs and was on the air for far too long.

With HBO’s slow-burn foray into original programming, television was suddenly treated as a place to give visionary writers and filmmakers all the time they need to truly tell the story they wanted to tell. For the first time ever, television creators weren’t limited to 24 or 48 minute brackets of time to tell a story. With HBO great storytelling was no longer held back by censorship or notions of “bad taste” (and really, who is to say what is deemed ‘bad taste’ these days with daytime talk shows and reality TV).

The ways we as viewers soak up television has also changed how the medium has transformed over the years. Advertising no longer dictates what we watch on TV since technological advancements allow us to avoid the advertising methods of yesteryears all together.

DVD enabled us to soak up entire shows in small amounts of time, following more closely the details and buildups that one often misses with week-to-week viewing schedules. The Internet allows for shows to be experienced uncensored and sans commercial breaks and even allows shows to venture outside the realms of simple episodic television by creating webisodes, online forums for discussion, and interactive websites to coincide with the storytelling.

The question that arises though is whether or not this influx of television is a good thing. Are we watching too much television? Is this yet another distraction in a long list of sectors of popular culture drawing us away from the outdoors, away from the great books, or more traditional pursuits of knowledge? The answer to this depends solely on the viewer.

I for one am enamored by the wave of quality writing and film making coming out of the truly great series on television (and to be fair there is still a lot of crap out there). While film is far from the state of irrelevance, it’s hard to deny that television, as a visual medium, gives artists more room to stretch their ideas. The depths to which “The Wire” took viewers and the messages it managed to spread through its five seasons and 60+ hours of storytelling is unprecedented in the filmmaking world. The show took its cues from great literary devices (beautifully structured character arcs, multiple points of view, and even contemporary, well-respected authors) and created its own world, with all the highs, lows and complications that make reality so intriguing.

On the other hand, there is the notion that we as consumers rely too much on the media. A creative spree is always a good thing but as a viewer it’s difficult to decide how to spend one’s time. Between the great novels to read, films to screen, albums to listen to, journalistic endeavors to be privy to, and now television series to soak up, it’s increasingly more difficult to find time to just be.

It’s hard to say if this wave of original television will reach a tipping point, or at the very least, a moment when there just isn’t anything of worth to watch. Until then it surprisingly comforting to know that there are a number of upcoming original series and returning shows to look forward to. HBO’s prohibition era gangster epic, “Boardwalk Empire,” the return of “Breaking Bad” after it’s season three cliffhanger, AMC’s zombie gamble series, “The Walking Dead,” a second season for David Simon’s New Orleans’ love note, “Treme,” and most likely some surprises along the way.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK ELEVEN

2010-09-04T02:32:00.005-05:00

Week 11: You Made Me Realize

Music has the magical ability to link with personal experiences and be burned into your psyche forever. Musical deja vu is a beautiful thing and for me, it is something that I always try to explore. What is it about certain songs that make them stick with you through life? How do songs, albums or even snippets of lyrics cling to people, their memories and experiences in life? Through this project, which I will update on a weekly basis, I hope to explore the musical moments that have stuck with me over the years and get to the essence of what makes them memorable. It's a chance to explore my old (and new) favorites and hopefully shed a new light on what makes them so unique. 52 weeks, 52 moments in music that shaped who I am today.

“Only Shallow”
My Bloody Valentine
Album: Loveless
Creation Records
1991

The opening track of My Bloody Valentine’s masterpiece, Loveless is an explosion of guitar wizardry. It’s a track that stops you cold in your feet. Its thunderous waves of sound swirl around your head for days. It’s an assault on your senses–a truly remarkable feast for the ears that sounds powerful through headphones and, when played live through monster amplifiers, produces sounds that tickle the nostrils.

Loveless’ opener, “Only Shallow” perches high above the rest on the short list of great album openers. Read as: while the phrase often comes off as cliche, this song literally blew my mind the first time I heard it, an appropriate response that I’m sure many others can relate to.

Shoegazers, distortion wizards, or heavy guitar rockers, pick your label of choice. In my opinion the music of My Bloody Valentine can be best described as the closest thing to flying through space.

To date, My Bloody Valentine only released two studio albums, with Loveless being its current swan song. But what a way to clear the stage.

Besides being the band’s masterpiece, Loveless is also one of the truly remarkable “studio” albums of all time. Its notoriety is unprecedented. Recorded over two long years, in 19 different recording studios, Loveless was the painstakingly-realized brain child of Valentine frontman, Kevin Shields. The album nearly bankrupted the bands label, Creation Records; was selfishly worked and reworked by Shields alone, with the other band members serving more as studio session musicians than as part of a creative congress; and was crafted in various mental states, often aided by a sampling of certain mind-altering substances, mainly ecstasy. While he might deny rumors of drug abuse during the long two-year stretch, it is widely rumored that Shields was rarely sober during its recording.

The album’s signature swirling guitars and waves of distortion required hours of over-dubbing and contemplation. Shields, and self-professed control freak played almost all instruments featured and recorded much of the album on little to no sleep.

The result is an album that was truly unprecedented back in 1991 and since its release will probably never be matched in terms of its shear brilliance and ambitions of creating an ethereal sound.

While often heralded as an essential album in rock and roll (Pitchfork Media’s pick it as the Best Album of the 1990s, and then bumped it down to a silver medal pedestal to make way for Radiohead’s Ok Computer), I was turned on to My Bloody Valentine late in the game. To put it bluntly: my university introduced me to Loveless.

I remember my father’s response when I told him that I would be filling some senior year elective credits with a music course covering the history of rock and roll during the 1970s and 1980s.

“So what are those tests gonna be like?” he would say. “An exam on how to play the air guitar?”

The truth is Andy Hollinden’s fascinating Z301 course opened my eyes to a plethora of new music, first and foremost among these musical revelations, a detailed and appreciated, albeit overdue, window into punk music.

Mr. Hollinden never played “Only Shallow” in class, in fact his lecture on the “90s Alternative” sub-genre breezed past My Bloody Valentine completely. Instead, “Only Shallow” remained a mysterious “extra track” on the courses listening syllabus (which was accessible online as either an MP3 stream or download. Tuition well-spent!). I happened upon the track late one night with my headphones snugly comforting my ears, the song’s true modus operandi for preferred listening experience.

Extreme moments of musical revelation are harder to come by in the digital age. We as listeners inhale copious amounts of music of all varieties and as consumers have access to everything at all times. As a result the discovery of a true gem, the kind of sound that makes you pause to speculate on what you just heard, ends up becoming the fix music aficionados pine for.

“Only Shallow” opens with four tight snare drum hits, immediately followed by an onslaught of menacing guitar riffs–calculated fuzz delivered with the kind of perfection seldom found in rock. What follows is a symphony of distortion that pierces the ear drums (My Bloody Valentine’s music beckons to be heard on speakers turned to eleven) followed by band member, Bilinda Butcher’s dreamlike, non-sensical lyrics cooling the raging fire.

It’s a hell of a way to open a record. A no-holds-barred exploration of what sounds can be unearthed with a guitar, a tremolo bar and a carefully executed recording process. It required an immediate repeat, followed by another, and eventually another.

The day after exposure, I bought Loveless and listened to the album’s song cycle as the ambient waves merged in and out of each other, never allowing for a break.

Loveless is an album that must be listened to in its entirety. The songs unfold as a kaleidoscope of sounds that push the limits on what a guitar is capable of. What’s most striking about the record is that despite the layered sound, the majority of Loveless was recorded using very basic equipment tuned and performed in a certain way, and rehearsed over and over again in order to secure that one-of-a-kind sound. The album was recorded pre-Pro Tools leaving much of the studio wizardry to basic techniques pushed to the edge. It’s as if Phil Spector’s “Wall of Sound” manifesto was digested alongside a couple doses of ecstasy and the music of Sonic Youth.

My Bloody Valentine disappeared completely from music after Loveless and its short-lived tour that followed its release. Shields lent his talents to a handful of side projects, most notably new songs for the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s “Lost in Translation” and an experimental ambient/spoken-word record with Patti Smith.

Then came the brief reunion tour in 2008.

When it was announced that My Bloody Valentine would play a number of shows in the states, including one at Chicago’s Aragon ballroom, I was ecstatic. I had to get a ticket. I had to go. I had to see how this intriguing record might transfer to a live setting. Would it carry the same weight as the album I’ve played over and over again? Would “Only Shallow” pack the same punch as it does kicking off Loveless? Will the band even sound good 15 years later? My eager anticipation curbed any concerns. After all, it was My Bloody Valentine!

The show at the Aragon Ballroom, an admittedly lousy auditorium (if acoustics matter to you), remains the loudest concert I have ever attended. I scoffed when ear plugs were handed out at the entrance but was glad I took a pair once the band kicked off its set with the mesmerizing, “I Only Said.” That the band’s set was closed with its standard encore, “You Made You Realise” stretched to a twenty minute assault on the senses that literally made one concert goer standing nearby hold his ears, as if surrendering to the sonic chaos that filled the auditorium.

The show remains a highlight amongst many incredible concerts I have experienced in my life to date. The show was not exactly what I expected but it had enough surprises to keep it unique. Sure the beautiful melodies that make listening to Loveless a religious experience for anyone who finds spiritualism in rock and roll were replaced by ear-piercing noise, but the energy that exploded from the massive stacked speakers was unlike anything I had ever been a part of.

My Bloody Valentine took its name from an obscure 80s slasher film (the original was actually remade not too long ago) and it invokes an image of a metal band, the kind of music that takes its cues from skeletons and the color black. Summed up: before I actually heard “Only Shallow” I had no idea what to expect from the band’s oeuvre.

Loveless is an album that will be studied and listened to for years. Whether or not My Bloody Valentine comes through with new material remains to be seen and is irrelevant. Some bands get a pass for birthing a singular masterpiece and then clearing the stage. Mission of Burma is a definite candidate, as is The Stone Roses with My Bloody Valentine joining the ranks.

Like all the music covered in this humble project of mine, Loveless is a record that I cherish and return to constantly, though arguably one that comes with its own decorum, strict guidelines that must be obeyed.

1) It must be listened to on ear smothering headphones.
2) It must be listened to at night.
3) It must be listened to in its entirety.
4) An irresponsible volume level is understood.

ON HIATUS

2010-05-18T03:33:00.001-05:00

From May to August I will be traveling through Southeast Asia and Southern China. Though I will be listening to music I will not be writing about it. Will resume in late August.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK TEN

2010-04-07T19:43:00.007-05:00

Week 10: Sign O the Times Mess With Your Mind

Prince

Album: Sign “☮” the Times

Paisley Park/Warner Bros.

1987

What is the definition of a successful double LP? Is it a cohesive package–a collection of songs perfectly paired and organized to tell a story? Should the album have an epic underlying message? Or should it merely be a document of some creative spree, the result of which can’t be limited to a single album?

Why do some of the truly great double albums somehow manage to pull off the feat of piquing interest, despite their long-winded running time?

Consider some of the obvious contenders: Led Zeppelin’s Physical Graffiti, Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main St., Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde, The Beatles White Album, Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life, The Clash’s London Calling (and later its Triple LP extravaganza Sandinista!), Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime. These albums run the length of some major motion pictures, but even after multiple revisits, still demand to be experienced in their entirety.

They don’t hold the same grandiosity of, say Pink Floyd’s slightly overrated The Wall. Instead these albums are effective because of their musical breadth and ambitions. Take as much as we can come up with and release the lot of it. Give the listener the ultimate listening experience. Tear the walls down. A tried and true motto.

There’s something magical about a perfectly executed collection of songs, and it’s even more remarkable when the album is a hodgepodge with no overlying message or theme.

Prince’s Sign “☮” the Times is the artist’s greatest achievement to date. It skates around damn near every musical genre Prince could conjure up, features pop at its catchiest, rock at its most visceral, ballads at their most tender, and a couple of head scratchers thrown into the mix to keep things interesting.

The origin of Sign “☮” the Times goes like this: coming off the massive success of Purple Rain and his mid-1980s Revolution run, Prince was working on three simultaneous projects–Dream Factory (leaked in early production stage), Crystal Ball (a triple-LP that induced panic from Prince’s label) and Camille (a solo-endeavor showcasing Prince’s alter-ego). The projects were either abandoned, and the scraps and highlights from all three records were assembled for Sign “☮” the Times.

On paper the album sounds like a disaster–the result of tensions between band members and label executives. A bastard record of the time. Summed up; this could have easily been career suicide. Instead Sign “☮” the Times is not only Prince’s best effort but easily one of the greatest, and most surprising albums to come out of the 1980s.

I first dove into Prince’s purple prowess with 1984s Purple Rain. Obvious, sure. But what a masterpiece of unrelenting pop music. While some people pose the musical identity question, “Beatles or Elvis?”, I’ve been become more fascinated with the responses I get when asking: Purple Rain or Thriller?

Purple Rain is perfect. It accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do and gives Prince reason enough to scream, “baby I’m a star!” Still Purple Rain is pop, plain and simple, with few genre-bending moments, save of course for the epic, guitar-heavy title track.

There are moments on Sign “☮” the Times that pick up exactly where Purple Rain left off. “I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man” takes the catchiness of Rain’s “Let’s Go Crazy” and “Baby I’m a Star,” and tacks on an extended blues-inspired instrumental outro to, you know, up the ante.

“Housequake” takes dance music into the future by running funk and soul through a drum machine and synthesizer (hints of drum and bass genre to come down the line), and “If I Was Your Girlfriend” is just as sexually raw as Rain’s “Darling Nikki.”

Fortunately Prince doesn’t stop with what he was already too familiar.

“The Cross” is an epic slow-burner that blends gospel, arena rock and roll, and even a sitar to create a sound that references early Prince records but in a more polished final package.

At just under three minutes, “Starfish and Coffee” is Prince tackling a children’s song, while also embracing the magic of food and unflinching individuality.

The album’s title track is exactly what the title promises, a socially conscious soul number that truly captures the time. One of Sign “☮” the Times’ greatest feats, however, is following the direness of “Sign of the Times” with the silly, bubble gum pop of “Play in the Sunshine.” It’s as if Prince deliberately wants the listener to know that nothing about this album’s ride will seem predictable.

“It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night,” an intoxicating live cut that showcases Prince’s stage routine of the time, accompanied by the Revolution at the top of its game. Carried along by Matt Fink’s driving drums, Wendy and Lisa’s sultry backing vocals, and even a bit of rap and jazz thrown in, the track is easily the culmination of everything heard before it. That the song might be the only time pop music will ever be able to tinker with The Wizard of Oz and live to tell about it (as seen through the song’s intro/outro of uniform “ohhh weee ohhh”) only adds to the song’s allure.

Sign “☮” the Times closes with “Adore,” a slow, sexy R&B tune perfectly suited to cap any evening. The song creeps along with its horn interludes, gospel-inspired pipes, and Prince’s unique high-pitched vocals. Its lyrics are corny at times but miraculously the song manages to feel anything but.

When we be makin' love

I only hear the sounds

Heavenly angels cryin' up above

Tears of joy pourin' down on us

They know we need each other

It’s easy to mock Prince or at the very least, underestimate him. Sure he was a product of eighties glam but the man knows how to write great songs and is a masterful guitar player (his performance at Superbowl XLI remains one of the best in the event’s long-running, half-time show tradition).

Sign “☮” the Times remains one of my all-time favorites. I liken it to Stevie Wonders’ Songs in the Key of Life, in that both albums are thick with content but never bore. Certain songs pack enough energy to get you going in the morning, while others help you ease into the night.

Sign “☮” the Times was also one of those rare surprises for me. I stumbled upon its title track during a downloading sweep of Prince songs, in the wake of an unhealthy obsession with Purple Rain and the song “Beautiful Ones.” “Sign of the Times” was unlike any other Prince song I had heard prior.

It’s dark, timely, and completely honest in its perception of society. In its foreboding meanderings through the front pages of a social world in flux, Prince preaches:

In France a skinny man

died of a big disease with a little name...

...

You turn on the telly and every other story

Is telling you somebody died

Sister killed her baby cuz she couldn’t afford to feed it

And we’re sending people to the moon

...

Some say a man ain’t happy

Unless a man truly dies

The song was visceral in a way I never would have suspected from Prince and instantly made me seek out the album on CD.

Though he is relentless in the amount of music he currently releases every year, Sign “☮” the Times is his last true masterpiece. It captures everything that made Prince a star–channeling the sounds from his early days, carrying through his ascension up the pop charts–and even gives listeners hints of what was in store. I’m convinced that it’ll convert any Prince non-believers, or at the very least give listeners a glimpse into a different side of the man who famously made doves cry. Hell, it even inspired the title of the blog you’re currently reading. Enthusiasm manifests itself in many ways.

Bob Dylan Reviews #10

2010-03-30T01:38:00.008-05:00

Bob Dylan Reviews

Album #10, Self Portrait

Columbia Records, 1970

In Bob Dylan's memoir, Chronicles: Volume 1, he writes in the chapter entitled "New Morning," "I released one album–a double one–where I just threw everything I could think of at the wall and whatever stuck, released it."

Bob Dylan's, Self Portrait, is one of rock and roll’s most notorious album duds. It’s also one of the few albums in the artist’s canon that few people, critics included, have actually sat down and listened to in its entirety.

Hype is a funny thing. Coming off an impressive run of nine solid, and universally lauded albums in the 1960s, Bob Dylan released an album that puzzled fans, yet again, but also garnered one of the most infamous reviews of any album in rock and roll. Greil Marcus’ scathing Rolling Stone review of the album opens with, "What is this shit?"

Self Portrait is not a great album, but it’s also not as bad as its reputation claims. Self Portrait is, rather, an experimental album, possibly intentionally executed by Dylan to kill some of the spotlight swarming his life.

Let’s take a look at Dylan’s current predicament: In 1966, he had survived a near-fatal motorcycle crash, that no doubt opened his eyes a bit. He was fed up with the media and his fans labeling him the messiah of rock and roll and a voice of his supposed generation. He seemed completely ready to ditch this built up “false persona” in lieu of a normal life with his family in upstate New York.

Nashville Skyline had left listeners and critics, "scratching their heads" as Dylan writes in Chronicles: Volume 1. By the end of the decade that made him a star, Dylan was ready to move on. He recalls spreading rumors that he was going to retire from music all together. He took a trip to the Western Wall in Jerusalem and wore a skull cap in front of the press just so he could be written up as a zionist and ultimately shed the baggage of his followers.

That Self Portrait’s title alludes to Dylan trying to show the world his true side (or perhaps an imagined-self that would send obnoxious his fan-base and critics alike running) shows that once again, Dylan was eager to send a message to the public.

The music on Self Portrait is not bad, it’s just not as good as everything that preceded it.

The 24-song collection is comprised primarily of studio B-sides from the Nashville Skyline sessions, covers of traditional and contemporary folk and rock songs, and a handful of live tracks recorded with The Band at the Isle of Wright Festival.

What’s striking about Self Portrait is that it’s a mish mosh of songs carrying no overlying message or theme, setting it apart from the previous nine records. Nashville Skyline came as a surprise to some but at least it felt like a concise exercise, channeling a love of country music and showcasing a new style of singing. Had Portrait been released solely as a “bootleg record,” much like the still-ongoing Bootleg Series that would eventually arise, the album might not have incited Marcus and others to impale Dylan and call this album the end of his career.

If you look at the year Self Portrait was released, it’s understandable that many fans felt betrayed by Dylan.

1970 saw The Beatles’ breakup, not to mention Simon & Garfunkel (but more on that later). Jimi Hendrix and Janis Joplin both bought the farm, and a wave of long-winded progressive art-rock from Europe seemed to be ready to explode. It was a sudden and harsh end of a fruitful decade for rock and roll.

Leading up to the release of Self Portrait Dylan had given the public plenty of warning signs that he was an unpredictable artist unwilling to play into the media’s portrait of his place in the world. Why fans and critics would be that shocked by Portrait remains the album’s biggest mystery.

Self Portrait opens with the enchanting but bizarre “All the Pretty Horses,” which upon first listen must have seemed even more out of left field than Skyline’s introduction of Dylan’s country crooning voice.

“All the tired horses in the sun. How am I supposed to get any riding done?" This is how Portrait opens. Sung by three gospel singers and set to swelling strings and a simple guitar riff, the song instantly puzzles the listener, but does so in a surprisingly beautiful way.

Some view the song’s sparse lyrics as a nod to the fact that the album is admittedly void of the epic Dylan songs we’re used to. “How am I supposed to get any riding done?” could easily be mistaken for “How am I supposed to get any writing done?” which some see as Dylan saying that he's done writing the "protest songs" that the masses still expect.

At only two lines, it’s also worth mentioning that this song is the only track on side one that is a Dylan original, the remaining songs being covers and arrangements of traditional folk tunes.

The cover of Gordon Lightfoot’s “Early Morning Rain” is forgettable but feels like a direct spawn of the Skyline sessions.

“In Search of Little Sadie” gets things moving at the end of side one, and carries into its sister song, “Little Sadie” on side two. The arrangement of a traditional folk ballad about a man coming to grips with the fact that he murdered a woman in cold blood is actually a perfect Dylan song. It wouldn’t have felt out of place on say, John Wesley Harding.

The “Sadie” tracks differ only in terms of instrumental arrangements, and both feature choppy production, again giving the impression that Portrait truly is an officially released collection of outtakes and bootlegs.

“Woogie Boogie” is a fun instrumental that again feels like an extension of the Skyline songs, most notably “Nashville Skyline Rag.” The song builds to an eventual onslaught of brass culminating in a rip-roaring sax outro. The song, which was written by Dylan, is the result of an artist no doubt having fun in the studio. It’s an ode to "the blues" that Dylan so often returns to in his career and is an all around standout track on Portrait.

“Belle Isle,” another arrangement of a traditional folk song, carries on with the crescendo of strings first heard on “All the Tired Horses” and is one of Portrait’s more tender moments, save for the fact that Dylan’s vocals seem off key. Nevertheless, the tale of a man falling in love with a mysterious Celtic maid on "the banks of Belle Isle" is enough to warrant the song’s beautiful orchestral arrangement.

The live version of “Like a Rolling Stone,” recorded a year earlier at the Isle of Wright Festival, is not the best live cut of the song available, but it captures perfectly the time of its recording. The Band’s presence is understood with Garth Hudson’s organ and the backup vocals from Robbie Robertson and company playing a vital role in the late 60s sound.

Self Portrait was officially released before the monstrous double album with The Band, Basement Tapes, but many of the songs on Portrait seem to be rejects or leftovers from those fruitful sessions. The version of “Like a Rolling Stone” is also an early sign of how Dylan would often deconstruct and alter his songs throughout his career. To this day no single live version of his hits are the same. His music always seems to evolve over time, taking on new forms–sometimes improving, sometimes causing fans to cringe.

The live version of “She Belongs To Me” (taken from the same 1969 concert) is another noteworthy example of this idea. Dylan’s songs take on different lives over his career. It’s an aspect of his music that fascinates some and infuriates others. Still no matter how you feel about it, it’s hard to argue that it doesn’t keep things interesting.

Self Portrait’s most famous song, that is to say the only one people seem to reference when talking about the album, is “Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight),” one of the album’s more successful covers and easily one of Dylan’s more underrated songs. Period.

Again blending strings, backup female vocalists, and a simple, albeit off-key vocal style from Dylan, this song seems to be one of several tracks on Portrait that carries a similar style and mood. Combined with “Belle Isle,” “All the Tired Horses,” and “Let It Be Me,” “Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)” takes the tenderness of Nashville Skyline and ups the production ante by adding, dare I say, a Phil Spector “wall of soundesque” level of instrumentation.

The song, a cover of a traditional folk song set during the Whiskey Rebellion in the United States is an ode to back-country moonshining. Its a romantic portrait of the love of homemade whiskey and a lawlessness that was required to keep this passion alive during a time when the taxman wanted a piece.

Build you a fire with hickory, hickory, ash and oak
Don't use no green or rotten wood, they'll get you by the smoke
You'll just lay there by the juniper while the moon is bright
Watch them just a-filling in the pale moonlight.

Listening to “Copper Kettle” you again get the feeling that, like many of the other folk songs recorded throughout Dylan’s career, this is a song and a setting in America’s past that Dylan cherishes deeply. It chronicles the kind of simple life Dylan yearned for.

Unfortunately unlike “Copper Kettle,” not all of the covers on Self Portrait end up as successful. The most criticized examples being Dylan’s lackluster covers of “Blue Moon” and Paul Simon’s “The Boxer.”

“Blue Moon” is a rock and roll standard that has been covered by a countless array of different musicians. Perhaps Dylan wanted to join the party, perhaps he just likes the song; whatever the reason, Dylan pulls out his “Lay Lady Lay” vocals but does little else to amp up the performance. It’s not that the version is horrible, it’s just boring, predictable and doesn’t bring anything new to the fold.

On Nashville Skyline Dylan’s crooning, soft-toned vocals work best when paired with “Girl From the North Country.” Here he takes one of his immortal classics and sheds new light on an otherwise familiar sound (this move is aided by Johnny Cash of course). Dylan’s “Blue Moon” sounds exactly like you would expect it to sound like, which does the song a disfavor.

On the other hand, Dylan’s rendition of “The Boxer” is one of Self Portrait’s moments that must have really inspired Greil Marcus to famously open his Rolling Stone review with such a harsh choice of words.

Many of posited that “The Boxer” is one of the Dylan’s more humorous offerings. It has been seen as a parody of a song by one of his contemporaries that he either respects or loathes. Some see it merely as Dylan messing around in the studio, possibly while under the influence of something that toys with one’s judgement. Whatever the reasons are for the song’s existence, the fact remains that the cover just doesn’t work.

For starters, Dylan records a duet with himself, channeling both the scratchy Dylan vocals we grew accustomed to throughout the 60s with the country crooning imagined in Nashville. It’s an interesting move that, in this writer’s humble opinion, backs the argument that this is a song in which Dylan is poking fun at “The Boxer,” a classic song recorded by musicians who have truly beautiful voices at their disposal. Whether or not this is a direct response to something personal between Simon and Dylan remains unknown.

Dylan has always had a very subtle sense of humor. It pops up on songs throughout his career, and most notably during his mischievous probing of the media during his now infamous interviews. You don’t have to look farther than Dylan’s most recent album of Christmas songs set to blues and polka music to realize that behind those serious eyes there is a clever and dark sense of humor.

Self Portrait is hardly Dylan’s worst record to date (many argue that its sloppy follow-up compilation of Portrait outtakes, Dylan, is an even more dismal affair) but it still remains one of his most discussed mishaps.

During the eighties Dylan went through creative slumps that produced songs that make the music on Portrait seem like classic Dylan. What Self Portrait teaches us is that the media does in fact have power over listeners.

During the research for this entry I discovered a fan-made documentary on Self Portrait. What’s most striking is how many of the commentators who bash the album have never listened to the record all the way through. This is, of course, a sign of an unsuccessful album, however, when taking into consideration that Self Portrait contains 24 tracks, it should be assumed that amidst the duds there are some high notes.

Had Self Portrait been released simply as a collection of bootlegs and B-sides more people wouldn’t be as quick to follow suit and judge the songs. Countless magazine lists heralding the supposed “Worst Albums of All Time” place Portrait on a pedestal of disdain. Instead, I feel that Self Portrait is one of Dylan’s more curious moments in his career. How else should he have started a new decade? How does one follow a string of immortal, game-changing albums? Dylan would follow Portrait the same year with New Morning, one of the artist’s most underrated albums to date and one that garners this title because it comes in the wake of Portrait’s dismal press.

Self Portrait enabled Dylan to personally diminish the hype revolving around him, ultimately allowing him to start over and take his music into a new direction. He did this when he alienated fans by going electric, he would later do this during his “born again” years, and in the 90s, when his music and style changed so drastically that he worked diligently to attract a completely new fan base to his music.

David Bowie is often labeled a “the chameleon of rock and roll” for his many musical and physical transformations over the years, but its Dylan who really makes the best use of this career concept. For Dylan, the music always came first. The collection of songs on Self Portrait are exactly the kind of songs you would expect Dylan to release. He is a lover of obscure Americana and folk music (his current radio program showcases this passion perfectly) and he has always yearned to shed his musical skin for something new and less obvious.

Self Portrait is possibly Dylan’s most fascinating career move and is an album that demands to be revisited at least once more by skeptics. It’s not perfect but succeeds at capturing a moment in Dylan’s life and musical career. Sure The Basement Tapes is the better double album, but that documents, first and foremost, one of the truly rare and magical musical pairings in rock and roll.

Greil Marcus is a prolific music writer and his admiration for Dylan’s canon is unprecedented, however, one can’t help but think that his now infamous Rolling Stone review might have been the exact response Dylan was looking for at the time. It’s as if he walked right into the trap which makes Dylan’s persona as trickster and media manipulator, all the more intriguing.

6.0/10

Essential Tracks: "All the Tired Horses," "In Search of Little Sadie/Little Sadie," "Copper Kettle (The Pale Moonlight)," "Bell Isle"

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK NINE

2010-03-21T00:54:00.006-05:00

Week 9: Got Me This Song, Ha Ha Ha Ho

Music has the magical ability to link with personal experiences and be burned into your psyche forever. Musical deja vu is a beautiful thing and for me, it is something that I always try to explore. What is it about certain songs that make them stick with you through life? How do songs, albums or even snippets of lyrics cling to people, their memories and experiences in life. Through this project, which I will update on a weekly basis, I hope to explore the musical moments that have stuck with me over the years and get to the essence of what makes them memorable. It's a chance to explore my old (and new) favorites and hopefully shed a new light on what makes them so unique. 52 weeks, 52 moments in music that shaped who I am today

“Ana”
Pixies

Album: Bossanova

1990

4AD

She's my fave

Undressing in the sun

Return to sea - bye

Forgetting everyone

Eleven high

Ride a wave

–”Ana” Pixies

With Bossanova the Pixies made what might be the best modern day surf record. Considering the band hails from Boston, Mass. this feat is all the more impressive.

My appreciation of the Pixies maturated in waves. When I was younger my father passed on to me a cassette rip of Doolittle that his friend had given him. Up until high school, this was my only window into the band. I didn’t appreciate everything on Doolittle at that young age. Lead singer Black Francis’ exercises in primal scream found on tracks like “Tame” or the frightening lyrics on “I Bleed” warranted pushing the fast-forward button on my Walkman.

As for the rest of Doolittle, however, I liked what I heard.

The Pixies are masters at producing seemingly cool sounds. “Monkey Gone To Heaven” was catchy enough to make me utilize the rewind button, “Silver” was eerie, in an intriguing way, and “Mr. Grieves” was just plain weird with Francis’ menacing laughs opening the fast-paced chaos of the song.

Doolittle was unlike anything I had ever heard at the time, and was almost too much to take in. The album is non-sensical at times–pairing familiar pastime musical genres–surf rock, bubble gum pop, traditional hymns–with bizarre, often terrifying surreal lyrics (read: “Got me a movie / I want you to know / Slicing up eyeballs” from the rip-roaring opener “Debaser,” which, as I would later discover in college, brilliantly pairs Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel with rock and roll).

Francis' words aside, the adornment I have for the Pixies and Doolittle has always been attributed to guitarist Joey Santiago’s masterful blending of sound assaulting guitar shredding with Beach Boys era surf rock. While present on all of the band’s records, this style was best put to use on 1990’s Bossanova.

I uncovered the Pixies short, but sweet discography over a long stretch of time. For a long time Doolittle was all I knew (and maybe all I wanted to know). The release of David Fincher’s film Fight Club shed new light on the superb track, “Where Is My Mind,” which ultimately encouraged me to check out both song’s album of origin, 1988‘s Surfer Rosa and also The Pixies debut EP, 1987‘s Come on Pilgrim.

For one reason or another it took another four years, well-into my stint at University, for me to explore Pixies’ latter two efforts, Bossanova and 1991’s Trompe le Monde. Why, you ask? Not sure. Perhaps a band like this should be examined over time.

Attention was first turned to Bossanova one summer towards the end of University after I raided my cousin’s iTunes music library, which happened to have a handful of random Pixies tunes, including “Ana.”

I remember vividly the moment I first heard the song when it came on while my stereo shuffled through my newly acquired library. I didn’t know at first that it was, in fact, Pixies and Black Francis. The song is a rarity in the band’s canon in that it is the epitome of sleepy beach sounds. If the Beach Boys had ever had a truly menacing trip, they might issued something like this.

Opening with a quick drum crash and build, Santiago’s melodic guitar harmonies come in to set the mood. Enter Francis‘ whispering lyrics as he runs through an acrostic poem about a dreamy surfer girl riding an eleven-foot high wave. Carry the groove on for over two minutes and that's all she wrote.

The song is dark, fairly simple in its music and lyrics, but intoxicating.

It’s safe to say that before I even ventured through the rest of the tracks on Bossanova I was obsessed with “Ana.” It was like a fix for the addict in me. The song was on damn near every mix CD made during my Junior and Senior year of college, and more often than not when it was played, one singular listening was never enough.

Eventually I bought Bossanova and was blown away, yet again by its offerings. The album’s opener, “Celia Ann,” an obscure cover of a Finnish instrumental surf rock band (?!?!?!) called The Surftones, is perhaps Pixies best album opener, besting Doolittle’s “Debaser” and Surfer Rosa’s “Bone Machine,” respectively, in terms of setting the proper mood for the songs that follow. Bossanova is surf rock, stripped down, run through a wave of distortion and taken to some dark places. It's surfer rock on peyote.

The album is twisted yet brilliant. Loud and jarring at times, then suddenly and without warning, cool and melodic. Its “girlfriend” series of songs–starting with “Cecilia Ann,” followed by the epic “Velouria,” then the concise, angry “Allison,” and finally ending with “Ana–remain four of the band’s greatest songs.

Deeper cuts like the album’s beautiful closer, “Havalina,” the haunting “Down to the Well” or the insanely-energized cluster fuck of sound that is “Rock Music,” don’t require much adornment but get some nonetheless.

Still if I had to pick a favorite on Bossanova and really, in Pixies’ oeuvre, it would have to be “Ana.” The song is simple but musically packs a lot. It’s a song to unwind to. A song best heard at night. It’s on a short list of my favorite driving songs, and has a truly mesmerizing guitar riff.

When listening to Pixies my ranking of which album is the best slides in direct proportion with Joey Santiago’s guitar meanderings. When I discovered Bossanova it was, for a time, number one. Eventually the ridiculous title undoubtedly returned to Doolittle. When I finally got around to uncovering Trompe le Monde, it was a surprising victor, thanks in large part to its standout masterpiece, “Motorway to Roswell,” a moving tale of an alien visitor’s capture and eventual tomb of experimentation told in a way that only the Pixies could.

Sure both Bossanova and Trompe le Monde showed signs of cracks in the band’s infrastructure, most notably the tenuous relationship between Francis and co-singer/songwriter and bass player, Kim Deal. Many are quick to tag the latter two records, primarily when referring to Monde, as essentially Black Francis AKA Frank Black solo albums. While Deal isn’t as present during these records, they’re very much Pixies efforts, especially when you consider Santiago as an essential part of the band’s unique sound.

In the pantheon of rock and roll the Pixies doesn’t demand much more praise than it already receives. The band influenced an entire genre of music. Its blending of music and surrealism is ingenious and Black Francis is a masterful wordsmith. His songs are dark, violent, funny, bizarre, lovely, and, as the cunning linguist recently said in an interview on NPR’s rock and roll radio show, Sound Opinions, he “likes words for word’s sake.”

“Ana” never ceases to blow my mind. It’s a song that I can always turn to if I want to cap a long night. If I smoked cigarettes I’m guessing it would be my favorite smoking song, especially on a beach with the sound of waves crashing in the background. I’m still waiting for someone to utilize the song in a film soundtrack since, like many Pixies tunes, it feels like a score to a “surf noir” film, if such a genre ever came to life. I can always fall back on a Pixies album to take me away from reality for a bit, even if it's to a dark, dark place full of “Stormy Weather” or “ten million pounds of sludge from New York and New Jersey.”

Summed up: if, according to Pixies reasoning, “man is 5, the devil is 6, and God is 7” then Pixies is just shy of a perfect 10.

2010-03-15T21:19:00.005-05:00

Top Albums of 2009

Animal Collective

Merriweather Post Pavilion

Domino Records

The true test of a great album is longevity–can the record be revisited a year after year and still pack the same punch that you get during its initial run? Merriweather Post Pavilion was released just six days into 2009 and has been the one album all year that has given listeners more than ample time to soak up what it has to offer. As Collective’s eighth studio album, the hype surrounding the album’s release was high. In the end the group delivered.

The music seems to be the culmination of the band’s musical progression, which in the past featured records with moments of brilliance, sandwiched between harder to handle filler. The past albums, while excellent, never sufficed as being singular masterpieces (the group’s 2004 album, Sung Tongs comes closest to perfection but suffers from carrying on for too long with not as much deviation).

Post Pavilion’s “My Girls” was the perfect first single and easily one of the top tracks of the decade. “Summertime Clothes” floats along on a sea of processed sounds but manages to be the album’s most catchy and fun tune. On “Daily Routine,” rising vocalist/multi instrumentalist in the group, Panda Bear, muses on the daily grind of being a father set to sprinkles of keyboard swirls and pounding drum and bass rhythms. The record’s closer, “Brother Sport” is the one arena rocker on the disc that could truly bring the house down at the real Merriweather Post Pavilion outdoor arena in Maryland. The dreamy “Bluish” may be the band’s most beautifully lush song to date, overtaking Sung Tongs’ spine chilling opener, “Leaf House.” Comparisons to The Beach Boys have been made when discussing Animal Collective and in particular Panda Bear’s solo endeavors, however, the band has gone beyond mere imitation.

Through its impressive career thus far (eight studio albums, four EPs in ten years!) the group has continued to create a sound that is entirely their own. With Merriweather Post Pavilion their importance in the lexicon of modern music is completely realized. Now we wait for what’s next.

St. Vincent

Actor

4AD Records

Rising from the cult shadow of Polyphonic Spree, a fairly kitchy group that never managed to find their relevance in my humble opinion, Annie Clark put out one hell of a twisted record. Actor is at times truly like the Disney movie soundtracks she quoted as being influential. At the other end of the spectrum the album has moments that are truly frightening, both lyrically and with her use of screeching distortion and eerie background vocal walls. The music is puzzling at time. The lyrics range from tender, “I lick the ice cubes from your empty glass” to the macabre, “We're sleeping underneath the bed / To scare the monsters out / With our dear daddy's Smith and Wesson / We've got to teach them all a lesson.” The album may be the prettiest dark album of the year or the darkest pretty album of the year. Clark leaves you to decide.

Songs like “Save Me From What I Want” open with a suspenseful crescendo of electro string notes which then burst into a steady and terribly catchy back beat set to Clark’s ethereal pipes. “The Neighbors” finishes her musings on “psychotropic Capricorns” with a mighty closing stanza that could serve as the album’s unofficial manifesto on who Clark is, where she fits in the arena of indie rock, and what this album is all about.

How can Monday be alright

Then on Tuesday lose my mind

Tomorrow's some kind of stranger

Who I'm not supposed to see

Were it not for Neko Case’s Middle Cyclone and Animal Collectives Merriweather Post Pavilion, Actor would be the clear victor for album of the year. It’s a triumphant sophomore release from an artist to keep an eye on. When she sings on the harrowingly titled, “Laughing With A Mouth of Blood,” “And I can't see the future / But I know it's got big plans for me,” one can’t help but think she’s right.

Neko Case

Middle Cyclone

ANTI- Records

To say that Neko Case can do no wrong would be a bit unfair but throughout her solo career she continues to release masterful albums that showcase her lovely voice, which seems to only improve with age. Middle Cyclone, along with most of Case’s past efforts is the perfect album for driving on a warm summer’s night, windows open and the air tickling your dangling hands.

“This Tornado Loves You,” a song that truly swirls into motion like a cyclone, opens the album with a bang. The song showcases a funnier and wilder side to Case until the following stanza brings home the true Case: a poetic lyricist, in the tradition of Joni Mitchell and Carole King who wants nothing more than to write tender love songs.

“Cause I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss

I miss, I miss, I miss, I miss

How you'd sigh yourself to sleep

When I'd rake the springtime

Across your sheets”

“People Got A Lotta of Nerve,” is a masterpiece (joining the ranks of Fox Confessor Brings the Flood’s “Star Witness” as essential Case) and contains a moment that brings Case’s vocal range to the forefront and has the ability to induce a surge of the shivers with every revisit. Even on the record’s two covers, Case manages to add her own touches, with Sparks’ “Never Turn Your Back on Mother Earth” taking an otherwise cautionary tale and fusing it together with bubblegum pop.

“Magpie to the Morning” is an oh-so-tender lullaby with Case’s vocals shining bright. “I’m An Animal” makes best use of the album’s various notable guest musicians, including The Band’s virtuosic organ player, Garth Hudson.

Middle Cyclone has been tagged by Case as an homage to nature and the singer’s fascination with its mysteries and beauty. With any other artist fifteen songs devoted to mother earth (including an unnecessary 31-minute track of birds chirping) might seem silly or predictable but it suits Case. This is Case’s best record to date. It’s funny, beautifully romantic, deeply saddening, but is all together candy to the ears.

Phoenix

Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix

V2 Records

The feeling you get after listening to a completely awe-inducing record from start to finish for the first time is what music enthusiasts yearn for. It’s what keeps us listening. It’s our drug of choice and is potent enough to make a junkie out of us all. French electronic pop band, Phoenix’s album Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a perfect drug.

The record is short at just over 35-minutes but still manages to assault the ears with a sound that borrows and references damn near every rock genre–pop, prog, synth, rave, Kraut techno, indie. The songs are often of the historical nature with the band alluding to classical music obscurities (“Lisztomania’s” Franz Liszt), but lyrics aside, the must is what counts here.

Make no mistake, this is a pop album, but it’s one with surprises. The back-to-back album changers, “Love Like a Sunset Parts 1 & 2” come at nearly the album’s halfway point and are remarkable exercises crescendo. While lacking lead singer Thomas Mars’ signature squeaks and high notes, the first part is a Kraut rock-inspired groove instrumental that is at times menacing and at times hypnotic as it trudges along. It’s the album’s most surprising moment and easily the one track that sets this album apart from being, “just another French pop effort.”

“Lasso” might be the catchiest pop song of the year, and “Girlfriend” is a tender lament to loosing someone close.

Arising from the same French town that gave us Air, Phoenix is officially on par with its country cousin. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is a flawless record, albeit a concise one. It takes the best elements of the aforementioned electronic genres of yesteryear, and sheds a new light on the familiar.

This is an album that begs you to seek out Phoenix’s past efforts and one that has remained timely well into 2010.

The Best of the Rest

Maxwell

BLACKsummers’night

Columbia

The return of neo-soul? How about simply put: the hottest R&B album of the year. “Love You” weaps. “Pretty Wings” channels Prince in his prime. While “Phoenix Rise” brings back the long-honored tradition of featuring one solid synthesizer instrumental track, the “Contusion” to Stevie Wonder’s Songs in the Key of Life.

Sonic Youth

The Eternal

Matador Records

Fans who commented that 2006 Rather Ripped showed a mellower, more conventional side to Sonic Youth were shaken from their lament with The Eternal. Raw, visceral, pounding, loud, and most importantly, laden with the band’s signature guitar butchery, are just a few ways to describe Youth’s newest opus. At 56 Kim Gordon still knows how to bring the sexy with “Anti Orgasm’s” pulsating guitar waves and primordial vocal grunts. By the time you get to The Eternal’s nearly ten minute closer, “Massage the History” the record has taken on through Youth’s lush musical history and back to the present, showing us that these New Yorkers’ sound is eternal.

The Decemberists

The Hazards of Love

Capitol & Rough Trade Records

The return of the truly weird progressive rock record. While its previous album, The Crane Wife, told a similar story, its music tended to be more on the cute side than Love’s hair-raising tracks. With church organs, an accordion, strings swells, and probably a lute or two thrown into the fold, Love’s mythical love story sounds like a joke gone terribly wrong on paper, but is fully realized when listened to thanks to Colin Meloy’s lyrics and notable guest vocal appearances from Becky Stark and Shara Worden, the latter actually stealing the show on the folk rock album’s only arena rocker “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid.”

Moby

Wait For Me

Little Idiot/Mute

Surprised? Yeah, me too. After the breakout hit, Play, it seemed like Moby was on that oh too familiar trajectory into musical irrelevance. His 2008 club album, Last Night was a terrible let down, and past attempts to be the leader of a rock band rather than being the maestro at electronic symphonies that he truly is didn’t pay off. Sure Wait For Me follows the exact formula that Moby used on Play and its underrated follow-up, 18, but it still manages to sound fresh. Moby could be written up as ambient, since Wait For Me is a cool record to leave lingering in the background at the end of a long day, but really the best way to describe this album is: it’s Moby, but done well.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK EIGHT

2010-02-28T23:59:00.000-06:00

Week 8: What A Day That Was

Talking Heads

Album: Stop Making Sense

1984

Sire Records

The band in Heaven, they play my favorite song.
They play it once again, play it all night long.
-"Heaven"

1984 was a good year for music. The Smiths recorded its album debut, Prince unleashed Purple Rain, Bruce made a splash with Born in the U.S.A., The Minutemen’s Double Nickels on the Dime was released, as was Zen Arcade from Hüsker Dü, and Let it Be by The Replacements, to name a few. Then there was the Stop Making Sense soundtrack.

One month before I was born, Jonathan Demme’s concert film, “Stop Making Sense” was released. Its soundtrack, released the same year, was one of a handful of records my parents so wisely schooled my sister and me with. It was played at home, in the car; through headphones and speakers, and eventually out of the shoddy mono speakers of my household’s vintage Sony Trinitron when I finally saw the actual film.

For the record, the Stop Making Sense soundtrack was my gateway to Talking Heads’ music and to the film. But really, one couldn’t ask for a better introduction.

What else can be said about Stop Making Sense that hasn’t already been written before. It’s one of the most beloved concert films and albums of all times. It captures the Heads in its prime, serving as a retrospective of sorts of the band’s musical evolution up to that point. It’s one of the greatest albums of all time, taken from one of the greatest films of all time.

Need one more bold statement? How about this: Talking Heads is the greatest American rock and roll band. Don’t you think?

Think about Heads' transformation from stripped down, quirky new-wave punk outfit (as seen on '77 and More Songs About Buildings and Food) to the experimental, genre bending band it ceaselessly morphed into (from Fear of Music onwards). At only eight studio albums released, the band’s discography is concise, but one could say that the players said what they wanted to say, played what they wanted to play and then cleared the stage, ahead, ultimately paving the way for equally rewarding solo careers from each band member.

The music has influenced so many of its contemporaries and future acts, and “Stop Making Sense” the film changed the way filmmakers and viewers viewed the concert film genre–one will notice early on that the audience is hardly seen during the film and the stage is bare-boned, going against the flashy trends of bigger bands of the time.

David Byrne is one of rock’s true geniuses. An ambitious, almost mad visionary who has never slowed down in his quest to change how we experience music, which he’s long seen as platform best suited for all of the senses, not simply the ears.

Heads’ rhythm section is one of the great collaborations in music, with Tina Weymouth and Chris Frantz (real-life married couple) bringing an almost mathematically calculated sense of timing to the band. The bass line in the band’s mega hit, “Once in a Lifetime” alone is one of the great moments in musical rhythm. One bass line, played in repetition like a metronome, but capable of bringing the groove.

Keyboardist and rhythm guitar player, Jerry Harrison, had already come out of the equally influential Modern Lovers outfit before joining Byrne and gang, adding the final essential piece to the band.

Production wiz, and possibly the only other musician at the time with the brains and visions to keep up with Byrne, Brian Eno, would later play a key role in the band’s progression. And the backing musicians on Stop Making Sense, most of them spawns from George Clinton’s funk factory, managed the remarkable feat of taking beloved songs and not only shedding brand new light on them but at times improving on them (the non-Heads track, “What a Day That Was,” originally drawn from an obscure Byrne solo effort, being the perfect example).

I currently have three copies of Stop Making Sense on CD: one “borrowed” early on from my parents, another expanded Special Edition version bought later, and yet another rescued from a garbage bin my college roommate had put together, the latter thus becoming a permanent fixture in my car's glove compartment. I own its LP and have long dreamed of pulling off the film’s signature “Big Suit” for Halloween. The film is the one DVD I own which I watch on a monthly basis and it has traveled with me to Spain and here in Taiwan.

It’s hard to pick a favorite track on the album, or in Heads’ catalogue for that matter.

The aforementioned “What A Day That Was” is pretty terrific. But so is “Making Flippy Floppy,” “Heaven,” “Crosseyed and Painless,” “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody),” and of course the album’s tried and true mission statement of an anthem, “Burning Down the House.” When Byrne shouts to the seen but not seen audience at the end of “Life During Wartime,” “Does anyone have any questions?” The answer is always an unanimous: no, no we don’t.

I remember not really understanding what Stop Making Sense was all about when I first heard the album. Having not seen the film yet and being only slightly familiar with Talking Heads, made the experience all the better. For me, like my introduction to Paul Simon’s Graceland, the music just sounded great and it pulled me in.

The African percussion was flawless, bringing on the dance grooves. The rhythm guitar was tight and polished, and Parliament-Funkadelic’s Bernie Worrell’s sparingly executed synthesizer notes sounded futuristic in a surprisingly interesting way. As a budding drumming growing up, the tom-tom fills on “Burning Down the House” inspired many a table/chest drumming fits. Once I finally had a drum kit of my own I often reenacted these moments, much to the neighbors' dismay.

Really, what else can be said about Stop Making Sense. I’ve listened to this album over a hundred times and it only improves with age. The world is a better place because of this film, this album and Talking Heads contribution to music. When you realize how much is going on within each song–the sonic complexities, nuances and how much of the attention to detail was undoubtedly calculated down to every individual note and beat–reverence is the only proper response. Rock/dance/funk/pop nirvana.

Does anyone have any questions?

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK SEVEN

2010-02-14T22:12:00.001-06:00

Week 7: When Joni Met Jaco

Music has the magical ability to link with personal experiences and be burned into your psyche forever. Musical deja vu is a beautiful thing and for me, it is something that I always try to explore. What is it about certain songs that make them stick with you through life? How do songs, albums or even snippets of lyrics cling to people, their memories and experiences in life. Through this project, which I will update on a weekly basis, I hope to explore the musical moments that have stuck with me over the years and get to the essence of what makes them memorable. It's a chance to explore my old (and new) favorites and hopefully shed a new light on what makes them so unique. 52 weeks, 52 moments in music that shaped who I am today.

“Hejira”

Joni Mitchell

Album: Hejira

1976

Asylum Records

“Music expresses that which can not be said and on which it is impossible to be silent.” Victor Hugo

During my senior year of high school my budding interest in jazz music had come full circle. I played drums alongside two electric violinists in, dare I say, an eclectic seven-piece jazz combo. I was enrolled in a full-year jazz studies course (something of a rarity for a high school), and I regularly raided the public library’s respectable jazz CD collection. With the limit set at ten albums per visit, I could walk away with more than enough to soak up in a week, and I ultimately pieced together a fairly comprehensive collection of “burned” albums.

It was in my senior year that I first gave hip-hop a chance. It was the year I seriously dove into Bob Dylan’s catalogue and it was the year I discovered Jaco Pastorius. For most, Jaco is hardly a household name, but rather his is a tragic tale in the music world–a master of his craft, a musicians musician, cut short in his prime by a tragedy that still puzzles his admirers.

Arguably one of the greatest electric bass players to have ever picked up the instrument, period, Jaco got his start in the light jazz fusion ensemble, Weather Report, but quickly established himself as a leading force, releasing two solo studio albums and collaborating with a number of artists in and outside of the jazz world. That this legend would die from injuries contracted in a mysterious bar brawl in Southern Florida, makes the story all the more tragic.

I first became privy to Jaco’s self-titled debut album one day when I entered the jazz practice room of my high school’s music department to find a number of my peers hovered around a stereo blasting Jaco’s rendition/mash-up of Herbie Hancock’s “Kuru/Speak Like a Child” through the room’s significant sound system. Awe was understood.

That afternoon I picked up the CD version of Jaco Pastorius at the bookstore and spent the evening listening as Jaco turned the fretless electric bass guitar into a lead instrument.

His ability of combining traditional bass lines with melodic, tender harmonic chords to create entire, unaccompanied compositions on the bass changed the game for bass players everywhere. Not to go overkill on the praise, but it’s fair to say that without Jaco’s contribution to music, Flea from The Red Hot Chili Pepper’s, The Minutemen’s Mike Watt, Vic Wooten, and other prolific masters of the instrument may have never found their way. He’s that important.

In 1976, as Pastorius unleashed his debut masterpiece, he also started what would end up being a four-record collaboration with folk singer Joni Mitchell, starting with her underrated album, Hejira.

I had grown up with Mitchell’s Blue and Court and Spark, easily the siren’s two greatest achievements, but was unfamiliar with her forays into the jazz world until I stumbled upon copies of Hejira and 1979’s Mingus at the aforementioned library’s audio/visual department.

I didn’t link the two artists until I actually played the album and instantly heard what had to be Jaco’s tender bass harmonics coupled with Mitchell’s equally tender vocals. The four tracks that Jaco played on–”Coyote,” “Hejira,” “Black Crow” and “Refuge of the Roads”–are in my opinion four of the greatest musical parings out there.

Two masters of their individual crafts producing music of such beauty; it was enough to leave me wide-eyed. While Joni can make her pipes weep with melancholy, Jaco figured out how to do the same on the fretless bass.

It makes sense that Mitchell sought out Jaco (or vice versa). Both have extremely distinct sounds, and Mitchell has always walked the fine line between folk and jazz with her music, eventually devoting whole records to the genre she adores (she name checks “strains of Benny Goodman” on Hejira’s title-track and would later pay her respects to Charles Mingus on Mingus).

While slightly flawed as a whole album, Hejira is definitely one of the Mitchell’s most fascinating efforts. Written almost entirely on the road as Mitchell drove from Maine to Southern California, the album, which gets its name from the Arabic word for ‘journey,’ invokes images of traveling alone by car through America, a spiritual journey documented by so many artists over the years.

She paints pictures of desert landscapes, old highway motels, and on one of the album’s great standout tracks, “Amelia,” airplane vapor trails which she tags as “a hexagram of the heavens.” She’s always had a way with words.

While music journalist Ron Rosenbaum gives a strong argument for “Amelia” being Mitchell’s strongest and most intriguing song to date at Slate.com, I’ve always been moved by “Hejira,” that epic title-track that makes the best use of the Jaco/Joni marriage of sound.

On “Hejira,” Mitchell sings of “comfort in melancholy” while Jaco meanders in and out of her verses fingering his six string with the same warmth that Mitchell calls upon with her vocals and lyrics.

The beauty of jazz music has always been its language of improvisation. Most jazz standards are based around a series of simple notes. The players muse on the bridge and then each go off into their worlds playing off each other the way people share thoughts in a conversation. It’s a musical art-form that finds its finest moments in the surprises that can arise. Put a group of masters in a room and listen to the magic unfold.

On “Hejira” Mitchell sings, “I see something of myself in everyone / Just at this moment in the world.” When listening to “Hejira,” and the other three Jaco/Joni tracks on the album, it’s hard not to deny that the two artists found an instant connection in the studio. The fruit of this pairing is, in my mind, the heart of what makes Hejira such an incredible album to return to again and again. Lyrically, I still favor Blue and Court and Spark for giving the world lines like,

Oh I could drink a case of you darling

Still I’d be on my feet

–“Case of You”

I used to count lovers like railroad cars

I counted them on my side

Lately I don’t count on nothing

I just let things slide

–“Just Like This Train”

I stumbled upon Hejira shortly after diving into Jaco, (not to mention Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew and Jack Johnson) and found the connection between both geniuses to be serendipitous (this was before I relied on the Internet for musical fact checking to aid my listening habits). Liner notes would confirm that what I was hearing was, in fact, Jaco, but I had no doubt in my mind.

Later on that year I stumbled upon a forgotten Herbie Hancock homage record to George and Ira Gershwin, Gershwin’s World (1998), which features, among a number of beautiful collaborations, a Mitchell guest vocal spot on “The Man I Love.” I played it for my father who I knew was a longtime Joni fan, and he knew the minute her lush pipes poured into the microphone who it was.

Jaco and Joni have musical voices that are completely their own. While you can hear Joni’s influences on countless modern day singer songwriters, not to mention her contemporaries, Jaco’s presence still carries strong in and out of the jazz world. Both are unmistakable to ear.

Later that year I discovered Martin Scorsese’s concert film, The Last Waltz, a moving swan song performance from Bob Dylan’s great backing band,The Band and was pleasantly surprised to find Joni performing Hejira’s opener “Coyote.” It was eerie how Hejira linked together a number of my musical explorations of the time. While now I credit resources like Allmusic.com or Wikipedia as terribly informative fact-checking sites for exploring musical range, their absence that year provided me with countless surprises of collaborations that changed my perception of the music world. Suddenly jazz wasn’t just some side genre that only the hip or the old dug, but rather a music that was without genre boundaries.

Miles Davis’ foray into funk and rock, Steely Dan’s fusion of jazz instrumentation, and Joni’s pining to walk the line between folk/rock/pop/jazz were all part of a musical awakening that year. It cemented the notion that music is a universal language and while we can typecast and catalogue it into genres and sub-genres, its ultimately a form of expression that is completely unpredictable.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK SIX

2010-02-04T19:41:00.001-06:00

Week Six

"Station to Station"
David Bowie
Album: Station to Station
1976
RCA Records

The title track to David Bowie’s 1976 album, Station to Station begins with the sounds of train bursting into motion. The hush of the locomotion, presumably pulling away from a its station of origin, pans from the right to left channel and is eventually coupled with a restrained frenzy of distorted guitar and synthesizer sonic waves and a menacing clang of heavily-fingered piano keys. The thumping bass line enters, as does the echoed thunder of sparsely-played tom tom drums and a twangy rhythm guitar. A simple organ riff joins the fold and a shortly after the song’s third minute we are introduced to the ring leader of this slow-burning melee of sound.

The return of the Thin White Duke

Throwing darts in lovers' eyes

Here are we one magical moment

Such is the stuff from

Where dreams are woven

Station to Station is one of the great milestone records in the history of rock and roll. For David Bowie it was the record that bridged two of the artist’s most vibrant creative periods during the 1970s; for rock music as a whole it was the spark needed to merge a polished sound from America’s respectively growing soul and disco scene with the ambitious budding art rock scene happening in Europe. For me, it was an album that instantly changed all my pre-conceived notions about Bowie the lavishly-costumed performer and musician and granted me a portal into a side of the artist’s canon that literally shook my perceptions of music.

At six tracks, Station is one of Bowie’s more concise efforts to date, but it still manages to pack the punches. Its title track remains his longest song to date, clocking in at over 10 minutes, and is one of those songs that I never tire from listening to. It unfolds like a symphony, rising from dark and mysterious to groovy, eventually culminating in a amalgamation of disco, funk, soul, Krautrock, early techno, glam and pretty much anything other sound Bowie had lying dormant in his inner-psyche. It’s a track that I’ve listened to in too many different settings to count, under various mental states and it remains one of the most fascinating offerings Bowie has ever released.

Recorded during Bowie’s coke-fueled soirée in Los Angeles from 1975-1976 while Bowie was filming Nicolas Roeg’s great science-fiction film, The Man Who Fell to Earth, Station to Station is an album that both excuses drug use for the sake of art while also affirming the notion that drug use can rip apart the inner psyche. Summed up: Bowie almost died making this album but it was this waltz to a dark place that helped produce this masterpiece and was the catalyst the artist needed to flee hellish L.A. for Western and Eastern Europe to start his much-lauded “Berlin Trilogy” of records. In an interview Bowie once said of Los Angeles during the mid-70s: "The fucking place should be wiped off the face of the earth"

It’s safe to say my fascination with Bowie’s late 1970s period–beginning with 76’s Station to Station, spanning the “Berlin Trilogy” of Low, ‘heroes’ & Lodger, and finishing with 1980s spectacular Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)–is unending. Bowie has often said in interviews that he seldom recollects anything from the Station sessions (most musicians involved are also fuzzy when it comes to memories from the studio). The rock and roll rumor mill spins out yarns painting Bowie as a skeleton of a man, living off various dairy products and copious amounts of easy to get L.A. coke. There are notes of paranoia fueling the recording of the album. Magic and the black arts were both weighing heavily on Bowie’s mind and soul, as was an unhealthy interest in the occult and German philosophy. Still despite everything pulling Bowie deeper and deeper into madness (and a likely “rock and roll” demise) he managed to gather some of the finest musicians of the time, including a number of his previous musical peers (most notably dueling guitarists Earl Slick and Carlos Alomar, the latter playing extensively on Bowie’s “Berlin” albums) and assembled an unprecedented shortlist of songs that to this day remain gems in Bowie’s extensive repertoire.

My true gateway to Bowie’s music came during my junior year of university. Before departing for a semester abroad in Salamanca, Spain, I coaxed a high-school friend into swapping music with me, most notably his digital Bowie discography. I already had a piquing interest in Bowie before this chance meeting of digital piracy/musical exploration. For those who still doubt the benefits of music downloading in the digital age understand this: there are some musicians or artists out there who should be explored in lumps, preferably through a chronologcial survey of their canon. Bowie, Bob Dylan, Talking Heads, Prince, to name a few giants that come to mind, evolved over their musical evolution in a way that was often unexpected, not always without its flaws but always fascinating. To listen to these transformations from early to late is such a rewarding gift for a music enthusiast.

If you go through Bowie’s catalogue of records during the 1970s, Station to Station seems like a natural way to divide his most lucrative decade.

Following closely on the heels of Bowie’s foray into Philly soul and disco sounds, the flawed but catchy Young Americans, Station seems to develop partially on the sound that Bowie was cultivating on Americans, while also adding enough needed experimentation to prove that he, in fact, had a lot more up his sleeve. The big musical jolt would follow with 1977s Low, an album so dear to my heart that I will eventually get around to adding it to this project.

“Station to Station” as a track has taken on many incarnations in my life. There was a seldom a time the track didn’t manage to make it onto a series of car mix CDs circulating the stereo in my Toyota. Like so many of Bowie’s tunes, I am always brought back to Salamanca, Spain. As I walked the streets my soundtrack was often set to Bowie, as my Iberian stint somehow became the environment where I fully-discovered his music. “Station to Station” was (and still is) a favorite track to run to as its slow-building crescendo coincides perfectly with the gradual ascension to full-on sprinting that runners plan during routes.

Lyrically the track is a window into the intrigue surrounding Bowie’s mental state of mind at the time. There are references to the Jewish Kabbalah, read as the crown and base of the tree of life:

Here are we

One magical movement

from Kether to Malkuth

Bowie references love and loss, possibly a sign of the times, most notably his separation from his wife and disconnection with his son while also referencing is physical and mental state:

It's not the side-effects of the cocaine

I'm thinking that it must be love

Towards the end he finally gets to the point of the song and the album of its origin when he croons: “It’s too late / The European canon is here.”

It is widely known that Europe was beckoning Bowie, particularly through the music and art coming out of the East. His retreat to Europe, leaving behind L.A. was ultimately his saving grace. He has often said that he would have died in L.A. had he continued his lifestyle. That he also coaxed friend and musical influence Iggy Pop to join him in Europe, only moistens the intrigue of this period of musical exploration. Whether or not Bowie predicted or really knew what would ensue, musically, in the coming years of his career is up for debate, however, he knew that the art and changing tides in Eastern Europe would play an important role in the future of rock and roll. He, of course, wanted to be along for the ride.

My interest in this period of Bowie’s life would later lead to the reading of various accounts of the recording of this album, most notably Thomas Seabrook’s detailed book, Bowie in Berlin: A New Career in Town. I still listen to Station to Station on a semi-regular basis. It’s title tracks is one of the truly great epic songs in rock and roll. As for the rest of the album, Bowie’s at his finest.

“Golden Years” took everything that was good about Young Americans and fused it together with the twisted grooves that would find their way to “Station to Station.” “Word on a Wing” is a heartbreaking ballad of sorts that tests Bowie’s vocal prowess and ultimately showcases a range seldom heard. “TVC-15” feels like a Warren Zevon song was blasted into space and collided with disco tunes that time forgot. “Wild is the Wind” is a noteworthy cover that is reminiscent of Bowie’s earlier days. Then there’s “Stay,” which, besides featuring one of the truly great guitar riffs in rock and roll, is a sly number that would make Maggot Brain era Funkadelic envious.

Station to Station will always be a favorite in Bowie’s rich catalogue. Other venture and efforts would do more with this new found sound, most notably Low, however, it was Station that served as the jumping off point for Bowie’s major changes in the latter half of the century. Bowie released eleven near-flawless records in the 1970s, a feat that few artists working today could accomplish, especially when you consider that along the way he changed the sound and vision from album to album, station to station. After discovering Station to Station and the subsequent “Berlin Trilogy” I was officially hooked on Bowie, an unhealthy musical obsession that holds strong even today. Friends often scoff and wonder where this interest came from. They clearly haven’t listened to “Station to Station,” from its mesmerizing train whistle prelude to its coda, funk/disco/rock nirvana.

"Stay" featuring Adrian Belew

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK FIVE

2010-01-28T21:19:00.000-06:00

Week Five

“Sunshine on Leith”
The Proclaimers
Album: Sunshine on Leith
1988
Chrysalis Records

As much as I love discovering songs that remain true to my heart, I get just as much pleasure finding out what music is important to people I encounter. While traveling I am always interested in learning about what music or songs unite people and are universally recognized. Travel stories and memorable encounters, like music, tend to stick with me and instantly become reference points for my time in a foreign place. The following is a retelling of a travel and musical moment in my life that remains dear to me.

At the tail end of a backpacking trip in the Scotland Highlands I found myself in a run of the mill local pub in a borough of Edinburgh, after just having seen a football match at the local stadium.

The pub was full of locals of all age, the majority of whom had just exited the stadium after the Edinburgh team had lost the match. The Sunday afternoon outcome of the game didn’t alter the mood. This was clearly a time for being part of a community.

The pub was alive with the banter of old and young alike, the pints were flowing, the smell of stained bar wood and meat pies lingered in the air and the juke box was spinning traditional Scottish fare and classic rock and roll.

The Stones, The Beatles, U2 all made appearances with cordial indifference from the crowd. I was sitting with my host of the occasion, the local tour bus driver who had taken a group of us around the highlands and had extended the football invitation solely my travel partner and myself.

Suddenly, the first notes of a song came on that silenced the otherwise noisy crowd.

Most people know the band The Proclaimers from its runaway hit from the early 90s, “I Will Walk Five Hundred Miles,” but other than that catchy one-hit-wonder, little else is known of the band outside of Scotland. For the good people of Edinburgh the group, comprised of brothers Charlie and Craig Reid, is a mark of local pride.

The song that began to spin was the title track of the band’s 1988 Album, Sunshine on Leith. As soon as the first lines, “my heart was broken, my heart was broken,” were sung, the entire bar exploded in a massive sing-along that was unlike anything I had ever encountered. Part of the pleasurable surprise of the moment was due in part to the fact that everyone in the bar, from the children to the town elders, were joining in the anthem.

I instantly felt out of place and foreign to the locals who, during this song, could’ve probably cared less about who I was or what I was doing in their local haunt. It was a beautiful moment. It was a jaw-dropping sign of community, the acceptance and passion for local artists who made it big, and an ode to an unofficial town ballad.

Pints were raised high, people were belting out the lyrics and when the song was finished people went back to their banter.

What was striking about the incident was that not even an hour later the same song was selected again, and as if someone pushed rewind, the crowd erupted in the same motions. I asked Mike, the local guide and all around nice guy about why everyone knew this particularly song and he couldn’t give me an answer. Some things just are the way they are.

The Proclaimers’ minor international success in the 90s was clearly a big enough deal back home that people joined in together to recognize the crowning achievement of these local brothers from Edinburgh.

After I had had time to let the incident soak in I began to think about similar moments back home. Surely there must have been some song or moment I could compare this to. In college certain songs were instant crowd-pleasers at keg parties, tailgating events, and bars but these songs generally aim towards a particularly demographic, namely the inebriated, 17-30 year old market.

Sure, an artist like Michael Jackson is recognized by old and young, and a song like Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing” tends to bring the proletariat together (hell it even tapped into the echelon of society thanks to The Sopranos finale), but that music is too big to be as humble as “Leith’s” moment in the spotlight. What I came to realize is that part of what made this moment seem so foreign to me is that the pub is unlike any other bar or gathering spot back home. These pubs are not merely bars but rather assembly halls for the community to gather.

This football match was on a Sunday afternoon, a day of rest for most. Rather than watch the game from the comforts of a large sofa in front of a big screen TV, the masses went out to the pub. This is not to say Americans don’t follow suit as well. Sports bars back home have jukeboxes too, however, something about this moment made me think that I had just been given a glimpse into a different world.

As far as songs go “Sunshine on Leith” is a pretty basic ballad, nothing special. If anything it is a little corny or overly sentimental (read: “Your beauty and kindness /

made tears clear my blindness”) It references the district of Leith in Northern Edinburgh that serves as a port to the sea. But even to this day I’ll reach for it to remember that day. It reminds of just how powerful music can be for bringing people together, be it through a communal jukebox selection or a televised musical moment. In our current digital age where music is often solely experienced by the individual, rather than by groups, it’s refreshing to know there are still moments where people unite over song.

There was a time when I wished I had brought a video camera to the pub to document both moments, but the songs’ ability to spark a vivid mental image of that day makes up for it.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK FOUR

2010-01-21T00:50:00.008-06:00

Week Four

"Left of the Dial"

The Replacements

Album: Tim

1985

Sire Records

Don’t trust anyone who says the 1980s was a horrible decade for music. They clearly haven’t listened to The Replacements.

In the midst of countless hair bands, MTV airwaves-ready pop hits, and Toto, homespun bands like The Replacements were making great rock and roll, plain and simple. The group is often lumped in with the punk movement of the mid 80s, joining the ranks of Husker Du, Black Flag, et al, but this assessment only really works for the band’s early records. Instead, The Replacements remains one of the best truly American rock bands, making music that spoke to countless generations of regulars.

I wish I could say I grew up with The Replacements. I wish I could say my parents played its records for me at a tender age, schooling me musically like they did with so many other great artists. Sadly though, I didn’t discover The ‘Mats, as their also known as, until my last year at University after a dear friend’s band mate told me bluntly, that both Let It Be and Tim we’re must owns.

I had heard “Favorite Thing” from 1984s Let It Be before, but didn’t really fully appreciate the song until I heard the record as a whole. But what a dose of musical enlightenment discovering The ‘Mats was.

The ‘Mats lead singer and key songwriter Paul Westerberg is one of the truly great everyman American voices to come out of rock and roll. The Minneapolis native writes songs that range from the silly (Let It Be’s “Gary’s Got a Boner”), the tender (Tim’s “Kiss Me on the Bus”), the admiring (Please to Meet Me’s Big Star homage, “Alex Chilton”), the cruel (Tim’s “Waitress in the Sky”) the heartfelt (Let It Be’s magnificent “Unsatisfied”) and epics (Let It Be’s closer “Answering Machine”).

Westerberg’s lyrics are simple enough but carry a lot of weight. He writes about low-life Joes, average souls, salt of the earth folk, the people he grew up with and above all his love of rock and roll music. He doesn’t tell grandiose stories like Springsteen, and doesn’t carry the political muster of say Dylan, but he has a way with words that is unlike any other songwriter out there. Some liken Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy (a great songwriter in his own right) to Westerberg, but I tend think that’s wishful thinking for Tweedy.

On Tim’s “Bastards of Young” he laments about sons and daughters of his generation finding their place in mess of things–finding one’s way in an unforgiving world.

The ones who love us best are the ones we'll lay to rest

And visit their graves on holidays at best

The ones who love us least are the ones we'll die to please

If it's any consolation, I don't begin to understand them

The summer after I graduated was truly a summer of The ‘Mats. After discovering Let It Be I bought up the two other essential records in its catalogue: 1985s Tim and 1987s Please to Meet Me. All lingered in my car’s CD player for most of that summer as I said goodbye to college and went into the unknown of the real world, without a job and with no clue of what I was supposed to do with myself.

The ‘Mats music is essential driving music and the one song that ultimately ends up on most driving mixes is “Left of the Dial.”

To say this is The ‘Mats best song would be unfair since it’s damn near impossible to pick a favorite. This is, however, the best song to speed along to down a country road in Southern Indiana during the spring with the windows down, while testing the limits car stereo’s speakers.

I can remember vividly returning to my alma mater during the spring of my first year out of college, after a year back home and a job that paid well but left me, to quote The ‘Mats, “unsatisfied.”

Indiana University is tucked away in a truly beautiful part of the country, a place that even caught me off guard when I first visited the campus during my senior year of high school. Brown and Monroe Counties are known for their rolling hills, picturesque state parks and lakes. Outside of Bloomington is Lake Monroe, a scenic getaway that is worlds apart from the industrial Northwest Indiana neck of the woods that I grew up knowing.

One particularly nice day, I ventured out with my dear friend Chris and his girlfriend for a drive by the lake. No plan, just a chance to check out the area and enjoy the beautiful spring weather. The trip as a whole, like many visits to Bloomington was an escape from the then heavy weight of the real world resting on my shoulders. As we drove chatting and listening to various tunes, I felt bliss.

We toured the winding hill roads in my 95 Toyota Camry (not quite the ideal Replacement’s chariot–that would probably be a dilapidated relic of the Detroit automotive 1970s decade of excess, maybe a Gremlin–but close enough) with the windows down, the sweet, wholesome southern air rushing through the car. I had a number of mix CDs swapping in and out and a copy of Tim. We chatted, reminisced, shared some laughs, but were instantly silenced when “Left of the Dial” exploded through the stereo.

The song is one of a handful of Westerberg-written love songs. It’s an ode to a female musician that Westerberg either had a relationship with or simply lusted after. It’s also very much an ode to joys of listening to the radio, specifically the hipper college stations that reside “left of the dial” on most tuners around the States

According to Allmusic.com’s write-up of Tim, the song was written about Angie Carlson, the guitarist of Let’s Active, who may or may not have had a fling with Westerberg. Personally I think the song’s muse is best left unknown.

Pretty girl keep growin' up, playin' make-up, wearin' guitar

Growin' old in a bar, ya grow old in a bar

Headed out to San Francisco, definitely not L.A.

Didn't mention your name, didn't mention your name

And if I don't see ya, in a long, long while

I'll try to find you

Left of the dial

There is a level of comfort in the closing line, knowing that wherever she is he can always find her through the airwaves of obscure radio stations. It’s a romantic line but it also speaks volumes about what great music can become.

For me the song is as much a love ballad as it is a passionate ode to finding comfort on the radio through the songs we cherish. No matter where you are or how you are feeling, a classic song can bring you home.

When it comes to the airwaves, good radio is hard to come by these days but there is nothing like discovering a station or program that truly speaks to you–one that you can sync with aimless drives in the car as heard in the lines:

Passin' through and it's late, the station started to fade

Picked another one up in the very next state

Long driving trips alone can be lonely for some but for me I find them the perfect time to think. When tuning into local radio stations, it’s also a great way to soak up the lay of the musical landscape wherever you are. On one long drive from D.C. back to Bloomington, Indiana I did just this. Checking the stations in West Virginia to Ohio.

Musically, “Left of the Dial” is also a hell of a tune and is quite possibly the closest the band ever got to an arena rocker. Chris Mars’ drums are perfectly orchestrated, lacking the sloppy garage rock of some of the band’s earlier tunes. Bobby Stinson’s guitar solo leading up to the aforementioned closing stanza is one of his finest moments.

While I discovered The Replacements late in the game (still, better late than never) the band remains one of my favorites. I can play its records anytime, anywhere and find comfort in the music and Westerberg’s pure and honest lyrics. “Left of the Dial” will always bring to mind those times in the car. It will remind me of a great friend, the end of one memorable chapter in my life (college) and the uncertain start of another. It’s a powerful song that evokes all kinds of memories and is also just a great song to get lost in after a hard day.

NOTE: Sadly this was the only video of the song I could find.

It is not The 'Mats but rather Westerberg solo.

Tim is a must own for anyone interested in great rock and roll.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK THREE

2010-01-14T02:16:00.002-06:00

Week: Three

Miles Davis
Album: Sketches of Spain
1960
Columbia Records

Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue will always be his most accessible record to date, and easily the one quintessential jazz album that even non-jazz enthusiasts own or are at the very least familiar with. Around the same time that Davis was getting blue, he and composer Gil Evans worked out the arrangements that would make up Sketches of Spain, which I’m happy to say was my first foray into Miles’ canon.

Sketches of Spain is a record that is just soaked in cool sounds. Castanets and other light percussion notes wisp through the five arrangements, Davis carries the music along with his signature, restrained muted trumpet and Evans’ classical instrumentation gives the album a sound that could be best described as jazz meets legendary silver screen composer Ennio Morricone.

The album opens with a mesmerizing rendition of Joaquin Rodrigo’s “Concierto de Aranjuez,” a song I have sought out in many various renditions. It’s one of those rare and beautiful compositions that is taken to new heights with Davis’ weeping trumpet. There is something about the delicate use of harp and the song’s crescendo at the end that gets me every time.

Sketches of Spain is not the ideal gateway to jazz as it steers clear of the improvisational language of the art form. The album is more of a fusion side project that arose from the Columbia Records/Gil Evans sessions that resulted in this album along with Miles Ahead and Davis’ Porgy and Bess.

On Spain, Davis is the only musician seemingly attempting to stray away from the compositions at hand, making the album an interesting bridge between the classical and the jazz world.

Side B of Sketches of Spain features the record’s three original compositions, culminating with the incredibly moving “Solea,” a cut that instantly brings to mind visions of my time in Iberia.

Even before I finally made it to Spain this album (and this cut in particular) fashioned an imaginary Spain in my head, a place drenched in mystery and exoticism. The real Spain, while not as enthralling as the utopia in my head is still the perfect backdrop for this album.

Part of this association must be attributed to the fact that while living and studying in Salamanca, Spain I often deliberately walked the streets at night on my way home listening to Sketches of Spain through my ear buds. A later marriage of music and celluloid would further the link between "Solea" and this exotic place.

An entire column could be written on what the films of Pedro Almodóvar mean to me. Besides being one of the greatest storytellers working today in cinema, his films are windows into life in Spain, even if his film’s stories tend to depend on the melodramatic. His use of colors, emphasis on regional Spanish dialects, love of Spanish culinary traditions and a truly unique sense of how details can shape a scene, make his films time capsules of life in Spain. In 1995s The Flower of My Secret, a weaker installment in Almodóvar’s gamut, there is a scene in a ballet theater (a popular locale in Almodóvar’s cinematic world) that is set to Evans/Davis’ “Solea.” It’s the perfect fusion of two art forms and one that left me speechless when I first saw the film, recognizing the tune instantly. To this day I still keep the video clip below in my web browsers’ favorites folder.

Sketches of Spain, like so many of Miles Davis’ records. is the perfect capper to a long and tiring day. It’s an album best paired with a nice red wine, preferably from the Rioja region. I’ve found that it goes well with most novels. During college it spiced up even the most mundane of homework and study sessions. It’s atmospheric, often appearing more as a soundtrack to a David Leanesque film epic that was never filmed, with its soaring orchestration and Davis’ high marks. It’s an album that remains an essential in my jazz collection. Hell, even the cover art is memorable, with Davis’ now infamous trumpeter silhouetted behind a mock-up of the Spanish flag, with a raging torro and classic Old English typeface. As I write this I’m about to play the record again before, as its sounds bring up visions and memories from the past of a truly wonderful and one of a kind place.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK TWO

2010-01-07T20:22:00.002-06:00

Week: Two

I am a child of the grunge generation; if that’s the label we’re sticking with twenty years later. While music enthusiasts will argue about the true pioneers of the alternative rock wave–for the record looking back on the progression of music at the time, it’s hard not to side with the “Pixies were the true forefathers of the movement” argument, over the more universally recognized credit to Kurt Cobain and Nirvana–my gateway to the genre was through Pearl Jam.

I was too young to fully appreciate The Pixies during its heyday (though my dad’s friend’s offering to me of Doolittle at the tender age of eight always intrigued me, what with lead singer Black Francis’ screeching vocals and obscure choice of terrifying lyrics). While I wish I could say I discovered Nirvana’s Nevermind instantly upon its release along with the masses, it was Pearl Jam’s debut Ten that was my first real musical obsession.

I remember one summer in particular listening to the song’s on Ten over and over again through a pitch black Sony boombox by day, and through a matching black Sony Walkman from a audio cassette ripped from said boombox by night–those were the days, weren’t they? The liner notes on my original CD copy of the album have been unfolded and refolded countless times (those in the loop will remember the notes unfolding to form a poster of the band members standing in a circle, hands raised high and joined in a badass high-five of sorts). And I can clearly remember looping the opening moments of “Porch,” since it was one of the few songs with cool sounding curse words–the opening line verbatim, “What the fuck is this world”–that I had managed to slip by my somewhat censoring parents.

Pearl Jam is one of the few groups from the era that has survived and is still relevant in modern times (hell, its latest album Backspacer was a breath of fresh air in the band’s canon). Part of its success is based on its loyal fans like me who were mesmerized by Ten.

The album remains the band’s masterpiece. It’s a flawless execution of a budding sound that was, with all respect to the band members, all due to Eddie Vedder’s soaring vocals, which somehow meld gritty and epic into a style that remains unrivaled.

It’s also one of the few albums out there with a flawless flow that begins and ends on two perfect notes. Even for this project entry I was torn between going with the album’s slow-burning opener, “Once,” a completely unassailable way to kick off the album, or its more restrained, dare I say beautiful closer, “Release.” Ultimately I had to go with the latter.

I don’t know how many mix tapes and CDs I’ve capped off with this song. It’s an epic. Like “Once” it takes it time to build, allowing Vedder to test his deep vocal tones in front of a wall of rising guitar crescendos. Of all the songs on Ten this is where Vedder really shows he’s a musical force to be reckoned with.

His vocal range alone is enough to send chills down the spine especially towards the song’s magnificent closing moments when he carries the line, “release me” through an onslaught of distortion and commanding use of the ride cymbal from drummer Dave Krusen.

Even the song's instrumental outro that is linked to the song (a continuation of the intro to "Once") is worth the time on the record, adding an eerie finish to the already perfect closer.

Lyrically this song is very much akin to John Lennon’s shockingly personal, “Mother” off Plastic Ono Band LP. Both songs are heartbreaking laments about a lack of strong or loving parental figures. In the case of Vedder, it refers to the two father figures during his childhood and coming to the grips with the passing of his true father. He was apparently raised by a cruel stepfather and never got to know his real dad on a personal level before his passing. He realizes that he carries a piece of his real father but he’ll never know how or which part of his makeup. It’s this realization that makes the songs truly heartbreaking.

Oh, dear dad, can you see me now
I am myself, like you somehow

Casual interpretations of the song can be linked to the lines,

I'll ride the wave
Where it takes me
I'll hold the pain
Release me

which could reference escapism through drugs or simply, the release of stress in life. Letting go and living how you want to live is very much the unofficial manifesto of the grungers (it’s also the message I take away from the song since it’s difficult for me to relate to Vedder's personal story). Hell, even surfers could relate to this song since the lyrics remain intriguing in their simplicity no matter how you perceive them. When matched with the song’s grandiose music, it’s also easy to just focus on the elevating line, “release me.”

Mention must be made of the rumor that this song was written during the studio time in about 20-minutes while the band was doodling through possible riffs. If this legend holds true, then this backs the theory that some songs are just meant to be written and can arise in an almost spooky fashion. Artists have often commented on moments of brilliance coming out of nowhere during unexpected moments.

“Release” is a song that I can remember falling asleep to as a child and as an adult, one that I remember imagining in my head during daydreams. It’s a staple cut from a one of the greatest debut records out there and one that instantly made me a lifelong devoted fan of Pearl Jam. During the 2003 tour for Pearl Jam’s Riot Act the band opened its masterful set at Chicago’s United Center with “Release,” catching most of the audience off guard and cementing the song’s importance for me as I was carried away by its strength.

It will always be a headphone song, or the kind of tune that must be played through a car stereo at full blast while driving alone, preferably at night, with the windows closed to create the perfect sonic environment to ride the wave.

52 Weeks, 52 Moments in Music: WEEK ONE

2010-01-01T19:49:00.006-06:00

Week: One

“Graceland”
Paul Simon
Album: Graceland
1986
Warner Bros. Records

Graceland was released two years after I was born but was a critical part of my musical upbringing. Early memories of car trips through Northern Michigan are filled with the lyrics and sounds of this eclectic record. A full comprehension of the album’s cultural importance during Apartheid-plagued South Africa would come later, of course, not to mention its feat at bridging the gap between mainstream pop and what was perplexingly called, “world music,”–a truly Westernized label that ignores the obvious fact that all music is worldly since the language of music is universal.

The music of Graceland is diverse in its instrumentation, with Simon drawing from influences from all over the globe, but for a boy at four or five years old, it simply sounded great. As kids I can distinctly remember joining my sister and cousins in trading vintage-style tennis rackets, which we fashioned in our minds as the funky guitars and the slap bass that we heard blaring through the stereo speakers. There were countless hours of dancing to “You Can Call Me Al,” the album’s breakaway hit, and the soothing A cappella words from Ladysmith Black Mambazo was enough to lay our tired heads to rest after a long day of innocent play.

My naïve age made the lyrics of Graceland hard to comprehend. Lines like, “the bomb in the baby carriage,” “the automatic earth,” or “staccato signals of constant information” off the album’s triumphant opener, “The Boy in the Bubble” meant nothing to me in a social manner but were nevertheless intriguing sounding. The manner in which Simon delivered words like staccato, or combinations like cinematographer's party curled off my tongue with ease that first summer and for many years to follow.

If I had to pick one song off Graceland that truly sums up what this album means to me in turns how I appreciate and listen to music today it would be the record’s title track. I knew that "Graceland" was referencing Elvis, who was an artist who, even if I wasn’t entirely familiar with, I understood was important, much like how I understood the importance of The Beatles long before I ever seriously listened to its music.

There is a level of sadness to “Graceland” that even the youngest of minds can pick up on. Sure lines like, “there is a girl in New York City who calls herself the human trampoline,” sounded silly to a boy with a primitive understanding of vocabulary and wordplay, but the way Simon sings on “Graceland” is full of sorrow.

Listening to the song then I can recall thinking that Graceland was this mysterious and foreign place, almost biblical. “Pilgrims with families / and we are going to Graceland” is a line that particularly stood out.

Many years later I often come back to Graceland. I make it a habit of listening to it at least once a month in its entirety. During my sophomore year of high school one of my favorite history teachers, Owen Hein, would start each day off with a song from his collection of music from around the world (he also introduced me to the french duo, Deep Forest). On one particular morning he launched into his lesson with Graceland. I remember feeling proud that I knew all the words by heart and instantly gained a new appreciation for the record when we discussed South Africa's rocky past.

A single listening of Gracelenad is usually followed by several repeats of its title track. It’s probably the album’s most restrained and atmospheric sounding offering. With its ghost like echoes of background singers, tender electric guitar riffs and thunderous percussion and drum interludes, there is soul to the sound. “Graceland” is also easily one of Simon’s greatest songwriting achievements and clearly one of his most personal explorations of love and loss thereafter. It’s a song that will undoubtedly stay with me for the rest of my life. It’s a heart song, a song to take to a desert island, one that can comfort a soul and also make a soul weary of the highs and lows of true love. It’s a masterpiece in every definition of the word.

And I see losing love
Is like a window in your heart,
Everybody sees you're blown apart,
Everybody feels the wind blow

Bob Dylan Reviews #9

2009-12-07T22:54:00.004-06:00

Bob Dylan Reviews
Album #9, Nashville Skyline
Columbia Records, 1969

While closely expanding on the country and Americana themes explored on John Wesley Harding, Dylan’s decade closer, Nashville Skyline, took over a year to be unleashed on puzzled fans. At just over 25 minutes, Skyline manages to accomplish a lot despite its brevity, above all reinventing Dylan once again, most notably with his curious vocals transformation.

Those who write Skyline off as merely an experimental foray that gave listeners its sole pop hit, “Lay Lady Lay” are missing what is truly one of Dylan’s most beautiful departures.

Take the record’s opener, a rendition of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan’s tender ballad, “Girl From the North Country,” that in just three minutes pulls off a multitude of fairly radical makeovers to Dylan’s image.

For starters, “Girl From the North Country” is the first of many re-imaginings of Dylan’s back catalogue, a trend that he continues to carry on today during his touring. Here it is fleshed out on a proper studio record. He takes what many consider one of his untouchables and doesn’t improve on it but rather sheds a new light on an otherwise familiar song. Say what you will about modern day Dylan’s aptitude for singing, he certainly has a knack for surprising loyal listeners with transformative interpretations of his most cherished songs.

Above all major changes to Dylan’s musical persona, “Girl From the North Country” introduces the new voice, a surprisingly melodic croon that sounds like Dylan was channeling Roy Orbison and Ricky Nelson, by way of Dylan’s signature nasal howl. In interviews Dylan said that the voice was brought on by his decision to stop smoking. While feasible its much more likely he made yet another deal with the man downstairs.

Dylan pairs his vocals beautifully with Johnny Cash’s virtuosic pipes first as an ABAB duet tradeoff, which culminates in moment where the two (unsynchronized, mind you) share the closing stanza. While critics of this album then, and now spoke of their collaborations never truly working, the moment, even if just for one song, carries the weight of two seemingly parallel universes colliding for the first time on record. The result is an opener that is puzzling while also completely mesmerizing.

The song’s lush production, with dueling guitars, muffled snare drum brush strokes and a subtle reverberation in the microphones puts all of the song’s focus on the duet of Cash and Dylan. On a first listen it would not be uncommon for the, “okay, what has Dylan done this time” head scratching to be completely swept away by the song’s unadulterated beauty.

In typical humorous Dylan fashion, the awe-inspiring “Girl From the North Country” is followed by “Nashville Skyline Rag,” which was not only Dylan’s only album instrumental cut to date but also the album’s most blatantly country track. Its twangy guitar picking, honky-tonk piano and rubber band walking bass, and Earl Scruggs’ 5-string banjo gives the song a playful quality that is reminiscent of Another Side of Bob Dylan’s one-two opening punch “All I Really Want to Do” and “Black Crow Blues.”

The up-tempo and whimsical tracks on the album, “Nashville Skyline Rag,” “To Be Alone With You,” “Peggy Day,” and “Country Pie,” could easily be written-off as throwaways, nothing more than noodling studio filler but really they are the results of Dylan making the kind of enjoyable music he was raised listening to.

“I Threw It All Away” is arguably Skyline’s most poetic offering.

Once I had mountains in the palm of my hand
And rivers that ran through ev'ry day
I must have been mad
I never knew what I had
Until I threw it all away.

It’s hard to say how much of Dylan’s true voice was present on Nashville Skyline, but the central message of a man who had it all but squandered it away is a common one and arguably one that could be seen as an eerie precursors to Dylan’s divorce and his masterful Blood on the Tracks album that resulted from his heartbreak.

“Lay Lady Lay” is a Dylan immortal. It’s prime fodder for anyone who knows Dylan through any number of compilation albums released. On these said career-snippet records, “Lay Lady Lay” stands out as a bizarre little departure (I’ve even heard of people believing it’s not Dylan singing but rather Cash, proving both their ignorance to both Dylan’s career but also Cash, whose voice is unmistakable for anyone who’s listened to the Man in Black.)

Still on Nashville Skyline “Lay Lady Lay” feels right at home. It’s a simple love song with lush steel pedal guitar notes, a dreamy vocal performance from Bob and even a fairly tender and welcomed cowbell rat-tat-tat. This paired with the album’s most underrated cut, “Tell Me That It Isn’t True” form the basic narrative of the best and worst parts of love and/or infatuation.

Lyrics like,

All of those awful things that I have heard, 
I don't want to believe them, all I want is your word. 
So darlin', you better come through, 
Tell me that it isn't true.

Don’t have to be adorned and they hardly carry the weight of Dylan’s past efforts but the feelings expressed here are universal and true.

Nashville Skyline closes with, “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You,” which remains one of Dylan’s truly great romantic songs, an ode to the longing of a passionate and brief love affair.

Is it really any wonder 
The love that a stranger might receive.
You cast your spell and I went under, 
I find it so difficult to leave.

The album opens with a rendition of a classic love ballad, re-imagined with an Americana musical frame of mind and closes with this straightforward love song. It’s fitting that “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You” would later get its own drastic makeover during Dylan’s mid 70s “Rolling Thunder Revue” tour. That version was a powerful regular that showcased Dylan’s new gypsy-blues sound (which, if this was not a genre before the tour, was imagined by Dylan). For suck a seemingly simple effort, Nashville Skyline says a lot about the evolution of an artist’s career and really the evolution of a song over time.

After the motorcycle accident and Dylan’s flee from the spotlight, Dylan’s music was clearly less about the poetry and more about furthering his exploration of the roots music that he grew up with. He was tired of being of the, “voice of his generation” label that was constantly being hurled at him. While you could argue that he was stuck with this and that there would never be a direction home for Dylan after all that he had accomplished in a truly prolific decade, it’s easy to understand Dylan’s frustrations with his place in the world. But rather than completely void himself from the public eye, Dylan turned his musical attention to what he loved from his upbringing.

Ask any great chef what they like to cook when they’re alone or with family and more often their reply is universal, food they grew up eating. The comforts of tapping into what is familiar is sometimes exactly what an artist of any kind needs to explore during the hard stages in one’s career. Not to completely milk the soul food comparisons, but Nashville Skyline is very much an exercise in restraint and the basics of music that sounds good that equates to the kind of comfort food that Dylan sings about on “Country Pie.”

I don't need much and that ain't no lie 
Ain't runnin' any race 
Give to me my country pie 
I won't throw it up in anybody's face

Dylan’s contributed more during his unprecedented run in the 1960s than most artists even dream about achieving in their careers. He refused to be typecast. He was diligent about playing and writing the music that he wanted to deliver and he did this all in the face of a wide base of critics and fans all eager to see what would come next. What started Dylan’s second decade (the next album entry in this project) is controversial, puzzling, but also extremely fascinating because Dylan played the role of rogue genius.

Today we mourn a Wilco

2009-05-25T10:08:00.006-05:00

Jay Bennett, Dead at 45

Besides being an all around wonderful look at a band recording an album, the documentary "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart," shows the often inevitable clash between creative geniuses. The film, which meticulously document's the band Wilco's recording of its monumental record, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, has at its center two main players: current Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy and the recently departed Jay Bennett.

For fans of Wilco, Bennett was a crucial key to the group's overall artistic merit and a pioneer of their more avant-garde experimentation–evident on parts of the group's third effort, Summerteeth, and fully-realized on Foxtrot. While his subsequent termination from the band by Tweedy after the troublesome Foxtrot sessions seemed harsh at the times (watch the documentary, which follows the events leading up to his firing in great detail), it paved the road for the band's current incarnation (and sound), most notably with multi-instrumentalist Nels Kline.

Wilco's formation was the result of another notorious musical headbutt between Tweedy and his former Uncle Tupelo band mate, Jay Farrar, who now helms the group Son Volt. Bennett was brought in after Wilco's alt-country debut, A.M. and was the catalyst for a radical shift to more studio experimentation, including distortion and an array of new instruments. Being There's thrashing opener, "Misunderstood," was the first sign of the band's morphing from country twang to rip-roaring rockers, and Summerteeth's lulling orchestral number "Pieholden Suite" showed just how many instruments could be packed into one song, and Foxtrot's opening noise rock head-scratcher, "I Am Trying to Break Your Heart" brought this evolution full-circle.

After Wilco, Bennett kept a fairly low-profile, considering Wilco's massive success with Foxtrot. He recorded a number of solo albums, produced for other musicians, returned to his hometown in Southern Illinois and only recently was in the spotlight after he filed a lawsuit against Tweedy and Wilco for royalties deserved for certain songs and the "I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" documentary.

Bennett apparently died in his sleep and until an autopsy is performed, it's hard to say what caused his sudden passing.

Wilco's best work to date remains the string of albums that Bennett participated in. Being There and Summerteeth were both melting pots of all things Wilco–witty lyrics ("the ashtray said you were up all night"), soothing love ballads, power pop guitar anthems, and in the case of the Bennett-penned Summerteeth closer, "My Darling," a child's lullaby. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a sonic masterpiece that propelled Wilco to international indie-acclaim and was an early prime example of the Internet's positive effect on album promotion.

Bennett should be recognized and remembered for his musical contributions over the years even if Wilco continues to transform itself. The following "Pieholden Suite" clip is for you Jay.

Pieholden Suite Rehearsal @ Yahoo! Video

"My Darling," featuring Bennett's then trademark dreadlocks.

Bob Dylan Album #8, John Wesley Harding

2009-05-01T12:07:00.001-05:00

Bob Dylan Reviews
Album #8, John Wesley Harding
Columbia Records, 1967

After a life changing motorcycle accident and a series of underground recordings with The Band, Dylan went to work on his follow up to the rock world altering, Blonde On Blonde. Seven albums into what was already a prolific recording career, and 18 months since the bombshell release of Blonde, it’s safe to say expectations for Dylan were high.

The motorcycle mishap and sudden rush of fame had left Dylan jaded with his notoriety. He was tired of his constant need to appease the masses–critics especially–and his “voice of the people” label was more of a burden than a luxury. He was tired of being in the spotlight. Tired of the constant nagging of fans, many of which would take pilgrimages to his home in upstate New York. He had a family to be with and the desire to be nothing more than a musician and songwriter.

Taking into account the work on The Basement Tapes (which it should be noted were recorded months prior to the work on John Wesley Harding but was not “officially” released until the mid 1970s) and his newfound outlook on life, it comes as no surprise that Harding is more stripped down and less stylistic than its überhit predecessor.

For fans still grinding their teeth over Dylan’s electric period, John Wesley Harding must have also been a pleasant return to the simpler days of Dylan, his guitar, and his poetry. While folkier on the surface, the music on this album is equally as complex as the electric predecessor. The energy, however, is restrained.

The record kicks off with its title track, a story-ballad recalling the tale of real-life outlaw John Wesley Hardin. The instrumentation is sparse with a focus on Dylan’s harmonica while Dylan’s croons through the fairly straightforward lyrics. In many ways the song is a return to the Americana country folk of his early years, absent, however, of the blatant protest lyrics.

“As I Went Out One Morning” features one of the most memorable, albeit simple bass lines in rock and roll–a rubber band twang courtesy of one Charlie McCoy, who previously lent his guitar talents to “Desolation Row.” The song itself follows suit by weaving a tale from history, possibly referencing Tom Paine, an 18^th century American revolutionary. When Dylan/narrator opens by singing, “to breath the air around Tom Paine’s” the metaphor could be a slight reference to political protest however many of deemed this song (and subsequently this album) an allegory for Christianity. The story of a damsel in chains wanting to escape and the narrator seeing danger (possibly the temptation of sin) only to be saved by Paine, the song’s savior like figure.

The trio of songs that follow–“I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine,” “All Along the Watchtower,” and “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”–are openly pious with references to biblical figures (Bishop St. Augustine who fell to an angry mob), temptations (Judas Priest) and possibly in “Watchtower,” the Tower of Babylon and the city’s demise.

“Watchtower” is undoubtedly John Wesley Harding’s most significant song, one that has been immortalized through countless covers, and continues to leave interpreters puzzled to its meaning. Some believe it references modern day musicians struggling with fame (Dylan being the Joker character needing to break away from the spotlight), others believe it to be a precursor to Dylan’s eventual converting from Judaism to Christianity in the mid-70s, as seen in his born-again period.

What’s most striking about the “Watchtower” of this album is how understated the song is compared to the roaring live anthem renditions that others, including Dylan, would flesh out further down the road. That the true songwriting origins of the song are still up for debate only adds to the song’s allure and easily warrant an entire column based on the song’s controversy.

John Wesley Harding’s second half is truly Dylan’s first foray into country music. There is a notably voice change on tracks like “Drifter’s Escape” and “Dear Landlord,” and the steel guitar notes on the album’s closers, “Down Along the Cover” and “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” are in-the-moment reflections of the Nashville setting, a sound that would come full circle on the radical departure of Nashville Skyline.

Musically speaking, “The Wicked Messenger” is the album’s stand out track, a fiery blues number that is a lot more complex than it appears. From the piercing harmonica trills to the falling guitar licks and jagged rhythm, the song is the one moment on the album in which Dylan truly lets loose. The song snuck into Dylan’s live sets in recent years taking on a new, more timely fierce blues incarnation that perfectly compliments his touring band of recent.

If “The Wicked Messenger” is John Wesley Harding’s understated masterpiece, the aforementioned “I’ll Be Your Baby Tonight” may the one track on the record that is most out of place. Dylan has said that the album’s two closers were the only full songs written and imagined in Nashville. While musically “Baby Tonight” exudes all the sounds of Dylan’s new stomping grounds, it’s blatantly romantic lyrics would have been more welcomed on say Another Side of Bob Dylan. Ultimately the song feels like an after thought tacked onto the album at last minute. The fact that UB40 would later release a cover single of the song doesn’t bode well for its standings in Dylan’s oeuvre.

John Wesley Harding may be one of Dylan’s most underappreciated albums to date. The average Joe is familiar with the immortal “All Along the Watchtower,” however it’s safe to say most people, light “Greatest Hits” Dylan fans included, couldn’t tell you the album the song resides on, or any of the Harding’s other memorable moments.

What’s striking is that besides the notoriety of the album’s surprise hit, this is an unexpected and ambitious offering from Dylan during a time when the artist could have very well attempted to blow listeners away, yet again. Unlike his contemporaries at the time who were experimenting with psychedelia (The Beatles unleashed Sgt. Peppers) and budding art rock (Pink Floyd released Piper At The Gates Of Dawn), Dylan once again chose to go back to his roots, while also exploring historical and non-secular motifs throughout his lyrics. It’s classic Dylan without the grandiosity of his prior ascent to mega-stardom. Simply put the album is a concise collection of stripped down country folk songs that paved the way for future musical transformations, some welcomed, others not so much.

9/10

Essential Tracks: “As I Went Out One Morning,” “All Along the Watchtower,” “Drifter’s Escape,” “The Wicked Messenger”

Film Review: Tyson

2009-04-29T09:16:00.004-05:00

Film Review:
Tyson--R
Directed by James Toback
90 min Documentary
Sony Pictures Classics, 2009

Mike Tyson has always been one of those tragic prominent American figures whose achievements were unfairly overshadowed by his mishaps in life. Like Michael Jackson (from the incredible Thriller to his legal adventures in Neverland), Phil Spector (music revolutionary to big haired, gun toting murderer) or even President Bill Clinton (from the political arena changing “war room” to Monicagate), it’s easy to forget how incredible these individuals once were.

James Toback’s new documentary Tyson makes no attempts at debunking boxing champ Mike Tyson’s various conundrums over the years. Yes, he had a reputation for mistreating woman. Yes, he was a sexual deviant. Yes, he once bit Evander Holyfield’s ear, twice to be exact! In Tyson, Toback lets the cameras roll as Tyson reveals his remarkable life story from doomed street hood to an extremely young heavyweight champion of the world to gossip page luminary.

In 1986 at the terribly immature age of 20 “Iron Mike” won his first world title after knocking out Trevor Berbick in the second round. That prior to this monumental win Tyson had won 26 of his first 28 fights with a knockout, many within the first round, makes his early feats inside the ring all the more remarkable.

The first half of Tyson follows the same routine sports film formula, showing the contender rise from rags to riches through hard work, determination and a supporting mentor figure, in Tyson’s case, veteran manager Cus D’Amato.

He survives the perilous streets of his childhood and finds a constructive outlet for his anger with the gloves. The fight footage is enthralling (he truly was a powerhouse of a boxer) and his explanation of tactics like, "always trying to aim through the back of my opponents head, trying to find my punch going through and ending out the back of the head" is terrifying. When you realize how young and more importantly how naïve Tyson was when he was thrust onto the world stage, it’s a lot easier to find empathy in his downfalls over the years.

The father-like D’Amato brings out the confidence in Tyson but also unleashes the animal that made him such a ferocious force inside the ring. D’Amato’s premature death isn’t examined to great lengths in Tyson but it’s evident that it was a major catalyst for Tyson’s isolation in the world.

Weaving together modern day interview footage with footage from his various fights, Toback succeeds in shedding the limelight on Tyson’s extraordinary rise. The latter half of the film focuses on Tyson’s rough maturation.

There is no excusing Tyson for his poor choices along the way (his sexual escapades, drug/alcohol abuse, violence outside of the ring), no matter how many teary eyed interviews Toback includes. In many ways the film’s failures are found in its glossing over of certain key events, most notably the Desiree Washington rape trial, which was a legal nightmare for Tyson who was notoriously misrepresented by the defense team chosen by Don King.

Some of the film’s multiple screen editing with overlapping dialogue is distracting to the flow (especially considering Tyson's high pitched speech impediment), however, overall the film succeeds in its attempt to allow an older Tyson tell his side of his life story once and for all.

For boxing fanatics Tyson may not be the most revealing film to document Tyson’s career. His notoriety within that world still stands tall, however, for those of us who primarily followed his career through the scandalous five o’clock news spotlights the film is a refreshing reminder of how prolific he was as a fighter (seriously, in one fight Tyson admits to sparring with his opponent while suffering from a nasty case of gonorrhea, which he may or may not of contracted from a hooker).

The tale of the soul who threw it all away is a common one. With Tyson, Toback captures the tragedy of Mike Tyson’s career not by focusing on his misfortunes in life but of the little moments that shaped who he was and is today. By the time the film comes to his lackluster swan song in 2005 against contender Kevin McBride, Tyson appears relieved of the weight of having to be number one. While it’s hard to find admiration in his monetary cop out, fighting McBride solely for the payoff, void of any passion for the sport, Tyson seems wiser and at peace in his later years.

The film’s closing moment, set to Tyson’s somber wheezing breaths in the background, is terribly unglamorous for a film documenting a raging bull of a fighter like Tyson. Still the somber finale is fitting knowing what we now know about Kid Dynamite.

Television Review: Breaking Bad

2009-04-22T14:22:00.004-05:00

Television Review:
Breaking Bad
Created by Vince Gilligan
The Complete First Season
AMC, Episodes 1-7

Shows like AMC’s surprise hit Breaking Bad beg the question, where else can television take viewers?

Ten years ago it might seem absurd to believe that an audience would actually reserve time out of their daily grind for a show revolving around the cooking and dealing of Crystal Meth. Then again the same could be said about any number of mind boggling reality shows being churned out every year (how bout’ the short-lived 2008 dating series Farmer Wants a Wife, which is fairly self-explanatory).

In the rapidly advancing television arena that gave viewers anti-heroes like Tony Soprano, or the testosterone fueled series Rescue Me, the mind numbingly complicated Lost, etc. etc. a show focusing on a flawed but empathetic family man cooking up meth is somehow not only tolerable but viewed as riveting dark humor.

This is not to say there is something morally outrageous with a show revolving around a detrimental drug like meth, since one can find drama in just about any branch of life. What is most surprising about Breaking Bad is just how desensitized the modern viewer has become to the once risqué. Ten years ago meth was nothing more than scary new designer drug from the Pacific Northwest that was cheap to produce and reeked havoc on the human body and psyche. Today, besides being a creeping national epidemic, it’s the subject of an Emmy winning series on the American Movie Classics network.

The strength of Breaking Bad lies in its protagonist, Walter White (Bryan Cranson), an unassuming, average 50-year-old high school Chemistry teacher living in suburban Albuquerque. His wife Skyler (Anna Gunn of Deadwood acclaim) is pregnant with an unplanned child, his son Walt Jr. (RJ Mitte) has cerebral palsy and if life couldn’t get any more complicated, White is diagnosed with terminal lung cancer.

Cranson is the most unassuming choice for White. Prior to this series he was best known for reoccurring roles on Seinfeld as the slimy dentist Tim Whatley, and as the dopey father on the dysfunctional family sitcom Malcolm in the Middle. In Breaking Bad he remarkably morphs into a tragic character coming to grips with his upcoming demise, his run of the mill lifestyle, his past regrets and his financial obligations to his family.

His character belongs in the same family as American Beauty’s Lester Burnham, Jeff Bridges’ character in Fearless and the protagonist of Kurosawa’s masterful Ikiru. Like his cinematic brethren, White’s character has recently awakened from the slumber of his routine life and decides to risk it all, live it up, or, as the title puts it, ‘break bad’.

After discovering the cancer plaguing his smoke-free lungs and learning about the big bucks in the meth game from his DEA brother-in-law, White seeks out help from a former student he once flunked, Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul). When the series pilot commences and concludes (the show’s sharp editing is worth noting) the ill-matched duo has been cooking up inside a R.V. in the middle of the desert, White is stripped-down to his everyman white underwear and he is toting a handgun as the sirens approach from the distance.

The meth lab scheme that White proposes to Pinkman is both a sign of desperation (he needs to save up a lump sum of cash for his family’s future) as well as White’s way of letting loose during his potentially final months on earth. In one of the season’s best moments White erupts in a family intervention aimed at coaxing him into chemo treatment and spells out exactly how he wants to live his life. When the show wants to be sentimental, White’s true to life cancer realities get the job done.

White’s chemistry background remains mysterious throughout the first season. We learn that he was once a brilliant and prosperous mind at CIT but somewhere along the way strayed off this fruitful path and now lectures to detached high school students for just shy of $45K a year.

He knows his way around the substances needed to concoct the highly potent, highly addictive pipe fodder and seems to have an unhealthy fascination with the dangers and anarchy of chemistry. As the series unfolds its clear that there is a little hell-raiser lurking behind the eyes of this average Joe.

To this end the show is also very much a tutorial of some of the more curious outlets of basic chemistry in the same way House M.D. enlightens viewers with viruses and diseases. It’s not surprising that Breaking Bad’s most memorable moments are found in the various make-shift labs that White and Pinkman set up or when the two get creative with their scheming (a darkly comedic gross-out moment involving a corpse, hydrofluoric acid and an unstable porcelain tub is the kind of scene that will either turn viewers away or permanently suck them into the mayhem).

Despite the series’ somber storyline, Cranston brings a level of welcomed dark humor to the role. His witty banter and sarcastic outlook on his predicament pairs well with White’s underused intellect and bottled up rage towards the life he’s chosen. His interactions with the naïve Pinkman, a thugged out, wannabe player who is also in desperate need of more character development, showcase some of the show’s finest writing. Then there’s the larger than life Latino drug dealer named Tuco Salamanca (played with gleeful exuberance by veteran character actor Raymond Cruz) who gives viewers a hell of a cliffhanger during the season finale.

Breaking Bad’s first season, a meager seven episodes, is not without its flaws. A great deal of time is spent detailing the production and business side of White’s meth trade, however, little attention is reserved for the drug’s societal effects. White manages to cook up an extremely pure batch of “glass,” which according to a character can keep you high for days, however, the series fails to show the users who are filling White’s wallet. Programs like HBOs The Wire, which to be fair belongs in its own category of television series, succeed by channeling all sides of the drug war. In its first season Breaking Bad takes a timely social issue like meth abuse, brings it to suburbia but fails to show the bigger picture. For anyone privy to crystal meth’s effect on this country, it is widely known that it is hardly a petty drug.

Besides being terribly addictive (addiction is ripe for dramatic television), meth remains one of the most physically harmful drugs available, one that few are able to successfully recover from. That this side of Breaking Bad is still a mystery (after all the show’s is currently in its second season) is an aspect of the series that is fairly bothersome and irresponsible.

White is clearly throwing caution to the wind since learning of his cancer and his actions are seldom those of a completely sane man, however, through Cranston’s refined performance and the little background info available, it’s safe to say White has a good head on his shoulders. To believe that he wouldn’t concern himself with the repercussions of his highly potent meth formula–both on his family and the drug using community–is the one aspect of Breaking Bad that is a bit hard to swallow and hopefully will be developed/remedied further on down the road.

Television as a medium has come a long way since the early days of three major networks, a handful of nightly newscasts, and the occasional prudent sitcom. There was a time when the riskiest moments on TV were live prime-time disasters (Elvis Costello going against the corporate grain on Saturday Night Live), controversial episodes (Seinfeld’s notorious “Puerto Rican Day Parade” turn for example), or the Godfathers of Reality TV, Cops and America’s Most Wanted. To think that in this day and age a gripping dramatic series about a middle age man cooking up Crystal Meth would be as engrossing as your average hour-long drama is yet another indication to the endless directions writers can take television, truly rivaling that of its more revered cinematic and literary counterparts.

Breaking Bad is as gritty and risqué–censored language, blood soaked scenes of violence and even a bit of backside male nudity–as other envelope pushing cable network series like The Shield or AMC’s other golden child, Mad Men. The acting is polished and, in the case of Cranston, very surprising. At a paltry seven episodes, the series’ first season has a few glitches to work out, hopefully in the current second season but overall it is a unique shining light of a program amid an overly saturated market of bad sitcoms and mind numbing reality offerings.