Steve Winwood - Back in the High Life Again
Nothing says END OF THE SUMMER like Labor Day weekend and a trip to the dentist's office, right? Maybe just Labor Day. But I've been thinking a lot about the way music is used for different purposes, and this reverie was kickstarted by my re-listening to the Avalanches' "Yoga Mind Meld Zombie Relaxation Tape" (which you can still download from their website), which the band advertises as being of good use "when the party's over." Obviously the music played in a dentist's office cannot be too stimulating or intense, since the patients will inevitably succumb to their natural urges to dance or play air guitar or sing at the worst possible times, i.e. when the dentist is like 2 mms. away from drilling right through the roof of the patient's mouth and into the temporal lobe. The music at the dentist's office needs to act as a sedative in its own way, transporting the patient to a world of soft neon, mist, precise percussion, perfect vocals, light euphoria, and cumulus synths.
All four of these songs have been played in dentists' offices across the country perhaps millions of times. No doubt. I would in fact elect Joe Jackson's "Steppin' Out" as the Dentist's Anthem if I could, but I am (understandably) not the head of the ADA. I put this mix together for people who want, for whatever personal and secret reasons, to recreate the experience of sitting in that pneumatic chair, head tilted back, mouth open to ligament-ripping aperture, having their teeth worked over and tricked out. Why not. Enjoy the weekend.
[Though on a personal note, I love both that Steely Dan song (featured in a little essay from before) and the Moody Blues song, which, when I was six, I decided with my post-toddler faculties was the most romantic thing I'd ever heard.]
]]>Just a few loose propositions about this song: It will rev you up, but do not try to run while listening to it. Too much strain on the heart. Maybe if you're like a suburban Usain Bolt, you could run to the first half minute or so (alternately if you're like a Prefontaine clone, you could run to the whole thing, but at an adjusted pace; not synchronized with the beat). || The conjunction of dirty riffs and cymbal hits can, under certain circumstances, have adverse effects upon your brain, as I found out once when I fell asleep listening to this song on a transatlantic flight (extradition), and found myself half-dreaming that the stewardesses had transformed into the shiny metal robot women sometimes seen on 1980s-era pinball machines. || The percussion here accurately conveys the pleasure of drum-playing (can you imagine being able to play this?) || There is a flute in there, somewhere, and it is very frightened. || Here are all the lyrics, and they are strongly and weirdly motivational: "Sunlight shines on the top of the trees/the highest hills feel the sweetest breeze/you got to get up to get free//Open your eyes the things you see/are determined by the height of the ground you seize/you got to get up to get free."
Oneida will soon release the final installment of their Thank Your Parents trilogy ("Preteen Weaponry" was pt. 1, and "Rated O," the triple album, was pt. 2), titled "Absolute II." This record will feature "experimental drones," per the band's website announcement. You can listen to an excerpt of a new track, "Equinox," over on XHOL Recordings' website. Get excited, friends.
]]>FWP: So what inspired you to open the tanning salon?
[cascading sound of something being spilled]
FWP: What are those?
Pete: These white tablets?
FWP: Mmmhmm.
Pete: Do you want one?
FWP: Wow, there's a lot of them on the floor now.
Pete: Don't fret. So this girl Ashley, she was deeply tan. Fucked like a policewoman. Kind of a trash. Big, white teeth. Do you know those girls, who have that sort of horse-mouth look? Ashley looked like a hot, tan police-horse with bleached teeth. And this girl went to the tanning salon twice a week, for half an hour at a time. This is what she told me about the times that we talked. When I asked her how much money she spent to pursue this hobby, I thought, What a racket! And: I need to get out of this relationship.
FWP: So that was when you opened the salon?
Pete: Approximately. Well, there was the long deal of obtaining a loan from the bank, then finding the space to rent, and hiring employees. Do you know how hard it is to get a loan?
FWP: I've heard it's difficult.
Pete: You heard right, friend. And finding good help these days. Have you heard about that?
FWP: That it's hard?
Pete: Also correct. It's a horse-fuck-horse world out there.
FWP: What is it that you enjoy most about running the tanning salon?
Pete: The customers. And the free time. But the customers more than anything.
["Killamangiro," like Art Brut's "Emily Kane," features a shout-out to a former love, in this case Pete Doherty sings, "on the off-chance that you're listening/to the radio/thought you might like to know you broke my heart," in what has got to be one of the best advantages musicians have over normal everyday civilians, i.e. having their heartache broadcast, witnessed, and sung along to.]
]]>Someday in the future when I'm teaching mp3blogging courses at West Albany Technical State University, I will have to answer my future-students' questions about what things were like when people first started writing about music online. I'll smile, maybe erase a word or two from the blackboard (laserboard), then sigh and lean heavily on the lectern. "Things were different," I'll say. "People didn't know what to think at first. They were confused. Songs and writing at the same time, it was just...too much content, too much media for people to handle. And the writers didn't know that they'd invented a new form of expression. It was like jazz, except, instead of only a few people caring, no one cared. Writers were posting song files, .wavs, .smfs, .aiffs, sometimes just typed-out sheet music, along with their poorly articulated recommendations and criticisms, which often consisted of little more than ASCII art of a thumbs-up or thumbs-down. Some writers, perhaps high on the pneuma wafting up from the towers of their overheated desktops, would post songs paired with geometric proofs, or recipes for vegan french toast--there were no rules! Once, an mp3blogger in Peru posted a second-by-second description of George Thorogood's "One Bourbon, One Scotch, One Beer," in what some now call the saddest and most punishing post ever." Then I'll stare into the distance until the students leave the classroom and turn off the lights.
[This song is the sinister death-roll cousin to the XX's lovers' conclave; The Kills will hold a knife to your throat while you cuddle with them.]
]]>To say that this song reminds me of CBS' classic sitcom, WKRP In Cincinnati, would be a vast understatement. Something about the strings (alternately wan and viscous), and the staggering desperation in Dawn Silva's and Lynn Mabry's voices when they sing, "In this world/all of my dreams/one by one/they all fell through," really captures the sort of febrile weariness I felt while watching re-runs of the show as a kid. I would be lying if I said that, in listening to this song so intently over the past few days, I haven't imagined intricate scenarios where Loni Anderson's character, Jennifer Marlowe, in a full-on dissociation, sings this song to a penitent and less sleazy Herb (WKRP's advertising sales manager) amid a shower of Harvest Gold paint chip confetti ("When You're Gone": inspiration for delirious musings).
This is taken from the Brides' (who were, pre-Funkenstein, backup singers for Sly Stone) 1978 debut LP, Funk Or Walk, produced by George Clinton. You can buy it on Amazon for about the cost of a Kia.
]]>This entry is from Slatch, one of the first music blogs I ever read regularly. Jon was the main writer for Slatch, though he also started 75 or Less, a site that posts very short album reviews (per the name of the site). Jon put the cap on Slatch in 2005, and switched his attention to the amazing Tiny Showcase, which does some fantastic work. I remember exactly where I was when I first read the following (in my office at a job I despised), and I remember how hard I laughed too. Here's the link to the original entry.
Several Common Misconceptions About Hall and Oates
"You can't listen to Hall and Oates' new album, Do It For Love on repeat from 9am until 11:30pm without going fucking insane."
Not true. I put the album on repeat and listened to it all day in my office. Eight hours of Hall and Oates with only an hour break for lunch. I also listened to it on the ride home. Then, I took it out of my car and listened to it in my room while I finished up some work. THEN, I put the album on as I tried to fall asleep.
I woke up with these shivering cold sweats at 3:30am. There was this sort of buzzing in my brain (like the sound a guitar amp makes when you only plug the cord in half way) and the bass line from "Man on a Mission" running through my head. I ran to the bathroom and tried to splash water on my face. I'm pale-faced, clinging to the counter, thinking to myself "MUST. REMAIN. CONSCIOUS. DON'T. PUKE. I'M A MAN ON A MISSION TO LOVE YOU. BAAAAABY..." I came so close to passing out and smashing my face on the faucet.
So, you probably shouldn't listen to the album for thirteen hours straight, but it's totally possible. I love this album. I'm hoping the near-stroke and Hall and Oates overdose were unrelated incidents.
]]>Besides Wale's "Mixtape About Nothing" (which referenced Seinfeld), I can't think of many recent examples of music about television shows, though I don't listen to the radio anymore, so maybe there are tons of elegiac ballads about Lost and sweet little pop songs about The Real Housewives of ______. But I'm convinced that "Sleepless in Silverlake" is about The Hills, about the people-characters on the show. Tim Harrington says, in the very first line of the song, "We hit the hills/and we hit 'em hard/with iron wills/and with Mastercards." Is there such a thing as a fan-song, like fan-fiction? Surely there are good precedents in the Replacements' "Alex Chilton" and Pavement's "Unseen Power of the Picket Fence," (even Belle & Sebastian's "Shoot the Sexual Athlete") but those are all about other musicians or bands, which seems more like an inside baseball kind of thing rather than bare adoration. I'm willing to publicly accept that this song is not about the cast of the Hills, but will still cling privately to my misinterpretation and the idea that Les Savy Fav and the Hills is a good combination.
]]>The Recoys were the band that nurtured the talents of Hamilton Leithauser (Walkmen lead singer and Recoys frontman), and Pete Bauer (Walkmen bassist/keyboardist). 'Shake Off Your Nerve' is definitely proto-"Everyone Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone," i.e., replace the harmonica in this song with an organ, and you've got yourself a Walkmen track (which actually, "Blizzard of '96," and "That's the Punchline" were both written as Recoys songs).
"Shake Off Your Nerve" features a galloping drumbeat and a sheer wall of harmonica lament to accompany Hamilton's swagger and shout (he has never sounded more like Mick Jagger than he does in this song). "I did a dance in the beam of your flashlight there/out on the grass/under millions of stars" is one of the more evocative lines that Leithauser has ever written, and that, along with parts of the chorus ("C'mon kids/lets show off your haircut") make this song essential.
]]>If the world divides into facts, with no remainder, then it's tempting to think that certain things that happened could not have happened any other way. George always said about his meeting Sylvia: "Even though we met because of a machine, I would have loved her before the Industrial Revolution." That was their horrible little joke. One of a hundred tiny isthmuses that connected her to him--bound them together during their long periods of separation.
She was working the cash register at a coffee shop near his school. The machine was malfunctioning beautifully, spitting out long and perforated blank receipts, which the customers were less than pleased to see. Cappuccino and scones were transubstantiated into nothingness, as the register was having its tabula rasa'd. Because George had enjoyed a lengthy and glorious tenure as a grocery store cashier, he knew many models, possessed all the necessary knowledge to fix this problem, which he did, brushing aside several disgruntled and toe-tapping customers to come around the counter and, gracefully, press just the right button on the register to make it stop and remember where it was and what it was supposed to do. He rubbed his hands together and placed his palms on the keyboard, smiling at her the entire time. A half hour later, just as he was about to leave, she stopped him and asked him if she could take him to dinner, to repay him for the favor he had done her. He accepted, embarrassed because she had beat him to the punch. They introduced themselves. Sylvia was the name on her tag, pinned to her clothes that hung on her body like they couldn't care less. Sylvia is the name that is christened, in George's mind, as the marker of a certain push-and-pull feeling that ripples from his torso to his toes.
This song deserved a prime spot on the soundtrack to "Forgetting Sarah Marshall." In fact, if it were up to me, I would've re-written the movie around this song, which gives you an indication of why I am not a top Hollywood executive. Jason Holstrom sings of his encounters with the titular thieves, so the song lyrically is like Bresson's "Pickpocket" transposed to Hawaii. I'm surprised, come to think of it, that there aren't more songs about muggings, pickpocketings, etc. It's a pretty emotional experience, but maybe easier to deal with through the medium of the written word or perhaps the three-dimensional arts (we're all familiar with Brancusi's infamous sculpture, "Shiv").
"Thieves of Kailua" (the song) sounds a lot like some of the sections of "Smile," (2004 version), particularly those segmented, thousand-instrument-track songs with seven bridges, filigreed with alien sound effects, i.e. it's both weird and catchy. The percussion on this is especially notable, it puts a world of texture into the song and complements the sweetness of the ukulele. I really don't know how this album isn't more popular. Jason Holstrom: you missed the beachcore/littoraphilia trend by releasing this album three years too early, but try to take solace in the fact that you're extremely talented and have a wonderful voice.
]]>Dubnium has been called the "saddest of elements." Only one specimen has ever been found in the wild--in Michigan in 1986, a surveyor came upon a Dubnium filament roosting in the hollow of a tree. No caretaker was present, and perhaps most notable, there were no signs of abuse. The Dubnium expired in captivity shortly thereafter, primarily due to stress from prolonged exposure. Joan Simmons, who has written a book on the incident, the outstanding "Dumb and Alone" says that although disheartening, the loss of the element was not really felt or even observed by the scientific community. "It actually has no uses at all," she says, "and haven't we all had days like that?" Little known fact: Comedian Paul Rodriguez staged a benefit show for Dubnium on top of Amoeba records in San Francisco. It was sparsely attended.
]]>Elise, for instance, occupied us with her talk of her home in southern California, the sun, the hills, the beaches, and the indigenous blond-haired boys who either skateboarded or surfed along the landscape everywhere, as ubiquitous as chaparral or seagulls. She kept a rigorous countdown of the days until each school break, and couldn't help but point out, whenever in sight of a sunset, that the light on the East coast was a white, fluorescent imitation of the sunlight she had grown up with. Elise was also, as some knew, an inveterate patron of the school's vending machines, often living for days on whatever drop-downs she could get from the alpha-numeric menus: sandwich cookies, cheese crackers, dried fruit mixes, and occasional packets of noodles; she coupled all of these meals with can after can of diet cola. She claimed that the food in the dining hall was "too institutional," which no one even pretended to sympathize with.
And Bree: she was one of those dainty schemers who loved to bridle herself up against the administration to seek personal favors, and of all things, she usually chose to ask for elaborate field trips (for any interested students) to faraway malls, city centers, and places of historical reenactment. She liked to prattle on about how the assistant dean held her in such high esteem, and outlined, in frantic detail, how her current activities and studies dovetailed so nicely with her plans for college admission. When it came to Bree, most everyone knew that it was impossible to talk to her about anything but school: she had a knack for steering each conversation away from whirlpools of gossip and hearsay back to the relative terra firma of teachers, tests, clubs, and dress code regulations. She made up for these shortcomings, in my opinion, with an upper lip that did not quite cover her top teeth, and a resultant horsey smile that leavened her seriousness with a little helplessness.
]]>Robert Shaw, the actor, does not want anyone to know that Robert Shaw, the man, is terrified that he will die during the filming of this movie--set about by callow strangers and the hideously rude Richard Dreyfuss--while far away from his wife and children.
He sits on the edge of a park bench, writing in a clean, white tablet of notepaper. The Indianapolis. He intones the word, the name of the ship, and thinks about the aesthetics of its constituent syllables. What an ugly name for a ship, let alone a city. But what had happened to it, to the ship, he could not so easily dismiss from his mind, as he did with a swipe of his hand across a page of erased mistakes. He closed his eyes and imagined what they must have felt, the sailors in the water and in the dark, huddled and apoplectic with terror. A pre-linguistic fear: being eaten alive. Robert Shaw, the man, had never been exposed to such a threat and, he softly hoped, would never be.
Someone is walking towards him, holding a newspaper and a bottle. A local person, maybe. She approaches him and asks him what the time is, to which he replies, scratching an itch on his arm that is not there, that he has no watch and does not wear one. "I'm sorry," he says, and really is. The wind gusts as she nods, so that her hair simultaneously rises and skews as she moves her head up and down. Robert Shaw watches her walk slowly to the other side of the embankment of trees, and thinks to remember whether she was pretty or not. He can't tell.
When he does it, the monologue about the U.S.S. Indianapolis, it's beyond electric. Even Dreyfuss says so, grudgingly, under his breath. The entire cast, just beyond the semi-circle of the lights, sat and listened. He was a man in a glass booth. Intoning the details of so many deaths, carnage beyond the comprehension of many in his presence, he thought about one thing--worried it with his thoughts like it was a stone in his palm: what it had sounded like, all buoyant and dark, the unmediated music of the screams.
]]>This pop jewel is from the same 2001 Peel session that spawned 'Shoot the Sexual Athlete' (a.k.a. Stuart raps about the Go-Betweens), 'The Magic of a Kind Word', and 'Nothing in the Silence', all of which were finally released on the "BBC Sessions". Also from the era when Isobel Campbell was still rocking the cello and harmonizing with Stuart and Sarah (I will say that I miss Isobel's voice, if not her songs).
Perhaps the most alluring element in this song is the percussion--one of the few times that B&S have utilized an electronic drum track (it sounds like it's a sample that the band recorded prior to the session) and augmented it with Richard's live drumming, this may be the only instance when the band has ever or will ever produce something that could be called a 'hot beat.' But there's no mistaking the sound, it definitely moves in a kind of lite hip-hop way, and it makes 'Miraculous Technique' something very special.
And in a lot of ways, I feel like this song is a classic B&S track (up there with 'The State I Am In', 'Get Me Away From Here I'm Dying', 'White Collar Boy,' etc.): it's got all of Murdoch's usual lyrical tics (small town pleasures- check; seasonal references- check; sexual innuendoes of varying obliqueness- check), and the melody rivals any one of the effortlessly catchy Tigermilk/Sinister masterpieces. Weird thing about the lyrics--this song always reminds me of that Liars song 'It Fit When I Was A Kid,' which features the words "used a diamond on the glass/slithered slowly through the dark/made my way up all your stairs", where 'Miraculous Technique' has "if I could be a song/I would be something that would snake into your room/and be with you the whole night long". Not sure which one sounds more sinister.
]]>It's interesting to think of this song as its own discrete self-contained place, populated only by singer, girl, and music. The singer says, "I'll do my best to keep this love we have alive." But listen to that tone: there is a serious disconnect between the content of that lyric and sound of it as it's sung. No surprise that the next phrase is "But won't you help me, girl, help me, please." Lots of scenarios obtain in the possible world of this song: he's distracted, bored, and tired, just wants to be done with this argument already and he's searching for the thing to say that will bring the conflict to a tolerable close. Or he doesn't really care how things turn out, because his girl is a drag anyway (he says, later, that he'd love to take her on a romantic holiday, but she cries to him and says she can't deal with it). Or he's too busy paying attention to what's going on otherwise (a multiplicity of beats; Cure guitars? Duran Duran guitars? cooing synths? things phasing into and out of...phase?) to wholeheartedly pledge anything to this girl. If the last two minutes of this song are any indication, the girl's no longer a concern, she's wiped away by new sounds; the old diversions no longer divert.
[There's not a whole lot of information about New Moods. They have a myspace, a blog, and a facebook page, all of which are pretty minimal. They also have a bandcamp page that's similarly unrevealing. Here is a surely riveting anecdote: I found this band by pure chance when I googled "Tab Tab Tooth," (the name of a collaborative band composed of Brian DeGraw from Gang Gang Dance and Avey Tare and Deakin from Animal Collective) and it popped up in the list of New Moods' influences on myspace. All right. Go listen to their other songs here]
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