October, 2007
You are looking at posts that were written in the month of October in the year 2007.
hey that sounds like (a continuing series)
Posted on October 24th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
"Sweet Love" by the Commodores (1976) and "Best of My Love" by the Eagles (1975).
musing between floods of work
Posted on October 23rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, Musicians.
I wonder how Rufus Wainwright feels about being the baby-subject of his father's "Rufus Is a Tit Man".
hey that sounds like (a continuing series)
Posted on October 22nd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
The piano in Herb Alpert's "Rise" (1979) and Billy Preston's "Will It Go Round in Circles" (1973).
another candidate times two
Posted on October 16th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums.
I wrote, briefly, several years ago, a quick reaction to hearing Cafe Tacuba for the first time:
Wow. Listened to this twice on headphones yesterday. Very occasionally, no more often than once a year (probably less), I hear an album for the first time that I immediately know is going to be one of my very favorites, an album I return to with pleasure for years. It's a warm feeling, mixed excitement and gratitude. It's usually with an artist I've never heard before.
I only found out a few days ago that there was a new Cafe Tacuba album due, their first in four years, and of course now I have it. "Of course" because I didn't think of them when I was ruminating the other day about who my favorite rock band was now that Sleater-Kinney have broken up, and the new album reminds me that there's no doubt that it's Cafe Tacuba. Sino, the new one, isn't their best -- that would be 1994's sprawling Re, one of the ten best albums of the 1990s -- but it's good enough to be almost certainly a top five album for me this year. It's not as experimental or as big as their last couple of albums; they've stripped the instrumentation back down to the basics, and the songs are rock songs. In a way, it reaches back to their earliest work in its straightforwardness and simplicity. The big difference is these days there is no part of the rock palette they don't try, and they're good at everything they do. There are modern rock influences in their sound -- a few years ago Pitchfork, flailing for a comparison, called them "Mexico's Radiohead" -- but they like the arena rock sound too; in fact, what I hear most in Sino is Who's Next (and Velma hears U2).
I've only listened to the album a half dozen times, so I haven't learned it yet; but I feel compelled to note it now because Cafe Tacuba remain unjustifiably off the radar of great rocknroll. I don't say "inexplicably", because it's perfectly explicable: their songs are entirely in Spanish, and they make no concessions to the American market. (They don't have to; they are huge in Mexico.) But I urge you, if you want a complete picture of what is going on in the world of rock music, you owe it to yourself to try them. Start with Re; it's consistently great, it's all over the stylistic map, and you'll know whether you need to hear more.
They're playing Hammerstein in November, and Velma and I plan to see them live for the first time. Excited!
seventies survival, update twelve
Posted on October 12th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Roberta Flack & Donny Hathaway, The Closer I Get to You
These sappy part-switching duets never seem to go away, or change. This one gets more than a little incoherent: "Sweeter and sweeter love grows," Donny sings, "and heaven's there for those who fool the tricks of time, but the hearts of love define true love in a special way." I think the key to singing lines like that is to not think about them at all. Roberta Flack only gets to sing the chorus, which barely changes and that's probably just as well. They only sing one line together, at the very end: "Pulling closer, sweet as the gravity". O-kay.
"The Closer I Get to You" is awash in long synth notes that are gated or pitch-shifted or something -- vocabulary help requested -- to produce a changing effect in the background that is weird for a pop song, and is one of those things that becomes very noticeable once a record gets a little warped, or on almost any cassette recording, which will give it an unignorable warble.
Eddie Kendricks, Boogie Down
Perfectly pleasant disposable bouncy pop-funk. One solid groove (with its eight beats divided into a nice 1-2 1-2-3 1-2-3 pattern), no especially interesting structural changes (though a lot of decorative changes in the arrangement), completely pointless repetitve lyrics. There's some buried horn that sounds like it's trying to burst out into a KC & the Sunshine Band song, and some strings that escaped from Silver Convention. It does have a nice extended transition from the chorus back to the verse, albeit with synthesizer farts.
I'm curious about the history of the word "boogie". In pop music it's associated both with funky disco and with danceable southern guitar rock (e.g., Little Feat). How did that happen?
i confess, you're an idiot
Posted on October 11th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Badness.
A reviewer at rateyourmusic.com:
i confess ... I just can't love something just 'cause I'm supposed to ... the most overrated album on RYM.
This isn't confessing, of course, it's bragging. "Oh, I know I'm terribly picky. It's one of my worst character flaws." And what a lame brag. "I think for myself! You can't make me like it! You herd-following hype-slaves!" It's condescension preemption, a transparent bid for the Cool High Ground. It's a dumb game, even when it's played better than this, but there sure are a lot of people who never outgrow it.
hey that sounds like
Posted on October 10th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs.
Four variations on a melody (each of these examples is just a clip of the melody, not the whole song):
- Brian Eno, Taking Tiger Mountain, 1974
- the Go-Betweens, Dive for Your Memory, 1988
- Jens Lekman, If You Ever Need a Stranger (to Sing at Your Wedding), 2004
- Andrew Bird, Spare-Ohs, 2007
I'll bet there are many more, probably predating the Eno song.
library amusement
Posted on October 10th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Musicians, Untruths.
The New York Public Library has put a big "YA" sticker on Jens Lekman's album When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog.
By the way, I suppose it has been much mentioned how much he sometimes sounds like Stephin Merritt? e.g., on "Julie".
seventies survival, update eleven
Posted on October 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Chuck Mangione, Feels So Good
I'd forgotten that this has a funky Santana-like intro. This song was so ubiquitous in Lite Muzak contexts for a while that it was impossible to like. Even now the main sax riff makes me snarl, and the wacka wacka funk lite guitar behind it doesn't help, either. But I really like the guitar break (played by Grant Geissman) that starts at 1:39; this whole section sounds like it could be from a 1980s Carla Bley album. "Feels So Good", as was discussed in the comments at Jason Hare's weblog recently, is one of the last instrumentals to make the top five. The seventies were the last good decade for hit instrumentals.
Natalie Cole, Our Love
Typical sappy seventies ballad. Hackneyed strings: yes. Harp glissandos: oh yes. Cole has a great voice, and makes a dumb song bearable, especially on the extended, lightly bouncy bridge near the end of the song. Almost all of Cole's 1970s hits were written by the production team of Chuck Jackson and Marvin Yancy (and almost all Jackson and Yancy's hits were sung by Cole). Yancy came out of gospel music; he and Cole married, divorced, Yancy returned to gospel, and died at 34 of a heart attack.
The piano opening of "Our Love" reminds me strongly of something else, but damned if I can figure out what. At first I thought it was "Isn't It Time" by the Babys, but that isn't quite it.
Santa Esmeralda, Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood
Not the worst weird disco cover. Santa Esmeralda made spanish-flavored disco, though they were actually French studio musicians fronted by a saxophonist/singer named Leroy Gomez. "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" takes up an entire side of their Casablanca LP debut. The album actually has passionate advocates among disco revivalists. The followup album was called House of the Rising Sun, I'm afraid. I feel compelled to share the cover with you:
And that's all for today!
another curious omission
Posted on October 8th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
Seals & Crofts' "Summer Breeze", which peaked at #6 in 1972 and is unquestionably one of the top 100 songs of 1972 (it should rank around #66) is not in the top 100 of 1972 set. Hmm. (The number 100 song in the set I was given is the Isley Brothers' "Pop That Thang", which peaked at #24.)
"Summer Breeze" would probably have made my top 500, but it's not one of my favorites. I can't help wondering what else is missing, though. The game's still fun, anyway.
seventies survival, update ten
Posted on October 7th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Songs, 70s Survival.
The Commodores, Three Times a Lady
I can no longer hear this song without hearing Eddie Murphy singing "Fee Times a Mady". There's nothing objectively wrong with this song -- nothing outstandingly mockable, apart from perfectly ordinary cliche-mongering like "the moments I cherish with every beat of my heart" -- and the arrangement is inoffensive, spare, with relatively light use of the mandatory strings, and I like the trembly effect on the -- guitar? I'm not sure -- after "nothing to keep us apart". I just can't stand Lionel Richie's treacly singing -- I'm sorry, Jason -- and the way he puts extra-sincere emphasis on "twice" drives me crazy. Why is "twice" important? What does it mean, damnit? How was she a lady the first time? Does "three times a lady" mean anything at all? Bah.
Fancy, Wild Thing
I despise the neanderthal original, but this leering remake is worse. Features an unconvincing moaning Penthous Pet. One of the low points of the 1970s, unredeemed by, well, anything. Okay, the watery sound of the bass is kinda interesting. Has an electronic keyboard solo and a bridge for no good reason. Fancy were a studio creation, and had one more hit, "Touch Me".
Major Harris, Love Won't Let Me Wait
More female moaning! Well, this is a much better song, at any rate. Awfully hard to take seriously though, as the moaning gets pretty silly -- and this is the five and a half minute extended-moan mix -- while Harris sings a long string of gems like "take my hand / we will take a flight / and spend the night / in a wonderland", and "I need your love so desperately / and only you can set me free / when I make love to you / we will explode in ecstasy". The whole song is a beg for sex, not withstanding that she's already moaning up a storm. Anyway, it's a tasteful, restrained arrangement in the Philly style -- Harris had been a member of the Delfonics -- played by MFSB, and has a non-obvious chord change the first time through the chorus. "Love Won't Let Me Wait" was Harris's only top 40 hit, and he eventually returned to the Delfonics.
early trivial response to andrew bird
Posted on October 4th, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Albums, Lyrics.
I've listened to the new Andrew Bird four times today, and some of it's sticking, while some of it sounds like ordinary indie singer-songwriter fare to me; I'll definitely be giving it more attention in the next week.
The only thing I have to note right now is that when he sings "We'll fight, we'll fight", it sounds to me like he's declaring "Whale fight! Whale fight!" It doesn't help that he goes on to sing "they'll fight, they'll fight", which rhymes with "whale fight".
pop art
Posted on October 3rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Musicians, Stuff, Cartoons.
Velma just pointed me to an awesome page full of highly stylized drawings of musicians by this guy Craig Robinson that he calls Lollipops:
This style of character-drawing began when I was asked by the British advertising agency Mother to work on their campaign for the Observer Music Magazine. [. . .] When some of these drawings were exhibited at the Rock en Seine festival in Paris, I had a lot of fun secretly watching people try to guess who they are, so I've not labeled them here. If you do, however, need to know who each one is, just hover your mouse over the image for a couple of seconds and a label should appear.
The Lollipops are faceless yet cute, like dressed up Fisher-Price figures, defined by their accoutrements. I'm reproducing a few here just to give the flavor:
And lots more.
fortune cookies talk back: fortune of the year thus far
Posted on October 3rd, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Words, Oracles.
Here we go. Low fat, whole wheat green tea.
musical mythmaking
Posted on October 1st, 2007 by Scraps.
Categories: Music, Music Criticism.
Phil Ford at Dial M for Musicology has written a fine post about (among other things) the self-perpetuating mythmaking of musicals, taking off from the example of Richard Dyer, and this quote from Gerald Mast:
Americans take musicals for granted because we do them so well and like them so much. Because they are so close to us, we simultaneously take their enjoyment and dismiss their art. The ruse that musicals are supremely unimportant is the masquerade that gives them their power to move and amuse.
Ford:
Entertainers famously give audiences what they want, but this is not all they do, because, as Richard Dyer notes, their professionalization places them at a level of discernment above that of their audience. And so entertainment has a pedagogical function: it also teaches the audience what it wants, or might want. A routine like "Make 'em Laugh" makes a point of “getting back to the classics,” which in this case means old vaudeville routines executed at lightening speed, one after the other, to the accompaniment of a song that in effect instructs the audience to find this sort of thing funny. It is funny, but both the song and Donald O’Conner’s virtuoso physical performance make an implicit argument that you should find this funny, because the audiences of the past thought it was funny, and future audiences will too.
[. . .]
Professionalized entertainment therefore relies on a sense of its own history, expressed as myth. [. . .] The idea embodied in the phrase “the King is dead; long live the King” is never so well illustrated as in showbiz, where the radically different personalities, styles, audiences, and historical/cultural/social backgrounds of successive stars are papered over in a historicist myth of continuity. In That’s Entertainment! stars anoint their own successors—Bing Crosby introducing Frank Sinatra, for example.
[. . .]
And yet this practice of myth-making is taking place within a historical period of mass disenchantment. [. . .] The fundamental incongruity between the willful myth-making of musicals [. . .] and American society as a whole is understood in terms of "escapism." [. . .] Marxists critics are more apt to see this as a bad thing and to value art that “tells the truth” about society, while those in the entertainment industry are apt to wave away all such concerns with appeals to “entertainment”: both sides are indulging in a certain ideology, and each ideology adopts its own strategy of self-protection. As Gerald Mast points out, musicals always insist on their fluffiness, their lack of substance -- they protest, a little too much, that they are “only entertainment,” which places them outside of critical argument and into that realm protected by the words de gustibus non est disputandum.
[. . .]
Entertainment is fully able to reabsorb any revisionist narrative back into its own narratives. The musical is a tougher animal than we once thought, because it can metabolize the foreign matter of its fans' cynical and secret knowledge. Judy Garland is fired from MGM, and it becomes more and more widely known that Judy Garland is a pill-popping emotional wreck -- and a few years later we get A Star Is Born, which transmutes the revelations that had shattered her youthful myth back into . . . myth.
There's a good deal more.