Archives : all posts by Jordan

Meat Puppets - "Up On The Sun"

Tight melodic bass and hyper-active intertwining guitars recall theTalking Heads, but with Curt Kirkwood's laid-back vocals, sung wisely from a rocking chair on a back porch somewhere sylvan (whittling, perhaps, while singing), instead of David Byrne's ecstatic punch.

Even when the song builds behind him and gets heavy and bright, Kirkwood seems distracted, in his own world. Very careful. And sometimes like a Walkman running out of batteries.

One of Kurt Cobain's favourite bands.

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Captain Beefheart - "Tropical Hot Dog Night"

1. Whatever Beefheart tells you, do not believe that "like two flamingos in a fruit fight" is an analogy for something. It's not.

2. He's "playing this music so the young girls will come out...tonight." But they won't. Because they're scared of both the song and the fact that his name is Captain Beefheart. They don't want to "meet the monster tonight," at all.

3. "Like stepping out of a triangle, into striped light?" Also not an analogy for anything.

4. In the imperative:

"Step out of a triangle, into striped light. Turn around and step back into striped light."

I don't want to do that. How do you do that?

5. Everything's wrong but at the same time it's right.

Fairport Convention - "Tale In a Hard Time"

In the liner notes to Fairport Convention's 1968 album, What We Did On Our Holidays, there is mention of the band's "Byrd-worshipping." And nowhere is the influence more apparent than on Richard Thompson's beautiful piece of psych-jangle, "Tale In a Hard Time." It would be easy to confuse this track for an early Byrds song if it wasn't for the left-channel guitar solo at 1:43 (a round relic of earlier rock, unlike the angular progressive psych solos favoured by the early Byrds (more like the primary solo, shared between both channels)).

All the best elements of jangle are here. The intertwining picked guitars. The thick melodic bass. Lush vocal harmonies. Tambourine on the high-hat. Is that a glockenspiel taking up the first guitar's melody? (Seriously, does anybody know what instrument is playing that part coming from behind my right ear?)

I remember Sean complaining about Fairport Convention's production as being too clean and "cheesy." But for me, the production is a window through which we can see (another window) the clarity of The Fairport Convention's densely interwoven melody. Cleanliness is therefore key. It would be all too easy to obscure with muddiness what is great about this song. [Buy]

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Can - "Moonshake"

"Moonshake" is like a 1960's Japanese party movie set in the future.

Or like children line-dancing in tuxedos in a pure-white room painted with empty primary-coloured speech-bubbles.

Damo Suzuki sings like he's kidding (he most certainly is not). Like after every word comes out of his mouth he puts his finger to his mouth as if to say "shhh," and then gives suspicious sideways glances to his left and right before continuing, child-like, to bunny-hop alongside the tuxedoed children.

The krautrock repetitiveness of the guitars is overshadowed by the weirdness, the science and the loungy sax/guitar/croon. [Buy]

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Why no comments? You don't love music anymore? Or is it me who you have forsaken?

Ida - "Dream Date"

In grade five, I manipulated a classmate of mine into breaking up with his girlfriend, on whom I had a crush. That same day (where did I get the gall?), I asked her out over the phone and she said yes. I remember bursting out of my house (a bloated and cheesy romantic, at the age of ten) and jumping off my porch and into the street at twilight. Where was I off to? To buy candy? I was - I'm almost embarrassed enough not to tell you - singing "I Feel Good."

The first time I heard Ida I was in grade ten and a friend of mine lent me Brian Eno's Another Green World. That album was entirely unlike anything I'd heard before and I fell in love with the new sounds and the sad otherworldly melodies. That same day another friend of mine played me a song she was listening to on her Walkman. It was Ida's cover of Eno's Golden Hours. An intimate cover, true to the original, but understandably, with a more contemporary indie flavour. I couldn't believe the serendipity. Nor could I comprehend how lucky I was to have such cool friends.

My love affair with Ida essentially ended after that day. Most of their other songs I find boring, samey. No peaks. No valleys. Just pretty. And dull.

But this song is a perfect statement of the kind of unabashed optimism, excitement and anticipation, that comes with innocent, unskeptical new love. The feeling I had on that day in grade five (perhaps without the grisly cloakroom machinations).

The guitars, the ebow, the jaunty bass, the eager drums - they all indicate optimism; wide open-eyes and a dumb-grin. Like a distracted walk (your joy contained, channeled inwardly), oblivious to the world around you. Every new instrument is another thought of your love, a new reason to smile, to let your guard down. And finally at 3:08, the incongruously enthusiastic guitar solo is a laugh, or skip or some other ridiculous thing we do as our feelings outweigh our self-consciousness for just a moment, before we catch ourselves and turn it back inside.

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Say It Stranger - "Science Will Find You A Cure"

Here is some tenderness from Montreal's Say It Stranger, whose newest recording I had the pleasure of hearing this morning. I prefer the new songs to the ones on Demonstration of Skill, from which I culled "Science Will Find You A Cure", and so will save my figurative ink until the new songs have been properly mixed and I can post one of them.

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Yesterday I bicycled through one of those retractable gates used to stop cars at toll booths. The wood shattered as I biked through it. I never saw it coming. Is that normal?

Shuggie Otis - "Inspiration Information"

Two channels of wah organ and guitar gossip indignantly, a tentatively funky bass player plays apologetically and a drummer does something dirty with a break- beat. The weave is so tight that it is hard to distinguish between the instruments. Shuggie's smooth lead and backing vocals blend right in, with the occasional piercing high note cutting through and briefly reverberating above the melee.

Even more mind-boggling is this piece of information: Shuggie played all of the instruments.

A true pop-music auteur, Shuggie largely disappeared after the release of Inspiration Information (in 1974) until it was rereleased on David Byrne's Luaka Bop label in 2001.

Shuggie Shuggie Shuggie. Shuggie Shuggie. Everybody say it. [Buy]

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Snailhouse - "All That Will Change"

The rockier the Snailhouse, the better the Snailhouse.

Snails need protection from the elements, urban debris, etc (not so different from us humans after all, eh scientists?). And the fragile music of Snailhouse is best when confident, put to crunchy marching guitars, thick harmonies and tight, propulsive drums.

"All That Will Change" has all that and more. The drums are not only tight and propulsive, but melodic when they need to be and then sprawling and wild. Added to the crunchy guitars are occasional accents of tremolo guitar and a fuzzy solo which sounds as if it's coming from a box on the floor in the next room.

Mike Feuerstack's (aka Snailhouse's) voice ranges from shy, quiet and nearly breaking, to a brave shout.

The song is a clash between fragility and confidence.

"I've got a reputation as the homeliest man in town," is sung like a taunt. With his heart on his sleeve and his chin up and out, he stays his path. We are hearing a fight between lovers. And both the lyrics and the music mirror the trajectory of one of those fights: bravado turning to uncertainty and nakedness and then back again. The aggressive charging verses crumble into shimmering vulnerable choruses.

It should be noted that no man is better at stage banter than Mike Feuerstack. He will amuse you with his words and crush you with his songs. Watch out! [Buy]

I am missing.

But I shall return later today. Put on your headphones and your reading glasses.

I'm so tired. As a result, I hired my trusty editor, the comely Max "Christine" Maki, to write today's second post and do the lyrical analysis (accompanying my musical thoughts) for the first. She is 73 years old and smokes two and a half packs of Camel Lites a day.

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The Fembots - "Small Town Murder Scene"

I wrote:

"Small Town Murder Scene," is a faded, flickering black and white saloon rag. Men sit at the bar, dejected, leaning over their beer. An entertainer sits down and bangs away at the piano, belts out one of the thousands of songs he knows. The clientele clues in and on the one-and, and three-and they bang their glasses on the bar. The bartender keeps the beer flowing, pouring it out on two and four. A sing-along ensues. A fiddler joins the party. Hoots and hollers. Castanets and singing saws. Bringing some joy to the Old West is what the Fembots are all about.

Christine wrote:

Or so you may think, not having listened to the content of said hooting and hollering. The town couldn't wait to get rid of old Valentine there, who, as you can probably imagine, was one of these annoying busy-bodies always meddling in others' affairs (or, possibly the aging gold rush harlot, merely misunderstood?). So, the townspeople set out to find the right basement milieu for their grisly solution. And then, to the bar for brief mourning and raucous celebration. Worry about cleaning up later. [Ed. The Fembots bring joy to the Old West not exlusively through song, but also through murder.]

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And:

Joni Mitchell - "Edith And The Kingpin"

Joni Mitchell spent her early childhood years in North Battleford and Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. I have a soft spot for Saskatchewan. Joni's life has been somewhat melodramatic: a survivor of childhood polio (which she contracted just one year before the polio vaccine was invented), she was left (temporarily) unable to walk and with a spine so bent two fists could be inserted under its hump. At the age of twenty-two she gave birth to a secret daughter she later gave up for adoption, and even later (thirty years) found again (as a result of
internet rumours).

Joni Mitchell's eighth album, The Hissing of Summer Lawns, did not at first catch my attention. Too psych rock, too high and low end (not enough middle), too dissonant, too artificial 70's, too moog. Some people love this sound. Not me. I find it cheesy. But having run out of cds to listen to at work one summer, and having replayed this one so many times that I reached a state where I could overcome and accept what I usually see as flaws, I slowly became conscious of its piercing brilliance.

With an almost too-smooth beginning, this jazzy-psych song of decadence and past primes tells the story of the ugly relationship between Edith and her kingpin. The guitars and drums seem too soft, the bass too harsh, the keyboard too shimmery and the flute riff completely unnecessary. But, when Joni adds tumbling jazz melodies in her sharply on-key voice, all these contrasts come together to form an entirely uncheesy whole. This song taught me something: even I can appreciate the heaviness of seventies rock.

Joni moved from Saskatchewan to Toronto, then New York, then L.A. to pursue her musical career. It's hard adjusting to a new place, learning and observing the strange ways of the big city:

"The big man arrives, disco dancers greet him, plain clothes cops greet him, Small town, big man, fresh lipstick glistening."

There are differences between old and new selves, old and new homes that must be reconciled. There are doubts:

"Women he has taken grow old too soon, he tilts their tired faces gently to the spoon."

But Joni knows she too has much to offer, and romantic and snowblind, she falls into desperate love with the man with the diamond ring.

"Edith and the kingpin, each with charm to sway, are staring eye to eye."

At the end, the very best part of the song: "You know they dare not look away."

I won't deny that I haven't secretly hoped for (and elsewhere spread) an internet rumour regarding a second secret daughter (me). Ha ha. [Buy]

Yusef Lateef - "Sister Mamie"

Yusef Lateef is one of my dad's favourite recording artists and his "Russell and Elliot" (a weeping, plaintive blues) is one of the first songs I can remember hearing.

From Lateef's excellent Live At Pep's recording comes "Sister Mamie," a jazz, blue and far-eastern.

The drums are off to the side, pushing the song from left to right, not supporting it or pushing forward. The piano is an insistent low-down shake of the head. The bass slides. Lateef is on senai, a quadruple-reed woodwind. He wails and cries. His playing frames the other more traditional solos in the context of an anguish inexpressible by the twelve-tone blues.

Play it for your babies. They will end up like me.

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Donovan - "Hurdy Gurdy Man"

Is it OK to write lyrics like these:

''Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity

'Tis then when the hurdy gurdy man
Comes singing songs of love''?

Certainly not.

However, colossal distorted electric guitars (and sitars, of course), constant drum fills and a twee voice affected with tremolo join his special brand of pre-prog fantasy lyrics to make "Hurdy Gurdy Man" a strange and beautiful classic of psychedelic folk/rock.

For further listening consider Jim O'Rourke's perverse hurdy gurdy drone album, Happy Days.