Archive for the ‘music’ Category

Is there a letter in your bag for me?

Posted: December 14, 2014 in Miscellaneous, music, Record reviews, Writing
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In this season of thankfulness, I want to sincerely thank everyone who has ever written me a letter. I love the mail. I love playing in the mail. I was lucky to have had two superlative, longtime pen pals, but alas, they are no more. They have ceased to be. They have kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain and joined the bleedin’ choir invisible. In a word, they’ve changed their address. (Yes, I know that’s four words. I’m a big tipper.)

I don’t remember how I got involved with mail. Like most boys my age, I sent my allowance money to shady companies that advertised incredible promises in the back pages of Batman and Justice League of America. For example, there was a dramatic half-page ad for a “Civil War battle set” that would enable me to re-create the entire Virginia campaign from the moment Grant took command of the Army of the Potomac…and all for a couple of dollars!

Imagine my surprise when the mailman did not drive up with a truck and a crane to deliver my Civil War battle set but instead handed me a box in which you could’ve packed cough drops. The blue and gray soldiers were translucent fingernails of plastic that barely existed in three dimensions. Even their artillery was flat as a pancake. I didn’t repeat this mistake later on when I saw the dramatic ad in some other comic for the Battle of Midway battle set.

But when did I start writing letters? Who was my first letter-writing chum? I don’t know. I do know that back in the 1960s, in fourth or fifth grade, we all had at least one class in how to write “The Friendly Letter.”

Dear [name],

How are you? I am fine. [The rest of this paragraph was about what we were doing in school and how much we liked our teacher.]

[The second paragraph was about our wholesome home life. A pet featured prominently, or if you didn’t have a pet you could make do with a younger sibling.]

[Complimentary close: Take care, Your friend, Sincerely, Write back, etc. If you were a girl-type person you drew a heart for the dot over the i.]

Stevie

I grew up (somehow) and found people to correspond with. I added different types of letters to my repertoire; in addition to the Friendly Letter, there was the College Admission Letter, the Cover Letter, the Query Letter, the I’ve Read Too Much Thomas Wolfe or Too Many French Existentialists Letter, the I’ve Owed You a Letter for Six Months Letter, the Begging for a Job Letter, and the Begging for Sex Letter.

Some of these letters are not effective and should be discontinued.

Well, I am still a lucky guy, and not just for having known Judy and Jack or two of my other veterans, Pauline and Tilda. I guess the Lords of Kobol heard my prayers, because in the absence of old friends, new ones have stepped in and sent me mail. I was happily surprised when I made a list because there are more of you than I thought: Accused of Lurking, Mr. Seaside, Starry-Eyed Stamper, K to the T, and Mark It K8, among others. Special D is not above cutting the side out of a beer carton and making me a postcard. (K to the T, Accused of Lurking, and Mr. Seaside have all pulled off this trick with beer coasters.)

Another of my correspondents is Johnny Five. J5 deploys his skills primarily to mock me, but it’s mail and I’ll take it.

Johnny5

Thank you, everyone who has ever written me a letter, dashed off a postcard, or selected an insulting greeting card. Thanks to all of you for going to the trouble of finding a stamp because you knew I’d enjoy your barely legible scribbling. Thanks to you vacationers who thought of me in far-away places and bought a postcard and remembered to send it a week after you got home. Thanks to those of you who created your own postcards. And thanks for the beer coasters. Note to self: One is an accident, two is a coincidence, but three is a collection. I’d better make a checklist.

Today’s Randoms: The Land Down Under Edition

Thumbs-up
Courtney Barnett, The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (2013)
Ms. Barnett is a poet who sings/talks you through her songs as if you were walking with her through the low-key chaos of her life or helping her into the ambulance following an asthma attack in the garden. She’s a female Lou Reed or a non-crazy Courtney Love. The Smithereens would’ve been a great backing band for her, but I like the lo-fi rockers she’s recruited. (Her bass player is Bones Sloane!)

“Avant Gardener” is fabulous. “David” sounds like Bowie’s “The Jean Genie,” though Bowie’s song is closer in its imagery to Reed’s “Take a Walk on the Wild Side” while Barnett’s song includes the line “Come on Davey, let’s go plant a tree/You bring the spade, I’ll bring the seeds.” On “Anonymous Club,” Barnett evokes Neil Young in his quieter moments. She does the same for Liz Phair on “Scotty Says” and “Are You Looking After Yourself.” Some duds here – the last two tracks are a drag – but overall, I’m really digging her music.

Guilty pleasure
When I first read the name INXS, I pronounced it “Inks.” I was busted in public for it, too. Same deal with R.E.M., which I pronounced “Rem.” But I can’t compete with a former co-worker who thought the name of the melancholic English New Wave band that recorded “Personal Jesus” and “Strangelove” was “Pesh DeMode.” (This mangling fits with a line from another Depeche Mode song, “Behind the Wheel”: “I hand myself/over on a plate.”)

INXS doesn’t have a single album I’d spend money on, but I love “The One Thing” (Shabooh Shoobah), “Original Sin” (The Swing), “New Sensation” (Kick), and “Suicide Blonde” (X). I won’t even buy the U.S. edition of their greatest hits because these four songs come with 12 I don’t want. (The Australian and U.K. editions include even more crap.) But I do love those four songs.

Shabooh Shoobah is a stupid name for an album, a movie, a car, a dog, or a mathematical theorem, but it would superbly suit a political party.

No no no no no!!!

Angel City

Angel City, Night Attack (1982)
Angel City is an Australian band that made the mistake of forming about the same time as AC/DC but without any of AC/DC’s skills. And AC/DC is not overflowing with skills.

They were The Angels in Australia and Angel City in the rest of the world. I found a few of their songs online, including the intriguingly named “Dogs Are Talking.” Turns out those dogs got nothing to say. The best part of Night Attack is the cover. Their cover model looks exactly like a gentleman I worked with in the early 1990s. Bruce never shot lasers out of his eyes, but perhaps he did that outside the office when I couldn’t see him. I’ll write him a letter.

 

Run-DMSteve explains it all for you

Posted: November 23, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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In June I set out to review every album Prince ever made. I embarked on this project because I realized that, for me, Prince was embalmed in the ’80s – the guy I heard at clubs and parties. He was that sexy M.F. who could rock, croon, talk to God, talk for God, write weird erotic scenarios, and take goofy chances. I wanted a better idea of who he really was. There had to be more to the man than “Purple Rain” playing to a gang of us nerds in a hotel ballroom at a science fiction convention.

It’s easy to follow, album by album, a band that existed for fewer than 20 years – I’ve done that with The Jesus and Mary Chain, The Pixies, The Clash, Creedence, and several others. It’s much harder to do with an artist who’s been playing and recording for 30 years or more. They change too much. They travel down side roads while you stick to the interstate. Or you change too much. It’s been a long time since I was punchin’ a clock and listening wide-eyed to Born to Run.

It’s also hard to follow an artist with a lengthy career because every artist, no matter how talented, eventually skids into the Bad Spot. That’s the rough patch where your Muse runs off with someone younger and prettier and you’re left to grit it out on craftsmanship alone.

In the 1970s, Neil Young dissected his soul on several awe-inspiring albums. Two that’ll slay you: On the Beach (1974) and Tonight’s the Night (1975). When the ’80s dawned, Neil took a long time getting out of bed. For example, Trans (1982), which might as well have been called Tron, and Everybody’s Rockin’ (1983), his fake Fabulous Fifties record. Neil didn’t make a good record until Freedom (1989), which you’ll recall for the stunning “Rockin’ in the Free World.”

Bruce Springsteen did pretty well in the 1980s, at least until Tunnel of Love (1987). Then things went downhill. Or, in Springsteen terms, the mill closed, the state cops shut down all that street racing, and the D.A. couldn’t get no relief. After two subpar efforts, Human Touch and Lucky Town (both 1992), he recorded nothing of consequence until his reaction to 9/11, The Rising (2002), after which he reinvented himself as the Dark Knight of the 21st century.

I need a weatherman to explain to me what Bob Dylan was trying to do on Self Portrait (1970) and Dylan (1973).

David Bowie’s career after Scary Monsters (1980) is not the least bit scary.

Sadly, Michael Jackson’s career after Bad (1987) is not worth talking about.

Back to Prince. I made it through the first 14 albums. I rediscovered his ’70s disco discs. I relived my youth with Dirty Mind, 1999, and Purple Rain. I was struck as if by lightning by Sign O’ the Times.

By the time we got to the 1990s, the road Prince and I were driving developed some serious twists, the safety rails disappeared, and the paving got thinner. Loyal Reader Slave to the Garden warned me that in the ’90s, Prince, in his apocalyptic struggle with Warner Bros., dumped albums on the market that should’ve been dumped in the dump. We were approaching the Bad Spot.

The next one on my list, Come (1994), is what we critics like to call awful. I’d rather listen to a flock of trumpeter swans barking like dogs as they circle for a landing.

Prince’s 1987 bootleg, The Black Album, officially appeared in 1994. It’s not as good as black albums by Spinal Tap (1984), Metallica (1991), and Jay-Z (2003), though it’s probably better than the Marilyn Manson Black Album bootleg, if I could bring myself to listen to that one.

Looking at the rest of the ’90s, I see that Prince was either attacking the Warner Bros. Death Star or playing stuff that belongs in a galaxy far, far away. Well, what did I expect? How long can Prince go on being that sexy M.F.? (I can still pull it off, but only from a distance.) Artists have to change or they might as well be locked in a trophy cabinet. I’m convinced that Prince will emerge from this depressing era into some new and wonderful form, but I’m not going to follow every bread crumb until I catch up with him.

(There are two albums I definitely want to hear: The Girl 6 soundtrack, which is supposed to be a throwback to the ’80s, and the three-record Emancipation, both from 1996.)

What I’ve learned
Here’s what I can tell you about me: It’s hard to grow past the music that filled me with joy when I was young. Some of those artists are still recording, but they no longer speak to me. Or perhaps I can no longer hear them.

Here’s what I can tell you about Prince: Overall, no performer in the history of popular music is as talented as Prince. Some people sing better or write better or dance better, some people see deeper into the human or the national psyche. Some people are more economical (Prince does not know when to end a song).

But no one can do everything that this gentleman does at such a consistently high level. No male performer is as insistently sexy without also being sickeningly misogynistic. Carlos Santana, Paul McCartney, Elvis Costello, Bowie, Young, and Dylan are as prolific, but even those guys never released three discs of original material on the same day.

There’s much more to Prince than “Purple Rain.” I just don’t need it.

[Editor’s note: It’s at least twice as difficult for a female singer/songwriter to survive in a decades-long career as it is for a male. It’s much easier to find male counterparts to Prince, so I stuck with the men.]

I started out liking Prince, but after listening to the first 14 albums I really like Prince. I want to keep liking Prince. So I’ll stop here. Thanks as always for reading along.

A couple of days ago I spent an afternoon listening to Pink Floyd and Justin Timberlake. I got nothing out of that. This afternoon I’m listening to Chuck Berry. Until next time, enjoy this insane video from the Neil Young of the Everybody’s Rockin’ era.

 

The blogger formerly known as Run-DMSteve

Posted: November 16, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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When my brother and I were little, we tried to rename ourselves. Two of our choices were “Moose” and “Tex.”

We got Moose from Moose Skowron, who played first base for the Yankees. I remember him as a slow-footed blunderbuss, but I just checked his stats and for a guy named Moose he sure hit a lot of triples.

We got Tex from our Grandpa Sam, who worked with cattle in the Old Country and should’ve moved Out West when he came to this country in 1912. Imagine how my life would’ve turned out if I’d grown up in the Texas Panhandle instead of some dinky town you don’t stop in on your way to Cape Cod: Instead of writing this stupid blog, I’d be happy as a clam, governing the Lone Star State and repressing the rights of women and minorities.

How happy are clams? How can you tell?

Moose and Tex didn’t stick, nor any of the other names we tried, and in our family we remained Ronny and Stevie. My various attempts at rebranding in adulthood didn’t work, either. I’m like the teenage baseball player in Philip Roth’s The Great American Novel who kept bugging his adult teammates to give him a nickname. They finally gave him one: Nickname.

Here’s how the 1% do it
Prince ran into trouble in 1993 when he changed his name to a symbol without giving anyone a clue as to how to speak this symbol.

Prince symbol
Symbol courtesy of Loyal Reader Accused of Lurking.

Naturally, everyone immediately gave the symbol a nickname. (I can’t have a nickname, but a symbol can have a nickname?) The one you see most is “The Artist Formerly Known as Prince.” That’s right, Prince, we were still saying your name. Prince was also called The Purple One and The Artist Never Known As Tall. I don’t want anything like those attached to me.

So why did Prince Rogers Nelson change his name? What does the symbol mean? What did his family call him? How about his lovers? And why should you devote precious synaptic energy to exploring these questions?

Why did he change his name? His war with Warner Bros. His evolution as an artist. Because he could.

What does the symbol mean? It’s a combination of the symbols for male and female. It’s officially referred to as “The Love Symbol.” It looks like something you’d tie at the end of your line to catch some trout.

What did his family call him? Moose or Tex.

His lovers? “Sexy M.F.” (see below).

I think he was just fucking with us. All he really wanted was to play a Love Symbol-shaped guitar.

Prince guitar

Now comes the winter of our disco tent
Prince and Warner Bros. fought furiously in the 1990s and eventually divorced. (They’ve since remarried.) Here is what seems to have been the flashpoint for both sides, the next album on our list, the one with the symbol slapped on the cover.

Love Symbol  Album
1992
Right off the bat, on an album with an unpronounceable name, we get a track called “My Name Is Prince.” Don’t look at me, I just work here. Prince shares his origin story: “In the beginning God made the sea/But on the seventh day he made me.” Lest you think he’s conceited (OK, he is conceited), he continues with “My name is Prince, I don’t want to be king/’Cause I’ve seen the top and it’s just a dream.” This confused song also asks whether the Lord is happy with us and states that Prince isn’t happy with Jim Crow. And, of course, he’s not planning to leave until he has sex with your daughter.

“My Name Is Prince” could fill any dance floor, and “Sexy M.F.” is the song James Brown always wanted to record. Unfortunately, even with the awesome strengths of The New Power Generation behind him, the Love Symbol Album takes a dive after the first two tracks. We get ordinary songs, generic reggae, lethargic love ballads, one song that reminded me of Billy Joel (“The Morning Papers”), another that reminded me of Robert Palmer’s “Addicted to Love” (“The Continental”), one that set a new pomposity standard (“And God Created a Woman”), and Kirstie Alley answering a phone and having one-sided conversations. What? I don’t know.

I disliked “3 Chains O’ Gold,” another ballad with nothing in the tank. I mention it only for the enchanted flute you’d expect to hear in a treetop in Rivendell or in a TV commercial starring Snuggles the fabric softener bear.

But then comes “I Wanna Melt with U” and all I have to say is wow. In fact, double wow. This is one of the best disco songs of the ’70s. Except for the swearing, this whole album feels like the ’70s.

Love Symbol staggers into the end zone with “The Sacrifice of Victor.” Sometimes you catch a whiff of 1999 or Purple Rain and you cry from nostalgia. This is a song about a black man striving against all the crap that life throws at him:

Lord I might get tired,
But I, I’ve got 2 keep on
Walkin’ down this road
Keep on walkin’ down this road
When I reach my destination
My name will be victor.

True, Prince was writing not about his struggle against a white-dominated society but his struggle with his record company, but even so, he’s speaking from his heart. And, being Prince, he opens the album named for his symbol with “My name is Prince” and ends it with “My name will be victor.”

This exasperating record was written as an opera.

Thus ends the Prince Project!
Prince gave the Love Symbol its freedom in 2000 and I’m doing the same for me right now. I’ll tell you what happened and what I learned in our next, very exciting episode.

Today’s Randoms: Favorite baseball nicknames
The Human Rain Delay: Mike Hargrove
Eye Chart: Doug Gwosdz
Death to Flying Things: Three players since the 1870s, including a current Seattle Mariner.

The late great Dave Niehaus, Mariner announcer extraordinaire, had most excellent verbal skills, except for nicknaming. He dubbed pitcher Glenn Abbott, who was 6’6” and from Arkansas, “The Tall Arkansan.” He gave third baseman Dave Edler, who was a redhead from Yakima, the moniker “The Redhead from Yakima.”

Dave Edler later became the redhead mayor of Yakima.

Glenn Abbott is one of only three men in baseball history to have three sets of doubled consonants in their names. The other two are Rennie Stennett and Dennis Bennett. The weird thing is how close they all were in time. Bennett retired in 1968; Stennett played his first game in 1971 and Abbott in 1973. They have nothing else in common, besides playing baseball and being carbon-based life forms.

 

 

Dude, you’re killing me here

Posted: November 7, 2014 in music, Record reviews
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Anyone can plunge into a creative tailspin, or fail to live up to public expectations, or rush off in directions that alienate your fans. God knows I’ve done all of these. I don’t know what happened to Prince in the years 1987 through 1991, but here are some clues.

The Black Album
1987
Prince decided not to release this record, which immediately became an underground bootleg sensation. The aboveground release was in 1994, so I’ll get to it there.

Lovesexy
1988
A concept album from Prince in which his love of lust battles his love of God. I don’t know if Prince ever settled this, but I can tell you he didn’t bring it up again on Batman.

“Alphabet St.” is worthy of the old Prince, but you’ll have to memorize its position on the CD because there are no $#*&^$! index marks. “Dance On,” a protest song à la “Sign O’ the Times,” is remarkable, but good luck finding it on a disc where every FN song bleeds into every other song.

The title track resembles Human League’s 1983 super explosive smash hit explosion “(Keep Feeling) Fascination.” Is that good or bad? To me it’s good, but 1983 was one of my favorite years.

I don’t understand this record.

Rolling Stone’s critics named The Black Album (which didn’t officially exist) and Lovesexy two the 10 best albums of 1988. Midnight Oil’s Diesel and Dust was #1 with the critics; the readers voted for U2’s Rattle and Hum. I’m with the readers on that one.

Batman
1989
Prince’s disco soundtrack is frozen in carbonite. I mean, stuck in the ’80s. You could still get people moving with “Partyman” (the Joker is the party man), “Vicki Waiting,” and “Trust,” but no one would remember them five minutes later. “Lemon Crush” has some zap to it, but only because it resembles “Thriller.”

“The Arms of Orion” is inferior to all existing songs about Orion, including “Orion” by Metallica, Jethro Tull, and Linda Ronstadt, and I don’t care for those songs, either. The 6-minute megamix “Batdance” gets this mention and nothing else.

Graffiti Bridge
1990
Objective: Write a sequel to Purple Rain.
Result: You can’t go home again.

Don’t ever say this man isn’t generous, though. He wrote all the songs but gave half of them to other acts: Mavis Staples, 14-year-old Tevin Campbell, and yet more Prince protégés, The Time. He also recorded one number with George Clinton and his Funkestra.

There’s not much to choose from here, but of the songs that are all Prince, Huey Lewis & The News would’ve sold their souls for “Can’t Stop This Feeling I Got.” “Elephants and Flowers” is about honoring God through multiple sex partners. High five. “The Question of U” reminded me of The Beatles: The music of “Come Together” and the lyrics of “Yer Blues.” Give Prince points for bowling a split.

Of the songs that are not all Prince, the one I like best is his collaboration with Clinton, “We Can Funk.” Add to that The Time’s “Shake!” (which sounds like Question Mark & The Mysterians’ “96 Tears”) and we can move on to 1991.

Bonus: Two of The Time guys produced Human League’s 1986 smash explosive super exploding hit “Human.”

Rolling Stone’s critics ignored Graffiti Bridge, but the readers named it one of their runner-up albums for 1990. Critics and readers agreed on Sinéad O’Connor’s I Do Not Want What I Haven’t Got as the best of the best.

Diamonds and Pearls
1991
This is more like it. Prince has a new backup band, The New Power Generation, and they can stomp, they can play a soul ballad, they can even play jazz. “Thunder” is his best opening track since “Sign O’ the Times.” It flat out rocks, and even though I get the feeling that the new boys are restraining themselves they still beat the couch stuffing out of AC/DC’s “Thunderstruck.”

This reminds us yet again that Prince can reach into the grab-bag of pop and reinterpret anything he pulls out. “Strollin’ ” sounds as if it were inspired by the 5th Dimension’s “Stoned Soul Picnic.” “Willing and Able” is a Dire Straits song with better singing and a beat.

Because Prince is equally ready to fight record companies and his own fans, Rhapsody is only authorized to play nine of the 13 tracks on this album. I couldn’t find the rest on YouTube BECAUSE THEY’RE NOT AVAILABLE IN MY COUNTRY. For example, “Cream,” which Rolling Stone’s critics picked as one the year’s best singles. (R.E.M.’s “Losing My Religion” topped the critics’ and readers’ picks for best single of 1991. Prince will not reappear on this list until 2006.)

Even with that handicap, and even though the last four tracks on this disc are eye-crossingly lame, Diamonds and Pearls is easily the best album of today’s group. If you’re going to buy any of them, buy this one.

Join me next time for the moment you’ve been waiting for: Prince changes his name!

Reflections upon listening to the Flaming Lips’ With a Little Help from my Fwends a couple of times
(A guest review from longtime reader Number 9.)

When Sgt. Pepper first came out, I would put on side 2, turn out the lights, and play my violin along with “Within You Without You.” So I can understand the Flaming Lips wanting to play along also. I like what they and their, uh, fwends, have done. I haven’t heard of most of their, uh, fwends, except, of course, Miley Cyrus – who knew she could kinda sound like John Lennon (“Lucy in the Sky”)? Mostly I like the instrumental/electronic intros and interludes, the stuff that pushes at the Sgt. Pepper envelope. But my favorite track is “Fixing a Hole” by, uh, fwends the Electric Würms, a nice slowed down rendition – I hope Paul likes it too.

 

Zombies just want to have fun: A few thoughts on Halloween

Posted: October 31, 2014 in Miscellaneous, music
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Today I heard “Ghosbusters” (three times on two stations), “Thriller” (twice), and once each for “Spirits in the Material World,” “The Purple People Eater,” “Monster Mash,” “Season of the Witch,” and “Every Day Is Halloween.” From this sample I deduced that Christmas music is always about Christmas but Halloween music is never about Halloween.

Ray Parker, Jr.’s “Ghostbusters” is about ghosts, sure, but it’s also about as scary as “Y.M.C.A.”

Michael Jackson sets a scary scene in “Thriller,” but it turns out to be a movie on TV. “I can thrill you more than any ghost,” he claims. Uh-huh. As for Vincent Price’s monologue, remember that the root of it is “And whosoever shall be found/Without the soul for getting down/Must stand and face the hounds of hell/And rot inside a corpse’s shell.”

It’s always a mistake to put Vincent Price on your record.

Sting is scary, music by The Police is not.

Sheb Wooley’s Purple People Eater has one eye, one horn, flies, and devours people, but it came to Earth to form a rock ’n’ roll band. The last word in the song is “Tequila.”

In Bobby “Boris” Pickett’s “Monster Mash,” all they wanna do is dance, dance.

Songs with “witch” in the title are usually about a woman who won’t have sex with the singer. God knows what Donovan was getting at in “Season of the Witch.” He threw me with the line “Beatniks are out to make it rich.”

For the boys in Ministry, every day is Halloween because they dress like goths, not because they come to the door asking for candy.

David Bowie’s “Scary Monsters” are actually “super creeps,” Oingo Boingo’s dead men are going to a “Dead Man’s Party” which makes it a descendant of “Monster Mash,” and The Psychedelic Furs’ “The Ghost in You” is a love song, and not to a ghost.

We humans like being scared…in our books and movies. We love haunted houses and Halloween. We love opening the door on another batch of kids dressed as monsters, ninja assassins, witches, Jedis, superheroes, and roller-skating ninja assassin prom queens. But we don’t like being scared in our music. Wagner can be frightening, but that’s because I don’t want to be trapped for weeks in one of his operas.

Unidentified noises in the night, when we’re in bed, scare us. Songs don’t. I don’t know why.

Tonight, my parents opened the same door for trick-or-treaters that they’ve been opening since 1957. There must be adults who got candy from my Mom and Dad back when they were kids and who are now bringing their grandchildren around. And I’m their son. OK, now I’m scared.

 

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