All I Want Is the Real Thing and a CD that Lasts for Years
This is really a post that should be about how much I want a Multiple Orgasm, but I've never quite got there. (Uh, writing that post.) So it's a grace note hiding in a much larger issue, the whole absolute need for a music collector like me to have a holy grail of a disc that I must luck into someday, in the used bin, on E-bay, at garage sales I don't even go to. Yet in my desirous mind there's some perfect sound, embodied on some cherishable plastic, preferably with lyrics and voluminous liner notes and some good art. Now, that CD I long for is the Pooh Sticks' crowd pleaser Multiple Orgasm, which I have on tape as is fitting as one of its songs is "On Tape." It's recorded live in Trudi's basement, and if I have to explain who Trudi is, and why Hue Pooh was a rock hero, well, you need to do some research.
I need to get to the subject at hand--today's minimal magic moment, courtesy of the last long lusted-after disc, Peter Blegvad's King Strut & Other Stories. If people know Blegvad they tend to know him for his association with Andy Partridge of XTC, who pretty much cribbed "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" from Blegvad (hence the Peter part, I guess). I finally got the disc on import, admitting partially to myself that I kept putting it off as I always needed the need of it, and once I had it the poor disc could probably never live up to what I hoped it had to be.
It mostly does, especially on a cut like the deliriously catchy "Swim," the seductively sentimental "Shirt and Comb," and the song this endless prelude builds to, "Meantime." I'm a sucker for slant rhymes, and this song, with its supple, tricky acoustic guitar line and someone probably hitting a drum rim with a stick (no credit for that) and Pino Palladino bassline, builds its lyrical magic on triplets that opens:
Life has a throat, we learned to grab it,
That kind of thing comes automatic
in a zone like the one that we inhabit--
in the Meantime.
there's nothing automatic about that automatic, but the catchy rolling rhythm sweeps it right along.
I need to get to the subject at hand--today's minimal magic moment, courtesy of the last long lusted-after disc, Peter Blegvad's King Strut & Other Stories. If people know Blegvad they tend to know him for his association with Andy Partridge of XTC, who pretty much cribbed "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" from Blegvad (hence the Peter part, I guess). I finally got the disc on import, admitting partially to myself that I kept putting it off as I always needed the need of it, and once I had it the poor disc could probably never live up to what I hoped it had to be.
It mostly does, especially on a cut like the deliriously catchy "Swim," the seductively sentimental "Shirt and Comb," and the song this endless prelude builds to, "Meantime." I'm a sucker for slant rhymes, and this song, with its supple, tricky acoustic guitar line and someone probably hitting a drum rim with a stick (no credit for that) and Pino Palladino bassline, builds its lyrical magic on triplets that opens:
Life has a throat, we learned to grab it,
That kind of thing comes automatic
in a zone like the one that we inhabit--
in the Meantime.
there's nothing automatic about that automatic, but the catchy rolling rhythm sweeps it right along.
posted by George at 9:57 AM
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