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.