What Does Michael Jackson really sing in
“Don’t Stop Till You Get Enough?”—We always thought it was “Keep on, with your post. doc,” though we knew we were wrong; we didn’t know what was right
One banter game us music buffs sometimes end up playing while jamming or even just talking is noticing melodic—or other—similarities between songs that aren’t usually associated with each other, for instance Siouxsie and The Banshee’s “Cities In Dust,” is like Quicksilver Messenger Service’s “What You Gonna Do About Me?”
Or The Replacements’ “I’ll Be You” is like Cat Stevens’ “Father And Son” or, The Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale” has a good deal in common with Little Anthony And The Imperials’ “Hurt So Bad” Then there’s the case of Continuous Peasant’s “So Denied” (2003)—the main riff and guitar solo was later used by Wilco on their crowd-pleaser, “At Least That’s What You Said.” Now, it can’t be plagiarism if you can’t prove someone knew about it, but I’d love to go up to Jeff Tweedy and just say “hey, great minds think similarly….so when you gonna introduce us to your manager?” There’s many other examples, but I’ll just throw the idea out there as a theme, and this week’s top ten probably has very little or nothing to do with it.
For years I went back and forth on this album. I knew I liked it better than Electronic Music (on the Zapple label), with its proto Metal Machine Music, but in part it felt like a novelty. Felt like too many throw-away novice sitar noodlings, juxtaposed with half-baked piano or guitar riffs that seem like early versions of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” but I made a tape of it for a friend and she really liked it, as a kind of ambient music—and, in that context, it suddenly hit me. This album is a bonafied classic, and not just because Oasis named one of their most catchy songs after it.
Recently saw Ms. Nasty perform at a BBQ fundraiser shindig at San Francisco’s Bottom of The Hill (two nights later she opened for Leon Russell) alongside of many other local luminaries like Oranger, Katy J and The Mother Hips and Pink Nasty stole the show—warming up the initially skeptical local hipster crowd with charming stage banter (hurling witty insults her sound guy, her led guitarist Ryder McNair, the sound guy, even her father!)—oh and I haven’t even mentioned the music! While there’s certainly enough ‘star power’ in Pink Nasty that fans of Scheryl Crow, Fiona AppleBonnie Riatt or even Kelly Clarkson could respond to—a beautiful voice and a keen sense of melodic compositions, for those who need a little more, Pink Nasty delivers both a sense of swirling warm full mid 1990s indie rock guitars as well as an earlier soul sounds with distinguish her from most of her contemporaries. In fact, many of Pink Nasty’s best numbers utilize a classic rocking soul-waltz feeling that transcends all her influences. Luckily, both of her albums showcase this sound—even if the cutesy cover drawings do not do justice to the classy act inside the covers.
The Flaming Lips absolutely hate when people single out this hit single of theirs. After all, they fancy themselves a serious band. But that’s kinda the problem, isn’t it? Hell, the great melodic (with just a touch of yearning) novelty single was so much of what I loved about Camper Van Beethoven (to say nothing of classic rock and roll radio (circa ‘56-’73)—”Where The Hell Is Bill?” “Joe Stalin’s Cadillac,” etc)—and The Flaming Lips extended this into the grunge (or post-grunge) era—for a moment.
A ‘spoken word’ album for people who may not generally like ‘spoken word’ albums. Some of you may know Garrett Caples for his many reviews (and cover stories) in The Bay Guardian on (mostly local) Bay Area hip hop artists; other may know of his books of poetry . Caples slummed it for a few years in academia, getting a Ph.D iwith a dissertation on Surrealism, and not just the french kind, but the Freedom kind (uh huh!) and so yes, well he may be better as a surrealist than a rapper (hence the album title), part of what makes this album so great is that he’s bringing these two styles, and worlds, into heated dialogue with each other (there’s also a couple more ‘indie-rock’ sounding pieces (tracks8 and 27). In fact, the album gets much more musical as it goes on (in the process suggesting a narrative similar to Caple’s own journey away from white academic teachers to sitting at the feet of teachers likeShock D and E-40and such. Helped out by such musicians as Jeff Mellin, Graham Connah, “Rob Norris, Matt Mitchell, J-Stalin, Geoffrey Dyer and Andrew Joron (the last two are also great poets), and featuring samples by Andre Breton and Zora Neale Hurston, this album not only creates a wide-ranging sonic experience that is pleasurable in its own right (and reminds me a little of Edwin Torres’s Holy Kid released on KillRockStars around the turn of the century) but also may direct listeners to Caples’ published works. Includes such cuts as “Prufrock Shakur” (which recalls some of David Byrne’s ‘spoken word’ experiments with Brian Eno on both Remain In Light and My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts), or the Tom Waits sonic textures of “Turning On The Tongue” as well Caples’ great send up of Marc Bolan’s songwriting abilities in T.Rex
On a compilation from Teen Beat (2003).
One of the many short ‘throwaway’ songs (along with the classic “Blowin’ Your Nose”) Van Morrison recorded as he was trying to get out of his contract with Bang records in 1967/68.
I still may write a lengthy review of that recent Leonard Cohen Montreal tribute concert film, but the short version is this: the concert footage gets a C-, but the interview with Cohen himself gets an A. Cohen is one of best interviewers because he’s more willing to talk about the craft of songwriting (and is damn good at it) than most other contemporary songwriters I respect. Of course, I feel a special kinship with Cohen because, like me, he had developed an international reputation as a poet before he released his eponymous debut album rather late in life by 1960s standards—and his decision to ‘make the switch’ from primarily focusing on poetry on the page to songwriting in many ways parallels my own. As for the interpretations of his songs in this movie, too many of them reeked of reverentiality, like I was sitting in the church of Cohen. There was some good performances, but nowhere near the best cover version of a Cohen song, which was a screaming melodic hardcore re-invaisioning of “Famous Blue Raincoat,” with searing emotional guitars and voice, and absolutely danceable. I didn’t even realize it was a Cohen song too later; Cohen’s influence and importance to many 1980s hardcore bands is almost erased by the new crop of reverential singer/songwriters or vocal stylists represented by this new 2006 film, which in my opinion does a disservice to Cohen’s achievement. So, check out the Ruin song, and tell me if you think I’m crazy, but it would be nice if it were invited to the party alongside of, say, Jennifer Warnes, Bono or Rufus Wainwright
Classic hard driving funk-soul single—-Its message could be seen as ‘black power’ but it also does something else in bragging about his strong stock, his lineage, on the values of hard work, and viscerally conjuring an image of his grandparent that counters much of the pious pussfooting around the “S” word.
I used to hear this song in New York City on WFMU so it was definitely in hipster circulation before Terry Zwigoff and Daniel Clowes made use of it in their Ghost World(2001); one of the best movies of the last decade, and definitely a classic song, although I couldn’t tell you what its lyrics translate to in English
