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Preface: this is the first in, hopefully, a series of commentaries about music that has little or no bearing on current popular culture, and is mostly personal and inaccessibly sentimental. Nevertheless, indie is exhausting me now, and it could be either the onset of a milestone birthday (if you care to know which one, look up what age Bob Dylan once warned his acolytes above which a person cannot be trusted) or musical over-exposure, but it’s time to return to something atavistic that I can always rely on for good results.
These are ugly times, or at least it feels like it. Probably no worse at the root than days of yore, but occasionally there is an event that makes you long for what you thought was a kinder era. My moment of forced nostalgia came last Friday as I was riding home from work and saw a little old lady gingerly crossing the street at Dearborn and Walton - not fatally slow, but certainly not in leaps and bounds. Still, she was making good time and, as is the law in Chicago, had the right-of-way, which did not stop an adipose SUV driver from hurling towards the intersection with intent to proceed through at speed, until he slammed on the breaks to avoid hitting Nanna.
I could make out her mild but weathered voice admonishing him for not yielding to her as she stood frozen on the double yellow line. I don’t figure that she called his mother a whore, or insulted his heritage, but he fast became infuriated. With slack, unshaven jowls swaying to and fro like warm testicles, he turned to her, his skinny buddy riding shotgun looking on as he said, “Shut up, fuck you!” in that TV mobster tone where ‘fuck’ becomes ‘fwahck’. So not only is Grandma nearly bowled over by Lips Manlis and his crony, but is told to be fruitful and multiply herself. I begin to long for the past.
And the past manifests itself in curious ways. Scenes of ugliness like this make for the question, “Was there a better time in the world than this cruel modern epoch?” Whether or not it was externally better is too vast to quantify, but it seems so because hearing albums like Neil Diamond’s The Jazz Singer was once enough to feel right in the world.
Mind you, that was when I was seven, but for whatever reason, after seeing a near hit-and-run on a septuagenarian, I was compelled to put on my scratchy LP of the soundtrack to one of the worst movies ever, and it did the job. Not only that, but I still knew every word, despite having not listened to neither sides A nor B since grade school. Of course, this is a completely subjective missive, but that’s ok, because attempting objectivity about music that touches you on a deeply emotional level tends to result in something you’ll regret having written.
Patriotism, catchy songs and grown-up topics I wouldn’t fully understand for years after last listening to the album are all there, and it combines for a delicious sentimentality cocktail. What did I know at age eight about ‘Summer Love’? Nothing, but Neil’s saccharine honesty made me nostalgic for it (and I should admit that the scene in the movie when Neil Diamond and Lucie Arnaz get naked was the first time I remember my parents and I having the awkward sex-talk, but that’s neither here nor there). Forget about the once-ubiquitous Reagan-era anthem, ‘America’… this disc has some real childhood gems. To wit:
- How was I supposed to know that ‘Amazed and Confused’ was a paltry lift from Zep’s ‘Dazed’ counterpart? Did I know who Led Zeppelin was? Would it have mattered? [No.]
- I was so young that I even had to ask if ‘You Baby’ were about an infant… so what if I didn’t know that ‘baby’ was a euphemism for ‘young lady for whom I have the hots’? Wow, this is better than confession.
- And can you imagine how much more comfortable it was to think that ‘Jerusalem’ was not the omphalos of world conflict, but a song that’s catchy as hell? Yes, those were good times…
I knew all the words but none of the meaning. It didn’t matter, and nothing was going to stop me liking the shit out of it… not adult themes in the movie like father/son dilemmas, marriages in crisis, the record industry’s evil ways, or even Neil Diamond himself. My parents tried, but nothing, not even his own Greatest Hits could wean me off my Jazz Singer habit me. Can you blame me?
VS 
What little I recall from the movie smacks of subtle prejudice, excessive sappiness, and most of all bad acting… so what? Just as the defects in the vinyl are as much a part of my listening experience as the music itself, the memory of it and the actual content are inextricably bonded in a special, gawky personal favorite.
The Jazz Singer has been conspicuously absent from my Top 10 list, but no longer. This is that album that transcends the ‘guilty pleasure’ moniker, and resides somewhere deep in Freudian territory. I recommend that you find yours (some usual suspects: Mom & Dad’s old copies of Jesus Christ Superstar, Johnathan Livingston Seagull, The Big Chill Soundtrack, etc.), dust it off and admit that it’s The Shit. Maybe I’m the only one who ever repressed music like an Oedipal Complex, but when the world’s asshole drivers are out to kill the world’s grandmas, it’s time for a vacation to Atavistic Island.
M.I.A. is a dirty dirty sellout. Never mind that she is ostensibly retired from performing, there is absolutely no reason to listen to her again, and her albums should be stricken from the historical record.
Alas, that is not possible. Many people, perhaps one or two of the readers of this blog, have listened to and professed to liking her albums. And now, thanks to Judd Apatow and Seth Rogen, she’s a pop sensation. So, you, with your superior musical knowledge, will inevitably be asked if you have listened to M.I.A. This will put you in a very tricky situation. You can’t say no, lest you lose yor well-deserved feeling of superiority. But if you simply say yes, you will admit that you listen to something the masses listen to, and that just isn’t possible. You’re better than them! Your response must reflect that. So, here is a guide that hopefully will allow you to deftly answer this question.
First, you must display a wry smile. A small, quick chuckle would also be appropriate. “Yeah, I listen to Ms. Arulpragasam,” you start, with a weary tone to your voice. Make sure you don’t confuse M.I.A.’s given surname with that of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahminedjad. Nor do you actually say “M.I.A.” Quickly, you correct yourself. “Or, I used to.”
Your counterpart will surely have a quizzical look on his or her face. So, you’ll elaborate, “Her first album, Arular, was incredible. It was so real. It dealt with living in a state of extreme poverty and constant war. Her dad was in the Tamil Tigers, you know (you don’t know. I didn’t until I googled it just now. And I’m still not sure. Just go with it.). She’s much more of a gangsta rapper than someone like fuckin’ (insert contemporary gangsta rapper). Arular combined punk and electropop and Britpop and…” Now your voice will trail off. Shake your head and mutter, “it was unreal.”
Here’s where things get tricky. Her second album, Kala, wasn’t any worse (or so I’m told. I never actually listened to either album. Not really my style. But I digress). But “Paper Planes” was on the album. So say something like, “And Kala was great too. But they fucking (pronounce the g) censored it. ‘Paper Planes,’ you know, the song from the commercial, had these gunshots in them. Of course, the shithead suits didn’t like that. And now it’s in that fuckin’ commercial.” As you can tell, the level of profanity will rise exponentially as you get away from actually talking about the music.
At this point, you should have a diatribe prepared about how capitalism is ruining art. Something like, “She was explaining the awful conditions in Sri Lanka. And now she’s being used to shill stoner movies. Movies made by men who don’t care about the poor, and if they ever saw someone like Ms. Arulpragasam before she became famous, they would just walk right by them, not even stopping for a second. What a disgrace.” (You can also go into how great Freaks and Geeks was here also).
By now, the other member of the conversation, if he or she is still around, will regret even asking the question. You will have retained your elitist status, even if you, like me, haven’t listened to it. And if you have (which you probably should, people seemed to really like it), you can talk about how it made you feel or how you couldn’t stop singing it or something like that. There is only one way to end the conversation, however:
“Santogold is so much better anyway.”
“The World’s Greatest Music Collection” is up for auction on Ebay. While the name may be very subjective and the premise alone could spark pages of debate on blogs like… oh, I dunno… say, Superstarcastic.com, it is a pretty impressive collection of LPs and CDs (what, no cassettes or 8-tracks or Reel-to-Reels?).
On the collection’s website, current owner, Paul Mawhinney, claims that there are 3 million records (45s, 78s, EPs and LPs) and 300,000 CDs spanning all genres.
By Apple’s advertised estimations, it would take 150 160 GB iPods to store the touted 6 million songs available in this auction. That would cost you $52,350 before tax and shipping. Which is nothing really if you can afford $3 million in recorded materials. If you can hack that, you’ll be happy to know that you’ll currently be the only bidder.
When I first heard The Postal Service’s album, Give Up it rocked my world, in a snyth-poppy, not-that-rockin’ kind of way. It was totally awesome and amazing…FIVE YEARS AGO.
That’s right - today marks the five year anniversary of Sub Pop’s official release of Give Up.
Since then samples of the pretty little bleeps and blips have been (over)used in commercials selling cars, hospitals, candy, mp3 players, crappy MTV reality shows, and most recently UPS. Do the ad-men think that this is still the ticket to the hearts and wallets of the indie-yuppie demographic? Are there really people out there who aren’t as completely over it as I am? Apparently so. A quick search of my Facebook network shows that 12 of my “friends” and over 500 other people list The Postal Service as one of their favorite bands….
I am of the opinion that this is not even a real band; it’s a project. And it’s played out. I’m sure most of those people have checked out other Death Cab for Cutie music - it’s practically mom-rock these days. But how many of them listen to Dntel? James Figurine?
Five years later and this shit will not stop. It’s a phenomenon. Good for Sub Pop, and good for Ben and Jimmy. Not good for me because I have actually become sick of a record I really, really liked. It’s okay though, even if it hadn’t been embraced by the masses, I’d probably no longer be listening to this anymore. File it away as a classic and give it up.
In light of the interest I’ve seen lately in the total awesome-ness that are metal album covers, I’ve decided to compile 10 from memory and collection for the sight-thirsty public. These covers are a mix of favorites, most brutal, most metallic-ly artsy, most gruesome, etc. Enjoy.
Leviathan by Mastodon. This album rocks on its own, but the cover is unbelievable. All of Mastodon’s album art is like this, but this one just wins. It just wins.
Whoracle by In Flames. Pay attention to detail on this one; there’s so much going on. I, for one, feel rather bad for the little girl on the lower right hand side.
Deliverance by Opeth. It embodies creepy. It’s got all of the classic elements of eerie: old bed with smiling doll on it, dark lighting and lots of shadows, and some dark figure in the reflection of the mirror to the left of the clock to the left of the bed.
One Kill Wonder by The Haunted. How about that.
Versus The World by Amon Amarth. How epic is that? In the context of the picture, I don’t think it possible to be more epic.
Master of Puppets by Metallica. It’s my favorite album by them and it’s got some serious artwork. It should be in a museum.
The Great Cold Distance by Katatonia. I dig the red lighting, the shading, and the melancholy of this cover. The album emits exactly what the cover conveys. I just like it.
Metal Magic by Pantera. How cool is this cover? If southern metal would have existed in 1975, this is what a typical record sleeve would have looked like.
Reign in Blood by Slayer. The album itself has been deemed “The heaviest album of all time” by Kerrang! Magazine. Quite satanically explicit for 1986, huh?
Tomb of the Mutilated by Cannibal Corpse. Truth is, there isn’t one cover by these guys that isn’t violently grotesque and eye-popping. This one just…just…just somehow stands out in the mix. I mean, had you ever thought about a half-rotted zombie going down on another before seeing this?
So that’s that. Metal rules.
I let a friend of mine borrow this album the other day and decided to take another listen in honor of it. I forgot how disgustingly good it is.
You gotta love something so classic and Renaissance as DaVinci’s Vitruvian Man to be tampered with and exploited to fit the artistic musings of a death metal band. The “supernatural art” of this album is exactly what Anders Friden says it is. It’s above and beyond. Besides, after this album, In Flames started down the rocky, well-trodden, and shit-streaked path of mainstream. It’s still good, hell it’s still amazing…but it’s still streaked with brown. It’s much like what’s been happening since the dawn of good music. Eventually, most of it just gets corrupted and stretched to fit a wider demographic. Clayman falls in just before that. I love it.
