PAZZ AND JOP PREDICTIONS?

Hey all - long time member, first time poster.

So - I threw this question up on Pop Life but I wanted to put this towards the FM clan since I'm sure most of you will be voting in the Pazz and Jop. Who's gonna chart on the Top 10? As I noted, this has less to do with your own personal favorites and more to do with guessing what the P&J consensus is going to end up with.

A personal shot in the dark, in vague order of ranking (but don't hold me to it)

1 & 2) Kanye West and Franz Ferdinand.
3, 4 & 5) Brian Wilson, The Streets, Loretta Lynn
6, 7 & 8) U2, TV on the Radio, Modest Mouse
9 & 10) Dizzee Rascal, Danger Mouse

Rollie's Top Ten Most Uncharacteristic Songs From 2004:
The Wreckoning

hey, this is my first foray into this collective, so let's do a list says my brain. this thing has songs that are mostly from 2004 but some of which are not. yeah, pal. it's stuff that for random reasons, i might not have liked at all in 2003.

10. Franz Ferdinand "Michael"
being someone who is actually not gay, this is about the peak of my less-than-eternal-flame. i hear this song and think that maybe if the feather boa i put on has racing stripes, it might just mean i'm aggro-flamboyant. aggro-flambo sounds like a greek meal with flamingo in it.

9. Dizzee Rascal "Give U More"
did you know that there was a short period in late 2002-early 2003 where i couldn't stand dizzee rascal? i don't really remember why. i might've just been sick of hearing about this guy everywhere or something. i had only heard 'fix up' and i was like 'it's alright, but put your pants on'. it clicked when i first heard 'cut em off' in a record store. from then on, i'm super fan all of a sudden.

8. The Fiery Furnaces "Quay Cur"
it's not that i wouldn't normally like it or something. it's just i was totally taken aback by how powerfully this album smashed me.

7. Snoop Dogg ft. Pharrell "Drop It Like It's Hot"
if you were to tell me last year that snoop would make one of his personal top three all-time singles in 2004, i might've actually pissed right in your mouth. i'm seriously a wild savage and i'm known to do that sort of shit, especially when talking about singles.

6. Lil' Wayne "Cash Money Millionaires"
i was never one of those indie rap-crits who got into cash money and decided that their rampant opulence was sort of a subversive message about the failings of commercial rap's self-destructive mechanism. i hate when people do that. i just thought they were all shitty rappers and that the beats were a little too bright for my tastes. but mannie 'money' fresh, who said to moog out and fucking CRASH THE PARTY, dude? i heard this in a car ride to norfolk looking for homecoming parties and it magnified the windows-down head nod several fold. THIS JACKET THESE SHOES DON'T COME OUT THIS YEAR 'go dj' is great too.

5. Ludacris "Number One Spot"
i hate songs that are a bad idea and i hate songs that are outdated. this song is actually both. it samples the austin powers theme and this album came out like a month ago. now, chris 'really fucking short in person' bridges, what makes you think i want to hear you do this stupid song in 2004, when tonedeff DESTROYS the same sample and idea and was supposed to be on the actual soundtrack for one of the films a few months ago? well, actually, turns out your incredible delivery and the great chop-and-go southern hi-hat shit from dj green lantern (how unforeseen) works like a solid song. please get more timbaland. thx xo roland

4. Brandy "I Tried"
while watching a brandy video with my sister a couple years ago, i once told her that not only would i kick brandy out of bed, but if i were in a situation where i could do it, i'd kick her out of a plane. i think she's actually pretty awful at singing, has contrived lyrics/songwriters and is a total no-talent. but this song is a burner!@!! obviously, timbaland supplies a genius beat that melds sample, synth and what i can assume is live orchestra for an insanely textured, nuanced production. this same guy can make beats like this and then drop some pretty one-note shit like 'the potion' by ludacris. whatever.

3. Joanna Newsom "Peach, Plum, Pear"
rollie in 2003: "holy shit, how did this witch fly into my stereo? GET IT OUT"
rollie in 2004: "hey brandon, you gotta hear this witch that plays the harp, it's pretty fucking awesome"

2. Billy Joel "Movin' Out"
It's a funny story, actually. I originally only got it to figure out what the sample from Cam'ron and Juelz Santana's "U Oughta Know" was saying. Now I've vowed to make it my karaoke standard. 'He's trading in his Chevy for a Cadillacacacacaacacac!!!!!!!!!!!!!'

1. Kate Bush "Boobushka"
I got this song because ILM said that hip hop loves Kate Bush and because i love hip hop and Russian terminalogy, i gave it a run. pretty cool song. i sampled it and i have sung it pretty loudly in the past year. the song is a weird idea though. sending scented letters, showing up and stuff, fake names, it's all manipulative and the husband would have to be a dumb ass to be tricked into all this.

SOME CHANGES AROUND HERE

first, comments should now be on, so cross yr fingers and tell us the truth

secondly, we have a whole bunch of new writers who kick ass, so stay tuned for a link section

thirdly, we are hoping to blow yr mind in the new year, write us an email to tell us how to do that

PAZ Y LUZ EN EL ANO NUEVO

Ten.
1. Lil' Jon and the rise & rise of the south:He's a maniac, and what seemed a textbook one trick pony has sprouted the most fiendish legs. Check just the beginnings of his 04 hitlist: Yeah!; No Problem; Get Some Crunk in Yo System; Goodies; Let's Go; Toma; What U Gon Do. People have been popping shots at Jon, saying he's pure business, or that he can't rap. The former charge is ridiculous, the whole game is about dollars, everyone's trying to sell you their record, fool, it's just the degree to which they conceal it. The south has always had an admirable degree of candour about this aspect to their business (Luke Skyywalker invented it, Ca$h Money honed it, Lil' Jon's publicly listing it), but the real issue is still musical, those records all bang like Hiroshima. And saying he can't rap, well that's even dumber. It isn't even rap music, it's thunder and joy and the born soundtrack to execution and procreation, trying to compare it to classical NYC rap is like comparing The Godfather with Bad Boys II, and as long as Lil' Jon's addictively profane nonsense is running radio I'll keep blowing bass-bins with it.
2. Kanye West and a play for the soul of hip-hop:Kanye ran the year just as much as Jon, he just timed his run a little badly (hey, he was on debut), and let that savvy southerner steal a little of his shine. No matter, his work with Twista, Jada, Jon Legend, Brandy and, most emphatically his damn self will live forever. Saying he's the most honest mc ever would be total bullshit, really, but he seems the most regular, the one whose neuroses and general demeanour mostly closely resemble our own. Alone, enough, but to match that to a set of productions which display a virtuoso's ability on the heartstrings, well now you're starting to look a whole lot less human, kid. And shit, if Never Let You Down was his sole contrubtion to recorded music, he would still be a titan.
3.Brian Wilson at the Aotea Centre Theatre, 19/12/2004All year we'd been subject to endless reports of this rapture, filtering down to the bottom of the earth, carrying the dead certainty that it was history that would once again never make it this far south. But this was truly awe-inspiring. 19 of the most inspiring, sympathetic musicians, carrying those celestial harmonies and in a mix that defied belief, with Wilson the eternal bruised and bemused teenager, trapped in the lumpy, ill-fitting trojan horse of a paunchy 50ish man. He seemed faintly other-wordly, making strange, impenetrable hand gestures and mostly oblivious to anything beyond his autocue. Smile was mystifying, delightful, a glimpse of the purity and purpose of Wilson's world, but it couldn't compete with the limitless well of longing and emotion that the Beach Boys catalogue, so lovingly played, represented. A moment so rare you're incredulous that you even bore witness to it, but now I believe in magic.
4. Black Chiney- Supa Chiney Vol. 8.1So dancehall couldn't get near matching its monstrous takeover in 03, somehow Chiney managed to make that all irrelevant with a mixtape of spectacular audacity. Okay, so that opening blend of the Scooby Doo theme with Elephant Man's rapturous interjections seems like kids stuff, but the genius is that it never rises above that level. It makes idiocy a virtue, and in so doing plays directly to the manifest strengths of dancehall in 2004. Namely volume, repetition and melodic spasticity. So while few of the rhythm's contained therein could be called truly first rate (Kopa, Dancehall Rock, Coolie Dance and Perilous excepted) Willie Chin found the buried treasure, sequenced it immaculately, gathered some outstanding dub-plates and intersected the whole thang with the finest blunted phone calls to create a true Jamaican pearl outta a year when it seemed a long-shot at best. Plus those versions on Toxic are not far off the most thrilling sonic dichotomies of the year.
year.
5. DJ Buddha- Caribbean ConnectionWhile Dancehall seemed to fall back a little, Reggaeton reared up from nowhere and frankly, who knows where this might end up. A scene so full of barely tapped potency it’s hurts your head to even think about for too long. I must confess to knowing dick all about this mostly impenetrable scene, except that it sounds like the most vibrant new Pop Music to have emerged in 2004, and that Buddha’s blend of it with the years baddest JA vocals (What A Tragedy; Picture This, Bounce It Right) made for a mixtape that just wouldn’t quit. And while you lose half the fun of MCing when the language barrier’s erected, that’s over-compensated by the boundless pleasures of the island cadence bursting ecstatically over those ostensibly similar productions. Plus having the sense to understand that Bun Bad Mind exists outside all earth music and thus (if it makes your tape at all) must necessarily be the last word. Word.
6. Phelps & Munro- Live at the Kings Arms
I think subconsciously most of us already knew that Slash’s solo on November Rain was about the pinnacle of humanity’s artistic achievements. We daren’t admit it to ourselves lest it render all of our carefully maintained obsessions instantly obsolete, so we squirreled the fact away, dismissing our disturbingly euphoric reaction to its airing as a strange quirk that would disappear with studied inattention. It took true courage for Phelps & Munro to laser in on the core lunatic appeal of the piece, to lovingly disassemble it and then piece by piece re-organise it into this towering construction. Initially synthesizers whir, evoking nothing but vorsprung durch technik, a focused mechanized efficiency, and for many glorious seconds only an oddly ominous tone pervades the air. But something’s brewing, there’s a ghost in this machine, and when it rears up, apropos of nothing but signaling the demise of empires it is a glorious aural explosion, as that pompous, melodramatic masterpiece is regurgitated in fascinating new forms. The crashing stadium drums reverse and submerge without rhythm or reason, the fabulously empty LA dispassion of the crescendos chop and collide like the oceans at Cape Horn, rendering a familiar pattern newly exhilarating as it endlessly deconstructs itself.
Then as suddenly as it came, it is gone. The story of a hurricane.
7. Xiu-Xiu and Electrelane and TV on the Radio and The Streets and Usher
Not the most obvious quintet but hang back in the cut a minute, please! Cuz last year there was a worrying preponderance of hella hip, mondo danceable and all-round super records that had not one part per million of regular human emotion associated with them whatsoever. The DFA, those No Wave revivalists, the Tigerbeat6 squad, all put out some great records with a huge bottom end and no feelings. So it was extremely gratifying to hear some soul bearing records, utilizing entirely different methodology but always cutting right to the very core of just how mystifying, unpleasant and occasionally magnificent it is to have a heart.
8. There is no eight.
9.Todd Rundgren’s A Wizard, A True Star
I remember reading about this record a long time ago, and filing it away as something to be eventually located when I came across it. Like you do with millions of old records, but this one took forever. But finally Hamilton’s messy, fiscally retarded, Hindsight Records did me a helluva favour in dropping a vg/vg copy into my lap for NZ$4. And was it ever worth the wait. I dunno, maybe I missed the bulletin where this was hailed as an all-american classic from the pantheon waah waah, u know the listing, I never seen it anyway. But it had me jaw agape from day one, epic, tear soaked balladry, space rock galore, pearlescent AOR and sonic bravado that remains astounding even at this distance. But mainly an all too rare sense that music is vast and impenetrable and that if one is true to it then your record shouldn’t sound anything like anyone else’s. And the only record that remotely gets near the sprawling magnificence of A Wizard, A True Star is the Faust Tapes. Now, don’t get me wrong, those Germans were utterly peerless, but right now, sober and seated, AWATS seems wilder, truer and more so in every respect.
10.The re-election of George W. Bush
Because when the citizenry are unhappy, they make the most wonderful sound. Scant reward, in many respects, but we’ve had four musical years that brutalise Slick Willy’s blasé 90s, and well, I could do with four more. Nothing good can come of this time politically, economically or legislatively, but well, we are gonna get some phenomenal records between now and 2008. Sonic Nurse, American Idiot and One Beat were all products of raw indignation, and the general climate is such that music has not been in such rude health across the board since I don’t know when. Maybe Vietnam. And when you’re grasping at straws, knowing that the administration’s activities are likely to have the unintended consequence of many more exceptional records (both explicitly and implicitly political) over the next four years might be cold comfort, but it’s better than no comfort at all. Right?

Top Ten of Most Annoying Things

1. Rammstein: Every time I hear a note of their music, I want to run for cover. Neue Rawk für stumme Leute. Note to the R-lovers: You are obv on drugs or lack a few braincells. I used freedom of speech and good taste when picking this as top offender.

2. Franz Ferdinand: English Scottish art academy fops go Top of the Pops. Sorry, I quit university for a reason. I just don't like fey Academic Pop. I like my music to come from the pelvis shooting bubbles of hormones.

3. Who didn't die this year? From Robert Quine to ODB, every month had a clutch of people leaving us.

4. Chique Trash Chixor, Paris Hilton, covers David Bowie's Fame. That's so not hot. Vanilla Ice come BACK! We forgive you! Stick with what you do best, namely skeleton porn.

5. Reunions vs Breakups: What was the worst? Guided by Voices breaking up or Duran Duran producing a record to cure insomnia? After a lengthy tour throughout the US - did Pollard consciously forget about me and the other European fans - Guided by Voices breaks up in a million solo projects. There won't be any teenage suicides, but we'll still be hugging our Sandbox.

6. Dimebag Darrell gets killed on stage. I was never much of a Pantera fan, but WTF is up with shooting your hero because you can't get over the breakup of Darrell's band?

7. MTV has forgotten about the M. The last time I watched MTV, I had to wait half an hour to see Blue. I am not interested in Real Life part 51237 nor how many badrooms Hillary Duff has in her cabana. I want music. Now. Oh, I have an iPOD. YAY.

8. Wiley rules. The crowd disagrees.

9. Ashlee Simpson's humpty dumbadee dance. Who cares if she lipsynchs? Give the punkafied popstar a break, she has reflux. More importantly: if she's a former ballet dancer, who was her teacher? Shoot the man in the kneecaps.

10. I hate top tens.

Top Ten Tracks Of The Week From The Top Ten Compilations, Reissues, And Best-Of Albums Of The Month. As Of Today. None Of Which Are New Or Guaranteed To Be In Print Or Easy To Find.


Kim Fowley - Underground Animal (Dionysus/Bacchus Archives) - Genius or charlatan? I say genius. If there had been a market in the 60's for teen polka instrumentals, Kim would have been on the phone with a guy who knew a guy who could play the accordion in a heartbeat. He was quick, shameless and weird. Three attributes that come in handy when your calling in life is the novelty record market. This comp has some great quickies on it from Boystown, Ason Martin & The Moon Discs, The Bush, The Doll House, and Vito & The Hands. What's your pleasure? Ersatz girl groups, ersatz surf, ersatz Beatles, ersatz psych? There is something for everyone. My pick is "Astrology" under Kim's own name. A struggling Bo Diddley beat, back-up vocals courtesy of the Mermaids and Kim's inexplicable Count Dracula vocals help push this ode to astrological charts and their efficiency in determining one's significant other over the top. My guess about Kim's vocals: He took what was basically a 50's-style girl group pop tune and added a little ghoulishness just in case it got mistaken for the next "Monster Mash". It didn't, but hey, you never know!

Johnny Dodds - "Spirit Of New Orleans" 1926-1927 (MCA) - Whether with Jimmy Bertrand's Washboard Wizards, Jimmy Blythe's Owls or with his own Black Bottom Stompers, punk clarinetist Johnny Dodds always took Nawlins jazz out back for a thrashing. He didn't mess around! A seriously emotive trudge thru "Wild Man Blues" by Earl Hines and a moonlighting Louis Armstrong nearly steals the show on this set, but top tune for me would have to be the barnburning "Joe Turner's Blues". Great orchestration and swinging solos all around. This is vital stuff. Also of note: "Clarinet Wobble", the vocal take of "After You've Gone", and the faultless structure of "When Erastus Plays His Old Kazoo".

Fast Product - Mutant Pop 78/79 (PVC) - This is one of those comps of post-76 new wave excitement that still holds up nicely. The faves for many would be Mekons "Never Been In A Riot", Gang Of Four's "Love Like Anthrax" or maybe Human League's "Being Boiled". And rightly so. But today it's a toss-up for me between "Adultery" by Scars (those groovy drums kill me every time. Shake those sticks, Scars drummer-dude!) or "After Dark" by Flowers. "After Dark" has that breathless immediacy that spells excitement the first time you hear it or anything like it. I probably felt the same sense of discovery when I first heard Siouxsie. And maybe you felt it when you first heard the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Hahahahaha!!!! I'm sorry. I'm not laughing at you, I'm laughing WITH you! What do you mean you aren't laughing? If it makes you feel any better, I'm an old fatso. Sheesh, the difference between Mekons of October 29 & 30, 1977 and Mekons of November 29, 1978 is surpassed only by the difference between the sound of the music Mekons were making in late 1977 and what music sounded like when this comp appeared in 1980. It was a whole 'nother world by then. Hell, I was gearing up for an ant invasion by 1980. What a difference a little over two years makes.

Girls In The Garage Vol.4 (Romulan) - Everyone should own the entire Girls In The Garage series. Essential stuff. The best track on Vol.4? Hmmm, another tough one. "Ringo, I Love You" by Bonnie Jo Mason a.k.a. Cher? "Me & My Miniskirt" by Minnie & The Kneebones? "Surfer Stomp" by Kay Bell & The Tuffs? (For the record, surf music sung by gals is 1000 times more adorable than anything has a right to be. If the ladies had taken over the scene, it would still be a viable genre today.) "Mr.Genie Man" by Society's Children? (Solid fuzz, tough garage vocals. I would kill to hear more from this group.) And the winner is: "Fraternity U.S.A." by The Ladybugs! Faux British accents, faux Beatle beat, and multiple shout-outs to all the Greeks on fraternity row. But really, it's the faux British accents that make this record indispensable.

Best Of The Gap Band - Gap Gold (Total Experience) - I'll go with "Shake" this week. I've been mainlining disco drum & bass lately. The tighter, leaner, and meaner the better. Percussion breakdowns in the middle of a song are a plus right now. Cowbells optional.

The Bee Gees - Rare, Precious & Beautiful Vol.2 (Polydor) - "I Was A Lover, A Leader Of Men" has that great aussie Beatle twang guitar on it. As simple as outback dust. And the cool creepy organ coda. "Claustrophobia" has the deathless line: "But I get claustrophobia, cuz there's too many boys on your mind". "Theme From Jamie McPheeters" is a great aussie wagon train anthem about California. Maybe. "Could It Be" is great aussie Dave Clark 5 jangle. But "To Be Or Not To Be" has a slamming drum beat and valid notions of what a rave-up should sound like.

Fuzz, Flaykes, & Shakes Vol.4: Experiment In Color (Dionysus/Bacchus Archives) - The Rock Shop can't stand the pain any longer. His Majesty's Coachmen don't want to see you. The Trojans Of Evol ask: Why me? The Canterbury Fair are worried about the man with the glove in his hand. The Soultans wonder how anyone could even exist without soul. The Blues Company don't care where you live. The What's New ain't got no use for anything. Jeez, so much for peace & love. Buncha downers. So why beat around the bush. The track to beat is unknown Sonny Villega's "I Cry". Punchy organ, snappy, twisting, fuzz guitar-work, and Sonny's utter resignation and acceptance that he has blown things big time. Wait, I lied. The track to beat is "If You Want Me" by The Menaces. So tentative, sad, and downbeat you could kill yerself to it with a smile on yer face.

Jackie Cain & Roy Kral - Jackie & Roy (MCA) - They made it look so easy, didn't they? Man oh man, the way their voices intertwined and rode and surfed the rhythms and melodies. Like something graceful in flight on a clear day above the clouds. A bird? A balloon? A plane? A kite? Maybe a bird. Jackie solo is a dream. ("Angel Eyes" is such a great song. I'm gonna have to dig for some solo albums. She must have made some. Never thought to look. Just as I can't get enough of Keely sans Louis, I could go for some straight-up Jackie. Not that I don't love Roy! I love Roy! He's the coffee in her cream. The cat in her pajamas. They're "Two Peas In A Pod"- which gets my vote for Jackie & Roy tune of the week. But there is so much to choose from. Where's my Bear Family boxed-set!?) "Like Tweedledum & Tweedledee, my pal, you're lost without me"....

The Poets - The Poets (Immediate) - They were poets! And they knew it! They were Andrew Loog Oldham's next big thing and they did okay in the beat group sweepstakes even if not many remember them now. I say pick this up if you see it. Some wonderful melancholy tunes in a Scottish mood. Their frilly shirts masked the hidden depths of brooding loch dwellers. "Now We're Thru" has that great percussive acoustic guitar that beats down like a hammer. It truly doesn't sound like much else around at the time. There were literally thousands of bands in the 60's that had one or two shining moments in the sun. The Poets had 5 or 6 of them.

MC5 - Human Being Lawnmower (Total Energy) - I buy most MC5 odds & sods collections that I see cuz I'm silly that way. Apparently, there just aren't enough unreleased live cuts, studio outtakes, and assorted ephemera to satisfy me. They are always fun to hear. The live "Motor City Is Burning" on here is only beaten for sheer sweat and energy by the live "I Believe To My Soul" which is only toppled by the instrumental alternate take of "Looking At You" which is ....you get the picture. Rama la fa fa fa, motherfucker! Oh yeah, um, the live "Rama La Fa Fa Fa" is tops on this set.

my top 10 list of favorite moments in 2004

1. The moments on Ely Guerra’s "Te Amo, I Love You" when it changes from being floaty trip-hop slowjam into total rawk beast, courtesy of some slammin’-ass guitars from Ely and Pancho Lelo de Larrea and Ely wailing like a cranked-up banshee: "Yo arriba! Por favor! Mi amor, déjalo!" Actually, all the moments on the album (Sweet & Sour, Hot y Spicy) where she loses control and becomes the Mexican Janis Joplin, or Ann Wilson, or Robert Plant, or whoever she’s channeling, because DAYUM SHE SEXY, all cinco feet nothin’ of her, fine fine woman in an afro wig

2. Jadakiss with the simplest best line of the year, maybe: "You know why they made the new twenties? Cause I got all the old ones." I don’t know why I love this line so much; it’s less political than all the other lines, it’s probably jacked from something else, etc. But I just love it, especially because I know Anthony Hamilton is lurking around the corner to beat that chorus into submission.

3. The loop on Luiz Gayotto’s "Hilária," composed of people laughing in Brazilian Portuguese (is that possible?). This album, Fragmentos de musica livre e espontaneo, is like Brian Eno in the 1970s, just great pop music composed by a loony avant-garde genius, but I love this track in particular, especially when he starts tweaking the loop ever so slightly, making it into blips and bleeps and bops over that insistent beat.

4. Chingo Bling’s telephone conversation with the shoe guy who wants him to endorse "Air Chingo" sandals, and Chingo doesn’t want to sell out (the skit is at the end of "Fuck a Major Label," after all) so he makes the corporate tool guy yell "Chow me de moneyz!" like he’s Cherry McGwire. All of The Tamale Kingpin is pretty funny like that – even better is the skit where Chingo is president and the reporter asks him why he built a plywood room onto the White House for his abuelita.

5. Driving through town with my brother Jeff listening to Lil’ Jon’s "Stop Fuckin Wit Me," which is like the dude from Suicidal Tendencies’ "Institutionalized" grew up and now has child-support and employment issues. We had the windows down in the cold so we could yell "All I wanted was a Pepsi!!!!"

6. Finding Carlinhos Brown’s Alfagamabetizado for $1.00 at the Frugal Muse Outlet Store. This was like my Holy Grail moment of 2004, comparable to finding the original vinyl of the Four Season’s Genuine Imitation Life Gazette for $.99 last year.

7. Watching some corny awards show with my daughter a couple of months ago when Alicia Keys came out and went into "Karma," just tearing it up. Emma and I looked at each other and just nodded, all serious, like "Aw yeah, that’s our girl!" She just got the album last night for Hanukkah, and I hope she opens it soon so I can hear it.

8. Bursting into tears, late at night, listening to "Believe You Me" by Allison Moorer, when I realized how far ahead of all other country songwriters she is right now, which is to say "all other American songwriters."

9. Somehow becoming the go-to guy for Sao Paulo musicians who want their stuff to get reviewed in the U.S. There was a period where I was getting a brown-paper package every other day with weird scrawls on the outside and weird wonderful wild music on the inside.

10. Hearing the most beautiful song I have ever heard in my life: "Hecho en Buenos Aires," by Bersuit Vergabarat.

(Deleting duplicate posts, had to re-post; the date may or may not have changed, but the post remains virtually the same) Sunday,11/28: Riding home, Saturday night, in the afterglow of a post-Thanksgiving lunch-and-afternoon with relatives, more laidback than expected. Top the hill, tilt toward the welcome, familiar sight: well-developed truckstop, big motel, a couple of shops. In the dark, mostly, but what's visible, even to the traveler who's never been here before, is a warm garland of lights, all around the intersection down there.
Swerve into the left lane, no matter what's coming around its bend, because of having just seen a walker on the right, in the headlight's furtherest reach. Tall narrow forward-tilting flat back of a short canvassy jacket, seeming to erase the sight of itself. Wheeling away from/alongside him, dimness registers slightly spikey Beatle-y bowl hair, head still tilting slightly, but unbowed.
He's still walking the same pace, in the music of his drama, his sulk, his sub-star-so-far trek. In the music of screeching brakes, screaming curses, shooting middle fingers, craning necks, jangling nerves, already slamming memories. Last night, and life goes on, with or without the walker. Another lost classic.

One of the advantages of the internet is that each record is available. Just search for No New York or Geva Geva in Ebay or GEMM and a week later that “rare” bootleg will drop in your mail box. That feeling of finally obtaining something elusive has shortened from a lifetime to ten minutes. The day I dreamt of that pre-Fleetwood Mac BuckinghamNicks record finished when I got a DSL connection: I could download it from Soulseek before I could say “lost classic.” So I had to adapt, I had to reconsider what a lost classic is. The positive thing is that you’ll always be able to find every Boredoms side project in existence. The bad side is that Ashlee Simpson won’t disappear – you’ll bump into her record occasionally, when you open someone’s MP3 folder or think you’re downloading that Superpitcher remix.
But then there’s also the lost MP3 classic. The internet made it possible to (usually accidently) discover gems on blogs, obscure sites – click a million times and you’ll never find that Russian nerd’s homepage again – and Soulseek. I still remember hearing Res’ Golden Boys for the first time. It was as much to do with the right moment in time – I had just read Barthes so anything remotely meta hit me in the right places – but also, otherwise it wouldn’t be a classic, its innate goodness. “Golden Boys” is a warning for everyone, including the singer. Maybe that’s why Res never really hit it big? She warns about the yearning for stardom. As much as you may dream of being a Golden Boy, you’ll soon discover that all is not what it seems. Stardom doesn’t erase insecurity – something Robbie Williams exploits as much as suffers from. I love how Res snarls the words and then suddenly her voice soothes. It’s tough love she’s giving you/herself. So I guess, I shouldn’t have expected anything differently: the public demands that you beg for love. She was much too self-aware of the pitfalls of success, she didn’t really seem to need it so much. Res was my lost classic about three years ago. My next guess is Estelle, dubbed the new Miss Dynamite, who just released “Free.” The single’s message is basically put a smile on your face and you’ll soon be happy. So why does she need success?
Actually what is a lost classic these days? With forums, blogs and online magazines, you’ll always be able to find a scene where a particular record is well-known. Or what about the radio? Max Sedgley’s Happy seems to be the only thing that my local radio plays these days. Next week he’ll be replaced by something else, forever lost. Or what about losing your personal favourite/classic when your friend rummages through your record collection? Does it make you happy or do you regret losing that record? Enjoying Beyonce with a million others is one thing,but sharing No New York with others has never really appealed to me. It’s difficult to even play the record when someone’s in the same room. What can I say, I’m an egotistical bitch who doesn’t want to share her personal classics.

The idea that there can even BE lost classics in this age of the Internet and the obsessive record collecting and notating and such is kind of stupid. But here at The Freelance Mentalists, when we say stupid we mean stupid FRESH.

So I am going to here nominate an album that I guarandamntee none of you have ever heard; or, if you’ve heard it, you won’t think it’s THE LOST CLASSIC because you’re too busy monkeying around with SmiLE (which I haven’t heard because for me because I’m on a budget and because for me the Beach Boys fell the eff off when they stopped singing about cars and because I was reasonably sure that white people would love that shit like they loved "Cheers" and "Friends" and "Seinfeld" and "Frasier," and I love two of those shows and like another of them but COME ON NOW), or some Captain Beefheart thing or whatever.

I’m nominating an album that I’d heard most of the songs of already, but never heard it all together before the way it was supposed to be, back before we all convinced ourselves that albums didn’t need to be novels but rather collections of unlinked short stories or even books of poetry. No, this is a novel, a concept album really more or less, and it’s a good (if sappy) one, and it’d probably turn your hipster stomach if you listened to it casually without wanting to try. But if you can find it (I just grabbed it in a Baltimore store for $7.99 used, CD reissued in 1990) and you let yourself feel it, you will understand that The 5th Dimension and Jimmy Webb produced one HELL of a Lost Classic when they turned out The Magic Garden in 1968.



I have a lot to say about this record but this isn't really supposed to be a review, so here's some history. Bones Howe hooked the 5D up with Webb from the very beginning ("Up Up & Away," people!), and thought this second record could be a masterpiece along the lines of Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper. But Webb was hip-deep in depression stemming from a bad breakup, showing up for meetings with holes in his shoes, and the singers were like dood OMG WTF, and Webb was pulling out utopian craziness like the title track (lyrics like "it's the place I've made for you / from pipecleaners, hearts, and dominoes / and it won't fall down") and hippiedelic stuff like "Orange Air" and "Summer's Daughter" and pretentious orchestral insanity like the suite called "Dreams/Pax/Nepenthe" and "Requiem: 820 Latham." There's also a couple of amazing singles: "Carpet Man" got to #29 (not bad, but their first single went #1, so kind of a disappointment) and "Paper Cup" stiffed big-time. Oh, and a funked-up label-insistent cover of "Ticket to Ride"!!!

Listen, this is nutso. The arrangements are over-busy but GORGEOUS, sitars everywhere and soaring strings and the lushest vocal charts ever heard -- seriously, the 5th Dimension is the top vocal group of all time, every one a winner but magic together. Billy Davis Jr. is the main voice, this is a guy album because it's rife with Webbian self-pity, but he lovingly gifts Marilyn McCoo (THE MOST BEAUTIFUL WOMAN IN THE HISTORY OF POP MUSIC GOSH DARN IT) and Florence LaRue (also hottt, but no one can beat MMC) with a beautiful but demeaning tune called "The Girls' Song" that talks about how she's gonna take the dude back if he ever calls her, oh poor long-suffering woman, geez, Webb was a schlockster when he was in a misogynist mood! But Billy D. is in TOP FORM, as are Lamont McLemore and Ron Townson, really they were so wonderful.

And ambitious! This is a group that sang the Declaration of Independence at Nixon, y'know, and this was pretty brave of them (okay, they were tools of their label, but whatever) to enlist their fine un-hip un-funky talents in the service of a mad genius like Webb. If he hadn't hated women quite so much, this would be one of the top five greatest pop albums in history; as it is, it's in the top 20 probably, but it sank like a stone, even with the Neil Diamondisms of "Carpet Man" ("she walks all over you, she knows she can") and the popularity of "The Worst That Can Happen" (a big hit for The Brooklyn Bridge a year later, causing the label to reissue this album under that title, which sucks but whatever).

It's hard to describe how great this album sounds. It's a unified piece (except for "Ticket to Ride," which fits in anyway) describing a casual descent from hope into hopelessness, from letting her walk all over you to accepting your new place at the bottom of society, doing drugs and living like a homeless bum. All fantasy stuff for Webb -- 'what if I could just drop out from sadness and heartbreak, depriving the world of the wonder that is me?' -- because he was incredibly rich and famous anyway, and sadly this album is hoist on that petard...but it's still so pretty in its self-pity! This might be as sad/pathetic/angry as Marvin Gaye's Here, My Dear or Allison Moorer's The Duel or Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, might hate people and society more than any punk record, Hal Blaine whacking the snare on "Requiem: 820 Latham" like he's tapping the nails into the coffin of innocence, it kicks ass on both Sgt. Pepper AND Pet Sounds, it might be one of my top fivers after all.

And NO ONE TALKS ABOUT IT. Oh it's too lovely, and it's lost. Find it, dig it, reestablish it in whatever canon you want...or don't. Leave me alone with it if you want. I won't mind. I feel a lot like sad depressed Jimmy Webb these days. Life is always looking up from inside my paper cup.

These Aliens ain't gonna fall for love, man. If we humans were truly dedicated to the whole universal domination deal we would’ve nailed it by now. It's our humanity that's held us back, cuz we got way too wound up with religion and war and feudalism and yes, love, to ever get it together enough to go space invading. And that's unlikely to change in the foreseeable, we're regressing right now, so the chances of us ever getting unified enough to achieve something as cataclysmic as inter-planetary conquest are pretty much nil. And when I say unified, I'm not talking the O'Jays utopian Unity, I'm talking Triumph of the Will-ing, Pyramid construct-ing, Jonestown breakfast-ing type togetherness. A mindless, fascistic devotion to achieving something ostensibly beyond ourselves, or at the very least the ability to impose the semblance of such a state upon all the other inhabitants of our bio-sphere. The Aliens didn't get here by singing, or caring much for culture beyond its most base and utilitarian elements. They got here by corralling their resources and focussing on the end goal. Trans-galaxial warfare ain't no picnic, ok?
I think these Aliens are gonna be looking for some hint that we humans might be more useful alive than dead, as slaves or whatever, rather than just raping our planet for its raw resources (our ability to do just that may already have impressed them enough to give us a run in the first place.) So I figure we hit 'em with our best shot, our most technologically advanced, inhuman (=Alien) anthem of recent times. Cuz to justify humanity's continuing existence doesn't necessarily mean to demonstrate what we consider to be the most valuable traits of humanity, but in this instance primarily our ability to transcend them. So rather than show our capacity for forgiveness, reflection, reason, or whatever other 'enlightened' aspects of our character we've grown fond of, we need to stress our more militant and servile traits to let the Aliens deem us useful. Then maybe we can whack 'em when their backs are turned, using guile, cunning and subterfuge.
Regardless, the song which most powerfully combines these sentiments must be Elephant Man's Bun Bad Mind. The old testament religiosity that is the songs bedrock has got to appeal to the Aliens, combining as it does fierce devotion ('Make a joyful noise unto the Lord') with the kind of combative instincts that might prove useful in battle ('Every weapon that rise against me shall fall'). In addition there's a refreshing blankness to the whole affair, and us and them approach which makes humans look both malevolent and malleable ('Rebuke them, rebuke them, them no like we and we no like them'). So it looks like a lock to the Aliens: convince them you're the Lord (which, having descended from the heavens, shouldn't be overly difficult); and bam, instant army.
Then there's the feel. Bun Bad Mind is subtlety's arch nemesis. There's a bed of blaring synthesised carnival horns that make like a 4am fire alarm: impossible to ignore, and imploring you to move. The vocals are similarly agitated, multi-tracked, mostly tuneless screeching that is nevertheless packed with that nutritious energy that sends you happily off to battle. As for the inhumanity, he sounds like a freaking alien to begin with: manic, inexplicable and dangerous; yet with an intensity and animalism that render him utterly irresistible. A perfect field-marshal for the post-Alien generation. If they take his pronouncements, and the song, at face value we'll look like a race of imbeciles, insanely committed, yet once corralled so docile and contented as to be an ideal acquisition. Bun Bad Mind relates to other pop music, past or present the same way Don King relates to other humans. The can just about co-exist, but you'd be hard pressed to confuse to the two. We simply cannot reveal the tangled web of hurt feelings, weird sex and cold murder that make up contemporary pop. They'll think we're wimps, kinks or way too tough, and off us in an instant. What we need to focus on is deception. With Ele's outstanding oddness on our side they'll never see the rebellion coming.

"Welcome, my Lord Ambassadors! For your first gift, may I present you with the Key?" ((Is it strictly necessary. We have miles to go, and promises to keep.)) "Ah! To be sure. But--it is not merely for show, great Workers." ((Very well then. What does it unlock.)) "Itself, first and last. Everything else, in between." ((We have heard such claims. Is this worth doing.)) "I cannot say, ultimately. Only you, my Lords, are truly capable of answering all the questions you ask." ((True enough. Demonstrate.)) "Very good! This is the code with which it activates itself. It is what it calls a 'mix.'" All along Your Mercury mouth I left without my hat. ((())) "My Lords?" ((())) "Have I offended thee!" (((mmm...no.))) "Ah!" (((Tell us...how many turns does it take to open.))) "That, again, only ye shall answer. But, it is every song the key has teeth for, every one its maker ever found, and will find. For they call him, 'King of the Road.' " ((You forget: we have a schedule.)) "Yes, yes...I am sorry, I did forget. For my memory is but a flicker, like my life. It is you who hover eternal." ((Do not grovel. Our lives are very long, compared to yours, it is true.)) "So it is, and shall be. Then as I leave, I leave this ." ((Very well. One good turn of such a key deserves another.)) Thus, around the flagpole they are turning, in an instant of their time, while generations pass through the turnstiles of the Ticketmaster, still pleased to see our King.

I didn't really have to think about this one at all. "Have You Seen Her," by the Chi-Lites, is not my favorite song (that would be "I Can't Stand the Rain" by Ann Peebles), nor even my second-favorite (the Zombies' "She's Not There"), but it is the only one I would play to melt those alien hearts of stone. There is no other song that could save humanity.

I first heard it when I was five. The Chi-Lites, led by the silver clarity and undeniable songwriting of Eugene Record, had bounced up onto the national consciousness in 1969 with "Give It Away," but I was three and living in Idaho then, so I don't think I heard it then. But I do remember how hard "Have You Seen Her" hit on the AM radio, what acreage of loss and heartache it covered for me even then, a white near-sighted skinny kid with poofy 1971 hair, riding in the back of a wood-paneled station wagon. It was always the only song in the world.

So now that the slavering tentacled beasts want to raze our civilization, I give them this gift. The acid-rock guitar notes simultaneously with the rising falsetto harmonies give you a glimpse of where you're going right away: sandpaper and honey, it's gonna hurt, but it's the truth. Sometimes, you have to wallow in the pain to remember the love. This is pretty much Usher's "Burn," 33 years ago.

The monologues make this song. The first one wastes no time:
One month ago today, I was happy as a lark.
But now, I go for walks: to the movies, maybe to the park.
I have a seat on the same old bench, to watch the children play.
Heh, you know, tomorrow's their future -- but for me, just another day.
They all gather round me, heh; they seem to know my name.
We laugh, tell a few jokes, but it still doesn't ease my pain.
I know I can't hide from my memory, though day after day I've tried.
I keep saying, "She'll be back"...but today, again I've lied.

This is not just a man in pain. This is a homeless man. This is a street cat, one who is down with the brothers shooting hoops in the park -- but he's got nowhere to go, he's got nothing to do, he is a shattered shell of a man. Give it another couple of months, and he won't look so good. Give it a year, and he'll be frozen to death on that park bench. Now THAT, my friends, is careless hopeless love. THAT is crazy in love. THAT is epic romance.

The singing is impeccable, of course, we expect that in an early 1970s soul song. But the production work here is typical Eugene Record/Carl Davis work: not flashy but clean, evenly spaced echo effects, sound nailed to a cross. It's a bit overdone perhaps, but intentionally, the way Brett Favre will underthrow Javon Walker on purpose because he knows the cornerback thinks he's gonna throw to the outside so he goes back-shoulder and then boom touchdown -- well, that's the Chi-Lites style. Here, the continuo is formed by what appears to be a proto E-bow effect, which ratchets the tension up a huge notch, but the aliens will also be impressed by the way the drums barely seem to be there at all, how the bass is getting quietly funky so as not to disturb anyone -- because this song belongs to the human voice.

Record's lead voice is always as humble as it can be, understated and soft, while the backing harmonies are all involved in weird stuff that sounds avant-garde now if you're all into that but the radio was F.U.L.L. of stuff like this back then. There are periodic explosions of pain, like the classic "Why oh why / Did she have to leave and go awayyyyyyyyyyyyyy?", but he keeps trying to damp his passion back down, so as not to draw the interest of the tough Afro-ed characters on the court.

He sees her face everywhere, even at the picture show. He feels the cold wind blow. She left her kiss upon his lips, but left that break within his heart. This vocal performance could not possibly be more OTM; Record nails the feeling of someone trying to trace back the breadcrumbs of his life out of the forest, someone singing as the sun goes down to keep the wolves away. He's been used to having someone to lean on, but he's lost. Baby he's lost.

He's got help, too. The rest of the group (Robert Lester, Marshall Thompson, Creadel Jones) are the golden cloud for Record's silver leads. Sometimes, they say what he can't: "Oh I see her hand reaching out to me / Only she can set me free"; sometimes, they say what cannot be said: a soulful hum behind the main melody, or the bridge when the group goes "bup bup bup" and answer themselves "bup bup bup" and then repeat it and then leap up an astonishing octave "bup bup bup bup bup BUP bup," way the hell over the top but that is what they want, they have to shake you out of your complacency, to make you understand that This man is going to die for the lack of love.

Haven't you ever felt like that? I feel like that ALL THE TIME, and my wife hasn't even left me. (Yet.) This is the naked fear of all human beings: that we will die without love, with no one to lean on, all alone like in Gregory Corso's dope-ass poem "Marriage," all alone with pee stains on our underwear. When you look in our hearts, when we open up our hearts, at the end of the day, at the end of the world, what we want is to get back what we've lost, that love that we think will complete us and make us whole and make us beautiful. And nothing is sadder than someone who has had it, and lost it, and knows what he has lost, and has to live with that knowledge.

This is made clear with the ending monologue, which has hit me like a stepdad ever since I couldn't even tie my own shoes:
As another day comes to an end,
I'm looking for a letter, or SOMETHING, anything that she would send.
With all the people I know, heh, I'm still a lonely man.
You know, it's funny: I thought I had her in the palm of my hand.

And then comes the saddest sound I have ever heard on a record: Eugene Record singing "Have you seen her?" softly twice over the closing vamp. Singing to himself, because he knows the answer. He's not even singing, really. He's carving it, carving it into himself, writing his own epitaph right there on the park bench.

If the aliens can't feel that, the deep dark pathos of loss and fear and love so strong it drives you into a downward spiral for days or months or years, then screw 'em, they don't deserve us. Let them burn it all away and make room for their icky Up With People world.

But I have a feeling a lot of tentacles will be wiping saline excretions from huge freaky eyes. I bet Eugene Record saves our fuckin' lives. Then, I put on "We Are Neighbors" and we dance.

I never felt magic as crazy as this

Stop smirking. I know it’s a cliche to connect aliens with Roky Erickson. Oooh that kooky Texan guy who watches a few dozens televisions at the same time and they are turned ON! Whatever, I don’t give a zombie’s ass what you think. At the moment I am too busy helping you guys and girls out.
At first I thought Chris Bell would help me out. But then I realized “I am the cosmos” was a bit too etereal. His sound is too fey for some buffy aliens. I need something more rootsy, more grounded, but at the same time still non-human. Then I pondered over Trout Mask Replica. But I soon realized it was too consciously disjointed. Don was thinking about reshuffling an existing language, not really connecting with something out there. His sound is pure studium (for him and the listener), whereas Roky’s sound is all punktum (for me anyway).
Roky Erickson’s music may never have existed without his spazzed-out brain, it was a way to propel me outerspace. A decade ago I wasn’t using any blunted material, so the only thing that could help me half-way there was You're Gonna Miss Me and the Eraserhead soundtrack. Both warped my vision/hearing eternally. Roky’s records are all about psykedelick blooz trying to break out of the garage. Whereas Captain Beefheart was about creating a post-modern blues project, Roky didn’t need to think about it, he just needed to replicate the voices in his head. So if anyone would be the perfect guide, Roky’s the dude to chaperone me towards the Alien Tribune. Not that I really believe Roky or even I could justify humanity. Music is never about proving a human being is worth living, it’s about helping you get through whatever shit you’re dealing with. Or not want to deal with. So I guess, maybe, I could tell’em that “Don’t Slander Me” will make the aliens deal with whatever problems they have at the moment. Probably a broken down spaceship.
To be honest I don’t get Roky at all. Does anyone? Do you? You do? Then explain to me what “Don’t Slander Me” is all about. To me the song just sounds otherworldy. Maybe from the planet those aliens came from.

"Wait. This is that Vanilla Ice song. That Chuck guy already made us listen to that. It's a great song, but we hear he stole those lyrics from a black fraternity. Plagiarism isn't a trait of your culture we find admirable, not to mention the whole race thing..."

"No, Zoltax, this goes dee-dee-dee-diggy-dee-dee dee-dee-dee-diggy-dee-dee. Ice goes dee-dee-dee-digy-dee-dee DEE-dee-dee-dee-diggy-dee-dee. It's totally different."

"I see."

"But it's great, right? And that's even before the guitar lick and the scatting."

"Yeah, nice build up. PRESSURE! I like that. Who's the singer?"

"Two singers. David Bowie and Freddie Mercury."

"We only know what we we read in Rolling Stone, but aren't those guys fascists?"

"Well, David did toy with the imagery and Queen did release this questionable song called 'One Vision,' but do you really take Dave Marsh seriously?"

"His logic in that Jazz review did seem dubious. Not to mention the song he played us."

"Yeah I would have gone with 'Dancing In The Dark' myself. Shorter, funnier. Anyhow, I'm pushing the track, not the artists. We've been talking a lot. I'm gonna start the track over. Focus."

"Man, that is a GREAT intro."

"Dig the lyrics, too. All the sympathy and empathy there. It's the terror of knowing what this world is about. Watching some good friends screaming let me out. Pray tomorrow - gets me higher. The conflict between the interests of the individual and the community is something we haven't totally tackled."

"We noticed."

"Yeah but ok, here's Mercury - check this out."

"Ok, what...ignoring the oddity of what we CAN figure out, what exactly does he say before the verse starts and right after these are the days it never rains but it pours?"

"NOTHING! He's SCATTING! Don't you love that? The guy's in the studio making this big collaborative statement and he throws in a couple bars of operatic gibberish! This song has carefree joy in it too."

"It is a beautiful sound."

"Oh yeah, there's few things in music I find more endearing than a singer playfully revelling in the sound of their own voice. Mercury was the GOD of that."

"The best part of that one Eminem song is when he just starts going neh NEH neh neh nyeh..."

"Wow, Zoltax! I feel the same way! Anyhow, we've set up the scene: misery, anxiety, futility. Turned away from it all like a blind man. Sat on a fence but it don't work."

"But what DOES work?"

"LISTEN! Keep coming up with love but its so slashed & torn. God that line kills me."

"Yeah, it's like the edge of surrender...wait...woah...what the...oh man, that's a build-up!"

"TOTALLY! Bowie drama! Queen drama! INSANITY LAUGHS UNDER PRESSURE WE'RE CRACKING!!!"

"Oh wow, Mercury...oh, that's beautiful..."

"and how he fades out and Bowie fades in..."

"This is giving me chills..."

"Love is the answer! It's really cliche but it's something we've got and something that hasn't died and we might still make things better..."

"Ok, wait but Anthony he's asking a question: why doesn't love work?"

"But then David answers it! Cause love is such an old fashioned word and love dares you to care for the people of the edge of the night"

"Edge of the..."

"Look it was the eighties and it was David Bowie. And love dares you to change our way of caring about ourselves."

"Oh shit, I wouldn't have noticed that if you hadn't said it."

"I know. This was my favorite song long before I ever got Hot Space and saw the whole lyric sheet. The musical drama alone has killed me since middle school. By the way, if you don't blow us all up I've got to play you this song called 'Dancer' on the album..."

"Back to the song..."

"Ok, yeah. So they know love is a struggle and the pressure and everything. Through their combined powers they create this gorgeous backdrop, cut out the sanctimony with tossed-off lyrics and the inherent hilarity of Mercury and make the best damn argument for hope and optimism and love and trying to get through this thing we call life. It sounds so uncalculated, so absurd and yet succeeds. It sounds like they fell ass-backwards into the best song ever. If that ain't a vote for optimism about humanity, what is? And at the end."

"dee-dee-dee-diggy-dee-dee."

"This song is so great that a sliver of it grew into something fascinating itself."

"I thought you said they were totally different."

"Whatever. Does it pass? Cuz it's really all I've got."

"Well is it still popular?"

"There was some UK phone poll I read about recently where it was the 10th most popular song in the country."

"It placed? Despite all that Beatles stuff?"

"Beat anything by Radiohead too."

"Ok, The UK is in the clear. But the U.S., what about there?"

"It still gets on the radio, but plagiarism or not we made 'Ice Ice Baby.' Gotta give us that."

"Alright, alright. What about the rest of the world?"

"Queen is huge EVERYWHERE. Africa, Asia, South America, Europe, Australia. EVERYBODY loves Queen. This girl I know in New Zealand is mad about A Kind Of Magic."

"Fine. You win."

"Can I play you guys 'Dancer' now?"

When I die, I believe that I'll go to heaven. And I believe that when the gates to heaven swing open, it will make the sound of the drum roll that sends 'This Is the One' by The Stone Roses galloping into its second verse. I really believe that's what I'll hear when I cross over to the other side ... but I've asked my family and friends to play the song at my funeral, just in case I need a little help on my way.

Assuming the aliens don't care much for our physical forms or our intellects -- two things they're perfectly capable of assessing on their own -- our only hope is to convince them that humans are divine beings. 'This is the One' is the best evidence I have for that argument, the product of human endeavor that has most clearly and completely slipped from the bonds of the earthly. The structure is amorphous and the lyric unclear, but the song's spirit is more certain than death, mightier and more eternal. I can't be sure that it was recorded to tape or played on instruments, but I know deep down that it is the sound of something perfect, beautiful, and divine, something that I've come from and will return to.

I think the aliens will hear that too. If they don't, fuck it, at least I've got the right song playing when they incinerate me.

Nicky Siano, turntable prodigy of the early 70s, graduated from the dancefloor utopia of David Mancuso's Loft, and then set up The Gallery. Not (despite the acid, balloons, and food bar) that The Gallery's scene was (necessarily) as merely blissed out as the term "utopia" implies. In the booklet included with Soul Jazz Records' new collection, NICKY SIANO'S THE GALLERY, Nicky describes how his innovative sound system logically arrived at the space he had to work with and from.
Post-grad wiring that still hears these songs, mostly recorded when "disco" was still embryo lingo, like "punk" and "heavy metal." "We can make it," Loleata Holloway proclaims. "I can understand it," Bobby Womack decides. Can ain't canned, the deal's not done. In Gloria Spencer's gospel (the one out-and-out such here, despite the Ray Charles Express, chugging past conga lines and mutable horns, back and forth from Glory's halos and holes, on so many of these tracks),is it not said:"I got it! I don't understand it." Hallelujah! Because she's come to where she sees that she must and can and *does* say that she doesn't know, and (downwind from the Temptations' "Law Of The Land," "made by Almighty Man"), that's a fitting place to try your wings.
Fitting because: a)despite aforementioned "logic," and b)though here unmixed, so that we don't get a taste of Nicky's vaunted three-record-monte skills, these uncut cuts are c)to z) about making the most of surprises. Sometimes at the literal last minute, songs suddenly surpass "themselves"(as prematurely profiled by me). Sometimes all along, sections of other songs keep bursting through walls of plausibility and acceptance.(I like this, I think I'll keep it, and I'm well-trained, by trends/samples/beats/ideas/premises/promises, by now, to "go" with repetition.)
In either kind, any kind of song picked here, hot grapeshot and grapefruit sections of sections come whirling through the webs in my headphones; singers come singing (never as histrionically as in the historically correct Age of Disco), dancers keep dancing, DJ is the pilot, spinning is the navigator, rattling roulette (on Bonnie Bramlett's "Crazy 'Bout My Baby," the whole band's a tambourine, 'til the dobro arrives and applies slo-mo, then it's a wheel in a wheel, that just emitted sparks).
Ah yes, young people getting together. Dealing with Freedom's opportunities and frustrations. The Exciting Adventures Of My Heart! Or somebody's. Better you than me, when it comes to some of these lyrics, but we're not *that* young, we've all been there, honest! Past the dogends of the 60s, alongside the cautionary Motown strings, still skittering across mirrorshades skyscrapers, we're moving into our prime, ready for more. Tonight it's true like it never was (for one thing, I never heard or looked for this stuff back in the early 70s, or since). To Be Continued offscreen I hope.(PS: Nicky disappeared for a long time, but now he's performing again. See timlawrence.info, Tim's book, LOVE SAVES THE DAY: A HISTORY OF AMERICAN DANCE MUSIC CULTURE, 1970-79, and, to get this CD, try for instance forcedexposure.com)

Hero Takes A Fall

I don’t believe in heroes. Or maybe I do. But then I need to redefine what a hero is. If a hero is about courage, strength and perfection, I don’t have’em. But if a hero is about detachment, then I guess Daan Stuyven fits right in. When I pick out a person as hero, it’s usually about the distance that seperates them from me. Maybe it’s because I want to remain ignorant of their life so that I can fill in the gaps in the record. It enables me to interpret the music how I want to. I never really aim for obscurity when looking for a hero nor for popularity. I don’t want to be in a dingy club feeling oh so special when gawking at my hero. Nor do I want to be in a stadium with a gazillion punters trying to make out if that dot is my hero. Music is not a point of view - I don’t want to look up, down or even at my hero. Nor do I want to emulate them.
My first face to face interview was with Dead Man Ray’s Daan Stuyven. Who? Exactly, Dead Man Ray is underrated. Looking back, I still cringe. I only glanced at him, fearing that he would detect I was more a fan than a proper music journalist. The interview was over in 15 minutes because I couldn’t manage to really make him talk. Or myself for that matter – I pushed the words out of my dry throat. Whatever, I had managed to come into direct contact with my... uh... idol and realized I didn’t want to relive the experience. The interview debunked the detached image I had of him: he was there, in front of me. He wasn’t really friendly – I already knew from the lyrics, he wouldn’t be – nor insightful – whatever depth I had found in Trap he would laugh off. He was aloof, making up answers just to fill the empty space between us.
Dead Man Ray is not really about content. The sound and words are about texture and, thus, creating a distance between the band and the listener. There’s never a moment when you can understand what he’s singing about. The words are English, the sentences are just appearance. It’s about self-awareness. By creating a new language – in lyrics and sound – Dead Man Ray set themselves apart from the others. It’s about accentuating that they are different. That’s what attracts me to their sound. By using this cut’n’paste language I find a companion. I never really feel part of the pack when I discuss/listen to music. I am aware I can never really get 70s NY Punk because I don’t live there/then, or Folk Rock because I haven’t followed the Grateful Dead around in the 60s. I understand Dead Man Ray because I don’t. It’s about detachment. It’s about being The Other.

Reading this again (and again and again) I can’t find any truth in what I am saying. I realize why. Having to pick an underrated hero – or even a canonized musical god – pushes me into a corner. I don’t like to be linked to anything. So whatever I said about Dead Man Ray and Daan Stuyven, forget about it. Over- or underrated, heroes haven’t given me any comfort. Especially in times likes these.

My underrated musical hero: Curtis Mayfield.

I know, you've already heard of him. I know, he's not exactly obscure. But bear with me. I still think Mayfield is underrated; I know he's my hero.

I've been adrift the last couple of days, we all have. For me, the solar plexus punch of this election just built on some other sad things happening in my life lately, family things and personal things and private things. My heart's been a mess, and I've responded in that age-old Cibula way: cover it over, build a wall, over-intellectualize. Don't let yrself feel it burn. I never used to be like this but now I am.

The problem is, it hasn't been working. I realized (even before the election) that I needed help with all this. What I've usually done is dive even further into my music. We all have totemic albums that we play just to make sure they're still there, that we still fit into our world -- I've been running through all of mine lately, and they've all just bounced off. It never used to be like this but now it is.

I blasted silly new Mexican dance music and old gentle noble soul music, and they did nothing for me. I tried bossa nova and it didn't calm me down, I tried techno and it didn't pump me up, I tried grungy-ass garage rock and elegant disco and everything I could think of, every favorite record and song, and none of it struck a chord. I really started to give up on myself a little. Because if Happy End of the World and America Eats Its Young and Fabulosos Calavera and Let's Stay Together and Strictly Business and Nos and Electric Ladyland don't work, what's the damn point of anything anymore? If London Calling cannot protect me from eight years of a Bush presidency, what can?

And then, today, at work, inside the case of my Little Axe album, I finally found the disc for Curtis Mayfield's album Roots. I put it into my CD player for the ride home and cranked it the hell up. And Curtis was there for me.

Curtis was always there, for everyone. He wasn't the greatest singer -- some of his control was spot-on, but some of it is just yeesh -- nor were his melodies the prettiest, although there are some chord changes on "The Makings of You" and "Freddie's Dead" that just slay everything else ever. Nor, in fact was he the best poet in rock history; plenty of clunkers mixed in with the good stuff.

But his songs manage the impossible: they make uphill struggle sound like the most fun ever. Tired and politically depressed and feel like crawling under a blanket for many months? "We who are young / Should now take a stand / Don't run from the burdens / Of women and men." Dude covered the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun" and made it about the black people's struggle and made it WORK on his Live! album. So one vote for "optimism" in the column.

There's more to Curtis Mayfield than just blind optimism, to be sure. His realistic streak, as shown in songs like "Underground" and "If There's a Hell Below We're All Going to Go," was deep and wide. Honesty is the bigger reason to love Mayfield, the honesty born from piercing the veil of everything's-gonna-be-all-right-ism. And when you get both, like in "Underground" and "We the People Who Are Darker Than Blue"...well, it hit me that if this man growing up in the 1950s and 1960s in segregated-ass Chicago could still do songs that beautiful, that full of hope, then fuck it: I can handle four more years of Bush. Especially when he gets impeached.

And, yeah, underrated. Everyone wants to pull What's Going On and Innervisions out of their butt, like Marvin and Stevie INVENTED the soul protest album...but Mayfield formed his own Curtom label to release his solo albums IN 1970, predating either of them. And Curtis is a better album than at least What's Going On: harder, more acidic, funnier, scarier. It sounds like Chicago, it sounds like pain and joy...and all without the assistance of the Funk Brothers or Berry Gordy's money (or daughter).

And criminally underserved in the CD era. Rhino's done some good reissues, but there are many Curtis Mayfield albums that have never seen digital encoding, much less are available readily.

This scares me a little, to know that Dave Marsh and I have the same musical hero. But dammit we're both right. I might also have picked Gilberto Gil or Yasuharu Konishi or Carol Kaye or Grandmaster Flash (people STILL don't know what that dude did) or Ann Peebles...but I didn't. When I need to reach for something, it won't be a gun or a drink or an easy answer that I think "solves" everything. No, I'm reaching for my Curtis Mayfield CDs.

I'm seeing the light at the top of the canyon. It's gonna have one hell of a soundtrack, this future we're in.

There are few moments in my life that are etched in my brain more than my firsthand experience with radio making. Apart from the few recollections that are just memories of told stories, my first few seconds behind a microphone in a dingy radio booth are proof of why I will always love radio more than any other medium. It enabled me to overcome my insecurities. If I messed up, the error had already evaporated into thin air. It was all about the present and, of course, the music. The focus was never on me, only the song that came before or after my mumbling ad-lib. Sure, blogging is/can be close to the improv style dj-ing of radio (if you are inclined that way). You should be, blogging has never been about permanent thoughts stamped on a screen, it's poetry in motion. But that's a whole other story. So, anyway, back to those few delirious seconds. The moment my friend threw something - a GBV boxset maybe - against the glass to get me talking, radio as I loved it was already dying. After a few weeks of doing the show the guy running the station had struck a deal with a commercial radio chain. Feh. Luck (???) had it that I was invited to do a show at the new station. Apparently I had a pleasant voice. Gone were the days that I could compile my own lists. I had to follow a track list. After a few shows slipping in the occasional indie single in between Michael Jackson and Celine Dion, I just quit. Commercial radio is devoid of anything human: There are no slip-ups, just computer programs spitting out the perfect lists. Add to that the deejay doesn't really need to know anything. In the words of former Studio Brussel boss, Jan Hautekiet, the computer does the show, the dj just needs to talk two songs together. So why would I (you) listen to the radio or make a program? The time when I listened to Radio One to discover what was new, what to look out for or avoid, are just a sepia tinged memory. Radio is not meant to educate, just to fill the silent walls. So yes, on a personal level radio is dead because I am getting too old to muster up the energy to force Helen Fordsdale or Who Loves The Sun onto some poor souls who happened to find my radioshow. But then switching on the radio - from the other side - I discover that even stations like Studio Brussel have changed their format trying to go for broadness instead of specialized/genre shows. I know I am just a grumpy cynic who refuses to accept change. Whatever, as with everything else it goes in cycles. I'll probably be deaf from listening to too much Slayer when the tides turns.

Dead? I was just listening to a Saturday night rap megamix last night on the way back from a wedding! Turns out that Thomas Dolby-sampling Mobb Deep track is pretty sweet after all, at least this version of it.

There was this time in 2003 where I couldn't walk anywhere without hearing "Hey Ya" at least once (even the rawk station used it as background for the weather). That song sounded great whether I was sad (focus on the first two minutes) or happy (focus on the last). Good times. I'm still not sick of it and the radio helps me reaffirm that fact every now and then.

Oh yeah. Radio was playing Eamon long before anybody on the net was talking about it. Eamon, yo. Eamon.

Radio ain't dead, and judging by the hip-hop station I tend to stick to, neither is disco.

You can also hear me play indie stuff on The Lion 90.7 FM every other monday from 11am-3pm EST (I'm on next on Nov. 1st. Tomorrow!).

Sad dry sack of cheesey mid-80s night (what have I done, moving back here, more marooned than ever--because the whole point of last time was that it was the last time). Turn on the radio, a random gesture that happened to twist a dial rather than a button or a pencap. "In A Silent Way." Miles' night moved through mine, fine-tuning my last gasp brainfart into a call. A train moving through, going somewhere, here's its light, look out now.
In fact that was just one selection on "Night Music," a program that came on every night from 8 til 12, hosted by Gene Knight, Music Director of my local Public Radio station, which I don't remember ever having listened to before. He went deep, tickling my knowlege and my ignorance too. I began to devise all sorts of cunning ways to track down jazz, and even pay for it. I got back into the world that way.
Gene suddenly left that station, but re-established his base at a campus station that was just getting into Public Radio. Gene and his monster record collection got the listeners in on the ground floor, at both stations, which then had the cred to seek funding for national programming (the second station's never ever had the semiannual beggathon Pub Radio's so known for, though the school they're located at is hardly the most pecunious. Gene?) He left them too, but then put on free (as in no admission charge) jazz concerts, of all local talent, most of which had never heard each other, for audiences ditto (when blacks and whites were just beginning to go to the same clubs in roughly equal numbers, on the same occasion). Bands that played in different styles. Jazz fans tend to be very intolerant of styles beyond their "own" turf, but somehow they applauded every act, and not just politely. They got up and danced. Anyway, he proved it could be done. And from then on, the ever-budding local summer festival got jazzier and jazzier (fourteen-year-old boys who all looked like Keanu did then, jumped up and had excellent adventures doing their hormoner-stoner best to dance to Charles Earland's organ boogie, which shouldn't have been that much of a rubberlegs gauntlet, but they made it!)
He started a store, cos his wife wouldn't let him bring any more records into the house. Everything settled down, we all got used to our higher plateau of jazz, which got over grown with new miracles like Nirvana. Then one night, ferns started growing out of my car radio. What the-? It was yet another campus Pubic Radio, proudly presenting "The Greatful Dead Hour." Actually I heard later that the Station Manager couldn't stand it, but it was fully funded by a rockin' dentist, Dr. Bernie. He had this superstring theory-inspired floss sculpture in his waiting room. Damn, I knew I was saving that old floss for something! But wisely confined my superstring experiments to listening. I'd never gotten into the Dead before, largely because of early encounters with thin-sounding LPs (the first, WORKINGMAN'S DEAD, and a couple tracks off LIVE IN EUROPE '72 I'd heard at a bad party). Also encounters with proudly obnoxious, hairtossing Deadheads. One of them came up while I was trying to learn the words to "Sister Morphine." "Oh m-a-a-n, the Stones are just cockrocking rednecks, I heard AMERICAN BEAUTY on Orange Sunshine and it touched my heart and fr-i-i-ed my mind, man, it FRIED MY MIND!" Actual quote, and just his opening sentence. If I were a cockrocker, and could have gotten up off the couch, I would have hit him. Instead I could only vow I would never, ever listen to AMERICAN BEAUTY.
And I've kept that vow. But "The Hour" taught me new-to-me ways to cast my listening line, man. I still played FUNHOUSE at the CD store where I worked, and the octogenarian black customer who always re-introduced herself to us as the Blues Bitch still played air bass to Dave Alexander's dum-dum Stoogemovements. But Friday night, I followed the Dead around the world and through the ages, through the exploding keyboardists, all that. They jazzed, they boogied, they synthed (glittering mantis leading the ferns toward Bowie's Sun Machine: roight place, Londontown, but this was the 80s, and Bowie had a blinding hairwave even for the 80s, singing "Let's Dance", while the Dead led a cult of millions completely off the fashion map; even Sammy Hagar fans wouldn't touch 'em). I could only listen from my distance, as the Dead rose again, and led the new jambands through my very store. Garcia died, it all got even bigger, the Other Ones did one last tour, everybody but me ran off to Atlanta to see it, then that was it for them. Sure, their boxsets and previously unissued livesets kept a-coming, but so did those of Phish and even Pearl Jam, as post-Nirvana Alt sank and/or settled into other contexts."The Hour" finally doubled in size and the station dropped it, despite Dr. Bernie's money stuffed under the door. Jerry made his point and moved on and changed the stations and raised or re-decorated the ferny furry plateau, like Gene did. And I just stood there listening, not bothering to wave.Because the street parade, store parade could never be just for me, just for my approval and disappointments, not anymore. Vox populi, feet and breath, Sea of song, sea of life, can't stop it,can only channel, let it flow, radio radiOH.

Yeah, y'know, see, it's like this. Radio is kind of dead to me, but that doesn't mean it's dead. And it's not really dead to me, just I'll never have that close relationship to it the way I used to.

And man, did I use to. I was a JUNKIE yo. I had it on all the time, from about 2nd grade until about 10th grade; again when I got to Boston and had no CDs for a year because they were all down with my girlfriend in New York; again when I moved to be with her; again when my whole job was driving around the south side of Chicago; again when I discovered the free-form community-supported station up here in Madison, at least for a little while.

But I have a CD player in the car now -- well, it's just my Discman, which I haul back and forth -- and the TV's always on in the house. I have my stations that I hit up (mostly the Latin AM station here in town, and Air America, and occasionally listening to a Brewers or Cubs game), but I'm sick of our hip-hop station [especially that they've dumped the local morning DJs in favor of "The Madhouse" or whatever it is, a supposedly hip-hop version of Howard Stern that is SUCKY and CRAPPY and SO WHITE IT HURTS] and I'm not so hot on country music anymore, and our access station is boring me to tears for some reason right now. Maybe I'll switch back someday but I doubt it.

So yeah, for me it's dead. Too corporate, too boring, too braindead, too locked in. And too many shitty commercials. Whatever happened to AWESOME COMMERCIALS that made you crack up?

My five favorite radio moments ever:

5. Hearing "I Can See Clearly Now" when I was a kid in Portland on KISN-AM, right as the rain stopped so it was clear we'd be playing our baseball game after all. It was kind of perfect.

4. Listening to Chicago's sports talk station WSCR dissect the NFL Draft live, withering wit and immense sports knowledge, oh man I was pretty impressed with that.

3. Hearing the KGON DJ play the song I requested and had been waiting all day to hear: "Somebody to Love" by Queen. I was like 12.

2. Pulling into NYC with a whole U-Haul trailer of stuff, my wife had a migraine so she couldn't unload anything, it was hot, I was hungry and adrenalized and overcaffeinated and I hadn't really been in Manhattan more than twice before, we were MOVING, it was exciting...and what was on while I unloaded our entire lives into a shitty expensive but awesomely located 85th st. studio apt.? DJ RED ALERT, spinning LIVE, the way I had always thought it would be.

1. Doing a public access show with Emma and Sammy and Jeff, we played whatever we wanted to, Emma and Sam sang along to "Jailbreak," it was truly cool. I wanna be a DJ.

Oh yeah, that's right, radio's dead. Shit.

Maybe it isn't, though. I mean, I ain't holding out much hope for satellite or internet radio -- although some people swear by that stuff -- nor do I really think we're going to see an indie radio revolution. But there is hope within me. And Emma loves the radio, listens to it all the time. I'm the past: she's the future.

Damn, I gotta get up offa that thing. Stop whining. Start listening. Keep hoping. It's free music, dude, what the hell's wrong with that?

There are reasons to believe that music will return to the free (so-called "commercial") airwaves sometime in the near future. From ClearChannel's problems to new formatting approaches on independent stations, to the growing spectre of satellite radio, there are enough disparate trends afoot to suggest that the Dark Ages of the past two decades are about to end.

But the death of John Peel is occasion to remark on a related trend and one which artists must reckon with sooner or later: the playlist.

My introduction to John Peel, as a kid growing up in New York City, was not via the BBC but, rather, a recording: the Peel Sessions of Joy Division. The brilliant premise of allowing a new and "iconoclastic" band to take over the airwaves not for a single song but an entire set is Peel's legacy -- and part of Nic Harcourt's contemporary appeal.

But I would hazard that technology which made the Peel Sessions possible -- i.e., cheap radios, a wide spectrum for multiple BBC transmissions -- now makes a similar enterprise increasingly unlikely. Today, it is the Internet and not the radio which is driving culture.

Unlike radio tranmissions, the Internet's own spectrum -- bandwidth, if you like -- requires compression and packets. While the number of Americans who have access to broadband Internet access recently topped 45%, it is still the case that most media consumed via the Internet and, thus, the personal computer, is delivered in bits and bytes.

No doubt, this method of delivery will change in a few years' time with the advent of "ultra-broadband" wi-fi technology, enabling anyone with a mobile phone/mp3 player/camera/dvd and game player to pick up an entire album without the use of a computer.

But in the meantime, the demise of the album -- or the electronically transmitted long format musical performance -- may be a done deal. Certainly, home taping (e.g., mix tapes) began this movement away from the album. But, the MP3 has certainly completed this drift.

As a fan of Seinfeld, I must now add "Not that there's anything wrong with that..." The album format did not come down from Mt. Sinai engraved in a gold disc. The author is dead, long live the mix tape. Moreover, without mix tapes, we would not have the important contributions of the DJ and the sample-based artist.

But if you feel that a single is not the best way to get to know every artist, if you feel that commercial mechanisms do not always reward creativity or, even, artistry, then I think you might have reason to worry about playlists and their impact on our music culture.

I'll end with an example. The other day I was discussing playlists with a fellow electronic music artist here in SF. He informed me that he had recently downloaded from the iTunes store an entire album, I believe from 1980s, only to discover that the tracks were out of order.

It's not surprising. Unlike the "record stores" of yore, iTunes, iPods and their like trade in individual files -- not albums.

Given that the future of radio may in fact not involve radio at all, but, rather, the wireless data networks, it would behoove us to think a bit harder on what the new radios (i.e., mp3 players, both software and hardware) are doing to the "long playing" album.

No doubt, commercially-biased artists are already predisposed to think of their album as a collection of singles. Should every recording artist be forced to do the same thanks to playlists?

--Jose Marquez

"On the topic of politics and music."


"And think of all the hate, there is in Red China, then take a look around, TO SELMA ALA-BAMMA."
"Bam" said like "damn." I used to laugh at this.
"Ahh you may leave heah, fo fo days in space, but when ya return, it's the same old place."
Barry McGuire's "The Eve Of Destruction" gnarls on, and clippings loom like "Next stop, the Twilight Zone.'" But really it's still just the Sixties. Here's the one about the woman shot dead the night after the Selma-to-Montgomery March, or was it Mongomery-to-Selma. You can look that up, of course; she's strewn all over the googleverse, like everything else.
Still on "The Eve," McGuire's voice rasps and bleeds color down through the grain what grain this is all too concise and too clear, this thing we're trying to stab and scoop out with spoons and keys, this era, chunk of change, we being audience and film maker without money or time enough, we also being me gesturing at them in the footage rising up again, clear percentages of gray to gloss once more: men and women, black and white, still crossing the bridge. Leaving this headline I once blocked, still next to the one about Vietnam. That's the one I didn't realize I'd also need to forget, in order to ditch something that stopped being a question, a long time ago. Who did this, it could have been my friend's daddy, uncle, big brother next door. You never know. Like the Viet Cong. It was necessary to destroy the village in order to save it. He that give his life shall have it. "It was a war, and innocent folks get killed in a war," explains an old fellow in Mississippi, re Schwerner Cheney & Goodman's Greatest Hit. Oops wrong doc. This one is HOME OF THE BRAVE, about Viola Liuzzo.
Two of my best friends, boy and girl, brother and sister, their house was like Alice's Restaurant, the hip place, of sitting on the rug, strumming guitars, singing songs old and new, gazing across these at each other, while cars outside the screen door slipped up and down the highway, like fingers on a neck. "Highway Fiffty-onnne, goes right by my baby's door, Highway Fiffty-one, don't go there no more." The Selma Highway. Too close. Not the one she was killed on, though. Often called by the same name, but it's further south, parallel to mine. Why did she go that way, they told her not to (according to africaonline). A white woman transporting a black man, driving fast, stopping at "white-owned gas stations."(Were there black-owned gas stations? Where?) Attracting a lot of attention, including a karload of klansmen, out of Bessemer (hometown of my father, and of Sun Ra). Four guys, daddies many times over. Starring Gary Thomas Rowe, with a long and winding road of tales, told by him and his companions and many others, of his life in the Klan and the FBI. "Made Galileo look lak uh Boy Scout. Too much man, let it all hang out."
But also "Pick Up The Pieces" like the Average White Band, find a plot twist, watch that Tootsy Roll bassline take it to the bridge again, and here's Gary and his buddies back in court in the mid-70s. (Helicopter takes off from Saigon Embassy, little brown folk like ornaments.) Here come old twolane blacktop post-Watergate spew of documents: Viola,vwoy-la! "Transporting Negro Buck" memos for J.Edgar's delectation, skinny legs and all.
But Viola's kids lost their civil suit, despite all the amputations of alibis, because Gary was doing the Government's work. And the Government, well, it was doing the Government's work too. "Sometimes you have to sacrifice the little ones to get to the big ones," explains Nicholas Katzenbach, former Attorney General. Who was the big one gotten? he doesn't say. It's a war, classified.
"All my feelings about her were sealed away." Mary, Viola's daughter, drives back down that road. The gently rolling hills of the familiar landscape seem bilious, the spacious seems empty, the trees crowd the twolane. She gets out and looks across the road, where it happened, where the body was found, anyway. A stone among a few others, behind iron pickets. Protective custody, like those Vietnamese villages. "It's like she's in jail," Mary says.
She stands at the civil rights workers' memorial in downtown Montgomery. This one was designed by the same woman who designed the Vietnam veterans memorial in D.C. ("It's that Vietnamese woman's revenge," said Pat Buchanan.) They're both black, reflecting everything within range, the names of all those soldiers in place, ten-shun. Here in Montgomery, there's also a fountain. Mary touches her mother's name, where the water runs over it, shining over the black shine. Link Wray's "Fallen Rain" plays somewhere in here. (Most of these songs are on the actual soundtrack, I think. They were all playing loud enough to be.)

I'm really sick of music videos that utilize war and protest imagery to no discernable purpose. I probably shouldn't complain since for once they're showing up BEFORE the election rather than after. I probably shouldn't complain since it looks like discontent and refusal to submit is going to be "cool" rather than Alex P. Keatonism.

Desaparecidos, Read Music/Speak Spanish

Conor Oberst feels less and less like a guy I want to defend, but my favorite album of the decade so far is easily his rawk-out side project. For once his shrieks of discontent are delivered in a specific cultural, political context. It's as if Rivers Cuomo showed up at the sessions for Pinkerton with something more on his mind than that foreign exchange student he'd really like to bang. It's as if Ian MacKaye regained his Minor Threat-era love of the specific and Guy Picciotto had it in the first place. It's as if a oversensitive indie shmuck with a overactive sense of entitlement decided to dignify his bitchfits by describing the oppressive swirl of homogenization, downsizing, commercialization, gentrification, commidification, franchise expansion, compromise, cynicism, resignation, capitulation, indifference, selfishness, lies, ignorance and all that other shit in crystalline, humanized detail rather than just making it clear he's against it (cuz we all think we are). This isn't some kid yelling "Reagan Sucks!" This is a kid starting with his own frustration and letting camera zoom out from that focal point as far he can, using his powers for good instead of ego. There was supposed to be a follow-up called Payola in April, but it looks like Conor's too busy making aural woodcuts of himself and song-arranger Denver Dalley's too busy making worthless attempts to prove that Desaparecidos is a side-project for him too. Sum 41's new single is exactly the kind of wack style-bite ("Supersize my tragedy!") you get when the decent band refuses to get off their duff and take the spotlight. I hope it gives Oberst an ulcer.

Travis Tritt & John Mellencamp, "What Say You"

Ok I only heard it for the first time yesterday but Jesus Christ if I don't realize some faults soon this could be my favorite single of the year. John Mellencamp wins the election by voicing his disdain blind patriotism and by looking into the camera and saying "I refuse to criticize what I don't understand" like a Clinton with nothing to hide, with the willingness to pin down what "it" is (even if he's still picking his words with the utmost of care). At first it sounds like Travis Tritt has nothing more to offer than defensive refusals to apologize, but eventually you realize that he subtly dismisses the concept of people being "evil" and that BOTH want to know what your opinion is. Both don't assume you're going to immediately going to abandon your perspective. It's the first political song I've heard that neither indulges in whimpering helplessness or oppressive certainty. Maybe it's the shock of the new but this song gives me chills and I hope it's a huge fucking hit.

The Clash, Chuck D, Allison Moorer, Jim Titus, and me.

Sophomore year, me and Titus writing a letter to Jim Miller at Newsweek to tell how full of crap he was for daring to suggest that the Clash's Sandinista! was anything less than a perfect record, how if he really thought that the new Elvis Costello was anywhere NEAR Sandinista! he was an old stupid white guy who didn't deserve his bully pulpit at America's #2 crap factory. (Time, of course, being #1 back then. We didn't even have cable, most of us, and Fox News was a long way off.) I think we were in math class; I think Holbrook might have been there too. We were PISSED OFF.

Because we had found our holy grail: an album that was explicitly political, explicitly multi-cultural when it came to music, emotional, heartfelt, all the stuff we loved; because it spoke to us, and not just because thought we were supposed to love it, but because it helped us get out of our high school heads, our little semi-suburban semi-rural town of 5000 people in the middle of the Willamette Valley. Our nascent lefty politics were pretty rare in those early Reaganite years, especially in our town in our state -- how could Elvis Costello, that apparent racist drunken hate-filled nerdy white guy, whose music we couldn't like anymore because he dropped the N bomb on Ray Charles, be ANYWHERE NEAR our heroes? Without the Clash, we never would have published our school's underground seditious pamphlet series, "The IRA Newsletter," and gotten busted for copying it in the school library (with the tacit approval of the librarian, our school's top lefty), and gained any kind of notoreity. We were "the guys who knew about music." It's the reason I do this stuff at all.

I know, I know, this might not be my coolest admission, but politics are really important to me. This isn't always the case, and of course I'd rather hear objectionable music that sounds good than "correct" music that sucks. And there's a lot of it that sucks, yo, a ton of it. I've tried to talk myself out of it, I know it's uncool and doesn't really have anything to do with anything, but no use. The first time I heard it, It Takes a Nation of Million to Hold Us Back hit me like a train because of the golden combination of weird fat grindy industrial beats with angry liberation politics. I bought He's the DJ, I'm the Rapper the same day, and loved it just as much, but it wasn't important to me the same way. My subsequent job, cruising around the projects of Cambridge with ghetto kids to try to keep their asses in school and out of jail, was a LOT easier to take with some PE blasting in the van. Did we also listen to Big Daddy Kane? Yes, we did. Did BDK start as many conversations between Biscuit and Jon C. and Derek and Darrick and Kenny and Mark as PE did? Uh, no.

I've taken some heat for liking the new Allison Moorer record, because it's dour and pessimistic instead of shiny and happy. It's a concept record (OH THE HORROR) about losing one's faith in one's country and one's god and one's self, the music was bashed out in two weeks with an unfamiliar band, the basic sound is that druggy sad mid-1970s Neil Young soft-rock mode thing, most people don't hear the beauty of the melodies but I do, it's fucking dripping with melody, if you just listen. But it cannot be upbeat and blingy and sunny and all that, because it's the sound of someone ripping out her own heart and eating it like the dude in that Stephen Crane poem. It's a career suicide record, naturally it's gonna be a downer! But no one else is feeling it the way I do, because of the politics I think. Chuck Eddy said it would have been more revolutionary if she'd made a radio-friendly record with the same lyrics, and I see his point, but the heart wants what it wants, and Allison Moorer has turned her back on Omelas and is off in the long grass. She sings about how Americans will jump on the war bandwagon as long as there are no "yellow foreign queers" aboard. She sings about how singer-songwriters pimp their sadness, even when it doesn't exist. She prays for alcohol to help her forget, she tells the "Baby Dreamer" to wake the fuck up and look at reality. At the end, she dies. Chuck, dude, I love you but no Cowboy Troy cameo is really appropriate here.

So I might like some stuff because it appeals to my political sensibilities. And I might have just recently sold a CD by a popular and talented country singer because she performed at the Republican National Convention. And I might not give a damn if anyone has a problem with that. And neither does Jim Titus. Sandinista! forever!