Valentine’s day is over

14 02 2013

Valentine’s Day. Eh.

When I was a kid my dad would buy treats for all of us for Valentine’s Day, so I was WHOO! VALENTINE’S DAY.

Then I got older and hated everything, so VALENTINE’S DAY, BOO!

Then I got even older and skeptical of corporate interest and manufactured holidays, so Valentine’s Day, how gauche.

Then I got older still and said, yeah, it’s manufactured and commercial, but if it gets you chocolate and kisses, well, what the hell, have at it. And if not, eh.

Anyway, a coupla’ vids for whatever mood you’re in:

Oh, Billy. . .

Gotta love the fish-sticks.

I don’t know if they were a one-hit wonder or not, but this is a fine pop song—although I wonder how many might not know what a “cassette tape” is.

The desperation in this song is so. . . fetching.

Because if I ever think love might even be possible for me, this might be a nice way to experience it.

Kisses to all.

 


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Listen to the music: What would we do without you?

29 01 2013

Kate Bush is still putting out records, right?

I mean, I know she was never one to crank out the albums, but every coupla’ years she would drop a tankful of tunes and Kate being Kate, that was usually enough to get me through.

Then again, I didn’t really start listening to Kate Bush until, mm, The Whole Story/The Sensual World, so it was pretty easy for me to say, No hay problema with the lente of the songs: I could simply dig through the back catalog and satisfy myself with those.

And Kate Bush is satisfying, because her songs were always kitted out with weirdness (the aro0-roo-roo in “Hounds of Love”) or literary allusions (“Cloudbusting” and Wilhelm Reich) or literary weirdness (Heathcliffe! It’s me, Cathy! I’ve come home/It’s so cold, let me in-a-your window-oh-oh).

And why the Pause for the jet? Why not?

She’s heartbreaking too, but often with an undertone of menace: in “Hello Earth” she warns the sailors and life-savers and cruisers and fishermen out of the sea and “Mother Stands for Comfort” of the worst kind. Oh, and the threat of “Experiment IV”:

Music made for pleasure,
Music made to thrill.
It was music we were making here until

They told us
All they wanted
Was a sound that could kill someone
From a distance.

Of course these lyrics would be surrounded by the most gorgeous sounds.

I thought I had all of her cds prior to Hounds of Love, but I don’t see any on my “stolen/not replaced” list. Hm. I wonder if I had them on vinyl. . . .

Anyway, while I thought I had the cd (The Red Shoes) after The Sensual World, apparently not. The gods of Wikipedia tell me there were three cds released in the 2000s, but I don’t know any of them. If I ever get around to buying music again, I should probably consider those.

My favorite Kate Bush tune? I dig most of them, but the one that stoppers out the rest of the world? Jig of Life. The fiddle, the drums, the, um, obscure lyrics, the DRUMS, the incantation at the end—c’mon, is it really such a surprise?

The only thing missing is a jet.

~~~~

54. Bjork, Homogenic
55. Rory Block, Gone Woman Blues
56. Blondie, The Best of Blondie
57. Bjork, Vespertine
58. BoDeans, Love & Home & Sex & Dreams
59. Boukman Eksperyans, Yodou Adjae
60. BoDeans, Go Slow Down
61. Boukman Eksperyans, Libete (Pran Pou Pran’l!)
62. David Bowie, The Singles 1969-1993
63. Billy Bragg, Talking With The Taxman About Poetry
64. Billy Bragg, Worker’s Playtime
65. Billy Bragg, Don’t Try This At Home
66. Brazilian Girls (eponymous)
67. Breeders, Pod
68. Billy Bragg, Going to a Party Way Down South
69. Breeders, Last Splash
70. Broken Social Scene, You Forgot It In People
71. Brother Sun Sister Moon, The Great Game
72. Broken Social Scene, We Hate Your Hate
73. Carla Bruni, Quelqu’un m’a dit
74. Jeff Buckley, Grace
75. Kate Bush, Hounds of Love
76. Butthole Surfers, Electrilarryland

Putting these in the order in which I listen to them as opposed to a straight-alpha is a pain in the ass. The point is to listen to these in a manner in which I otherwise wouldn’t—hence the A-Z ordering—but having already stated my minor listening deviations (breaking up bunches of the same artist), I think I can go back to just listing what I’ve listened to and be done with it.

I mean, I want to be meticulous but not, y’know, uptight. . . .

I’ve also decided to start mixing in some jazz. My jazz cds are currently separated from my pop cds, but as I listen to them, I’ll integrate them into the whole.

And while I may end up inserting some classical into the listening mix, the cds will remain in their orchestra seats.

1. Geri Allen, The Gathering
2. Geri Allen Trio, Twenty One
3. Anderson, Crispell, Drake, Destiny


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Get it while you can

19 01 2013

Happy Seventieth Birthday, Janis!

I don’t know if there’s anything after life, but if there is, I do hope you’re singing.

~~~~

[Reposted from January 26. 2012]

I missed her birthday.

Not that she’d know, given that she’s been dead for over forty years, but I used to know and celebrate the day Janis Joplin squalled her way into the world.

I think I’ve written this before, but what the hell: My friend K. and I taught this to a half-busful of Forensic [speech, not mortuary] Society high schoolers on our way back from some tournament or another. It was dark, the bus was old, the trip long. And if our high-volumed rasping pissed off the faculty adviser, all the better.

Janis was like that: the big personality you could hide behind.

I fell for Janis in high school, aping her in drink (Southern Comfort, when I could afford it) if in nothing else: I couldn’t sing like her, had no appetite for heroin, and was never as outrageous as I would have liked to have been.

Janis was too much, in every way. She was too loud, too drunk, too high, and way too sexy for someone who in no way fitted any conventional notions of sexiness.

You could see that, too, in those old photos and reels of her performing. She knows she’s performing when she sticks out her tongue or her chest or when she struts across the stage. She’s covering.

She never thought she was enough, but man, when she snugged that mic up beneath her lip, her voice spilled out and over her and everyone who heard her and then all her too-muchness was just as it should be. No cover, then.

[The video I had posted was taken down, but it showed Janis singing “Get It While You Can” on the Dick Cavett show. If you can track it down, by all means, watch it. Devastating.]

There she is, in all her feathers, a few months before her death.

Of course, that she died was part of the fascination for my teenaged self—she suffered for her art!—but it was the fight in her, even more so, even if back then I could only valorize the suffering-unto-death, not that she suffered in the fight to stay alive.

I was listening to her recently, and came across a line I used to write on notebooks and bathroom stalls: Tomorrow never happens, man, it’s all the same fucking day, man.

Janis Joplin, absurdist. She would have been 69.


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

It’s the terror of knowing what this world is about

17 01 2013

All right, all right, it’s a Queen song, not a Bowie song, but it’s on a Bowie compilation so back off, okay?

Besides, I don’t own any Queen cds.

Where was I? Oh yes, guilty pleasures.

“Guilty pleasure”: really, a misnomer. I don’t feel at all guilty for love love LOVING “Under Pressure”. I can hear it in the cleaning aisle of Home Depot and I’m going to bop my head and maybe, just maybe, sing it softly to the mops and soaps and buckets.

And if I’m at home? Well, you know what happens: Kick off the slippers, pump up the volume, then silently sing the shit out of the song, complete with body swirls and stretching out my arms as I mouth

‘Cause love’s such an old fashioned word
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the Night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
This is our last dance
This is our last dance
This is ourselves

I take the Bowie part in this, grooving while Freddie does his Freddie thing. We end with the finger snaps, of course.

Will I ever do this in front of you? Of course not.

I don’t know what it is about this cheesy song—and yes, I do think it is cheesy—but I am helpless before its bass line and multiple crescendos and overwrought lyrics. I could perhaps say that it is the ontological pathos of This is our last dance/This is ourselves that shivers me timbers—but you’d know that was ex post facto bullshit, right? That I bopped and flung my arms out long before I even knew what ontology was, right?

Still, my passion seems. . . unseemly. A cheesy pop song, fer cryin’ out loud! And Queen, fer cryin’ out loud! Couldn’t I have gone with, I dunno, Bob Dylan? (No.) Leonard Cohen? (He’s not that kind of guy.)

Well, passion is always unseemly to those who don’t share it, and reckless for the helplessness it engenders in those caught up in it. How can you not give yourself over?

So: Instead of guilty pleasure, I dub this “helpless pleasure”.

Um ba ba be.


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Listen to the music: Keep on keepin’ on

8 01 2013

I lost my groove.

I mentioned in a previous post that I am no longer a completist, that is, I no longer need to own every cd by every singer or band that I like. Five U2 cds? Enough. Six REM? Plenty. It’s not that I won’t buy any more cds of those for whom I already own multiple discs, but, y’know, the urgency has faded.

Given my former completist sensibilities, however, I do own many cds by one band/singer which, frankly, has been a problem on my quest to listen to every cd I own: I burn out on a group.

My current (cheapo) stereo allows me to load 3 discs at a time, which is just right: Enough for a solid listening section, without me wanting to cut it short. But when you’re working through your collection alphabetically, that means the Beatles are followed by the Beatles followed by the Beatles.

I like the Beatles. But, unlike in the past where I would overdose on a single group, I no longer have the patience to listen to three or six hours of the Beatles or Beck or, really, anyone. Hell, the 72-minute long Mary J. Blige cd was too long for me.

Like I said, the groove was gone.

Once it became apparent that I was avoiding listening to my cds because I didn’t want multiple all-Beck nights, I decided to switch things up. I considered just plucking cds out randomly, but I figured that the pick wouldn’t really be random and that I’d just pick cds I often listen to. No, better to continue with the alpha-step, but tweak it.

Now, when I have more than one cd by the same performer(s), I choose the first one, then pick a cd from the following groups. So I chose Beck’s Mellow Gold, then Daniel Belanger, then Belle and Sebastien’s “Tigermilk”. The next night, Beck’s Sea Change, Belle & Sebastien’s Storytelling, and Belly’s star.

Works like a charm.

A few other things. One, I really do like Belly. I like Tanya Donelly’s wordplay (On every track/I fractured every back/Thinking the point was step on every crack), and how her voice cracks on “Super-Connected”—one of the things that distinguishes pop singing from, say, operatic singing is that the flaws are an integral part of the force of the song. (Think of Merry Clayton’s break in the Stones’s “Gimme Shelter”: she’s been hauling Jagger through that wail, and when she finally breaks near the end, you know what she’s been through and what she’s put you through.)

Two, I am a puddle in the face of a good leftist rallying song. Goddamn if I didn’t tear up listening to Black 47’s “James Connelly” (Oh Lily, I don’t want to die, we’ve got so much to live for/And I know we’re all goin’ out to get slaughtered, but I just can’t take any more). I am a pinko all the way through my bitter little heart.

Three, I think this whole quest is starting to take shape. Early on I was treating this as a kind of duty; even as I claimed I wanted to see if I could recapture my connection to the music, it felt more like a test—and who likes taking tests? But I’ve gotten off my ass enough times to shimmy around the wood floor, or paused just to take in the words and the sounds that now, now it feels more like a chance.

And that’s all right.

~~~
28. Be Good Tanyas, Chinatown
29. Be Good Tanyas, hello love
30. Beach Boys, Endless Summer
31. Beatles, Revolver
32. Beatles, Abbey Road
33. Beatles, Please Please Me
34. Beatles, White Album
35. Beatles, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band
36. Beck, Odelay
37. Beck, Midnight Vultures
38. Beck, Mutations
39. Beck, Mellow Gold
40. Daniel Belange, Rever Mieux
41. Belle and Sebastien, “Tigermilk”
42. Beck, Sea Change
43. Belle and Sebastien, Storytelling
44. Beck, Guero
45. Belly, star
46. Belly, King
47. Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo de Silos, Chant
48. Beta Band, Hot Shots II
49. Bettie Serveet, lamprey
50. Jordy Birch, Funmachine
51. Bjork, Post
52. Black 47 [eponymous ep-cd]
53. Mary J. Blige, No More Dramas


Comments : 30 Comments »
Tags: , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Listen to the music: Just call me Joe

26 11 2012

Where’d Joseph Arthur go?

I coulda sworn I had a cd or two by the guy, but I look at my list of pop music and stolen pop music and he’s nowhere to be found.

Did I own him, then get rid of him? It’s just possible that before I left Somerville I sold or gave away some cds that I didn’t listen to, and thus removed him from my database, but.

But, goddammit: Did I really erase him from everything?

Dammit. Maybe he wasn’t stolen, maybe I bought him post-burglary, then got rid of him pre-Brooklyn, so there’s no record of him ever having graced my collection.

It’s not so much that I miss him—I remember a distinct “eh” upon listening to [pause while I look this up] Big City Secret—but that I’m unhappy that I’m messing with my own memory.

Shit, I do this with books, too: My database is only for current books, not every book I’ve ever owned.

That’s fine, actually, that I don’t obsessively track everything I’ve ever had (just the books and music I do have. . .), but, jeez, this is how I end up gaslighting myself.

Hmpf.


Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Listen to the music: No I don’t want to hear it

13 11 2012

Four hundred and sixty.

That’s how many cds were stolen, four hundred and sixty: 407 pop, et. al., and 53 classical. Of those, I replaced 276 of the stolen pop, and 22 of the stolen classical—which means of course, that 131 pop and 31 classical were not replaced.

I’m no longer exactly sure how my cds are arranged—since they’re now all in my wine-box bureau, i.e., hidden away, I’m much less likely to rearrange them by various genres—but it looks as if my jazz, classical, traditional, and perhaps soundtracks are separated from the pop, blues, and electronica stuff.

So, had my collection not been pilfered, I would have already listened to:

1. Dot Allison, Afterglow
2. American Music Club, Mercury
3. Laurie Anderson, Mister Heartbreak
4. Laurie Anderson, Home of the Brave
5. Laurie Anderson, The Ugly One With the Jewels and Other Stories
6. The Band, The Last Waltz

I would have been able to replace all of these from the used bins while I was living in Montreal, but for whatever reason, I chose not to.

Right after the burglary, I was mad to rebuild my collection exactly as it had been, title for title, whether or not I had listened to or even much liked the lost cd. After awhile, however, I relaxed, and while browsing for the gone-away cds would also be on the lookout for new (used) discs that I wanted more than the old-used discs.

I do remember that I wasn’t terribly impressed with Laurie Anderson’s Mister Heartbreak, and while I liked Dot Allison’s cd, there were always others that, on my scavenges, I found more interesting. I can always get that later, I thought.

Yes, I did have renter’s insurance, but there was a limit as to the dollar amount of the cds they’d replace. I bought extra coverage, but it still wasn’t enough to pay for everything. (I’m not complaining: my insurer dealt with me quickly and didn’t contest any of my claims.) Anyway, that my coverage was limited meant that I couldn’t just stroll to the HMV and load up on [outrageously high-priced] new cds.

That was fine, actually, as I preferred with both cds and books* to prowl the used shops. I’m not much of either a shopper or a hunter, but my atavistic impulses emerge at the challenge of trying to find what I want in the bins and on the shelves.

Then there is the added thrill of coming across something that just looks. . . intriguing, and taking it home for the hell of it. Sure, that can happen at a new-goods store, but it seems that kismet is more likely at a hodgepodge kinda joint.

So while I didn’t  replace 162 of the cds (although there are a few I couldn’t find and still pine for), I did end up finding room for hundreds of cds I might not have otherwise.

On the whole, I’d rather I hadn’t been burglarized, but with the music, at least, the loss led to something more.

*Oddly, not one of my books was stolen. I wonder why that was. . . .


Comments : 4 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Listen to the music: Banjo on my knee

12 11 2012

Okay, so I happen to be listening to the Be Good Tanyas sing “Oh, Susanna” when I wrote the title to this post.

No, I don’t have a banjo.

I do, however, have a guitar, an Epiphone by Gibson, purchased, mmm, back in the 1990s at Aabe’s Music in south Minneapolis. It’s black and nice and the back of the neck is curved so that my wee hand can cup it and my wee fingers can squeeze all of the strings on the fret.

Not that my wee hand has cupped the neck any time recently.

I took lessons when I first got the guitar, and. . . never made it out of a Mel Bay’s beginner’s book. I did learn some chords and could play (badly) a few Beatles’ tunes, a Suzanne Vega song, and parts of a few Indigo Girls’ songs.

I stopped, started, stopped, started, stopped, started, stopped. My guitar was tucked in my closet until a few months ago, when I said, Self, time to start again.

I did not.

As I was circling Prospect Park today I wondered why I didn’t just give up and give the guitar away. It’s been years and . . . honestly, did I think I was ever going to get good enough that practicing was more fun than frustrating?

Why not? Why not believe I might start yet again, and that even if I stop again, one of these start-agains will lead to me. . . playing, actually playing the guitar?

Why not believe I can have a life in which I am always trying to play the guitar?

I keep trying to breathe; there must be more than one way to breathe.

~~~

13. Laurie Anderson, Life on a String
14. Marc Anthony, (eponymous)
15. Arcade Fire, Funeral
16. Arcade Fire, Neon Bible
17. Joan Armatrading, Classics
18. B-52’s, (eponymous)
19. B-52’s, wild planet
20. B-52’s, Cosmic Thing
21. Susanna Baca, espiritu vivo
22. Susanna Baca, eco de sombras
23. Back From the Grave, Vol. 8
24. Eryka Badu, Baduizm
25. Eryka Badu, Mama’s Gun
26. The Band, Greatest Hits
27. Be Good Tanyas, Blue Horse


Comments : 3 Comments »
Tags: , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Listen to the music: Just as I turned to go

25 10 2012

I came late to Laurie Anderson, but I started listening to her, I listened with a vengeance.

I chilled to the ha-ha-ha-ha of ‘O Superman’, smirked at the line Put your hands on your head/Put your hands on your hips, chanted along with her chants, stretched my neck out and sighed at her serious absurdities. I used lyrics from three of her songs to head up chapters to my dissertation.

Un-hip-ily, my favorite cd is her most accessible, Strange Angels, mainly because of two songs: ‘The Dream Before’ and ‘Ramon’.  The first introduced me to Walter Benjamin’s angel of history:

She said, What is History?
He said, History is an angel
Being blown backwards the future

She sung this lightly, sadly. The image isn’t her’s—it’s Benjamin’s—but in this song, it’s her’s, all the same.

Lyrics from ‘Ramon’ made it into my dissertation, a song so odd and, yes, sad and right to the point of it all:

So when you see a man who’s broken
Pick him up and carry him
And when you see a woman who’s broken
Put her all into your arms
Cause we don’t know where we come from
We don’t know what we are

I used this for the last chapter, trying to come up with some way to make sense of what I had just done in trying to make sense of our biology and our technology and our existence, and this lyric, in all its uncertain and unknowing wisdom, seemed to make more sense than everything else.

I don’t always live up to this—I almost never live up to this—but this still seems to make more sense than almost everything else.

~~~

10. Laurie Anderson, Big Science
11. Laurie Anderson, Strange Angels
12. Laurie Anderson, Bright Red


Comments : Leave a Comment »
Tags: , , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

Listen to the music: Can’t stop the music

21 10 2012

C. told me to rip all of my cds before I got rid of them. If I got rid of them.

I don’t know that I would.

I understand the reason—it’s the same reason that I’m filing away the bibliographic info on all of the printed out scholarly articles I’m going to toss: don’t lose what you have—but there’s something. . . satisfying about an irrevocable purge.

I had tapes of my favorite albums, but I didn’t rush to tape everything else before I got rid of my vinyl. (And I got rid of almost all of my tapes when I left for Montreal.) No, my attitude was what’s done is done, and no use hangin’ on just to hang on. No point in fetishizing the past.

I do that, fetishize objects—most obviously, my books. It’s damned near impossible not to imbue objects which deliver meaning with meaning themselves, and as long as the deliveries retain that meaning, I”m not too worried about my affection for the objects. But when the possession itself becomes the point, well, that’s when I need to rethink matters.

There were a few people who tried to talk me out of getting rid of the albums, certain that I was throwing away irreplaceable treasure (i.e., vinyl), but as I told them: I have a shitty stereo system and I hate it when the needle skips, and I see no particular worth in having to turn the album over after 20 or 25 minutes. Besides, I didn’t really listen to this stuff anymore.

That was the real reason to get rid of the albums: These were singers and groups I’d listened to since I started collecting albums, and my tastes had changed. There were a few albums that I replaced with cds—by Rickie Lee Jones, Peter Gabriel, Paul Simon, B52’s, Violent Femmes— but most of them? Nope. Done. Goodbye.

I don’t regret it.

Of course, if I really wanted to, I could find clips of those bygone songs online, but I’m fine with leaving them all behind. When something ends, it’s good to let it end.

I had a moment, in some cases, a long moment, with those albums, and those moments don’t matter any less just because they’re over. This is something to which I am slowly reconciling myself, that something can happen for the time being, and that being in time may be enough, may have to be enough.

I don’t know whether this particular musical moment is over—that’s the purpose of this listen-through, to find out—but if I’m no longer moved, there’s no point in pretending otherwise.

But I’d like it not to be. I’d like still to be moved.

~~~

Listened to thus far:

  1. *Joe Acker, The Times and Places of Love
  2. Afro Celt Sound System, Volume 2: Release
  3. Air, Moon Safari
  4. Air, 10,000 Hz Legend
  5. Akufen, My Way
  6. Luther Allison, Blue Streak
  7. Altan, The Blue Idol
  8. Tori Amos, Under the Pink
  9. Tori Amos, Strange Little Girls

*Joe was one of the aforementioned downstairs neighbors who decided to shed the jewel cases. He and his wife Tara were great neighbors, early on kindly letting me use their shower when mine went on the fritz. We got to know one another hanging out in the yard with their amazing dog Gracie, and then hanging out in their apartment. They gave me a key to their place so I could take Gracie out during the day or let her out at night if they were getting home late. We lost track of one another some time after they moved out—last I heard, Tara was pregnant with their first kid—but they remain one of my few good memories of Somerville.

And yes, the cd is nice, too. Joe and Tara (who was learning mandolin) were deeply interested in Americana music, and invited me to listen in when they invited friends-with-strings over to play old-timey tunes, but the cd hews closer to the singer/songwriter folk/rock style, which well-display Joe’s meticulous guitar skills and honey-warm voice.


Comments : 6 Comments »
Tags: , , , , , , , ,
Categories : Music, Musing

« Previous Entries Next Entries »